Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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remained in and around Magdeburg. There were no recorded persecutions of Levy
and his daughter and the family of three survived the war years. 173
The situation of the Klemm family provides further insight into the unusual
course of events which could and did occur in families of mixed marriages. In
May 1939 the Klemm family lived at Breiter Weg 82. 174 There exists no record
indicating any family religious affiliation with the Synagogen-Gemeinde. Klara
Klemm née Heil was married to a non-Jew and had two sons, Manfred and
Wolfgang, aged seven and two years respectively in 1939. 175 Not dissimilar to the
situation of the family of Herbert Levy, by the end of 1939 the Klemms had not
been evicted from their home and were not forced to move into a ‘Judenhaus.’
However, unlike the Levys’ daughter, the two boys were compelled to attend the
‘Judenschule.’ 176 With the deportation of Klara Klemm in 1942, a series of events
unfolded, which quite possibly saved the boys’ lives. A school friend of Manfred
Klemm recalled:
Klemm lived about twenty metres from the Katharinenkirche [St Catherine’s
Church]. His mother was Jewish, but his father was half-Jewish, but had
Jewish as his religion. The mother quite early in the piece was deported and
never heard of again.
Now in that same building one floor above them was a German family who
had something like four children and after Mrs Klemm had to go, the oldest of
those children was a girl and she started helping to look after the boys. This
went on for quite some time. Eventually, the father, Klemm, went undercover
and this family looked after these two boys. The boys remained in the
apartment. Then came the big bombing in January 1945.
Shortly before that the father had returned and was living with them and of
course by that time you could get away with things like that. The Gestapo
wasn’t chasing us around that much anymore. By this time, the young lady,
173 Levy, op. cit., 10 July 1997.
174 Sonderaufbereitung der Volkszählung vom 17. Mai 1939, Listung der
Erhebungsbögen für Provinz Sachsen, Stadtkreis Magdeburg, Gemeinde Magdeburg,
BAB, op. cit., p. 14.
175 Ibid.
176 Name withheld, op. cit., 13 July 2004.