Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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Clearly most of the abuse Jewish children and youth encountered emanated from
their initial identification as Jews in school, which made them potential targets
anywhere. This would account for the experience of Günter Manneberg, who as
the only Jew in his school remained unmolested until his peers learned that he was
Jewish. 119
There were few exceptions for Jewish children in their pre- and early teens
who did not experience public abuse. The majority of interviewees remarked that
by the time they were of an age ripe for forming friendships that the policy of
state-sponsored antisemitism was well under way. Hence, in the majority of
encounters they were treated as a faceless and depersonalised enemy. This trend
did not always apply to those interviewees who were already teenagers when the
change of regime took place. The pattern associated with Jewish children
generally applied, but in the case of teenagers, there were some exceptions to this
rule. These exceptions emanated, no doubt, from friendships having been formed
prior to 1933. The situation of Hans Jensen (born Hansgünter Jeruchem in 1920)
typifies this exception to the general rule of hostility:
I had a friend who was a leader in the Hitler Jugend [Hitler Youth]. He said to
me one day: “We must go on a bicycle tour through the Harz and around that
part of the world. My parents heard about this and said: “No way. No way,
you can’t go……you can’t sleep in a Hitler Jugend-Heim [Hitler Youth
Hostel].” Anyway, I did in the end and I had a wonderful tour. We didn’t stay
in a Hitler Jugend-Heim. He agreed that he would not risk that, but he didn’t
travel in uniform either. I was about sixteen. I remember going to the famous
Denkmal [monument] of Friedrich Barbarossa in Goslar and all that. We were
gone close to two weeks.
I made another bicycle tour with this fellow Simon in 1937. From Magdeburg
by train to Heidelberg. We had a tent; we couldn’t sleep in the Jugendheime
so we took everything that we needed. And we went to the famous car race
held every year near Heidelberg and got on our bikes to Mannheim; from
Mannheim to Worms. We went to the oldest Jewish cemetery in Worms; and
119 Mannings, op. cit., 17 August 1999.