Congregation Ohav Sholom
Tales of Survival
MICHAEL ROSENBLOOM
Milton Kaufman
The history of Milton Kaufman and his wife Lee are similar. Both are German Jews and both fled Hitler's Germany as young children. Righteous gentiles aided both in their survival.
Milton was born in 1929 in the city of Wurtzburg, Germany. But it was the village of Laudenbauch, fifty miles from Wurtzburg, which the Kaufmans called home. Milt's father was wounded in World War I, fighting for the German army. He sustained the family as a salesman, traveling from town to town, selling fabric to farmers.
Milton remembers Laudenbauch as a village with a closely-knit Jewish community of 20-40 families. Minyans were assembled for morning, afternoon and evening services. Laudenbauch boasted of excellent relations with the gentiles of the village until the rise of the Nazi Party.
As a young child, Milton had plenty of friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Jews were able to practice their religion freely. Milt still remembers the men coming to shul on Simhat Torah, dressed up in top hats and tuxedoes and the women trying to knock off the top hats by throwing candy at them from the women's section.
Milt tells about a family simcha, celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of his grandparents at the Kaufman residence. Food was becoming scarce. A bass caught in the river, had to be kept in the river in a wooden box, for a full week in order to pull it out the day of the feast. It is here that Milton introduces a righteous gentile who appears several times during his narrative. This woman, Mrs. Gerchsheimer, would leave food for the Kaufmans in the dark nighttime shadows surrounding the Kaufman house, endangering herself in the process.
Around 1934 or 1935, things started deteriorating rapidly. As a young boy in Nazi Germany, Milt recalls vividly how this deterioration manifested itself in his and his family's life. At first, the same classmates who used to play with Milton, would simply avoid him. Later, during play time, they would beat him up. At first, the teacher would conveniently turn his back, in order not to witness the goings-on. Soon all pretenses were dropped as the teacher instructed the other children to take the "dirty Jew-boy" around the side of the building to beat him up. Children would sometimes pull Milton to the ground by grabbing him by his backpack. Then they would scatter his books and break his small blackboard, which each child was required to bring to school.
Milton remembers sitting in the classroom and having to go to the restroom. Raising his hand continuously, after what seemed like an eternity, the teacher finally recognized him. Young Milton asked to be excused to go to the restroom. The teacher replied: "Jews can't go to the restroom now." Worse still, after Milton, unable to wait any longer, had an accident, the teacher placed a dunce cap on his head and allowed his fellow students to take turns hitting him with a ruler.
It wasn't long before Milton's parents pulled Milton from the school and sent him to Wurtzburg to a Jewish school. There, together with another Jewish boy of Polish descent, he boarded with a Jewish family that had previously been unknown to both. In Wurtzburg, he enjoyed a temporary reprieve from the anti-Semitic mistreatment and humiliation to which he was subjected at the Laudenbach public school.
Not only did Milton make many friends in Wurtzburg, he frequently visited his paternal grandparents, who had once lived with Milton and family in Laudenbach. The grandparents moved to the Jewish old-age home in Wurtzburg knowing that due to ill health they could never get a visa to leave Germany for a safe haven.
September, 2002
Next article: Milton Kaufman Part II - Krystalnacht
Michael Rosenbloom is a member of Congregation Ohav Sholom. He can be reached at spidermr@aol.com.
