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Holocaust
 About the Book
About The Movie
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Preview
Chapter 1: The Family Weiss
Rudi Weiss´ Story
On August 8, 1935, my older brother Karl and a Catholic girl named Inga Helms were married. They were both twenty-one years old.
Clearly, I remember the hot summer sun over Berlin. Not a breeze stirred the leaves of the poplars and oaks in the beautiful garden of the Golden Hart restaurant. The restaurant was famous for its outdoor dining-white trellises heavy with grape vines, statues, fountains, and a thick lawn. Our wedding party had been given a private area, between high dark-green hedges.
I was then seventeen. My sister Anna was thirteen, the baby of the family. Vaguely, I recall her teasing me, and my chasing her, almost pushing her into the fountain. We came back to the long linen-covered table, with its bowls of fruit, champagne and ice cream, and with the wedding cake, and we were mildly reprimanded by my mother.
"A little decorum, children," she said. "Rudi, your tie? What did you do with it?"
"It´s too hot, Mama."
"Please put it on. This is a formal occasion."
Of course I did, if a bit unwillingly. My mother had a commanding manner. She always got us to obey. When we were little, she sometimes spanked us. My father, on the other hand, Dr. Josef Weiss, was so gentle, easygoing, and preoccupied with his patients that he never, as far as I can recall, criticized us or bawled us out, let alone struck us.
There was an accordionist present, and I remember him playing Strauss waltzes, lively airs from Rosenkavalier and Fledermaus. But no one was dancing and I knew why.
We were Jews, already a marked people. Thousands of Jews had already left Germany, their businesses and properties stolen by the Nazis. There had been outbreaks of beatings on the street, humiliations, demonstrations. But we had stayed on. My mother always insisted that Hitler was "another politician," an upstart who would be put in his place soon enough. She was certain that things would get better. Her family had been in the country for centuries, and she felt more German than any flag-waving bully in the street.
Still, the uneasiness at the wedding table was for more reasons than our Jewishness. The two families, the Helmses and the Weisses, really did not know each other. The Helmses were rather plain people. Inga´s father was a machinist, a flat-faced shy man. Not a bad sort, I suppose. His wife was a modest woman, rather pretty, in the same way Inga was-long-faced, blond, with clear blue eyes. Inga had a younger brother, who was about my age. His name was Hans Helms, and I knew him from soccer games. He was one of those athletes who puts up a great show when he´s winning, but folds when he´s pressed. We´d played opposite each other a few times, and I´d gotten the best of him. When I mentioned the games, he claimed he didn´t recall them. He was a private in the German army and was wearing his uniform that day.
Inga suddenly kissed my brother on the lips-perhaps to break the dull silence around the table. My brother looked embarrassed. Karl was thin, tall, a dark young man with thoughtful eyes. He had met Inga at the Academy of Commercial Art. She was the secretary to the director of the school, Karl a prize student.
My mother felt Karl was marrying beneath him. The humble working-class family seated opposite us confirmed her views that hot August day.
But Berta Weiss did not reckon with Inga´s unbreakable will. (My mother´s was fairly strong, but Karl´s love for Inga would not bend to it.) And they were truly, deeply in love. I think Karl saw in Inga strength, determination, a vigorous and vivacious girl, the kind of woman he needed. He was a worrying, pessimistic man, not at all like Anna and me.
"Kiss me once more," Inga said.
"I´m not used to it yet . . . in public," Karl said.
She seized him, kissed him, brushing back her veil. She was lovely in her lace and silk gown, the little crown of daisies on her head.
Anna and I began to applaud. I whistled through two fingers. This seemed to relax the Helms family. They smiled hesitantly. Hans Helms winked at me-man to man.
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