Angress Werner T. - Escape to Virginia: from Nazi Germany to Thalhimers farm

Published by The History press
Charleston, SC 29403
www.historypress.net

Copyright 2015 by Robert H. Gillette
All rights reserved

First published 2016
e-book edition 2016

ISBN 978.1.62585.443.8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947683

print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.912.5

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

My Hope
That my granddaughters
Rachel, Rebecca, Sara and Hannah
will be inspired by the resilient Hope and Courage of Eva and Tpper and all who rescued and nurtured their lives.

Robert H. Gillette (Pop Pop)
June 2015

CONTENTS

Foreword

THOSE WHO KNEW THEM BEST

EVA JACOBSOHN LOEW

Eva lived her life, every thought, word and endeavor, with one fundamental belief: Where there is life, there is hope. Deep within lived a gentle, humble courage without measure, from which she met and overcame all trial, navigated loss and sorrow and found goodness to celebrate. Always.

Eva came of age as the promise of her world, as she understood it, was disappearing. Abrupt dismissal from her school and friends, exile from her beloved home and family, final flight from her homeland of which she was so fiercely loyal and devoted. So much, so lost, all at once. Here her profound hope rooted a courage from which she grew and blossomed.

A young life spent packing and unpacking her belongings. What does one bring along when one can take so little? Moving from place to place, forever adapting to new people, countries, cultures and expectations. Always making room in her heart, and every step turned into a place for new opportunity, experience and growth. An unyielding search for knowledge, peace, joy. This is Evas story. Roll up your sleeves, kneel on her fertile soil, cultivate what is offered here. Her strength, perseverance and integrity will give rise to the best within you. For where there is hope, there is life. And all things are, indeed, possible.

JACQUELINE JACOBSOHN, Evas daughter

WERNER T. ANGRESS

If every adult has a period of life that stays particularly alive for them, for our father it was his teenage years, until and after he escaped from the Nazis. He grew in wisdom but kept some of the intense emotion, loneliness and idealism of adolescence. Sometimes he was a hero, risking his life, fighting injustices, battling the Third Reich, and other times he was caught up in his feelings, unable to focus beyond them. Then hed emerge and be warmly loving and presenta great listener, irreverent and kind.

He learned as a teenager that its possible to make a difference in the world. Before he was nineteen, he and his friend Meui had managed to get a group released from a concentration camp. He used words to help others, to make sense of his past and to connect with people. He wrote letters and, later, e-mails to friends every day of his life. Making and keeping friends was one of his gifts.

After he retired, he moved back to Berlin and talked to school groups and on the radio about growing up in a context where laws were created specifically to harm certain groups. Even though as a professor he knew their history in detail, he remained bewildered by the Nazis. He described a gentle, goofy relative of his who was gassed in a concentration camp and asked, How could they hate him? In his seventies, he bought a book with Adolf Hitler on the cover, and after an afternoon of Adolf s face staring up from the coffee table, he turned the book over. He didnt want Hitler in his living room. Even as a historical expert, he stayed vulnerable to feelings hed first had decades earlier. But he also taught and mentored many students in German history and wrote memoirs about the first twenty-five years of his life so that others could have access to his experiences. He used his expertise as an act of service for future generations.

MIRIAM ANGRESS, Werners daughter

WHAT IS
CREATIVE HISTORY?

Creative history is history told in a way that reads like fiction. It recounts the true stories of people who actually lived. Often, the real words of the personalities involved are used in the narrative, but in addition, dialogues and descriptions may be created to portray an event, to fill in the gaps. History comes alive in creative history, but it must pass the test of honest scholarship. The enormous primary research required to write creative history is the same as that for writing traditional history.

Escape to Virginia: From Nazi Germany to Thalhimers Farm is creative history. The stories are true. The diaries, photographs, books, letters and interviews compose the primary materials from which lives were reconstructed into a living testimony.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It took five years of extensive research to uncover the largely unknown stories and events that were portrayed in my book The Virginia Plan: William B. Thalhimer and a Rescue from Nazi Germany (The History Press, 2011.) In Escape to Virginia: From Nazi Germany to Thalhimers Farm, I have traced the lives of two remarkable people: Eva Jacobsohn Loew and Werner T. Angress. In addition to the research amassed for the Virginia Plan (for a complete bibliography and acknowledgements, see The Virginia Plan), both Eva and Werner and their families entrusted me with their personal diaries, photographic albums, books, letters and honest interviews. Their childrenespecially Jacqueline Jacobsohn, Percy Angress and Miriam Angressfacilitated my intention to honestly capture the lives of their parents, who died during my research. I am grateful for their contributions to the foreword and their willingness to share materials and memories. The Angress children published Witness to the Storm, an extraordinary autobiography originally written in German by their father, now translated into English. Jacqueline Jacobsohn devoted many months with her mother, Eva, translating and transposing her diaries, and she retyped hundreds of her letters. She graciously shared many photographs and artifacts and, through our many conversations, communicated the essence of the soul of her mother.

Abraham Ascher, historian, shared his insights into Breslau in the 1930s. His book, A Community Under Siege:The Jews of Breslau under Nazism, helped clarify the historical reality that was so close to Gross Breesen. His sister, Esther Ascher Adler, sent me her poems about her experiencing Krystallnacht in Breslau in 1938 and shared her letter to Martin Gilbert for his book, Krystallnacht. Professor Ascher directed me to No Justice in Germany: The Breslau Diaries 19331941 by Willy Cohn. This book personally included the days of Krystallnacht in Breslau and the surrounding towns. Dr. Marcin Wodzinski connected me to Jerzy Kos, of the University of Wroclaw, Poland, who was immensely helpful in finding archival photographs of Breslau and Gellendorf. He traveled to Gross Breesen to photograph the refurbished estate. Howard Bailes, teacher, historian and archivist, sent me his