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By Root 571 0

or crematoriums. Werner, 18 years old, could not really understand what this place was, this strange triangle of barracks in Oranienburg. He and his fellow inmates were marched and worked and abused, and it seemed like some sort of prisoner-of-war camp, but there was no war. It was still peacetime. The camp had been set up for six thousand political activists and criminals. But Handler and his father were among another six thousand men who had been brought in, all Jews rounded up on Kristallnacht. Werner did not understand what the Nazis were doing in this place, but with twelve thousand men it was now very crowded. Their clothes were not warm enough, and there were not enough blankets. The inmates found sleeping mates to keep each other warm on the straw where they slept. There were beatings, and disease, and overworking, and the one thing V/erner did understand was that “anybody who lives in these camps can be dead in ten minutes.” The political prisoners taught ihe Jews how to survive there, what to do and not to do.

After a few months Werner and his father were both released. Before they got out of the camp, a group of political prisoners told Werner, “When you get out, wherever you go, tell about people like us. Tell what is going on. Tell them in England that Germany is preparing for an enormous war.” It was the time of the Munich pact, when Western Europe had appeared to convince itself that “peace in our time” was possible.

Werner arrived in London with ten marks. On the boat over he had asked a fellow passenger what the English word for war was, and even knowing few other words, he told everyone he talked to that there was going to be “war.” The English patted him patroniz-ngly on the shoulder. Clearly the boy had been through some upsetting experiences.

While Werner and his father had been in Sachsenhausen, his mother had tried to arrange passage to England for the family, but she had been able to get only one permit, for Werner. It was now up to him to arrange papers for the rest of the family. When he got to London, he went to his mother's distant cousin, a barrister named Bernard Gill is, and told him about the camps, the storm troopers on the streets, and how his parents were being robbed of their money and property. He tried to make Gillis understand what it was like in Germany, and he said that he doubted his parents could survive there much longer.

The barrister listened sympathetically and then explained that if they came, he would have to support them, since they would not be able to work in England. But he could not assume this responsibility since he was already supporting a rabbi who had come over and he just did not have the money to support anyone else.

Both Werner Handler's parents were killed in Auschwitz.

When the war broke out, the British government decided it was too risky to trust any Germans in their midst. Werner Handler was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man and then to Canada. He had never been particularly political, but once again he found that the political militants were the people to know. They were the ones who spoke out for better conditions. They were the ones who knew how to survive, and he wanted to be one of them. In 1942 the British started allowing German Jewish refugees to work in defense jobs and even to serve in the military, but the British Army rejected Handler because it regarded him as a socialist troublemaker.

Back in England, he worked repairing bomb damage. Mia Leh-mann could now work in a factory. German Jews had their own world in wartime England, with political organizations such as Free German Youth and cultural movements and leftist movements. By the end of the war, Mia Lehmann, Werner Handler, and many other German Jews had met and married fellow refugees.

After the war there was little enthusiasm among them for returning to Germany. But a few German Jews, especially those still in their twenties, decided that even if they did not really want to, they had an obligation to return. Some thought they owed it to all the people they loved who were