Everybody has a story: A witness to war in Germany protests prejudice in America

I was 6 in 1943 during World War II, living in Bad Liebenzell, Germany, deep in the Black Forest. Papa was gone, drafted into the German Army. Mama insisted he’d refused to join the Nazi Party. I wondered what kind of a party it was that Papa had refused to go to. She said they became suspicious of Hitler’s motives when one night their Jewish neighbors were rousted from their homes and dragged away.

That explained why our Jewish milkman suddenly disappeared, no longer delivering milk to our house. I wondered if that was what war was about — hurting people like our friendly milkman.

Allied bombers were by then flying high overhead on their mission to the interior. My best friend Hans and I would stop our play to watch. Then one day the planes came down low, their bombs exploding along the railroad tracks that cut through town. It was the first time Bad Liebenzell had been hit. Later that day, I learned Hans was dead.

Mama took us three children (my brother Paul was 8 and my sister Irma 2) and moved us in with our grandparents. Although I loved them both, I found life stressful with Opapa and Omama. Opapa had been born a baron in the Baltics, traveling to the United States as a young man to attend Moody Bible Institute. Later, he worked with homeless boys on London’s streets until he was called back to serve in Russia’s Czarist army. Upon his discharge, Opapa moved to Germany.

He was tall and very thin during WWII, with a bushy white mustache, his bald head ringed with snow-white hair. He always wore a suit and vest, demanding respect from us children, insisting we girls curtsy when greeting him, “like proper young ladies.” Mama often spoke of God as her Heavenly Father, but with Opapa the only father figure I had at that time, I visualized God just as demanding and harsh.

After Hans was killed, my terror of the bombers overwhelmed my fear of Opapa. Every time the air raid sirens sounded, I’d go running straight to him, clambering onto his lap without bothering to curtsy. He would button me up tight in his vest, my head tucked under his sharp chin, his thick mustache tickling my ears. “There now, Irene, here in Opapa’s vest you are safe.” Learning to trust my grandfather gave me a better understanding of Mama looking on God as her Heavenly Father. That’s when I began to picture God as wearing a vest.

Germany finally surrendered and Papa returned home. Soon we began hearing about the horrendous things that had taken place in the concentration camps, and a terrible guilt overcame me. It was some of my own countrymen who had carried out those unspeakable horrors. Mama and Papa tried shielding us from those stories, but we heard. So, I reasoned, that was why our country was bombed.

By 1949, Jewish families began passing through town on their way to Israel. We opened our home to one such family, sharing what little we had before helping them on their way. The following year, my family migrated to America. I was fourteen when we settled in Billings, Mont.

I so longed to be freed from the terrible realities of the war. And yet it continued to prey upon my mind. Why, I wondered, had the German people allowed those terrible things to happen? Why hadn’t they risen up early on to stop Hitler’s insane fury?

After high school, I married Jim Ricks and we eventually moved to the Pacific Northwest. Then, at Christmastime 1993, just before Hanukkah, my brother, Paul, called from Billings. Some neo-Nazis had thrown a brick through the bedroom window of 5-year-old Isaac Schnitzer, destroying the boy’s Menorah, showering glass across his bed. Thankfully, Isaac was unharmed.

Paul told me, “I couldn’t stand by and watch the beginnings of another Holocaust right here in America. But you know? The whole town has come together in support of the Jews. Thousands of people are now putting Menorahs up in their windows. Businesses are displaying ‘Not in our Town!’ signs. The local television station interviewed me about our family’s experiences in Germany during the war.”

He said he warned people not to let it happen in America.

I was so proud of my brother for taking a stand against tyranny. It lessened some of the guilt I’d been carrying. I resolved after that I’d never fail to voice my own opposition to hatred. Had Opapa been alive and living in Montana in 1993, I’m sure he would have stood shoulder to shoulder with Paul. I visualized Opapa on the night little Isaac’s window had been smashed — pulling the child onto his lap, buttoning him securely inside his vest.

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