the knock on the door

As a youngster, Fred (Manfred) experienced the terrors of Nazism. He witnessed the smashing and looting of Jewish shops, and the daily beatings and disappearances of Hanover’s Jewish population.

The real terror struck with a loud knock at his own door. It was common for Jewish men to disappear, and one day Nazi officers came for his father. Fred watched in amazement as his diminutive mother bravely rebuffed them, claiming that her husband was “out on business.” In truth, a Christian family elsewhere in the apartment building was hiding Fred’s father.

In a memoir, Fred states; “Papa believed that God would protect the Jews, believed it deep in his soul.” Nevertheless, Fred’s father was eventually caught, served in slave labor, but was able to eventually escape to freedom.