Fritz Ottenheimer was 14 years old when he and his family escaped Nazi Germany.
Today, Mr. Ottenheimer is 89, and shared his story with nearly 400 Bethel Park High School sophomores at a program Feb. 4. The students are studying the Holocaust in their social studies and English courses.
Bethel Park Superintendent Nancy Aloi Rose said the unit of study “provides students the opportunity to open their minds and hearts.” She added that by doing so, “That’s how we will change the world.”
The Holocaust was an attempt by the Nazi government of Germany to erase the Jewish population of Europe. Between 1933 when the Nazis under Adolph Hitler came to power, and 1945 when World War II ended, nearly 6 million Jews were killed, including more than a million children.
Before leaving Germany in 1939, Mr. Ottenheimer said his family ran a menswear clothing store in his hometown of Constance.
“It was a very beautiful town with beautiful surroundings,” Mr. Ottenheimer said. “But what happened there was not so beautiful.”
He was 8 years old when Hitler came into power.
“At that age I could tell something was happening that was very dramatic,” he told the students.
Mr. Ottenheimer recalled a specific day about two months after the Nazi regime took over the country.
“My father noticed this day was different,” he said.
That day, a message came over the town loudspeaker telling citizens not to purchase goods from Jewish shop owners, but to buy from Germans.
Mr. Ottenheimer said his parents were born in Germany and so were their ancestors.
“We considered ourselves German,” he said.
Mr. Ottenheimer’s father fought with Germany in World War I.
On the day of the announcement, a soldier from Hitler’s private army stood in front of the Ottenheimer’s store. Undeterred by the soldier, Mr. Ottenheimer’s father took down all of the shirts and ties in his shop windows and replaced them with his medals from World War I. He then proceeded to approach the soldier, roll up his sleeves and show him his war injuries.
Other people from the town came to his defense.
“They said to him, ‘You’re making a mistake. He’s a good German,” Mr. Ottenheimer said. The soldier eventually relented and walked away.
“At that time, people were still able to give their opinions,” Mr. Ottenheimer said.
Eventually, though, “The propaganda machine went into action,” he said, adding that Hitler ultimately took over all of the newspapers and radio stations in the country.
Mr. Ottenheimer said people started to believe what the government told them to believe: “That Jews were criminals, dirty and foreign,” he said.
“People were intimidated,” by what the Nazis were saying about Jewish people living in Germany. “They stopped coming to the store,” Mr. Ottenheimer said, and his family had to close the shop.
“Things got pretty rough after that,” he said. Not only was his family struggling financially, they were dealing with the psychological issues stemming from all of the propaganda being spouted by the Nazis.
“How much of it did the people really believe?” he wondered.
At that time, Mr. Ottenheimer said many Germans were unemployed and having trouble feeding their families.
“When people get hungry they get desperate and when people get hungry, they believe anything people tell them,” he said.
Mr. Ottenheimer said Hitler put many of those Germans to work making guns and other weapons to get ready for the next war.
“Because it was obvious there was going to be another war,” Mr. Ottenheimer said.
Mr. Ottenheimer also spoke to students about how his family helped people escape from the Nazis after Hitler took over Austria.
“The German Army simply walked into Austria,” he said. “And the Austrians greeted them with flowers and flags. They were happy to be a part of a ‘modern Germany,’” he said.
Many of the Jewish families from Austria, trying to escape the Nazi regime, escaped to Constance, because it bordered Switzerland.
“Gangs of Austrians, following the orders of the government, attacked the Jewish people,” he said, including breaking into their homes, robbing them and beating them.
“The only thing they were concerned about was saving their lives,” Mr. Ottenheimer said.
Unable to stay in hotels or eat in restaurants in Germany, Mr. Ottenheimer’s father took in several Jewish families and showed them a small creek that led to the border with Switzerland. The Ottenheimers helped many families until Switzerland closed its border.
Mr. Ottenheimer then recalled a morning in November 1938 when he was shaken out of bed by an explosion. The synagogue in Constance had been bombed and destroyed and the Nazi soldiers were arresting all the Jewish men in the town.
“These men were honest, law-abiding citizens,” he said. Eventually soldiers came for Mr. Ottenheimer’s father.
“Two secret police agents had come to arrest my father,” he said. “My father was not read any charges,” he said.
None of the Jewish people had committed a crime, yet 30,000 Jewish men were arrested on that night, known as Kristallnacht, or “night of broken glass.”
“We simply did not know what was happening to us or why,” he said.
His father was taken to the Dachau concentration camp for a brief time, during which he got very sick, but eventually recovered.
Having some family in the United States, the Ottenheimers had applied for permission to come here two years before, but in May of 1939 it was granted.
“We were very fortunate we got out when we did,” he added. “But my experience was nowhere near that of those in concentration camps.”
The family moved to New York where his mother worked as a cleaning lady and his father worked as a porter in a movie theater.
“Three-and-a-half months later, Hitler’s army attacked Poland, beginning World War II,” he said.
At that time, Mr. Ottenheimer was still a teenager. He would go on to finish high school and join the United States Army.
He returned to Germany as an American soldier in 1945, fighting against the Nazis.
One student asked what it was like for him to fight against his own country.
Mr. Ottenheimer said that was a question he was asked when he first joined the Army. At that time he said, “I have a better reason for fighting against Germany than you do. I didn't just read about it in the newspapers. I experienced the cruelty of the Nazi government.”
After the war he went to college and eventually became a mechanical engineer with Westinghouse. He lived in Forest Hills for 50 years before moving to Oakland.
After the presentation, student James Fleckenstein said he connected to the presentation more because it was “different than just reading from a textbook.”
“It is a lot better to hear it first-hand,” said student Shalya Staley.
Student Lily Farmerie said “There are so many questions that are unanswered or kept secret” about that time in history. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” to hear him speak, she said.
Mr. Ottenheimer wrote all of his memories in a book, published in 2000, titled “Escape and Return: Memoirs of Nazi Germany.”
The book is available by contacting The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh at 412-421-1500.
Deana Carpenter, freelance writer: suburbanliving@post-gazette.com.
First Published: February 12, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
