They Came At Dawn

They came at dawn. At least, that's how I imagine it. The truth is, I don't know when the actual knock at the door happened. But sometime, they were woken up, or were already awake, bags packed, waiting. Weeks ago, when the latest race laws came into being, their windows had been broken by students from the local schools, graffitti sprayed on the outer walls, chants of 'Go to Palestine' shouted in the street. Since then, they were living on borrowed time. They must have known it.

What were their thoughts as the uniformed men led them from their comfortable home, where they had lived as valued members of their Jewish community? Grateful that their two boys, Kurt and Hans had escaped: one to Israel, one to Britain? Did Alma cry as she realised she would no longer be able to send food parcels to her youngest son, interned somewhere in England? Did Raphael, a devout orthodox Jew who prayed every morning and celebrated every Shabbat, thank G*d that Kurt would never again be taken down to the local police station and beaten up by the police, now that he and his new wife were safe in Israel ~ the country Alma and Raphael had tried to enter, but had been sent back to Nazi Germany by the British authorities as their 'paperwork' wasn't correct.

At the station, did they meet others, known faces? Did Raphael help his wife to clamber aboard the cattle truck, find a place to sit as it filled up with terrified families, all of whom would have been known to them? I try not to imagine that journey, days with little food, no water, perhaps a latrine bucket that would have slopped over onto the filthy straw. Human beings treated worse than cattle, robbed of their possessions and their dignity as the train bore them onwards out of their town, out of their country, toward the Polish concentration camp.

And then finally, the train arrived at its destination. The doors were slid back. I imagine men in uniforms shouting at them to get out quickly, snarling dogs straining on leashes, the elderly forced to jump down from the train, breaking their limbs as they fell. Sticks and batons raining down on terrified, exhausted, bewildered people as the cattle trucks disgorged their human cargo. Did they manage to stay together for those last few minutes? Look into each other's faces, touch each other before they were parted for ever, Alma led away to 'the showers', Raphael to whatever was to be his fate.

There is a Jewish tradition that every person dies three times: once when the body dies, once when the soul leaves the body, and a third time after the very last time that anyone still living says their names out loud. This is why every year, on the anniversary of their deaths, the names of family members are said aloud. It is called the yahrzeit. 

I do not know when Alma and Raphael died. I know where they died, and how they died. So on this 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on this Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025, I will remember them, my lost grandparents, and I will say their names out loud.

Alma Flatauer:

Raphael Flatauer:

The house still stands, still empty. The family who took it over, have  always refused to return it to us. But in front of the house, in full view of every passer-by, and in a perpetual memorial, are the two stolpersteine, marking the fact that a Jewish family, my family, once lived here.

© Carol Hedges 2025. No part of this blog, or family photos may be reproduced in any format without permission of the author.

Holocaust (Greek: sacrifice by fire)

 Results for:  Last / Maiden Name = Flatauer        First Name = Alma        Place = Berlin
                                                                                                                         
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany List of murdered Jews from Germany    murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany Page of Testimony                                   murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Berlin, Germany List of deportation from Berlin                murdered
Alma
Flatauer 1889 Osnabrueck, Germany Page of Testimony                          murdered

We live in a 'post fact' (or as I prefer to call it, downright lies) era. In this Holocaust Memorial time,  the internet is ablaze with Holocaust deniers, claiming that the massacre of Jews, gypsies, disabled people and gays under the Nazis did NOT happen.

The survivors of Hitler's 'Final Solution' are gradually dying. Those that are left, frail but undaunted, spend their last few days having to tell their harrowing stories over and over again, as the stinking sewage of denial washes through social media. When they are gone, who will bear the torch?

As many of you know, I am the daughter of German Jewish refugees, and post the fiasco that was Brexit, I have applied for restored citizenship, so that my descendants will never have their 'citizen of the world' status wrenched from them, as mine was by the alt-right German government. At the head of this piece is the visual proof, taken from German documentation, of the 'fate' of my paternal grandmother. 

But this is my mother's story, not mine: she was born in Berlin and as the anti-Jewish laws started coming into force, she was in her early twenties. She had to leave university, where she was studying art & design, and went to work for one of the many Jewish organisation that had started getting Jewish families out of Germany as they could see what was going to happen in the future.

UK Daily Mail pre-WW2 headline

She helped organise Kindertransports and her refugee organisation supplied the papers and documents needed for adults to leave. These organisations also helped make the situation of German Jews very public and were hated as a result. Eventually, Hitler decided to close the borders. The last train was scheduled to leave Berlin on December 7th, 1941.

The way my mother always told it: she sent her own parents to the UK where, as the Daily Mail article shows, the identical 'anti-semitic/illegal immigrant' rhetoric was alive and well then, as now, but she felt it her duty to stay in Berlin and help out to the end.

So it wasn't until the last day that she packed her suitcase and headed for the station. The queue stretched for yards. She stood in line, wondering whether she was too late. Then the German police started going down the line, checking passports and documents. Time ticked on. Finally they reached her, and roughly demanded her papers.

My mother handed them over. A brief scrutiny. A consultation. A list was checked. Then she was beckoned out of the line and ordered to go with them. Her heart sank. Was she about to be refused exit? Was she going to be imprisoned? Tortured? Deported to a work camp?  She followed the police .... along the platform ... past the waiting crowd ... straight to the barrier where the train was waiting.

A curt command and the barrier was raised. She was pushed onto the platform. The barrier was closed. Still not quite believing what had just happened, she took her place on the last train and came eventually to the UK, where she met and married my father, also a refugee. Nine years later, I was born in the UK.

My father's family refused to leave Germany, believing, as so many EU citizens, migrants and refugees believe today, that civilized people would never try to deny them their human rights. They perished at Auschwitz. I am the bearer of their story. If you read a tweet, or an article, or a book by someone denying that Hitler and his military machine ruthlessly and systematically exploited, tortured, and murdered eleven million human beings whose only 'crime' was that they were not ''them'', then remember this: the people who ignore their mistakes are destined to repeat them. Over and over again.

Some 2016 UK Brexit headlines

A journey to myself

As some of you know, my parents, Hans and Suzanne Flatauer were German Jewish refugees - my mother came from Berlin, my father from Hanover. They met at an international Jewish conference. This was in the early 1930's, when many predicted, correctly, that Hitler's rise to power would mean persecution in some form. Although those who'd read Mein Kampf could deduce what form this was going to take; many people felt equally that the German population would see through Hitler and his thuggish rhetoric, and vote his party out.

As restrictions on the lives of Jewish citizens began, including their right to education (my mother had to leave Berlin University) and attacks on individual Jews went unpunished, they decided it was time to leave. My mother's family, Lotte and Richard Mannheim came with her and settled in Hendon, north London. My father's parents Raphael and Alma, affluent, highly intellectual Orthodox Jews, but maybe not so worldly-wise, decided to stay. They subsequently perished in one of the camps - part of Hitler's deadly 'Final Solution'.

In their absence, my parents' German nationality was taken away, as happened to all who fled Nazi persecution. They never went back, and I was born in the UK, grew up here, suffering racial taunting from time to time - age 7, I remember asking my mother why a kid in my class had called me 'A dirty Jew' when I had a bath every night. I was though, to all intents and purposes, a British citizen. I had a British passport then in time, an EU one. And so my 'story' might have run its course - until two weeks ago, when this country voted to leave the EU.

My parents were stripped of their German citizenship. Now I have been stripped of my EU citizenship. As it currently stands, I and my descendants will soon no longer be able to work, live, or study freely abroad. Once again, other people have removed at a stroke my 'identity'. But this time, I refuse to submit quietly.

This time, I am going to fight back.


To be continued ...