Witness to the Storm by Werner T. Angress

Author:Werner T. Angress [Angress, Werner T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Jewish, Military, History, World War II
ISBN: 9780253039163
Google: bEWQDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2019-05-01T01:10:18+00:00

Werner Angress, on the day after emigrating to Amsterdam, October 31, 1937.

Now at least I knew that Papa had gotten out of Germany, and I knew approximately where he was. Nonetheless, I felt incredibly sad. Here I was sitting in a pension full of people I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Suddenly I remembered that as I was leaving Gross Breesen someone had given me an address. It belonged to a Werner Warmbrunn, a former member of Schwarzes Fähnlein in Frankfurt am Main. His nickname was “Meui,” and he now lived in Amsterdam with his parents and went to school there. I called him from the pension and reached him right away, it being Sunday. He said he would come to the pension, and ten minutes later we were greeting each other somewhat awkwardly. He invited me to go home with him to meet his mother. We had hardly left the pension when he asked if I really wanted to wait for my father in that dreadful atmosphere at Rosengarten’s. If not, he could ask his parents to let me stay at their house until my father arrived. And so on October 31, 1937, began a close friendship that has lasted to the present day. We had both been members of the Schwarzes Fähnlein; we both later emigrated to the United States (although at different times and under very different circumstances); we both studied European and German history and taught, did research, and published for decades. Even when we lived a great distance from one another and saw each other only rarely, our friendship continued. I still visit him whenever I go to California.

The week I spent waiting for my father, who was traveling through Austria and Switzerland, was a very good week. Meui was in his second-to-last year of a school equivalent to a classical German Gymnasium of the time, with courses in Greek, Latin, and French. In the Dutch schools they studied English as well, so he was busy with a lot of homework. But he still took time for me, and we did something together every day after school. The afternoon after I arrived we hitchhiked to Haarlem and went to the Frans Hals museum. In the evening on the way back to Amsterdam, we jumped naked into a canal next to the street and swam around like young dogs. It turned out that Meui shared my feelings for Germany and was probably even more nationalistic than I. Strengthened in this fervor by my new friend, I was to hang on to my blind German patriotism for almost exactly another year.

After a week, Papa arrived in Amsterdam and stayed two days, which we spent together in a hotel. He seemed to be immersed in his own thoughts most of the time and spoke little. The only conversation I remember happened when I let on once how much I missed Gross Breesen, my friends there, and also Germany. Papa told me then that he had always

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