The Funeral

When Mom died, Dad understandably seemed on autopilot. I went with him to the funeral home. Dad needed no time to deliberate the type of casket he wanted (simple pine), whether he wanted a headstone for Mom now or a double headstone to be filled in later (the latter), and where we would hold the funeral itself (at our synagogue and at the cemetery). More than once, Dad used the terms “modest and traditional.”

A surprise to me was that modest and traditional included six pall bearers that Dad wanted me to contact. They would all be men, and they would march next to the casket. His voice took on a solemn gravity as he told me who to call to ask to do the honors. I couldn’t remember going to a funeral with pall bearers – it sounded military not religious -- but maybe most of my memories were of recent celebration of life ceremonies, all the rage.  After the funeral home, as I reviewed my punch list of calls to make for the funeral, I flashed back to an anecdote from Dad’s childhood in Berleburg that must have taken place sometime between 1934 and 1938, i.e., the early years of the Nazis.

Dad said that the whole town turned out when World War I veterans died. The casket would be pulled by a horse-drawn hearse. Fellow soldiers would walk solemnly behind the hearse, each man donning his ribbons and Iron Crosses. Family and friends would follow in line after the veterans and walk to the cemetery. Neighbors and children would stand on their stoops watching the procession. This day, a Jewish veteran was to be buried. Grandpa came out of the house with his Iron Cross pinned to his coat. He got in line to follow the hearse. But no non-Jewish veterans joined him, nor did any non-Jewish family stand on their stoop honoring the man. I wasn’t sure if Dad remembered this funeral, or if he’d heard Grandpa talk about it often and had adopted the memory. Grandpa had served the Kaiser for four years in the Great War; that this comrade, who’d also given up years of his life for the country was now being ostracized because he was Jewish, must have at least insulted Grandpa, if not made him furious. It could be that Dad was still carrying around his father’s sense of betrayal and a need to make amends.

Once my memories were half-way across the globe, I pictured the little Jewish cemetery in Berleburg. I first visited it in the spring of 1978 with my parents and sister:

Although the lighting is poor in the above photo, and I don’t remember who’s grave my mother and sister are bracketing, I remember finding headstones for family members going back to the early 1800s. Before that, the headstones were inscribed in Hebrew without either Roman or Arabic numbers. Though I understood that the cemetery was important for Dad to visit, I was there mainly to keep him company.

Then I remembered all the hours Aunt Lucie had worked for over a years with several people in Berleburg to establish a memorial to the Jews who died in the Holocaust. Eventually the effort was successful, and a sculpture was placed in the Jewish Cemetery. Here’s a photo of Aunt Lucie addressing the crowd at the memorial’s dedication.

Among the people Aunt Lucie referenced in that speech, and whom she spoke of later to High School students in Berleburg was Grandma’s older brother Julius Bachenheimer. Lucie’s written remarks given to students at the Althusius Gymnasium stated,

A patriot during the First World War, Uncle Julius had a big wound in his left shoulder where shrapnel had hit him during the First World War. As a small child, I was proud seeing this scar for it meant to me that he had fought bravely for his Vaterland…. Julius, the only son surviving the First World War had been my grandmother’s favorite son. Oma Gustchen, as we called her, spent the war years [AO1] in America. When Julius died[AO2] , no one had the heart to tell her, for she often talked about their reunion. She died shortly before the end of the war. It was as though she was afraid to find out that not only her beloved son Julius was dead, but that his wife and three daughters had been murdered in Auschwitz.[1]

Julius was a good man. Karl-Hermann Völker, President of the Frankenberg History Club, said in the early 2000s (later translated by Lucie),

The (Julius Bachenheimer) family was charitable and helpful. At times, Julius asked beggars to come and eat at his house. Local children enjoyed the “Jewish Easter” when the Bachenheimers distributed matza among them. The family was completely involved in village life. All this came to an end after Hitler’s seizure of power…. In time, humiliation and hatred towards the Bachenheimers increased. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis imprisoned Julius Bachenheimer and sent him to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Witnesses of that time reported that they led him through the village in a humiliating procession. Neighbor Hildegard Zieg remembered Julius sarcastically saying about his time in Buchenwald, ‘There, where I have been, they had culture!’^[2]

Historian Horst Hecker wrote of Julius spent time in the Frankenberg prison and Buchenwald Concentration Camp “he was held under inhumane conditions and was apparently severely abused.” He died on July 14, 1939 of liver cancer.”[3]

Dad knew something of Julius’s mistreatment. But mainly he was upset at his uncle’s treatment when he died. Grandpa told Dad, “No good Christian was going to touch Julius’ body, dig his grave, or bury the poor man.” Photo of Julius Bachenheimer in 1915 when he was a soldier in World War I below.

Grandpa was 46 years old in 1939 and he had been working since his release from the Berleburg hospital on a variety of construction projects required by the Nazis (and in order to pay the various Jew taxes). I can almost picture him working alone in the cemetery, no one wanting to be near him for fear of breaking some recent Nazi interdiction. It might have been a very hot day, maybe a day with rain. I picture Grandpa working up a good sweat, his sleeves rolled up, soil sticking to his arms and face, bereft. I also imagine him weeping and praying for the health and safety of his children who he hasn’t seen in over six months (because they have been sent to Belgium).

Thankfully Grandpa’s prayers were answered. While my sister, cousins and I all adored our grandfather, I think it was my father who benefited the most from his company. Though he saw little of his father at times as a child, once Dad began working on the farm, he spent almost two decades working alongside his father. I think it was during these years driving in a truck or car, or even tractor, that father and son helped each other make sense of what they had been through, the nightmarish years from 1933 to 1941.

So Dad, an avowed atheist, who cared not a whit for Jewish religious services, wanted a respectful Jewish burial for my mother. And, when he dies, a ceremony and burial as he wanted for Mom for him. I will do my best someday to give him that, though it will not be easy to say good-bye to Dad or his legacy.

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[1] Lucie Weinstein speech to Johannes Althusius Gymnasium, Berleburg.

[2] translated by Lucie Weinstein, condensed by me.

[3] Horst Hecker: Jüdisches Leben in Frankenberg, p. 220.