Two Brothers

Afterword Biographical Reflections

THIS STORY IS entirely a work of fiction, but it is inspired in part by a circumstance of my family history.

My father was a Hitler refugee. He was born Ludwig Ehrenberg in Germany into a secular family of Jewish descent. He came to Britain via Czechoslovakia in 1939 with his parents Eva and Victor and his older brother Gottfried. The great kindness of various individuals in Britain ensured the family’s survival, as did the help of a small charity established in 1933 by British academics and scientists. The charity, now called the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA), still exists today.

Gottfried enlisted in the British Army in 1943, when, like the Stengel brother in my story, he was advised to anglicize his name in case of capture by the Germans. He became Geoffrey Elton and my father followed suit, changing his name to Lewis Elton. My grandparents remained Ehrenbergs until their deaths in London in the seventies.

Gottfried and Ludwig had a cousin, Heinz. Like the brother in my story, Heinz was adopted and, to use the Nazis’ own term, of pure ‘Aryan’ blood. When his parents Paul and Clara Ehrenberg escaped Germany, Heinz elected to stay in order to farm the land his parents had acquired for him.

Heinz was soon drafted into the Wehrmacht and, like the Stengel brother in my story, was part of the army stationed on the Channel coast in 1940 in preparation for Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain. Heinz also served in Italy; after the war, the family discovered that he and Geoffrey had come quite close to each other while fighting there on opposite sides.

Like the fictitious Paulus and Otto, my father and uncle experienced the segregation of school classrooms. They, too, were insulted by Nazi teachers and witnessed the confusion of the so-called Mischling. My father’s best friend was half Jewish and, on being given a choice, bravely elected to sit with the Jews.

In the story, Paulus and Otto’s grandfather had won an Iron Cross in the First World War. My grandfather Victor also served in the Kaiser’s army and won the Iron cross in 1914. He fought in the trenches throughout the war, and my children have the piece of shrapnel that was dug from his leg in 1917. Like the fictitious Taubers, my grandparents loved the country of their birth very much and saw themselves as both Germans and Jews. When the family emigrated to England, my grandfather secretly brought his Iron Cross with him. On discovering this in 1940, my grandmother buried it in the back garden of the lodging house in which they were staying, where it has no doubt long since rusted away.

Like the Stengel boy in my story, my Uncle Geoffrey ended up with the Army Intelligence Corps as an interpreter. Geoffrey achieved the rank of Sergeant and throughout his life retained a deep affection for the British army. Indeed, it was said in the family that the army truly made him an Englishman. In 1989, when Blackadder Goes Forth was broadcast, Uncle Geoffrey was at first most unhappy at what he considered to be an insulting portrayal of the army; he later took the view that the satire was drawn with great respect.

Although my father’s family were more fortunate than some in terms of the number of members who were able to escape the Holocaust, many of course did not. Lisbeth, my grandmother’s beloved sister, for instance, died like the fictitious Frieda, having volunteered to accompany a group of Jewish children being transported east. Lisbeth was shot along with her young charges immediately on arrival in Lithuania in 1941.

An incident which I had hoped to include in my fictional narrative but could eventually find no place for concerned my Uncle Heinz and the death of my great-grandmother. In October 1941, she was still living in her home town of Kassel when the German authorities began a final round-up of Jews there.

Her grandson Heinz very bravely visited the Kassel Gestapo in his army uniform and asked that his adoptive grandmother, who was close to death, be allowed to die in her bed. ‘Lassen Die mir die alte Judin in Ruhe,’ was his appeal. ‘Let that old Jewess alone.’ Perhaps his appeal was successful, because Emilie Ehrenberg did die in her bed soon after. She was spared the nightmare of transportation in a cattle truck to a death camp, but not that of having seen the country in which she was born in 1859 descend into insanity and barbarity without parallel.

Like Wolfgang Stengel, my family also had some experience of the pre-Holocaust SA concentration camps of the 1930s. My grandfather’s other brother, Hans, was a Christian pastor, having been converted while he was a student. He was sent to Sachsenhausen Camp, where his good friend Reverend Martin Niemoller, the great anti-Nazi cleric and author of First They Came…, was also an inmate. Hans was eventually released, due largely to the efforts of the Bishop of Chichester.

He came to England, where, like the brother in my story, he was interned as an enemy alien, although, also like him, he did not resent it. Great-Uncle Hans returned to Germany after the war in an effort to continue his ministry, but my father and his family were happy in Britain, grateful for the safe haven and the opportunities this great country afforded. Having arrived as penniless refugees, they eventually prospered and made their mark. Both my father and my uncle married English girls and both became professors. My father held chairs in Physics and later in Higher Education, and in 2005 was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Times Higher Education Awards.

My uncle became a historian and Regius Professor of English Constitutional History at Cambridge. In 1986 he was knighted for his services to the study of history.

Geoffrey died in 1994, but at the time of writing my Uncle Heinz and my father are still alive; they still correspond and met quite recently. Heinz has even met my Australian wife, Sophie — at Geoffrey’s funeral, in fact, making a connection that spans time, distance and history. I myself have been to Germany many times, where my plays are sometimes performed and also as director of the musical We Will Rock You. I have made true and lasting friendships there and have nothing but happy memories of the country of my father’s birth.

Ben Elton, May 2012