In the lion's den
Rudi is born in Berlin

In December 1936, the highly pregnant Laja Menen drove from Torgelov to Stettin. With this bittersweet secret buried deep in her, she took the train to Berlin. She did not want to expose herself any longer in this Pomeranian town. The young Jewess carried a bastard child underneath her heart. Anyway there were enough faces blaspheming and puzzling. In Berlin she gave birth to her child in a Jewish hospital. Protected through anonymity she was able to look out for a new housing. The journey to Berlin was not very difficult. The Pomeranian capital with its flourishing port was directly connected to Berlin by train. At the end of the thirties one could reach the grand world within 95 minutes from the province. Pomeranian lords, landsmen and even the service personal used those roads. Beneath some clothes for herself and the child, the young and courageous woman boxed some victuals. Just enough for the ride. She did not want to catch someone’s eye. The whole country was in the hand of the national socialists and the train was full of this brown vermin. And as a Jewess she was reckoning with any sorts of insults and molestations. As the pregnant woman exited the train in Stettin, one of eight railway stations in Berlin, she directly noticed the swastika banners hanging down the entrance of the station.

This utterly impressive railway station was not only the one most used in the vicinity of Berlin. Innumerable trains were carrying good tempered tourists to Swinemünde or to the island of Usedom. It was also the contact point for voyagers and the trans-shipment center for the transportation of cargo. Cabs were hectically shuttling between the Lehrter railway station and the railway station of Stettin. In incredibly huge vestibules the baggage was stacked. Over the broad stairs which lead to the train platforms in three meters height, the passengers were trampling. A fluctuating stream of people. Above the arches in the entry hall the German eagle. Its beak and claws were martially deformed and its feathers were depicted as swords. Shivering ! This symbol together with the swastika was present nearly everywhere. You could not overlook it. Laja, accustomed to the tranquillity of the Pomeranian town, was standing clueless between the crowds of people, carrying a piece of paper. An address on it. But who was she supposed to ask ? Men were hurrying through the great hall and over the streets. Men with buttons signalling their party. Men with flawless uniforms were forming the image of the street. It was a dangerous site for a young Jewess. Maybe she thought she could submerge in this hurly-burly. Become invisible. Maybe. And in fact, the unconcerned and careless Berlin was not noticing all of this misery.

Paul Lincke was singing „…Berliner Luft, Luft, Luft…“, the construction of the international airport Tempelhof started and Helene Bechstein, spouse of the successful piano-builder, was introducing Hitler into Berlin’s society. The proud Fuehrer had just declared the Olympic summer games as open. Athletes from forty-nine countries were participating. A gigantic propaganda for the national socialist Germany. The first time in history, television was broadcasting all events from the twenty-five different gymnasiums. Three-thousand journalists were able to read bulletins in more than fourteen languages. Completely on top !
The so called “Ordensburgen” were founded, where elite personal was trained and all bridal couples received one copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” for the wedding ceremony. Only a few were hassled by the nightmare of a new war. With a cathedral of light and the deployment of a hundred-thousand NSDAP-members the Nuremberg Rally was staged and Hitler was propagating the fight against the Soviet Union. Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, declared the food shortage as irrelevant, since one could get by without butter but never without guns. In the meantime, the harassment of the Jewish population continued. Persons like Max Liebermann, Kurt Tucholsky and Carl von Ossietzky were redlined and the citizenship of Thomas Mann was denied. The Jewish proprietor of a huge sore in Wertheim, one of the most luxurious stores in Europe, a “cathedral of commerce”, had to sell his shares for a rather ridiculous price. The alternative was to directly go out of office.

Very soon they were pushed out of the company. An „ Arian „ syndicate took over the business. In Wertheim Hitler built the imperial office and his famous Fuehrer-bunker. A small part of the merchant’s family could escape overseas in the last minute. Until today the struggles concerning the Wertheim property continued and processes are held endlessly. But who cared? Berlin was laughing, dancing and cheering. People were meeting in Hotel „Adlon“ in order to see and to be seen. The place where once Rathenau, Einstein, Sauerbruch, Furtwängler and Charlie Chaplin were celebrating was now profiting as the official hotel, from the glamour of the Olympic summer games. On every wall and in every street the swastika banners were fluttering. No place for the pregnant Laja Menen. She moved to the barns-quarter not far from the railway station Stettin, North West of the Alexanderplatz. Some acquaintances offered some shelter to the early mother. At least until the labor pains started. And here in this quarter of Berlin, life was all but glamorous. It was the poor house, the backyard of Berlin. Before the turn of the century until the year 1923 numerous Jews from Poland fled to Berlin, because of the political confusion.

They settled down in the east of the city, where the most streets had military names like “Artillery-Street”, “Rifleman-Street” or “Dragoon-Street”. In a very short period of time one thousand-five-hundred people or more lived here on one hectare. It was pure drabness ! The shabby buildings were covered all over with weeds. It was a terrible hygienic condition. The toilets were used by ten different families. A lack of everything. No water, no gas, no electricity and not enough space for families with many children. Those miserable conditions led to epidemics and severe diseases. Pneumonias, gastro-enteritis and colitis were the most common reasons for death. One could not get this misery under control again. In 1929 the Jewish writer Alfred Döblin, who immigrated to France in 1933, created a literary memorial for the barns-quarter with his book “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. It didn’t take long until the goings of the Jews created bad blood and anti-Semitism under the German population. Even local Jews, who have already been living there for a long time, contemplated the new ones with distrust. The Jewish middle-class lived in the Bellevue-quarter. Wealthy Jews preferred quarters like Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf or the very exquisite Grunewald. „East-Jew and West-Jew were rather temporal than geographical terms in Berlin“ Sammy Gronemann told. „ During the shift of their residence to the west of the city, the locals looked with unbelievable disrespect at the newly arrived elements from the east.

Not even two years after Laja found shelter in the shadows of the synagogue and gave birth to her child in the Jewish Hospital, this centre of Jewish life was destroyed. Two weeks before the Pogromnacht in 1938, about ten thousand Jewish citizens were expelled from the barns-quarter. In the Reichskristallnacht at the 9th of November, the new synagogue, one of the biggest and glorious bead houses worldwide, was set on fire. The courageous police officer Wilhelm Krützfeld prevented the worst. Under soviet occupation the rest of the building which was remaining after the inferno from 1943 decayed. But in 1987 the GDR, on the occasion of the 750-year anniversary of Berlin, restored the synagogue and placed a golden cupola on the top of the building. Nowadays Jewish Life, in and around Oranienburg is flourishing again. The quarter with all its Stores providing kosher food, the bead houses, cultural institutions, cafés, restaurants and galleries is enjoying great popularity in the meantime. At the end of December 1936 it was time. As the labor pains started Laja Menen walked to the hospital in the Iranian street in Berlin-Wedding, which was already occupied by the GESTAPO. In this very hard hour she was hoping to get help, rest and consolation there. And so it was. At the 31st of December 1939, under the custody of Dr. Hermann Hirsch, the single Jewess gave birth to her child. At his side Magharete Müller, an „Arian“ midwife, was standing.





“I can only remember a non Jewish midwife. It was Magharete Müller. A real Berlin type with the appendant beak. She was quoted in the whole hospital. She dedicated herself to the station, but had to leave it, since of higher orders“ the contemporary witness was saying.
Laja Menen called her son Rachmil. After her deceased father, Rachmil Menen. She chose Rudolph as his first name. Rudi should be his nickname. As the father she declared Mendel Ginsberg. Resident: Elisabeth Straße 45 in Stettin. As employer, Julius Gronemann from the Pomeranian town Torgelow. For a short period of time, she was secure in the cocoon of the hospital and could enjoy the lovely attention given to her by the personnel. After a Jewish Custom, Rudi was rubbed with salt after his first bath and a tora scroll was placed in the chamber. A panacea against evil spirits. In order that also known forces would not have a chance, the nurses were attaching small bells and amulets to the cradle. Yes ! Laja was in good hands. „ We lived in the hospital like in an oasis „, Rita Hirsch, who arrived a few months after Laja, was writing. „ It was a closed circle with an active social life. Both the doctors and a few of the nurses were friendly with us. Our daughter was growing up in this wonderful garden around the hospital, surrounded and spoiled by the love of the doctors and nurses“. Rita Hirsch was the wife of the gynaecologist Dr. Hermann Hirsch, who has already been dismissed from the university hospital Freiburg in 1933 and was now working for the Jewish hospital.

He was no exception. At that time many well-known Jewish doctors were looking for a new task in that hospital. After 1933 estimated authorities, appreciated scientists and university professors in ordinary of the “Rudolf-Virchow-Klinik”, of the “Hufeland-Krankenhaus” and of the “Universitäts-Kinderklinik” worked here and did from 1933 to 1938/39 an excellent job. The scientific level was very high. For the Jewish patients – the care of non-Jewish patients was forbidden long ago – a welcomed benediction.
The history of the Jewish hospital also began at the border of the “Scheunenviertel” near the synagogue in the “Oranienburger Straße” in Berlin. First of all in 1756 there was a Jewish military hospital. In 1861 the Jewish hospital was established in the neighbourhood of the New Synagogue, later called “Auguststraße”. In that hospital, sometimes called “Small Charité”, patients from all over the world were attended and soon there was a lack of space. So in 1914 a new building was opened at the “Iranische Straße” in the Wedding. Upon that occasion it was the most modern hospital in Berlin. But in the famous “Kiezkrankenhaus”, the highly qualified doctors had no more possibilities for real therapies during the National Socialism. The hospital was systematically segregated. Later you could hardly speak of an oasis. It was rather the backyard of hell. When the anti Semitic tumults in the streets of Berlin began, the horribly injured victims were taken to this place and the doctors and the nursing stuff had to run the gauntlet.

“Once I had to tear the patient document because a senseless assistant had described the prehistory of the patients injuries and the atrocities of the anti Semitic oppressors”, Dr. Rosenstein reported later. “It is ineligible for a hospital to manipulate the patients affairs but it was necessary cause otherwise we would have endangered the existence of the hospital.” After the “Progromnacht” in November 1938 the harassments increased rapidly. In the hospital a police station had to be founded for the lodging of ill prisoners from police jails. The anatomical museum was plundered and the Gestapo confiscated important medical equipment. One part of the building got the function of a gathering point. Doctors and nurses got the order to prepare the deportation to concentration camps and to help elderly and ill people to put on their clothing, to bag their property and to ascend on the lorries. The ghost of fear passed around. Very many patients committed suicide. The people knew the destination. So many decided to take pills or potassium cyanide. Each day the hospital stuff had to decide between saving the life or allowing the people to die. After February 1943 almost all patients and the staff of the hospital were deported. 23 doctors, almost all Jewish nurses and assistants were abducted to concentration camps and killed. But the eidolon was not finished yet. On the 1st March 1945, nearly two months before the end of war, the Gestapo confiscated the pathology halls and a lodge for an enlarged gathering point and a jail.

On the 21st April the “battle of Berlin” began. The Wedding was also under heavy combat. Even in the hospitals ground floor, the stay was mortal because of detonations and shell splinters. On the 22nd April 1945 the Gestapo left hastily the building. Forever. The daily laming fear of deportations was finally gone. Between 1933 and 1939 around 80.000 Jews of Berlin left the country with wistfulness. After the “Reichskristallnacht” 16.000 Jews of Berlin left the county. After the war a report, correctly supervised by the Gestapo, confirmed that on the 28th February 1945 there were “only” 6022 Jews in Berlin. The “operation” was successful. Even though not quite. The spirit, the will to survive and the creativity remained unbroken. Already in May 1945 the work was resumed in the hospital at the “Iranische Straße” with 145 beds. Nowadays the Jewish hospital is again a hospital with several medical centers of gravities. In the center of Central Berlin. The small synagogue in the old part of the building was restored and is again the center of religious reflection as in the past. Here the small Rudolf Rachmil Menen was circumcised on the 8th day after his birth. Circumcision as the “eternal sign of union”, the symbol of partnership with Israel, the love of each Israelite for his people and his religious fellows. An admission – and an extremely dangerous intervention in that time. Because a circumcised young male was stigmatised. Easy prey for Hitler’s beadles.


The unmarried mother who received the ritual immersion after her “male childbirth” and who still took pleasure in the hospitals concealment, had to make serious decisions. Yet she suckled the infant but there was no time left for delaying the weaning which is combined with a sacrificial offering and a celebration, for a trustful woman. She was completely alone with her decision. Where should she bring her baby? The caring doctors and the midwife knew the problem and reprimanded the impoverished mother to the “Jüdische Säuglings- und Kleinkinderheim Niederschönhausen” which was founded in 1907 in the German capital as the first Jewish baby farm. The misery of the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and the related mortality of infants had to be relieved, first of all with the provision of accommodations for nursing babies for Jewish children. Due to the fact that mothers could only take use of public care when they wee notified in Berlin at least for 2 years. That led to the segregation of all Jews who moved into Berlin or who were in transit and who needed aid. In addition to that the number of children out of marriage extremely increased in the middle of the 30’s and whose mothers were young adults. Laja belonged to them. At the end of 1936, at the age of 21, she came from Torgelow to Berlin for giving birth. But she had to care for her existence and of her child on her own because she was unmarried and the father of the child lived far away in Stettin. Although she got again the occasion in Pomerania, the male child needed care. So Laja asked advice the “Fürsorgeverein für hilflose jüdische Kinder”, a hostel for poor Jewish nursing babies. Here the small Rudi Menen was adopted without the consideration of his origin or nationality.



Now the Jewish woman could set out on her return journey to Torgelow. Knowing that her child lives in a good accommodation. Nevertheless she felt very badly. In the baby farm at the “Moltkestraße 8-10” in Berlin Pankow, originally built for children tom the age of two, they made an exception during the National Socialism. Some children even stayed to the age of six. The children enjoyed the bright rooms of the nice villa and the big garden with playground, sand box, coloured toys and pool. The older children took care for their small flowerbeds, watched the fishes in the fish tanks and learned playing piano. They felt well in comparison to many other Jewish children who were concealed by their parents or who were humiliated by the Arian children on the streets.



The “Jüdische Säuglings- und Kleinkinderheim Niederschönhausen” was sponsored by charities. Jewish families who succeeded to emigrate in these years, sent sheets and clothes, dolls and other toys. In addition to that there was an own stewing room. The Jewish nurses tried to make the children have a good time even though there were many hindrances. An idyll? No. Why should the Nazis terrible phantom stop in front of the baby farm? In September 1941 the piece of land was offered for housing and care for “Arian” old people and children because of an announcement of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. The office for “Volkswohlfahrt” of the NSDAP and the “Hauptwohlfahrtsamt” of the Berlin showed interest.

That fact led to the forced closure of the baby farm. On the 1st April 1942 the final evacuation took place. So there was no compassion. All beds with the babies were piled up on a lorry. The older ones, who could already walk, stayed close to their nurses and drove with them into the “Gipsstraße”. There was a provisional lodging. But not for a long time. Because all these children were sent with their nurses to Auschwitz.
No person who was deported at the end of 1942 survived the hell. Today the house with the pretty garden and the bright rooms in the calm, green residential area of Berlin-Pankow, has found a new determination. After a long search, the “Björn Schulz Stiftung” could rent the historic villa, which belongs to the “Jewish Community Berlin”. The former baby farm “Niederschönhausen” became the “Sonnenhof”, a hospice for cureless ill children. “Even if the occasion is a very sad one, this house shall forever be a house of pleasure. The children can enjoy their last weeks or months, years with the task to support and help families with cureless ill children because dying belongs to lifetime. They even can bring their budgerigar or rabbit with them in order to feel well as far as possible. The main point of all work is the affected child and therefore inevitably the whole family”, says Jürgen Schulz, the principal of the “Björn Schulz Stiftung” and father of the hospice idea for children in Berlin. His son Björn died at the age of 7 because of leukaemia.
The circle closes.

Another time mothers and families can knock at the door if they need financial and moral help due to their difficult situation with a cureless ill child. The device is a domestic atmosphere, self-determination of the parents and minimum routine. Like in the past. In 1937, after Laja knew her child in good hands of the Jewish hostel, she took the next train to Stettin. From the Pomeranian capital she went back to Torgelow. They needed her in the household of the Gronemanns. She lived there. In the old villa at the “Moltkestraße” in Berlin, the young nurses tried to compensate the missing love of the mother for the small Rudi and to educate him in a Jewish religious way like it was determined in the hostels statutes. That was also in Layas way of thinking. The Jewish broadcast reported that “(…) the little ones of the hostel in Niederschönhausen tinkered a “Noah’s’ Ark”. And the floors of the bright building should vibrate because of Hebrew songs. At the Sabbath-night and Jewish holidays like Chanukka and Purim there was a cheerful atmosphere. Until April 1942. More than two years the little Rudi lived in the safety of that place which gave the impression of an oasis. Until Laja picked him up. Just in time.

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