Wie ich überlebte : die Jahre 1933-1945

Author:Klaus Mayer

Summary:Memoirs of a "Mischling" who was born in Darmstadt in 1923 to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. He had an older brother, Bernhard. In 1933 his father left Germany and settled in Argentina; shortly afterward, his business was expropriated. In April 1934, Klaus converted to Catholicism. Because of the antisemitism in his public high school, he was enrolled in a Benedictine school in Ettal. The house in Darmstadt was expropriated, and his mother went to live with her parents in Mainz. In 1941, Mayer's paternal grandparents and his elder brother escaped to Argentina. In August 1941, the Benedictine school became a public school; Klaus was expelled because he was not an Aryan, but he managed to do the exams and graduate in 1942. He enrolled in a language school in Hamburg, with the intention of emigrating to Argentina, but again, because he was not Aryan, he was soon forced to leave. He joined his mother in Mainz, and found a job in a workshop and carried out different tasks for the city. In February 1945, the Gestapo made preparations to deport Jewish "Mischlinge" from Mainz, but Mayer was not on their list because he was registered in Hamburg. In the last weeks of the war, the Wehrmacht began to recruit "Mischlinge" but Mayer hid in the home of friends until the war ended. Fifteen members of Mayer's family were murdered by the Nazis. He later became a Catholic priest. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)