Northattan

Dear Northattan readers, viewers and listeners:

Thank you for checking out our website and engaging with us. For the next couple of months, the Northattan team will be posting only occasional multimedia updates and stories. We will then return in earnest this fall. We hope you will continue to check back with us to “see what’s up” in Northattan for our periodic coverage and for full coverage in fall.

Thank you, Northattan

Did you miss the live broadcast? You can listen to the full show below.

Finding quality daycare is a problem throughout all of New York City, but it’s especially acute in Washington Heights. This neighborhood has the largest concentration of children in all of Manhattan. But in 2010, a flock of new daycares opened in the area. Robin Respaut and Brett Teal brought this report.

The wildly popular Broadway musical, “In The Heights,” sets the lives of Dominican-American residents in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood to song. That play is in its final weeks. And now a new show that tells an older story of the neighborhood is just beginning.

It tells the story of Washington Heights just after World War II, when the neighborhood was home to the world’s largest community of German Jewish refugees – totaling around 25,000.

Today, those numbers have dwindled significantly, and Spanish-speaking immigrants make up the majority of residents. Some German Jews still live in the neighborhood, though, and Northattan asked three of them to tell their stories.

Martin Spier, 85, survived three concentration camps in Europe before coming to Washington Heights. Photo by Robin Respaut/Northattan.

Martin Spier, age 85

Q: What was your life like before you came to Washington Heights in 1946?

A: I was born in Rauischholzhausen, near Marburg, and I lived there in a small town of about 700 people until the war started. My oldest brother was sent into a concentration camp in 1938 on Kristallnacht, and when he was released, my family sent him and my other brother and my sister to England. There, they were picked up off the boat by a Scottish farmer. He wasn’t a Jew. And they worked on his farm during the war.

Me, I stayed with my younger brother, my parents and my grandmother. And in 1941, we were sent to a concentration camp, called Theresienstadt, in the Czech Republic. We worked there for two years, but my grandmother was in her 80s. She died there.

Q: After Theresienstadt, where did you go?

A: In 1943, we were sent to Auschwitz, the death camp. We saw carloads of people coming on the trains from Poland and Hungary. They didn’t see daylight. They just went straight to gas chambers and were killed. I didn’t know my parents would be killed. But they were.

I was picked out of, I don’t know, 10,000 people. They sent us to work at another camp, called Schwarzheide, building military tanks.

I will never forget my parents, walking from the train into the camp. I’m a bad sleeper. I won’t sleep tonight with our talking.

Q: How were you liberated from the concentration camp?

A: In January of 1945, they started the death march. There was about 1,000 young people my age who left. We marched from the camp to Prague until May, when the Russians liberated us. By then, there were only 200 people. The Russians gave us heavy food, like beans and bacon. But we were sick, and another 100 died from the food. I weighed only 70 pounds.

I went back to my hometown, and two weeks later, my brother arrived, too. I didn’t know he was alive, but he was sent to work at another labor camp. We decided to come to America, because there was no future for us in Germany.

Q: What did you think of Washington Heights when you arrived?

A: I was disappointed with America. I thought everyone was rich. But that was not true. I got my first job in White Plains, working with a jeweler. But I left that job a few weeks later and took others. I worked hard to make money. Eventually, I became a house painter and owned my own business. It was called M&M Spier Painting Corp.

I met other German Jews at the Macabi Club House at 158^th and Broadway. People played tennis there. We had our own soccer team. It was a whole group of people. We were all the same.

Edith Rosenbaum, 85, came to Washington Heights as a young girl and has lived in this apartment for 59 years. Photo by Robin Respaut/Northattan.

Edith Rosenbaum, age 85

Q: Why did you decide to leave Germany?

A: My father was sent to a concentration camp in 1938 on Kristallnacht. He was sent to Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg. He was lucky, because he was an athletic person – a healthy person. Many of the Jews in the camps couldn’t do the things they were asked to do. He was released three months later with the condition that he leave Germany. My mother saw to it that he would get out immediately after his release. And he had to go without us because of the affidavit. So my father moved to New York in February of 1938. We came that summer, just before the war started.

Q: What was New York like for you?

A: We first moved to the Bronx then quickly relocated to Washington Heights, where I’ve lived ever since. I’ve lived in this apartment building for 59 years. What was it like? There were a lot of Jewish people. Our neighbors knew we had no money. Bakers brought us day-old bread. People gave us clothing. My mother bought cans of food ready for the garbage. That way, we could eat. We were not hungry.

Q: How did your family earn an income?

A: My uncle lived with us. He was a tailor and was making money. My father worked for the department store, S. Klein – they took in a lot of German Jews – for $15 a week. My mother knew how to sew and did alterations for money. We had very little money, but we were together. That was good.

Q: What did a life in the United States mean to you?

A: For me, there was a future here. There were other people like ourselves. The language eventually became familiar. We felt that we belonged. I was grateful I was in the United States. I was grateful for everything.

In Germany, we left family behind – my grandparents, everyone on my mother’s side, the children. They were all killed.

Q: What career did you eventually pursue?

A: I attended George Washington High School, where, among other things, I attended a dancing class with a German Jewish teacher. There, I met my husband, another German Jew, who became an engineer. I wanted to become a nurse, but instead, I eventually became an English as a Second Language teacher. I’ve mostly taught immigrants that moved into Washington Heights and speak Spanish.

Q: Did you feel like you could relate to them?

A: They had to relate to me. It was a real adjustment for them to learn English.

Eva Fiest, 91, worked as a maid in order to get out of Germany, before coming to Washington Heights. Photo by Robin Respaut/Northattan.

Eva Fiest, age 91

Q: Why did you decide to move to New York City?

A: My brother and I were the only ones to get out. He got out of Germany very early, and warned us, this was not going to end well. My father said, “I have fought for Germany, and we have always been Germans. I don’t see why we should get out. This will pass.” But it did not. So as things were getting worse, my mother was able to send me to England to live with relatives there.

Soon after, my cousins decided to leave for the United States. I was working as a maid, and I said, “If you go, I go.” So they managed to get me an affidavit almost overnight, and I left with them. It was 1939.

Q: What did you do once you arrived in Washington Heights?

A: I stayed with one of my cousins, and she said, “Now take your time and get used to New York.” But after three days, I had a job. I worked at first at a home for girls on 157^th Street. Later, I became a dietitian at a nursing home, which was more up my alley.

Q: How did you feel about Washington Heights?

A: Most of the refugees lived up here. My cousins lived on 163^rd Street, just off Riverside Drive. Another one lived off Broadway at 179^th Street. It was the place to be. Washington Heights was greatly occupied by German-born refugees.

Q: Washington Heights is different now. How do you feel about that?

A: Now, most of the people are not Jewish. Most of them speak Spanish. As long as they are decent people, I don’t mind. And so far, so good.

Q: Your parents did not escape Germany. What happened to them?

A: My father died before the war. But, my poor mother did not make it out. She was waiting for a visa to go to Israel, and it never came. Instead, I received a letter in German that said my mother had left the town where she was born. The Germans had a special way of writing about what happened to people. So that, to me, was obvious. She was killed.

Q: How often do you think about her?

A: Very often. In those days, I was young, and I’m still blaming myself. Why didn’t I get my mother out? But the only way would have been if she had come as a maid. And the thought that my mother should do that kind of work, it never came to me. You see, if you grow up in a house where you had everything, to think that my mother would have gone on her hands and knees and cleaned the floor like this. I couldn’t see this, at the time. I couldn’t see it.