Free Alex's Wake by Martin Goldsmith Page A

possessing “the talent and intellectual ability to meet the demands” of the AGO’s rigorous curriculum. A year later, in March 1933—two months after Hitler had assumed the chancellorship—a teacher at the AGO described Helmut’s “disposition and character” with these words: “talent good, thinking ability good, very good-natured, polite, understands easily, but his effort and attentiveness vary greatly. He is exempt from physical education due to a case of rickets.”
    Within weeks of that assessment, the Nazi government passed the Law Against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities, targeting the country’s “non-Aryans.” The law specified that the number of new Jewish students at any German school must not exceed 1.5 percent of all new applicants and limited the number of Jewish pupils at any one institution to 5 percent of the total student population of that school. As an editorial in a reliable Nazi newspaper explained, “A self-respecting nation cannot leave its higher activities in the hands of people of racially foreign origin. Allowing the presence of too many of these foreigners could be interpreted as an acceptance of other races, something decidedly to be rejected.”
    Schools across Germany hurried to demonstrate their compliance with this new law. The AGO sent a letter to the Oldenburg State Ministry in early May declaring that, of its 194 students, only 3 were nichtarisch , or non-Aryan: Paul Gerson of the fifth grade, HelmutGoldschmidt of the fifth grade, and Hermann Loewenstein of the fourth. The letter hastened to add that no new nichtarisch students had been accepted for the Easter term.
    Across town, the all-girl Cecilia School sent its letter to the ministry on May 18, reporting that, of its 543 students, only 6 girls were nichtarisch , all of them israelitisch . They were first-grader Kathe Gröschler-Jever, second-grader Susanne de Haas, and sixth-graders Inge Cohen, Ingeborg Liepmann, Marianne Schiff, and Eva Goldschmidt. All of the other girls, the Cecilia administrator assured the ministry, were of “Aryan descent.”
    So it was that my Uncle Helmut and Aunt Eva spent the following five years attending their respective schools as outsiders, an unhappy status for schoolchildren under the best of circumstances. Ottheinrich Hestermann, one of Helmut’s schoolmates at the AGO, recalls that Helmut stood apart from the other children during breaks in the day’s schedule. Herr Hestermann speculates that Helmut’s isolation may have been due to the menacing presence of a brown-shirted official assigned to monitor all free-period activity in the school’s courtyard.
    Despite being shunned during those periods of official surveillance, Helmut maintained good relationships, especially considering the circumstances, with his teachers and fellow students. Throughout the mid-1930s, even as the outside world grew ever colder for the Jews of Germany, the teachers of the Altes Gymnasium spoke warmly of Helmut Goldschmidt. His evaluation from the fall term of 1935: “His conduct in school is generally praiseworthy; his grades show his good effort and ability.” At Christmas 1936: “He achieved good results while his conduct was admirable.” At Easter 1937: “His conduct is perfect; application and attentiveness are commendable.”
    Helmut’s grades were also quite commendable, again considering the circumstances of the times. Those circumstances included not only the heightened ostracism and legal discrimination against Jews throughout the country, but also the atmosphere within the hallowed halls of the Altes Gymnasium itself. The school had already existed for five centuries by the 1930s; it had a long, distinguished legacy with a conservative culture that was generally anti-Nazi in nature. But the localleaders installed as AGO headmaster a man named Westhusen, who proudly displayed a golden