Hitler was my neighbor

My name is Edgar Feuchtbanger. I'm 88 years old. I've lived here for quite a long time. I suppose one would call it a typically English life, but I was not born in England. I was born in Munich in 1924. I was a German Jew, and I lived right across the road from Hitler's private flat. Today it's 73 years since I left Germany in 1939, and I've decided to go back to Munich to see where I lived as a child. At the time it seemed to me, certainly as a child, quite a secure life, but of course it didn't. I lived, in a way, in the still center of the hurricane that swept over the whole world eventually. I hope I'm not bothering you. No, don't worry. Do you know who used to live down there? No, not really. Mr. Hitler. Really? Yeah. In the corner building at 16 Prinzreitenplatz. The one over there in the back. Mr. Hitler used to live on the second floor. We didn't know that. You didn't? No, we didn't know, but we're not from Munich. It's an historic place, but it's kept secret. That's crazy. It's a very important place where it all began. Over there on the second floor. We used to live here. We're standing in my father's office. It's nice that you came back to see what became of it. This neighbor was not like a neighbor, like any other one, because just at the point when he became our neighbor, he became also very important and very well-known and so on. That was a fact that we felt to be threatening, of course, but just how threatening it was, one couldn't imagine at that early stage. Nobody could. From this window, Edgar Feuchtwanger and his parents witnessed the rise of Nazism. They remained in this apartment in Munich, across from Hitler, until the last moments, until 1939, until the war. Yet, the Feuchtwangers are the exact portrait of those hated and blamed by Hitler for all the troubles of Germany. They are Jewish, wealthy, educated, and progressive. Edgar's father, Ludwig, is the head of the prestigious publishing house, Dunkirden Humblot. His mother, Erna, gravitates around Munich's high society. The Feuchtwangers have been German forever, and in Munich for over a century. Across the road, Adolf Hitler moves into a new apartment at the end of 1929. The leader of a young Nazi party dreams of power, but he is still far from his goal. A year earlier, during the 1928 federal election, 12 Nazi candidates were elected at the Reichstag. Hitler only managed to convince 800,000 Germans, 2.6% of the votes. But Hitler believes in his fate. His party meetings begin to draw larger and larger crowds. He is now financed by powerful industrials, and Mein Kampf appeals to more and more readers. At age 40, Hitler is now a comfortable man. He leaves the room he occupied in a lower-class neighborhood for the Prinzregentenplatz on the second floor of this building, in a luxurious nine-bedroom, 300-square-meter apartment next door to the Feuchtwangers. Our name, Feuchtwanger, was of course known to Hitler because it was not an anonymous name. We were not people who were, so to speak, below the parapet. We were well-known people. My family was well-known certainly locally, but my uncle had become famous much beyond that. He was, I think one could say without exaggeration, one of the most famous writers of that period. Leon Feuchtwanger, the most-read writer of his generation and a Nazi opponent of the first hour. Edgar's uncle is the author of the Jus Jus, an international bestseller that denounced anti-Semitism as early as 1924. More importantly, he is one of the few intellectuals who dared stand up to Hitler. He was a figurehead of the Weimar intelligentsia, which of course the Nazis and even other more right-wing people hated. So was the situation on each side of the Prinzregentenplatz in late summer 1929. No one knows that 7,000 kilometers away, an event is about to change the course of history. New York City, October 24th, 1929. Wall Street collapses. The economic ruin that shakes the United States spreads to Europe. In Germany, factories close one after another. In three years, the number of unemployed rose from 650,000 to 6 million. As a child, then aged six or seven, I didn't exactly know what a crisis was, but I experienced things like there were a lot of beggars always coming to the door. In the streets, Nazis and communists brawl during every election. Extreme right and left-wing members try to grapple the votes of those disappointed by the Weimar Republic. Hitler multiplies political rallies, as many as ten per day. He seduces the middle class and small business owners who fear for their economic situation. Hitler is now at the head of the second political force of the country. He is the one about whom everybody talks, the one everyone fears. It's at this moment that Leyen Feuchtfanger decides to publish Erfolg, a roman à clef in which, under the depiction of Rupert Kurtzner, everyone can recognize Adolf Hitler. Leyen Feuchtfanger tells the story of the political rise of a hysterical short man, a fanatic and a demagogue, who creates the party of the true Germans and seduces crowds with his anti-Semitic speeches. The book is a success. Hitler is ridiculed. When this novel appeared, it infuriated Hitler. And then my uncle became even more, if you like, public enemy number one, as he's often called, for the Nazis and for Hitler personally. Goebbels said, when we come to power, we will deal with people like Leyen Feuchtfanger. Because reasonable people like my parents and others couldn't imagine that somebody like that could come to power. If they did come to power, they wouldn't last any longer than any other of the governments of the Weimar Republic, which lasted, on average, eight months. And a lot of people believed that. The unthinkable happened. Hitler is named chancellor on January 30, 1933. The town is dressed with the colors of the victorious. People adopt new rituals, new gestures. A lot of the people thought it was great. There was a feeling of a new beginning. Suddenly, Germany was on its way back. People rushed to acclaim the Führer, the providential man, the one who will save Germany and better each and everyone's situation. For the enemies of the regime comes the time to make a choice. Stay or leave. Like Albert Einstein, thousands of opponents, scientists, intellectuals flee Germany. Leyen Feuchtfanger, who was then on a trip to the United States, decides not to go back. The events about to unfold will show him right. Within a few weeks, Hitler imposes his dictatorship. The police and the judicial courts are put under the authority of the Führer. The political opponents, who did not flee on time, are arrested and imprisoned in the first concentration camp built in the suburbs of Munich and officially destined to hold political prisoners, Dachau. Joseph Goebbels, recently named minister of propaganda, organizes gigantic book burnings throughout Germany. 20,000 books are thrown in the fire, among which those of Kafka, Freud, Zweig and, of course, Leyen Feuchtfanger. Edgar's uncle is even declared an enemy of the state. He is one of the 33 first Germans to be stripped of their nationality. His apartment is raided. For those like Edgar's parents who haven't left, the net is closing in. We knew increasingly that it was particularly dangerous for us, mainly because of the relationship with Leon. We were, as you might say, in the firing line. Ludwig, Edgar's father, hasn't forgotten Hitler's fury when Erfolg was published. He fears that the Nazis will take revenge on his family. He really, in a sense, would have been glad if Leon hadn't published that novel. I can remember my father telling me that he had been to visit his brother Leon in Berlin in 1929, and Leon had read him passages from this novel which he was then writing, and my father was rather appalled because my father was a much more emollient, you know, he didn't want to provoke anything. And he said, well, if you publish that, we'll be slammed, you know. In the beginning of 1933, Germany's new masters seem to have different priorities than exacting revenge on Leyen Feuchtfanger. Edgar's parents decide to stay, hoping for better days, and life goes on. Everyone returns to their daily routine as if nothing had changed. Ludwig goes to work every morning. Edgar is off to school. Edgar was eight years old in 1933, this very year at school. Edgar would brutally understand what Nazism was about. That's where it really, so to speak, began to impact on me. When I could see it, I would feel it didn't impact on me in the sense that I was oppressed or discriminated against or anything like that. But, you know, I learned all the Nazi stuff. Edgar's misfortune came in the form of a zealous teacher. Between a grammar and geography class, she teaches her students about the greatness of the Führer, the humiliation, the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, and the cruelty of France. In their notebooks, students are asked to list the acts of bravery accomplished by their ancestors during the First World War. How many deaths? How many injured? As many lines and crosses as there are relatives to avenge. Fortunately, the teacher that welcomes Edgar today is much more pleasant. That's the notebook we always used. The teacher was called Miss Weichel. She was extraordinarily excited by all these events, especially the rise to power. That's what she taught us. That's how it started. Oh, my God. Yes, Labor Day, May 1st. Barely eight weeks after the elections and the takeover. She didn't have to, but she taught us that. So she was convinced. It's hard to tell. Maybe she was already a member of the party. That's Hitler here with the sun rising. Oh, my God. My God. And here there's also... Look here and there. That's crazy. Oh, my God. And here you see what he has accomplished. His acts of bravery during World War One. It ended like this. Homeland. Dear German homeland, your people have proudly conquered victory after victory. Now misery and hunger have defeated you. It's making me shiver, really. Here's the list of my classmates. The zero means injured. The cross means dead. That's the whole class. Doing that at eight. So young. Yeah, she made us do that. With colors on the side. My uncle had received the Iron Cross first class. My parents had told me, so I wrote it there. You were just a boy and you had to write those things. What did you think about it at the time? I don't remember. I did what I was told. To be honest, Miss Weichel, we saw her as a very strong character, very charismatic. We took what she gave us. What the teacher said was... The truth, yes. Anyways, just a little while after, it became the official position of the regime. the Volksverein could have hoped to see him leave their neighborhood for Berlin, the capital. It did not happen. Because Hitler has a thing for Munich. It is there that everything started for him. He made it the symbolic capital of Nazism. It is in Munich that he organizes the most spectacular ceremonies. It is in Munich that he receives the heads of state whom he wants to befriend and impress. As we see here with Mussolini. It is in Munich that is commemorated each year the birth of Nazism. Edgar has a front row seat, processions advance below the windows of the family apartment, and like all the Munich kids of the time, he now has famous neighbors. Many high-ranked Nazi officials have a property in the neighborhood, either because they are from Munich and are Nazis of the first hour and were part of Hitler's rise to power, or they arrive later and want to be close to the Führer. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and future organizer of the Final Solution, from Munich. Hermann Goering, creator of the Gestapo, from Munich. Rudolf Hess, whom Hitler considers to be his heir, from Munich. Furthermore, in Munich, around the corner from Edgar, there is also Eva Braun, Hitler's hidden mistress, who lives at number 12 Wasserburgstrasse, whom everybody could see come out of her home on her bicycle, smiling. Edgar often ran into Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer of the Führer, and Ernst Röhm, the head of the SA. Röhm lived only a little bit further away from us. He had a villa there, much nicer than Hitler himself had. And when I went to school, I had to pass the villa that belonged to his photographer, Hoffmann. He was one of Hitler's Munich gang, and he was the employer of Eva Braun. And you could sometimes see, through the fence, a sort of lattice fence, Hitler sitting in a deck chair in the next garden. That seems now extraordinary, because Hitler is almost, you know, a figure, not a real figure anymore, is he? He seems some sort of mystical, evil figure, isn't he? To the present generation. As I experienced it, he was only... That's, in a sense, a dilemma, when one is talking or writing about it. It makes him seem almost normal, as if he was just a human being. But of course, in one sense, he was a human being. So... I had a friend who used to invite me to his birthday parties, and he invited me still in 1933, but not after that. It was a bit dangerous to mix with Jews, and particularly us, with Feuchtweiner. From the very first weeks of Hitler's accession to power, the SA forbade the access to Jewish businesses. And very soon, they would go further by harming the Jews physically. One picture will reveal to the world the daily humiliations experienced by the Jews. You can see a man escorted by armed SA in the streets of Munich, with a sign hanging around his neck, reading, I am Jewish, and I will not complain to the police again. The man is Michael Siegel. He is a lawyer, a father, and the Siegels were the Feuchtweiners' best friends. They didn't live very far away from us, and their daughter was really my closest childhood friends. We were really brought up together, you know, both taken out in our prams, and we played from the age of five onwards, always together. Edgar's childhood friend also lived next door to Hitler. She also survived Nazism. She is alive and well, like Edgar. On March 10, 1933, her father goes to the police station in order to plea the case of one of his Jewish clients, sent to Dachau the day before. But a few days prior, the SA and SS had seized control of the police stations. He did not realize, or perhaps he did realize, but was courageous enough to ignore it, that within virtually hours, certainly days, the rule of law had completely collapsed, and instead of him being able to complain, he was beaten up, then paraded through the streets with only his underpants, and the pictures, of course, of it were well known and went all around the world. That was in... March 1933. March the 10th, 1933, and I happened to be in bed with a cold, and I heard the front door of the flat slamming shut, and I thought somebody would come in and find out how I was. Nobody came. I got up, walked out, opened the door to the corridor, opposite the bathroom, on the pegs outside the bathroom, I saw my father's blood-drenched clothes. Well, you can imagine how I felt, sort of scared. And so I walked gently down the corridor to my parents' bedroom, and the door was shut. It wasn't usually shut during the daytime. I knocked at the door, and I just saw my father pull up his bedclothes, so I shouldn't see his face, his blood-stained face, because they bashed up his eardrums and knocked in his teeth. Well, there's a picture now that people can see, but I think you saw him soon afterwards. That was one of the few occasions I can remember coming to your flat. It must have been because your father was still in bed, and I remember seeing him in bed with his swollen face. He must have been better by then. It was no longer blood-stained, but it was swollen. The German newspapers refused to publish the picture of Michael Siegel, but 10 days later, it was on the cover of the Washington Post and helped reveal to the world the real face of the Nazi regime. I remember my youngest son asking me once, Mum, did you ever see Hitler? And I said, yes, of course. Explained why. In fact, quite close up one day when I was crossing the street and his car was coming round the bend, and I was standing there with my dandel and my plaits, looking like a nice little German girl, as one was, and he smiled at me, and my youngest son said to me, Mum, are you telling me that Hitler smiled at you? I said, yes. So, did you smile back? I said, of course not. I knew who I was. I don't know, but did you see Hitler? Many times, yes. Did he smile at you? Don't think he ever smiled, but when I was quite small, I was taken for a walk there. That's, I think, the first time I remember seeing him. Came out of the house, and he looked at me reasonably benevolently, I think. But we walked on, and yes. Why did so many Jews stay in Germany after the Nazis came to power? Probably because, at the time, nothing could bring them to foresee the genocide that was to come. Everyone was left to guess what Hitler was going to do. But the Führer keeps sending mixed messages. In 1934, when he gets rid of the most fanatic SA by having 200 of them murdered during the Night of the Long Knives, a normalization of power is hoped for, but it's quickly understood that it's not part of the plan. In Nuremberg in 1935, Hitler passes the laws for the protection of German blood and German honor, where it is questioned to biologically separate the Jews from the German nation. Conjugal and extra-conjugal relationships between Jews and Aryans are forbidden. Mixed marriages are forbidden. Jews lose their German citizenships and the totality of their civic rights. We knew, increasingly, we were not only second-class citizens, we were people without any rights. Our situation really was very precarious. I think we knew that. But, of course, since we hadn't got any obvious alternative, since we couldn't really do anything about it, we somehow brushed it under the carpet. But tried to forget about it. The last book he published was Keynes' General Theory of Employment, of course now a very important book. Prevented from publishing to the general public, Ludwig takes the head of a newspaper aimed at the Jewish community. This was probably one of the reasons why he thought this could just go on, okay? The Jews were excluded or they were driven back into ghetto-like existence. But to him, this seemed simply going back to a situation that the Jews had been in in the 18th century. So he didn't take seriously enough the fact that it was going to get much more radical. And, of course, not seriously enough the fact that, as the brother of Leon Feuchtwanger, he was very much in a personal exposed position. Leon Feuchtwanger, Edgar's uncle, has not abandoned standing up against Hitler. Settled in France at Saint-Henri-sur-Mer, he creates with Bertolt Brecht the anti-fascist magazine Das Wort. More importantly, his bestseller, The Jew Zeus, is adapted into a film. The movie premieres in New York City in the presence of Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, and other anti-Nazis in exile. Goebbels is furious and bans the movie in Germany. He will take revenge a few years later by commissioning an anti-Semitic remake of The Jew Zeus. The free-spirited hero of Leon Feuchtwanger appears under the features of a greedy, vicious, sexually deviant murderer and rapist of German virgins. Ironically, it is this second version that will be remembered. This Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda film, The Jew Zeus, was also a great success. It was Goebbels's most successful propaganda film and it was shown all over Nazi-occupied Europe and supposed to have seen by 20 million people and it was shown by Himmler to the concentration camp guards to motivate them. The persecutions and anti-Semitic laws have an objective. Drain the Jews out of Germany. Force them to leave. More than 30,000 leave Germany in 1935. The atmosphere reigning in the streets of Munich and other cities has become unbearable. Six aunts and uncles of Edgar have already left the country for Czechoslovakia France or Palestine. Edgar's father, like many others, resigned himself to stay in Munich. One shouldn't think that somehow these people light-heartedly failed to get out. It's almost impossible to get out. First of all, you had to find a country that would have you and even if you did, what you do when you arrive in another country with another language, what job can you do? And going to another country without any money, they had to leave all their money, all their possessions behind. Nazis took it away from them. It is enormously difficult to emigrate. Candidates to exile grow more and more numerous each day. But Western countries only grant a few visas at a time. Germany is getting ready to host the Summer Olympics and as if by magic, the anti-Semitic propaganda vanishes from the streets and newspapers. Hitler wants to give the spectators and foreign journalists the image of a tolerant country. The air is therefore more breathable and many want to believe in better days to come. For Hitler, the games are a total success. The German athletes crushed the competition. More importantly, he managed to reassure Europe who forgets for a time his belligerent intentions. He is now free to work on his great project. The annexation to the Reich of the German-speaking territories, beginning with Austria, his native country. On March 12, 1938, the Nazi troops enter Austria without even firing a single shot. In Vienna, he is greeted like a hero. Four days later, when he returns to Munich, he is welcomed with the same fervor. Hitler is more powerful than ever. Everything is going his way. In 1938, people said, well, he's done what even Bismarck couldn't do. You know, Bismarck only established Germany without Austria. Hitler got Austria without firing a shot. Hitler is leading the Germans towards an inevitable war, yet he is more popular than ever. After the annexation of Austria, he sets his aim on a new target, Czechoslovakia. He claims that the Germans living in the province of the Sudetenland are oppressed and demands that the territory be ceded to him in spite of international agreements. The Führer is unveiling his ambitions and the Germans can no longer ignore his intentions or his politics. The persecution of Jews inside the borders and the war outside of them. The Germans are, however, delighted and nothing seems to ease their fervor. The key to it, of course, is that he wasn't just successful, he was sensationally successful, you know, in German terms. He brushed it all aside, the whole opposition collapsed. If you were a German nationalist and you wanted to see Germany great and powerful and whatever, he did it for you, just like that. So that was the foundation of, you know, why they began to dance around him like a golden calf, you know, because he seemed a magician, you know, who could pull rabbits out of a hat. And the people who were on the wrong side, they felt increasingly desperate. I mean, isn't there anybody who will stop this man? President Dalier arrives at Munich's airport. Welcome by von Ribbentrop and a guard of honour. A little later comes the arrival of Mr. Chamberlain, and he is acclaimed as someone who, through a tremendous will, has just succeeded as one of the greatest peacemongers. Two men are decided on stopping Hitler when they arrive in Munich on September 29th, 1938. Edouard Daladier, the President of the French Council, and Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, want Hitler to renounce his plan to invade the Sudetenland. Benito Mussolini, the Italian Prime Minister, is there to serve as an intermediary between them and Hitler. In fact, after 16 hours of negotiations, Daladier and Chamberlain give up. To avoid war, they grant Hitler the Sudetenland without asking more than vague promises of peace in exchange. Hitler is happy, so is Chamberlain. Through this agreement, he believes to have avoided his country in military conflict. But he wants more. He wants a letter from Hitler stating his commitment to negotiate their future disagreements in a peaceful manner. The day after the signature, Chamberlain goes to the Prinzregentenplatz in Hitler's home across the road from the Feuchtweiers. Chamberlain, the following morning, went to the flat, and Chamberlain thought it was a great sign that he'd made an impression on Hitler, and Hitler invited him to his private flat. Chamberlain presented him with that declaration that he waved on his return to London and said, peace in our time, and a hero's welcome in London. And Hitler apparently signed this thing. We knew he'd sign it without even looking at it because in Hitler's terms, that sort of thing was totally meaningless. It didn't mean a thing to Hitler. Declaration of peace, what does it mean? It doesn't mean a thing. Now freed from the French and British pacifists, Hitler turns back towards his domestic enemies. He estimates the Jewish immigration to be too slow and wants to accelerate things. On November 9th, 1938, less than a month after the Munich Conference, comes the Crystal Night. Hitler orders a gigantic pogrom during which SS and Hitler youth attack synagogues, Jewish stores, and belongings. In the morning, as the German walk on the broken glass from the shop's windows, the violence continues. In Munich, the SS and Hitler youth arrest Jews in the street or in their homes, like the Feuchtwanger. I remember there was a knock at the door and there were, I think, two officials, a Gestapo, they showed a card, you know, and they gave my father very little time and just took him away. And later that morning, removal vans arrived, these large boxes, wooden boxes, and in which they put the books, all the important books were put in. The term that was used was sicherstellen, making secure. I remember my mother had at least the courage to say to one of the officials, do you have to make this secure as well? Which meant to pinch it. That's how it happened. All throughout the country, the same scenes are seen over and over again. Jews are dragged out of their homes, humiliated and beaten in public. 30,000 are arrested and deported to the concentration camps. Ludwig is sent to Dachau. We were frightened. We were simply frightened. We didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know what was going to happen to him. Would he survive? And we were really afraid. Fear is the overwhelming emotion you get in that sort of situation. And there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, you can't go out and protest or do anything. The Kristallnacht and the following deportations caused the deaths of 2,000 to 2,500 men, women and children. The weakest died from the violence and bad treatments. The others were assassinated by the SS. Edgar's father fortunately survived. In a way, it was almost a miracle that he survived because they didn't discover that he was the brother of Leon Feuchtbacher. Because that's how they were. They weren't that well organized, really. The right hand didn't always know what the left hand was doing. The rest of these people, somebody would have had to look up somewhere that here we have one brother of Leon Feuchtbacher, but they didn't. Ludwig is freed six weeks later on Christmas Eve. Edgar's father is now determined to leave his country. Hitler has reached his goal. In the beginning of 1939, thousands of Jews are trying to leave Germany. But despite the international outcry following the Kristallnacht, the other countries' borders are still very difficult to cross. The more useful immigrants are welcomed, scientists, researchers, engineers, but a massive Jewish immigration is out of the question. By that time, the one thought was, how can we get out? How can we get out of this as quickly as possible? And there were all these curious things that all sorts of obscure consulates of El Salvador sold us a visa, which was worthless and things like that. But then, of course, in the event, we got the visa to Britain, this capitalist visa, when my uncle and various relations put down a thousand pounds. That enabled us to get out as a family to England. Edgar, with his precious passport in his pocket, was able to reach England through Holland on February 15, 1939. My father went with me in a train and went to near the Dutch border. And SS men came through the train, checked the passport. They asked him why he didn't emigrate as well as me. And he said he was, but, you know, a bit later he was preparing to emigrate. And then he left the train and went back to Munich. And I went on across the Dutch border. And that was the first time I saw the sea. And I arrived in Hoek van Holland. I thought it was an adventure. I didn't feel frightened anymore. By that time, I thought, I'm getting out of this evil empire, as it would later be put. That's what I felt. Edgar arrived alone in England and was welcomed by a family of volunteers. Erna and Ludwig managed to leave Germany three months later and joined their son. The Feustwanger family settled in Great Britain and began a new life. Eight months after Edgar's departure, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and dragged the world into a conflict that would cost the life of more than 50 million people. In 1933, 500,000 to 600,000 Jews lived in Germany. Despite the obstacles, more than half of them managed to flee before 1939. Almost all of those who couldn't escape perished in extermination camps. The Nazi regime caused the death of more than six million Jews. Leyen Feustwanger, Edgar's uncle, had found refuge in France. After the war was declared, he was arrested by the French police and confined to the Camp d'Emile. His German citizenship had raised suspicion. He managed to escape before the Vichy police delivered him to the Nazis and reached the United States where he resumed his career as a writer. All of Edgar's family survived the Nazi regime except for his aunt, Bella. She had fled Germany for Czechoslovakia, but six months after the Munich Agreements, the German troops invaded Prague. She was arrested by the Nazis and died in the camp of Theresienstadt. Edgar was 14 when he arrived in England. Far from his school in Munich and his teacher, Miss Weichel, he was able to take on a normal education. After the war, he studied at the University of Cambridge and became a historian. Edgar got married and had three children, then three grandchildren. They live what one could call a typical English life.