|
|
|
|
||
|
Leonard Kenworthy 1912 - 1991
Leonard
S. Kenworthy served as the director of the International Quaker Center in
Berlin from the summer of 1940 to the summer of 1941 under the auspices of
the American Friends Service Committee and a steering committee of German
Quakers. He aided persons who had been labeled “Jewish” by the Nazi
regime—but who were not Jews by religious or cultural affiliation—in
trying to emigrate from Germany. Kenworthy also collaborated with the
International Young Mens’ Christian Association in its work in the Stalags
and Oflags—the Nazi’s prisoner-of-war camps. He visited
individual Quakers and Quaker groups throughout Germany, as well as
maintained contacts with other international relief agencies and European
Quaker groups. Kenworthy was born in 1912 to a Quaker family in
Richmond, Indiana. His father Murray Kenworthy taught in the Department of
Religion at Richmond’s Earlham College. After moving between New York,
Ohio and Washington, D.C., Kenworthy attended Westtown School, a Quaker
boarding school near Philadelphia. From there he went to Earlham College,
working summers at the Pocono Manor Inn in Pennsylvania. After he graduated
from Earlham in 1933, Kenworthy enrolled at Columbia University and earned a
masters degree in U.S. history. For a few years he taught at Friends Select
School in Philadelphia, at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Connecticut
and at the Friends Central School in Overbrook, Pennsylvania. The Kenworthys had a tradition of working abroad for
humanitarian causes: Kenworthy’s father had headed the relief work of
British and U.S. Quakers in the Soviet Union during the famines of the Volga
region in 1922, while his older brother Carroll spent two years in Japan on
the staff of the English-language newspaper in Tokyo. In the spring of 1940
when Clarence Pickett, executive secretary of the Philadelphia-based AFSC,
invited him to direct Quaker relief efforts in Berlin for a year, Kenworthy
honored his family’s tradition of serving others and quickly accepted the
position. After Leonard Kenworthy completed his yearlong
assignment with the American Friends Service Committee, he returned to the
United States. Soon drafted, he spent the next few years in the projects of
Civilian Public Service—an AFSC program for conscientious objectors. In
the CPS Kenworthy worked with emotionally disturbed children for a year in
Laurel, Maryland and then served two stints in medical experiments at Yale
University. After the war Kenworthy joined the staff of the
Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization in London and later in Paris. He became the first
director of its Division on Education for International Understanding and
wrote the first booklet published by UNESCO, The Postwar Child in
War-Devastated Countries. Following his job at UNESCO, he taught social
studies methods and international education for thirty years at the Brooklyn
College of the City University of New York. He served on the international
relations committee of the National Education Association, the Association
for Curriculum and the National Council for the Social Studies. Kenworthy
also headed a three-year, inter-cultural project of the Association for
Childhood Education International of Neighbors Unlimited. He also wrote many
tracts on education, social studies, world affairs and Quakerism. The circumstances leading to Leonard Kenworthy’s
stay in Germany developed quickly. In the late spring of 1940 Clarence
Pickett, the executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee,
asked Kenworthy to serve the Quaker International Center in Berlin for a
year because the AFSC sought a young, single man to fill the position who
spoke German and would accept the risks involved in such an assignment.
Taking an impromptu year’s leave
of absence from Friends Central School in Philadelphia, the 28 year-old
Kenworthy soon left New York on 22 June aboard a Pan American Clipper bound
for Bermuda. Honeymooners filled the plane, casting a cheery hue
uncharacteristic of that fateful day when France surrendered to the Third
Reich’s triumphant, gloating Wehrmacht army. After a two-day delay in Bermuda—made necessary by
stormy weather and allowing the young Quaker time to explore the idyllic
island—Kenworthy flew to the Azores and then on to Lisbon. Portugal’s
capital had become chaotic by the presence of tens of thousands of refugees
hoping to escape the war. Kenworthy fortunately found lodging in Estoril, a
resort town some distance from Lisbon. He shared a hotel with two Polish
princes and their entourage, Belgium’s President of the Chamber of
Deputies and a cabinet minister, the La Revue Belgique’s editor,
two wives of U.S. consuls in France, a Danish couple and numerous French and
British citizens. Unable to find transportation to Germany for several days,
Kenworthy used his time to see a bit of Portugal; one evening he visited the
Portuguese Exposition, a grand celebration of Portuguese history dominated
by a statue of Prince Henry the Navigator. After ten days, a man from A
La Littoria offered Kenworthy a seat on a plane to Rome, where he
conferred for several days with other Quaker relief agents before going to
Vienna for two days, then on to Berlin. When Kenworthy arrived in the German capital he soon
immersed himself into the role of director of the Quaker International
Center. As he became familiar with daily life inside Nazi Germany, it
generally seemed that life for most Germans continued quite normally,
despite the war. “People went to work; children attended school. Women
shopped, albeit with ration cards and often in long lines.” Soon, however,
he noticed subtle, yet distinct cultural differences between the culture he
found in Germany and the one he had left behind in the United States. As per custom there, on his first Sunday in Germany
Kenworthy joined friends for a walk in the suburbs. Initially he noticed the
mundane fact that men always walked on the women’s left in order to walk
on the sidewalk’s curbside—as opposed to the endless changing of
positions that took place in the U.S. When the strollers passed the remains
of what had been a synagogue, however, Kenworthy saw “the earliest
evidence for me of the cruelty to thousands of people, about which I would
learn so much in the months ahead.” Continuing on, they saw several
uniformed Hitler Youth talking on tiny telephones, practicing for future
service as communications officers in the Nazi army. As Kenworthy walked
down city streets, he saw so many soldiers that he took to counting the
times an officer would have to salute inferiors as he walked down a single
block. Still very new to Germany and sensitive to the
environment, Kenworthy noticed that men and boys wore gloves much more
frequently than their U.S. counterparts. He saw many outdoor telephones in
Germany—something quite uncommon in the United States at that time—and
numerous vending machines selling newspapers and public transit tickets.
Streetcars had special sections for those traveling with dogs, large
packages or baby carriages, as well as first-, second- and third-class
compartments based at various rates. Railroad station restaurants served
good food and provided a meeting place for friends; the Germans seemed to
ceremonialize the arrival and departure of family and friends—with both
men and women waving handkerchiefs as the trains pulled away from the
station. Bookstores were far more numerous than in the U.S., as were flower
shops selling both artificial and real flowers. Separate stores sold dairy
products, fruits and vegetables, in contrast to the diversified supermarkets
of the United States. Striking him as particularly surprising, Kenworthy
noted that art from English-based cultures abounded. Four Shakespeare plays
were offered concurrently at big Berlin theaters—prompting one native to
somewhat inaccurately explain to Kenworthy that archaic English was actually
modern German. He also found the books of several U.S. authors for sale: Gone
With the Wind, Anthony Adverse and The Grapes of Wrath. A number
of people he met had read Kenneth Roberts’ Northwest Passage and Arundel,
Margaret Rawling’s The Yearling or Willa Cather’s Death Comes
to the Archbishop. Despite the limiting effects of Nazi dogma and
censorship, the Germans continued to satiate their ongoing appetite for
music and literature—the latter Kenworthy thought because music was the
least political of the arts. In large numbers Germans attended performances
of Brahms’ Das Deutsche Requiem and Each’s Matthaeuspassion. Religious
concerts seemed to attract even larger crowds than usual, but according to
friends, not because of any renaissance in a concern for spirituality.
Kenworthy thought German books at that time consisted of three general
types: short, cheap accounts of the war, world history or geography and
semi-religious works. Newspapers and magazines abounded, tangible
indications of a highly literate society. During his first week in Berlin, the inquisitive
Kenworthy made a special effort—despite the disapproval of German
Quakers—to attend the mass celebration of the German victory in Narvik,
Norway. He walked to Unter den Linden and attempted to remain on the
periphery of the crowd, but soon was pulled into it. He expected harassment
when he would not yield the Nazi salute during the frenzy created by the
playing of Deutschland, Deutschland Ueber Alles, yet no harm came to
him—apparently, he thought, because his glasses and hat suggested he was a
foreigner. Kenworthy noticed that the flags, the music and
collective salute, the lights and speeches were all used to move and
manipulate the sentiment of the masses. Kenworthy heard Hitler’s voice
during the rally, yet did not see him. More importantly, however, he
perceived a lack of enthusiasm by some of the people present—even though
friends and journalists later told him it was the most aroused they’d seen
the Germans in months. When he asked some of the Germans about this, some
lamented they already had seen one great war and two depressions—only now
to be in yet another war. An elderly woman told him she had lived through
German wars with Denmark, Austria, France and the Allied Powers; did he
expect her to hear any news of war with enthusiasm? When Kenworthy arrived in the Third Reich in June of
1940, the Germans expected the war to end by August. Then they postponed its
culmination to September. In October they acknowledged that it would
probably last into 1941. Almost no one expected the war to drag on for more
than a year. The Germans offered a variety of excuses why the war continued
for as long as it had. One explanation had it that an outright invasion of
Britain would cost too many German lives, a price Hitler seemed unwilling to
pay. Many thought that having fought in the First World War, the Fuehrer
identified with the interests of the soldiers. As proof of this they pointed
to the greater mechanization of the army and the relaxing of class
distinctions between ranks. In this climate of tentative, ambivalent feelings
toward the war, Kenworthy found in his experience that some ten to fifteen,
perhaps only five percent were strongly anti-Nazi. The rest of the German
population, it seemed to him, remained largely apathetic. Hitler did seem
quite popular, however, as did Goering and Hess—although the latter’s
bizarre surrender to the British shocked most Germans. Himmler, a former
Bavarian chicken farmer, never did become popular with the German people. Eventually, Germans he met asked Kenworthy if he
intended to stay much longer in Germany—a question he interpreted as
really meaning did he think the United States soon would enter the war. In
response he answered that he had promised to serve the American Friends
Service Committee in Germany for a year—and he intended to keep that
promise. Helping those Jews left inside the Third Reich and
its occupied lands after the beginning of World War II was a seemingly
formidable task. A member of an idealistic, deeply motivated sect, Leonard
Kenworthy willingly arrived in Berlin in the summer of 1940 to direct the Quaker International
Center’s efforts to help those Jews that it could. Upon agreeing to direct the Center’s programs,
Kenworthy and the staff at the American Friends Service Committee assumed
that his arrival would overlap several weeks with the departures of Alice
Shaffer and Howard Elkinton, two U.S. American Quakers who had served as
Center personnel. Also, Kenworthy was to be assisted by Henry Cadbury, a
Quaker from Harvard University who would serve as “the elder statesman”
at the Center and be responsible for communication with German and other European Quakers. Because
of unexpected delays in his trip to Germany from Philadelphia via Bermuda
and Portugal and Cadbury’s sudden unavailability, Kenworthy was forced to
direct the Center by himself and with only a couple days’ consultation
with the departing former directors. Subsequently he had to “plunge into
the varied activities of the Center immediately and without the assistance
of any other Americans.” At least Kenworthy could count on the experience of
“a small but competent staff to carry on the work of the Center,” as
well as the help of “an unusually able group” of German Quakers. A
valued staff member, Irmgard Wedemeyer brought with her much experience as a
trained social worker. Being part Jewish, she also “had a special
understanding of the harassments to which her clients were being exposed
constantly.” For many months she had handled the cases of refugees fleeing
the Nazis, so understood “all the pitfalls involved in such work.”
Kenworthy said “She carried a heavy burden, but she carried it competently
and sensitively.” Eva Schaal filled the role of secretary and office
manager. Being bi-lingual and widely experienced with the plight of
refugees—as well as with German and foreign Quakers—to Kenworthy Eva
seemed “a splendid example...of the value a secretary can be to a
‘boss’.” It would be Schaal who would undertake all correspondence in
English. In addition to the other staff, the young Berlin
Quaker Dorothea Kaske proved to be a “friendly, outgoing person, willing
to do anything to help, from greeting visitors to standing in line for hours
to obtain [Kenworthy’s] ration cards.” Taking on all correspondence in
German, Kaske was “a joyous person, often adding gaiety to what was at
times a very sober scene.” Indeed, the Quaker International Center’s work
usually was very challenging and emotionally trying. The Center’s “most
urgent and in many ways most important task” involved assisting
individuals of Jewish ancestry who were Konfessionslos—without
religious affiliation. Kenworthy explained that “In that connection we
worked closely with three other refugee agencies, with the embassies of
various governments, and with several banks and travel companies.” The Center also oversaw other humanitarian-related
projects. It processed financial transactions for the Quaker International
School in the occupied Netherlands. In conjunction with Berlin and other
German Quakers, it organized the distribution of materials to Allied
prisoners-of-war. It also strove to maintain contact with various German
religious groups and the several Quaker meetings scattered across Germany,
as well as help coordinate travel plans for Quakers visiting Germany or
other European destinations. As Kenworthy concluded, “Hence there were few
dull moments, especially since what would have taken only a short time in
periods of peace, often took hours, days, or even weeks in Nazi Germany in
wartime.” Although he had studied the German language for two
years while a student at the Quaker Westtown School near Philadelphia, the
first task Kenworthy addressed was to gain better proficiency in German. He
explained that while he had “a basic foundation in that difficult and
highly structured language,” his knowledge of German was “very
elementary and certainly did not include such words as emigration,
passports, visas, air passages, embassies, and consulates.” To help him
learn words more easily, he formed a list in English of words necessary for
his work and then with Schaal’s help formed a parallel list of their
German equivalents. Regarding his struggle to learn German, Kenworthy
complained that “If you want a basic lesson in humility, then try to
conduct an interview or conversation in a foreign language. Very soon” he
warned, “you will discover that your vocabulary is limited to fewer words
than a child in kindergarten uses. And as an adult that doesn’t stretch
very far.” German seemed very difficult to the young U.S.
American Quaker. Kenworthy found that “Gradually, however, I did learn.”
Around Christmas some of the Quakers in the Berlin meeting for worship—the
Quaker version of a church service—requested him to use German rather than
English when he spoke during Meeting, as his messages of three or four
minutes “seemed inevitably to become 10 or 15 minutes in length when
translated by Emil Fuchs [a Berlin Friend].” Kenworthy had learned German
well enough to realize that “the translation was about one-fourth
Kenworthy and three-fourths Fuchs.” For the first few weeks he was in Germany, Kenworthy
studied German at a Berlitz school, but “stopped them soon because they
seemed less practical than listening to the radio, seeing movies and hearing
the language accompanying them, reading magazines and newspapers, taking
part in conversations, and working up a stack of cards with English on one
side and the German equivalent on the other.” As he learned German better Kenworthy became
increasingly engaged in the work of the Quaker International Center. Begun
as a Quaker response to the horror inflicted upon Jews by the Nazis during
and after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, the Center
committed itself to helping as many Jews as possible find refuge from Nazism
in other countries. Since Hitler had first come to power various new homes
for the Jews had been considered. Negotiations were being made after 1933
for the establishment of a Jewish colony in Africa’s Abyssinia or
Ethiopia, but Mussolini’s invasion of the latter in 1935 aborted that
plan. Similarly, Jews and their allies considered settlements in Central
America, the Philippines and Turkey, but to no fruition. Some investigated
sending Germany’s dejected Jewry to Australia or New Zealand, but workers
there fearing for their jobs and a lowered standard of living for workers
pressured both governments to discourage Jews from moving there—although,
as Kenworthy noted, “demographers maintained that a population of [twenty
million] was possible” in New Zealand. Initially, numerous German Jews migrated to the
United States, but soon the U.S. government issued fewer visas in response
to increasing anti-Semitism, protectionist fears and for political
reasons—as “there had been a few instances in which recent immigrants
had been accused of being fifth-columnists.” Kenworthy further reasoned
“Then, too, some members of Congress felt it would be better to slacken
off the number of aliens admitted to the United States in order to offset
the clamor for the complete closing of our borders to such persons.
Apparently” he concluded, “President Roosevelt also felt that the
barriers against immigrants should be raised.” [Public intimations,
however, do not automatically reflect private dealings. For the first six of
the Third Reich’s 12-year existence, the United States failed to award
even half of the slots Congress’ restrictive 1924-passed quota system for
immigration would have allowed for Germans and Austrians: between 1933 and
1940 the U.S. accepted 100,987 German immigrants or refugees; had all the
German and Austrian quota slots been awarded, 211,895 individuals would have
entered the U.S. from those two countries.] Even if a home could be found for would-be emigrants,
like other organizations of its kind, the staff at the Quaker International
Center had to clear several obstacles to securing passage for German Jewish
refugees. Primarily, an individual’s passport had to be validated.
Children of mischling—“mixed”—marriages had to obtain
releases from the compulsory Hitler Youth, a paper which often took three or
four weeks to obtain. Kenworthy noted that “Emigrants also had to obtain a
certificate of residence and one of good conduct. In addition, each person
leaving the country had to obtain several tax papers and affidavits about
his or her personal belongings and a certificate that all taxes had been
paid.” Those papers, in turn, had to be taken to several government
offices. When a person requesting to leave Germany had secured
all necessary papers, he or she had to take them to a special bureau which
“examined the person’s belongings and indicated which could be moved
abroad. Having cleared that series of hurdles” Kenworthy said, “the
emigrants then had to appear at the consulate of the country to which he or
she was going, producing a steamship or airplane ticket, plus other
documents. To almost everyone” he summed, “that seemed like an endless
process, but it was their only hope for leaving Germany or Austria.” Kenworthy grew frustrated at the long, excruciatingly
exacting process. He recounted that “In many cases our help was needed. So
there were the seemingly endless trips to the banks, steamship companies,
airlines, and embassies and consulates. Most officials were helpful, but the
transactions were almost always complicated and slow. Sometimes it seemed as
if I were a messenger boy” he complained, “trudging back and forth
between our office and those places.” At least some of the applicants actually succeeding
in meeting the stringent prerequisites for emigration and managed to escape
the reaches of Hitler and his Nazi fiends. Kenworthy later proudly reported
“In a large poster-like booklet issued in 1980, with pictures of the
places associated with aid to Jewish people, and a map of Berlin, it was
estimated that the Quaker bureau assisted 1000 persons to leave Germany. Of
that number” he estimated, “we probably assisted upwards of 100 in my
year there.” In a journal he kept at the time, Kenworthy recorded that
various individuals or families had found refuge in Ecuador, Cuba, the
United States, Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Shanghai and the Virgin Islands. Many of the Jews assisted by the Quaker International
Center wished to show their immense appreciation for the Centers aid, yet
official policy forbade such gifts. Kenworthy recalled, however, that Frau
Wedemeyer “bent that rule to accept potted plants and flowers, making her
office look like a botanical garden.” One grateful Jewish woman insisted
on giving the Center money, but to no avail. As she left Kenworthy’s
office, she noticed a box for contributions in the room where the Berlin
Friends held Meeting for Worship and placed a donation in it. When he heard
about this, Kenworthy felt “tricked,” yet Frau Wedemeyer suggested he
read a Biblical passage where Jesus allowed Mary to anoint his feet with oil
and then wiped them with her hair. He admitted “That was the first time in
my life that I learned that it is sometimes more blessed to receive than to
give.” While fortunate individuals were able to leave the
Third Reich, Kenworthy met many “whom we could not help.” He confessed
“How powerless I felt in such cases. All I could do was to listen intently
and sympathetically, telling them how much I wished I could assist them.
Occasionally” he remembered later, “I drew upon the experiences other
perplexed people had shared with me and asked the person...about the sources
of power which he or she had discovered in adversity.” Sometimes the
regretful Kenworthy told rejected applicants for emigration about Quaker
Meeting and invited them to attend Meeting or Quaker-sponsored public
lectures in the hope that there they would find “fellowship and spiritual
refreshment.” He conceded, however, ‘such gestures were so little, so
superficial, so frustrating. In the many years since 1940 and 1941” he
pondered, “I have wondered many times what else I could have done, but
have come up with no additional suggestions.” Kenworthy remembered three specific cases of people
whom he could not help flee the threat Nazi extermination. “One was an old
lady” he recalled, “her face hardened by bitter experiences, her eyes
almost closed, her jaw determined. In her hand” he retold, “she
flourished a cane as she vented her wrath on all those she could name,
ending with a curse on me for not helping her in her plight.” The “hazy picture” of a young girl of sixteen or
seventeen remained in Kenworthy’s mind long after his stay in Berlin. He
described the image: “In her short span of life she has experienced most
of [the] extremes [that] life can offer. She is struggling to understand the
world and to maintain her faith in God and in humanity. We talk and then we
pause a while in silence. What more, oh God” Kenworthy pleaded
desperately, “could I have done?” A third memorable person the Center could not assist
was a woman “who had just received news that would probably doom her
family to a terrible fate. A woman of refinement and culture” Kenworthy
said of the ghost who at that moment permanently moved inside his mind,
“she now lives under miserable, frightening conditions. With the tender
love of a mother, made even more tender through suffering, she tells me a
little about her family and thanks me for listening.” He added “She
expects no more.” Attending to the needs of the Third Reich’s most
disenfranchised subjects was the Quaker International Center’s primary,
but not only concern. In addition Kenworthy and the other staff maintained
contact with the Nazis’ prisoner-of-war camps. They could undertake this
work on behalf of British, French and Belgian prisoners because the Allies
and the Axis powers had agreed to observe the tenets of the Geneva
Convention dealing with the treatment of prisoners. Polish and Soviet
prisoners, however, were kept without such considerations, as their
countries had not signed the legally binding international agreement in
1929. Accompanying Tracy Strong and the International Young
Men’s Christian Association, as well as the International Red Cross and
the Ecumenical Council, Kenworthy visited both the Stalag base camps
for both soldiers and officers and the Oflags for only officers.
Explaining that “Many German Quakers were anxious to do something which
would represent even in some small way a positive testimony to their belief
in peace and brotherhood,” he reported that “it was the work for
prisoners-of-war in Germany which provided a service outlet
for...Friends—and was tolerated by the government.” Each Thursday afternoon, numerous Berlin Quakers and
their friends gathered at the Center to sort and wrap packages of books,
games, musical instruments, play scripts and costumes to be distributed in
various Stalags. Kenworthy recalled “since no books could be
shipped if there were any ink or pencil marks in them, they spent hours
laboriously erasing or blotting out such additions;” sometimes the
determined Berlin Quakers even rebound books. “Despite the fact that such
work was permitted by the government” Kenworthy noted, “it was
dangerous, making them suspect as persons aiding the enemy. Nevertheless, it
was a positive testimony and a mission of love.” Periodically Kenworthy would join the Thursday
afternoon work sessions, as well as contact publishers who were willing to
donate books published in French or English for distribution to the
prisoners. Kenworthy confirmed that the books were being delivered when
fellow Quaker Douglas Steere “saw many of them in a Stalag in Silesia
which he visited in 1940” and when members of the International Y.M.C.A.
returned from the camps with reports of what they had witnessed. Besides visiting prisoner-of-war camps, as director
of the well-respected Center, Kenworthy conferred with representatives from
various relief groups working on behalf of Poland, the Brethren and the
Mennonite Churches and the Hoover Commission, as well as the American Church
and the American Chamber of Commerce in Berlin. The Center also welcomed
visitors from the United States and published a newsletter sent to Quakers
throughout Europe and Great Britain via Switzerland. Kenworthy noted,
however, that the newsletter “was dropped after a few issues because it
was dangerous to report on many topics and persons about whom I would have
liked to have written.” Most of the work undertaken by the Quaker
International Center involved at least some risk of danger, especially that
of aiding Jews leave the Third Reich. Years after leaving the post of
director of the Center in 1941, Kenworthy reflected on how the Center was
able to accomplish its work at all. When initially asked how the Center had
any success at all in its difficult mission, he responded “I did not
know.” Upon further consideration, however, he thought of three possible
explanations: “One was that our work was so small that it was
given a low priority by the Nazis” Kenworthy speculated. “However, they
were well aware of what we were doing.” For another, he wondered if
perhaps “in 1940-1941 the German government did not intend to kill all
persons of Jewish ancestry; they were glad to get rid of them in any way
possible. In a sense” he admitted, “we were cooperating with the Hitler
regime. But we were saving the lives of human beings and that outweighed any
cooperation with Nazi-ism in which we might have been engaged.” And
finally, Kenworthy projected, “the past work of Quakers [especially in
feeding up to a million starving German mothers and children after the First
World War—including some children who would grow up to be officials in
Hitler’s regime] was so well known in Germany and so highly regarded that
even the Nazis were willing to let us do something to assist people of
Jewish background.” Whatever the reason, the Quaker International Center
served a crucial purpose. As he had taught secondary social studies before
accepting the directorship of the Berlin-based Quaker International Center
and afterward would return to a life of teaching, Leonard Kenworthy took
great interest in Nazi efforts to dictate how German children would see the
world and themselves in it. Although Kenworthy was unable to visit German
schools, he did obtain a number of German textbooks and checked their
content. He recorded two entries regarding the United States and the lives
of German-Americans. As the Nazis had vested interests in defaming the young
democracy, both accounts contained stilted, politically expedient
assessments of life in the U.S., even if some of their observations might
have reflected actualities: The young, capable American quickly selects a vocation in which he can
make a lot of money. He works and rushes around not always in the same tempo
as in New York City, but on the average much more rapidly than in Europe.
The American doesn’t work in order to live, but he lives in order to work.
Someone has also said that the American ‘thinks economically.’ He
doesn’t see the landscape, but the plot of land; not the fields, but the
crops; not the forests, but the wood; not the waterfalls, but the
waterpower. The object of all work is to make money. In this way one also
explains the struggle for wealth and the admiration of the rich—the
millionaires Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and others. The second passage referred to the approximately
twenty-five to thirty million people in the United States at that time who claimed
German heritage: The influence of the German spirit and German work,
however, has been and remains great. As farmers, industrial workers,
engineers, and scholars, our fellow Germans have contributed more to this
nation than the emigrants of all other peoples. Many have brought it great
wealth. Only they haven’t been able to unite themselves into a group and
to compete politically with Anglo-Americans. That was best demonstrated in
World War I. In that war the German-Americans had to forfeit their German
connections and work and fight against the Fatherland or be persecuted. Our
fellow Germans have learned from this wartime experience and have now
brought themselves together as a group. Of course Nazi interference into the thoughts and
private lives of both Germans and foreigners living in the Third Reich was
not limited to school textbooks. Kenworthy realized soon after arriving in
Germany that his work and movements were closely noted. During the 1940
Christmas Holiday he spent a few days in the Vor Arlberg region of Germany
with Douglas Steere—a prominent Quaker from Haverford College near
Philadelphia—and Greta Sumpf, a Berlin Quaker who also represented Quaker
relief efforts in Vienna. At the end of their stay at a hotel in Vor
Arlberg’s Stuben, Sumpf returned to Vienna and Steere traveled to
Switzerland. Upon his friends’ suggestion, however, Kenworthy stayed in
Vor Arlberg “for a few more days as a way of recuperating from my
demanding work.” Soon after the others had departed the Gestapo called Kenworthy and
inquired about Steere. “I took the call and told them that he had already
left for Switzerland. Nevertheless” he remembered, “they asked me to
tell them exactly where he had been during the last few days. I did so and
they seemed satisfied.” Kenworthy learned later that an attempt on
Hitler’s life had been made at the railroad station near the Quaker
International Center office in Berlin. He explained that “Apparently the
Gestapo was checking on the whereabouts of anyone who might have been
involved in that incident. Because of his stay in Berlin near the time of
that attempted assassination and his ‘escape’ over the boarder” he
noted, “Douglas was a suspect.” While Steere had been held for a number
of hours in conjunction with that “situation” and because his passport
had been incorrectly validated, nothing ever came of the Gestapo’s call.
Kenworthy later pondered “Just why I was not implicated has remained a
mystery to me.” While he generally was treated “in a fairly
friendly way by most officials and very well by others,” Kenworthy clearly
recognized that the Germans kept him under surveillance. “My mail was
certainly checked” he testified, “especially the letters overseas.” He
said, for example, that a letter to Clarence Pickett, the executive
secretary of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia was
returned “with seven reasons why it could not be dispatched.” He also
noticed that telephone conversations he placed from his office were
“sometimes monitored, as a listener would sometimes break into our
communications. Whether I was trailed at any time” he continued, “I do
not know. I never had that feeling. But upon a few occasions” he
added—noting the extent to which the fear of Nazi terror and surveillance
cast a heavy shadow over the lives of everyone—“the people I was
visiting gave me specific instructions as to glancing back from time to time
to see if I was being followed, lest they get into trouble because of my
visit.” In such an environment, Kenworthy’s Quaker principles came to be
severely tested. By June of 1940, when Leonard Kenworthy arrived in
Berlin to direct Quaker-sponsored humanitarian relief efforts, he found a
Germany already fully dominated by the war. With battles raging on two
fronts and German material as well as human resources thinly spread, he soon
experienced the day-to-day struggles of life on the homefront. While ground
fighting would not reach German soil for another four and a half years,
already those left on the homefront had to endure endless shortages of
goods, work harder to fill wartime production quotas and suffer the constant
threat of attack from first British, then U.S. American air raids. In addition to the tangible effects of the war on the
German homefront, however, the people also experienced severe emotional and
psychological suffering: the possibility of the death of a loved one
fighting on the front and of relatives or oneself during bombing raids over
German territory, anxious uncertainty about the war’s outcome, the
internal pressure of the constant stress and the heightened political
oppression applied by the Nazis to every aspect of daily life. Used to the comfortable, peaceful life of the prewar United States,
Kenworthy had to adapt to the rather grim conditions that met him in his new
home. In reflecting upon life in wartime Germany, he later recalled that
immediately upon his arrival in Berlin a co-worker at the Quaker
International Center accompanied Kenworthy to the food-rationing board
office and helped him obtain the all-important Lebensmittelkarte—the
rationing card distributed to every person living in Germany. He noticed
that while Nazi officials closely rationed food, “people were not
starving. Accustomed to living on a much more simple diet than Americans”
he explained, “they were able to survive, largely on potatoes, cabbage,
and bread.” He conceded, nonetheless, “What a monotonous diet that
was!” Kenworthy took considerable notice of the food
situation in wartime Germany. He found that meat had become scarce, rationed
at a rate of about one pound per person per week. As adults legally could
consume only one egg per week, “fish became the major source of
protein.” The observant young Quaker discovered, however, that rabbits
could be gotten beyond the restraints of the usual meat ration, so he was
able “to eat a good meal from time to time in a restaurant...which
specialized in rabbits.” As it had been since before the war, fruit remained
“scarce or nonexistent. By a curious twist of psychology” Kenworthy
noted, “people reached the point where they rejoiced when the government
announced a ‘gift’ of two or three oranges per person.” This mode of
thinking, however, seemed contagious, as Kenworthy reported that on the
first evening he was in Berlin with his predecessor in the Center, “Alice
Shaffer...and I were walking down the street when Alice saw a long line of
people. Immediately she suggested that we get into that line, not knowing
what was on sale, but realizing that something could be bought without the
precious ration cards.” To their disappointment the two Quakers passed
slowly through the line only to purchase “one tiny peach each, green and
hard, like tiny gourds.” Not only food, but also drink became cherished
commodities on the German homefront. “Coffee and tea were...impossible to
purchase” Kenworthy said, “and I had to accustom myself to the barley
coffee and the peppermint and apple tea one could obtain.” He considered
himself fortunate in that he had brought with him to Germany some “Martha
Washington coffee capsules which were popular in the United States at that
time, and also a few tea bags. Those became precious possessions” he said,
“which I hoarded and used for special occasions in the office or hotel or
as gifts for my German hostesses.” In addition, milk had become largely
unavailable, being reserved for infants, Schwerarbeiter—heavy
laborers—and the Fuerher’s soldiers. Not at all slow to figure out ways to work beyond the strict limits of
rigid rationing, Kenworthy soon realized that “In Germany, as in other
places in wartime, it was good to have relatives or close friends in the
country as a pig could be slaughtered, a chicken killed, or a little extra
butter made without the government knowing it. And one’s relatives and/or
friends” he said, “could thus gain some extra food, which they sometimes
shared.” The availability of food, however, would not be
Kenworthy’s only concern. He soon sensed the sobering threat of air raids,
as newspapers publicly noted the hours of blackouts and his officemates
taught him to pull the curtains “early in the afternoon because the nights
came so early in that northern part of Germany.” Also, shortly after he
had arrived in the German capital Kenworthy underwent his first air raid.
Merely jotting in his diary “Basement 1:30-2:30,” he remembered years
later that air raids during the first year or so of the war remained
“short, light, and sporadic. But” he said, “they became more frequent,
more widespread, and more intense.” Kenworthy learned to keep a handbag near his bed so
that when the air raid sirens pierced the night he could easily hurry to the
nearest Luftschutzkeller—air raid shelter—to spend “a few
minutes or a few hours until the ‘all is clear’ signal was given.” The
first time he sought cover in a shelter, however, Kenworthy found no one
else there and realized that “Obviously I had slept through the alert
signal and thought the ‘all is clear’ alarm was the warning signal.
So” he mused, “I trudged back to my room, thankful that no harm had come
to me.” One evening Stewart Herman of the American Church
convinced Kenworthy that one took as great a risk going to a Luftschutzkeller
as one did remaining in one’s room. “As he pointed out” Kenworthy
explained, “the water mains could break and flood the basement, or the gas
lines could explode and expose us to deadly fumes.” Kenworthy added that
later that night “we had the most intense raid to date and at one point it
seemed as if a missile had zoomed into my stomach. I lay there a while as if
paralyzed, drenched in sweat. Then I got out of bed” he recounted, “took
my bag, and scurried to the shelter, determined thereafter to heed the
warning signal as soon as it sounded.” While the destruction caused by bombing raids did not
seem extensive at first, some sections of the city received heavy damage
later in Kenworthy’s stay. All the bombings, however, seemed
significant—both terrifying as well as fascinating. Kenworthy admitted
that “Curiously...I sometimes enjoyed the searchlights which were used to
spot the invading planes, often describing beautiful patterns in the sky.
How bizarre!” he said. The frequency and intensity of air raids seemed to
correspond with developments on Germany’s fronts, yet as the Propaganda
Ministry retained tight control over news coverage of the war, the people
never quite knew what to expect in the way of attacks. In order to more
correctly anticipate the flow of the war, not to mention simply kept abreast
of what was really happening elsewhere in Europe and the rest of the world,
Kenworthy gained access to news more reliable than from the popular press or
government radio reports through other means. Already having taken to checking Die Woche—a
newsmagazine which published maps of territories alleged to be soon
occupied—for news of the war’s spread, Kenworthy made contact with
individuals who monitored the British Broadcasting Corporation’s news
service, although “there were serious consequences for those who were
caught indulging in that practice.” Also, returning soldiers often brought
personal testimonies of Germany’s military campaigns, as did visiting
foreigners. “Even the debris tossed by the waves onto the shores in the
north” Kenworthy remarked, “told their stories of the events which were
transpiring.” Too, attending the rallies held in Berlin to celebrate
supposed “victories” offered the young U.S. American some idea of what
battles were occurring where and who was sustaining what losses. “Of course” Kenworthy explained, “the
newspapers were filled with accounts of the war and the radio blasted us
with the news of the German victories. When I started going to the movies”
he added, “I was also bombarded with the weekly newscasts which were used
to tell the populace about the feats of their soldiers.” Officially sanctioned coverage of the war, however,
dripped with the characteristic lies and dogma of the Nazis. To obtain less
subjective information about current events, Kenworthy made a weekly trip to
the U.S. embassy “whether my regular work with refugees took me there on
business or not, in order to read the daily news briefs to which I had
access, giving me a fairly good idea of what was transpiring in the outside
world.” Naturally, the war and the presence of the
dictatorial regime which had caused it remained almost continuously—albeit
often subconsciously—in everyone’s mind. Often, on his way to visit the
U.S. embassy for recent news, Kenworthy would find himself whistling “the
very catchy tune of Wenn wir fahren, wenn wir fahren, wenn wir fahren
nach Engel-land, a favorite tune of the German radio broadcasts about
traveling to Angel-land, a play on the world England.” Realizing this
unintentional, implicit support for the war, this Quaker pacifist quickly
switched to whistling God Bless America and got a “perverted sense
of satisfaction from that defiant act.” Whistling was not the only thing Germans noticed
about foreigners seen in public. It took very little time before Kenworthy
saw the importance of being “cautious in a dictatorship, especially in
wartime.” He often found himself “looking around me in public places
before I spoke of certain people or events.” He and his friends also began
using coded language in order to be “more free in what we said.” As an
example Kenworthy related that his friend Howard Elkinton “always referred
to Hitler as ‘Nibs’ and I knew immediately to whom he was referring. So
ingrained did such habits become” he admitted, “that I found myself
being cautious for several days after I had returned to the States. In such
diabolical ways” he assessed, “I was affected by even 12 months as a
foreigner in [Nazi] Germany.” As the experiences of foreigners in the Third Reich
went, however, until the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into the
war, U.S. Americans in Nazi Germany after September 1939 fared well.
Kenworthy remembered later that “One of the surprises to me was the
prevailing attitude of contempt toward the Poles. Probably no group was less
respected by the Germans” it seemed to him, “than the citizens of that
land.” Although enslaved Polish workers in Germany were forced by Nazi
code to wear a purple letter “P” against a yellow field on their sleeves
for identification purposes, Kenworthy noted that “the treatment shown
them was so good that leaflets were distributed instructing citizens to
treat them with less respect and to have no association with them.” While U.S. Americans and their cultural cousins the
British never suffered the disgraceful treatment afforded Poles, Jews,
homosexuals, Gypsies, dissidents and others disenfranchised under Nazi rule,
the Germans did carry particular sentiment regarding those two groups.
Kenworthy testified “In my months in Germany I felt little hatred for the
English,” although hostility mounted as British air raids became more
frequent and devastating. “Some people” he reported, “were even bold
enough to speak with admiration of the ‘beating’ the English were taking
so well. A few” he added, “even said they wouldn’t mind if the British
retained control of their vast, worldwide empire, while losing any control
they had on the European continent. [These people] maintained that Germany
would have enough trouble running the continent, without taking on the
entire British empire!” Kenworthy observed that since the United States so
far had claimed neutrality in the century’s second great European war, the
Germans remained “relatively unconcerned about us, assuming, perhaps, that
we would not become involved.” He realized, however, that those “who
were older and/or knew their history, were aware that the entrance of the
U.S.A. could tip the scales on the side of the Allies, as it had done in
World War I.” Regardless of whether or not the United States
eventually would enter the Second World War, Kenworthy paid careful
attention to the degree to which Germans he met supported or opposed the
war. Cautioning himself against thinking that any more than a few would
oppose it, he found that a number of individuals “glorified in the
possibility of a great German victory, with all that would mean. As loyal
Germans” he editorialized, “most people hoped for victory, realizing
that the alternatives would be disastrous—communism, an intense civil war
in which no group would be strong enough to win, or economic disaster.” He
concluded that “Therefore even some of those who were opposed to the
Hitler regime, supported their country in this conflict.” No matter how they personally felt about the Nazis or
the war, every German had to come to terms with the drama which had settled
upon their land. As warring societies have done for millennia, the Germans
sought to ease the gravity of their situation by finding humor among the
direness of the times. During his stay in the Third Reich Kenworthy heard
several popular jokes that characterized ordinary people’s attempts to
find some welcome levity to ease the hardship they had no choice but to
endure. One joke involved ways in which one could tell when
people entered the Luftschutzkeller whether or not they had slept
that night.
If they said “Guten Morgen” they had already slept; if
they said “Guten Abend” they had not and if they said “Heil
Hitler” they it were still asleep. Another had to do with a trip Hitler took with
Goering in the SS commander’s plane after a heavy bombing raid. Hitler
soon fell asleep. When the Fuehrer awoke he surveyed the ground below and, seeing
much destruction, exclaimed “Magnificent. Wonderful”—to which Goering swiftly replied “Wait a minute,
Adolf—we are only flying over Kiel.” In one quip Hitler asked Moses “How did you get the
water of the
Red Sea to part so that the children of Israel could pass over dry land?”
Moses replied “It was the wand I had which made that possible.” Hitler pressed the ancient
prophet, asking where he could get such a wand. “In the British Museum”
Moses answered. Hitler, Goering and Goebbels were flying
together—one story held—when their plane crashed. When the listener
would ask who was saved, the teller of the story answered “The German
people.” Still another joke pertained to the difference between India and Germany and alluded to each country’s great leader, Gandhi and Hitler: “In India one starves for all; in Germany all starve for one.” |
