Mexico City Earthquake 1957

Mexico 1957

To this day I have not decided, which is worse, sitting helplessly in a flimsy shelter waiting for the bombs to hit you or experiencing an earthquake. In any case, the earthquake which I had the “privilege “ to encounter was, though the strongest Mexico City had had in thirty or so years, only frightening as far as I was concerned, since I was in no way harmed. Looking back, it was almost funny.

I had been to a movie with a friend, a Peruvian who was studying in Mexico and we had come to his place for a late cup of coffee.He shared an apartment with two American students in a residential section of the city. Two rooms, one with three beds and the other,really a large, kitchen.The entrance to this apartment ran along the outside wall to the top of the garage.

It was about midnight when we arrived. One of the Americans was awake and the three of us settled around the kitchen table with our coffee. Slowly the Peruvian emerged as a story teller.At first he just told us about his country but slowly he started telling ghost stories. One after the other. This way we spent the next two hours. Drinking coffee and listening to ghost stories. Until,all of a sudden we just sat,not speaking, not asking any more questions, just staring in front of us.

I was sitting at the outside corner of the table, looking at nothing in particular, when my glance went to the opposite corner and it seemed to lift.I said, very calmly, “Fico,look the corner.” It seemed to have lifted. He looked up and over to the corner to which I was pointing, rose, said “earth quake, get out, don’t run” and moved to the bedroom behind me to wake the sleeping room mate,Mike.Big,burly, Ken, to my right, jumped up,almost pushed me against the table and ran to the outside door,stumbling all the way to the ground, dashing to a parked car in the driveway, crawled into it, head first but immediately backed out of it since his big body didn’t fit into the car and huffed to the front gate which was locked. I had tried not to run but nearly fell over a thin wire fence in the front yard and arrived at the same time at the gate as Ken did. So did Fico who calmly started putting the key to the chain lock into the keyhole, unlock the chain and open the gate to let us out onto the street.

The world around us was totally dark except for the light of a taxi which slowly drove toward us. As a child I had seen the movie “San Francisco” and remember the earth shaking and breaking open. I stood next to Fico, holding on to his jacket for protection, looking around and expecting the ground to open up. Fico also just stood, calmly looking at the pavement, waiting for something to happen while the earth around us groaned and grumbled and Mexico City remained dark and the hills around us had become visible.

After a bit life had quieted down. All we could hear was the noise of the cars roaring out of the city. Fico and I started walking toward Insurgentes, the artery which bisects the city all the way into the country and finally into the water in Acapulco. Essentially, this road is built on a fault, which I learned a few weeks later, taking the bus to Acapulco.There you can see how the earth ripped apart millions of years ago. Today it was not as bad as that. The first damage we saw was the statue of “El Angel” which had toppled off its very high pole. We managed to grab a taxi which took us to my side of town. We slowly drove down my short street past the inhabitants clad in varying modes of night attire. Arriving at the top floor of my small apartment building I encountered my neighbor Sam groping through his apartment for candles. “Don’t even bother to go and disturb Catinka. She didn’t make a sound and is fine.” Obviously, I did not follow his well meaning advice and quietly opened the door. Out of the dark came Catinka’s voice. “Mammi, what was that shaking? I took my pillow and pretended I was sitting on the swings. And the lamp fell over.”.

So I dressed her and we went outside to reconnoiter.Not far from our short street on Insurgentes our feet crunched on glass as we passed the modern Sears Roebuck building. Across the street a six story Automobile showroom had completely collapsed, burying the care taker family. Slowly, as we made our way into town we encountered more destruction. As far as I was concerned. this was enough to frighten me to the core. Lying in bed at night I was never sure if I just imagined an aftershock or if the world around me had again moved.

I am sure one can get used to everything, even the constant threat of earthquakes.
Personally, I would prefer not to have to adjust to either. The difference,though, is, we humans can do something about bombs but are helpless when faced with the movement of the tectonic plates or the fiery discharges of volcanoes.

Music

       What is this sensation we call “music"? According to my Oxford dictionary it is one of the arts of the Greek Muses, the one which is concerned with the combination of sounds with a view to beauty of form and the expression of  thought or feelings; also, the science of the laws or principles by which this art is regulated. So much for  inspiring words of the dictionary. It is amazing that from such a dry explanation can spring such a plethora of research into the influence of music onto the human soul or spirit. This influence can stretch from the hymn-singing parishioner to politics in Israel or Nazi Germany. When I hear even just the beginnings of a composition of Richard Wagner I immediately think of the Nazis. But not because I associate the music with the Holocaust.

          I remember having to  sit through boring hours listening  to records of the opera The Meistersinger, including very boring lecturing by our well meaning music teacher. But that was not enough: he also described  the person of the great master, the composer Richard Wagner. How he always had to wear his velvet cap while working. How he could not work unless his heavy velvet drapes were closed and other such details concerning  his personal habits. To this day I shudder just to think of that man. To me then and to this day I think of pomp when hearing even just strains of his music. Having been raised to the delicate sounds of music of  an earlier period this dislike is probably quite understandable. Though my attempts to learn more about Wagner’s music were not helped by having to stand through the entire first Act of the opera Lohengrin because I was a minute late and the doors had closed. The usher would not let me go to my seat. The music, to my ears, was excruciatingly long-winded and my hurting feet did not help my willingness to learn about this, to many people, so admired composer and his music.

             On and off over the years I would make a somewhat critical remark to a conductor friend who invariably corrected me in telling me how important Wagner’s music was. Since these men were  accomplished and sometimes even famous musicians I have accepted the fact that Wagner’s music is important, but just not for me.

          But what now about those Israelis who are upset that the conductor of the  multi-ethnic  West-Eastern –Divan orchestra which consists of young Jews, Muslims and Christians, Daniel Barenboim, wants to play Wagner in Israel?  Barenboim thinks that Wagner is too important a composer in spite of the fact that he was a raving  anti-semite, not to be performed. Clearly this is not a controversy easily resolved. I can fully understand the sentiments of those Jews who object to Wagner’s music being played in Israel. On the other hand I find Barenboim’s explanation and aim to build bridges inspiring and commendable.

         This is just one example which shows, in a very blunt way, how music can influence the sensibilities and psyches of beings and not just us humans. Animals too, react to the strains of music, though I doubt they would appreciate the importance of the musical output of Richard Wagner.         

Wars then and now

There is just no way not to think about war these days. Blissfully, here in the U.S. it affects only what seems to be a handful of people in relation to the size of the population. I, for example, do not know a single  person who has a friend or relative in the service. One reads and watches news-casts and politicians talk about the war and praise the soldiers who are actually fighting but that is about as far as it goes for most people I know. This state of affairs is certainly different in my case and every European of my age, whether we fought in the war or had relatives or friends in uniform. One way or another we were all affected. At the same time one talked about the “war-machine.” Industrialists became rich producing arms.

          Before the industrial age wars were no less dangerous to the populations, their cities or farmlands. Just more primitive. An army would gather on a hill-side. The soldier sitting high on his horse, covering his body behind his shield, swinging his sword, charging forward when the leader gave the command, and if he did not survive the onslaught he died the death of a hero. A hero at least in the eyes of those dear to him who were left behind and needed solace. Some comforting memory to cling to.

          Though the implements of war were simpler they were no less destructive. Fire is a mighty  destroyer. Entire towns could be set aflame by shooting burning arrows from a horse. Nowadays you have to have a big  tank or airplanes to throw bombs from the sky. The war-machine is simply tremendous. No matter which side you are on or if you are on anybody’s side. Having been in some harrowing situations myself many years ago I know at least what it is like to have gone through an ordeal. I cannot even begin to imagine  how the inhabitants of any of the Arab countries who are now experiencing the current turmoil are supposed to deal with their day to day lives.

         The people least knowledgeable concerning  war are the younger generation, though they may be very much against war in general. On one hand it is, of course, wonderful if people don’t have to suffer. On the other hand, life is just not like that. It deals you hands. Anybody who is out of a job and can’t find one knows that. Now just imagine we were thrown into a full-blown war with rockets hitting us. Here in New York all we really know is the attack on the Twin Towers from which we have to this day emotionally not recovered.

        For some of us a big disaster constitutes the absence of hot water just when I want to wash my hair. Horrors. Where is the super? Thinking of hot water. I remember the first  winter of the war in Hamburg, 1939-40. All of a sudden the house had run out of coal for heat and hot water. How horrified my mother and we two girls were that we had to sit in the kitchen wrapped in our coats, the oven door wide open and the gas flames burning full-blast.We NEVER ate in the kitchen. My mother actually tried to convince us that it was healthy to stand in the cold bathroom, taking a cold shower and scrubbing your body vigorously to stimulate the blood circulation. I have to confess, I never learned to accept that philosophy though I had to learn to live with the cold or any other deprivation the war imposed on us just as everybody else did. Having lofty beliefs is very laudable. Acting upon them when circumstances push events to the limit will be quite another  matter.

        

        

        

Nazis III

       I was about sixteen years old when I met the three Degckwitz brothers whose father was the most prominent pediatritian in Hamburg as well as a professor at the University. My mother had taken my sister for an examination and came home glowing with excitement: She had had such an interesting  conversation with the professor, all about politics.

      It turned out, he was a flaming Anti-Nazi. So, when I was invited to a meeting at their house I felt very grown-up since I was probably the youngest person there. Rudolph, the oldest Degckwitz, was actually already studying medicine. His brother, Peter, had been as a soldier in Poland but for some reason was out of uniform and the youngest, Richard was still in school working toward his Abitur.

        We sat around talking about how we, in our small, limited ways, defied the Nazis. Father D.,for example, would openly, before a lecture, wave dismissively toward the lecture hall, filled with students who had risen to raise their arms in the Hitler salute. “We won’t bother with this today!” he would say.  This kind of action put him on the black list of the authorities and they subjected him periodically to house-searches. Luckily, somebody on the staff at the university would always warn him in time so that he had time to buy some cheap Hitler photos which he then hung around the house. I remember the boys laughing at the stupidity of the searchers. “If they had only checked our garbage cans the next day. We never kept the photos and always dumped them as soon as the air was clear. I have no recollection how often I went to a meeting but one way or the other I was friends with all three sons. When I went to Munich the next summer I saw Rudolph, the oldest, quite a bit.

          We had long walks along the Isar river , talking about the state of the world. Rudolph told me how he, every time he got a draft notice, would go skiing and dislodge an arm out of its socket, thus rendering him incapable for service in the army. Two years later, in l944 , when I was studying in Breslau, now Wroslov, I received word that Rudolph and another friend from Hamburg had been incarcerated for having  distributed Anti-Nazi leaflets at the university in Munich. Both survived  incarceration.

         Richard, the youngest, was drafted into the army after his final exam at school. When  pressure was put on him that he should take an officer’s training course, because educated men were needed, he wrote to his father for advice. Since mail was inspected the Nazis used this exchange as an excuse to put the father into a concentration camp. But I have been  told that he was treated with kid-gloves since he was such a prominent physician.

         I often detect a condescending tone, here as well as in Germany, when the absence of dissent is mentioned. "After all, Dachau was just a suburb of Munich,” I have heard mention more then once. “Just a short subway-ride from downtown.” Maybe that is true today but it certainly was not the case in 1942 when I decided to take a look. At that time all I knew was that pastor Bonhoeffer, the known Anti-Nazi minister, was incarcerated in Dachau. I had a very pleasant ride on a train pulled by a steam-engine which deposited me in what I took for the center of Dachau. No sign of a concentration camp, nobody around other than a lone police man who looked at me with suspicion. Somehow I felt very uncomfortable and out of place. Without speaking to anyone I took the next train home.

       I have since asked my cousin, who lives in that area and knew Dachau since she was a child. It was a sleepy artists colony and quite separate from the concentration camp. No, one did not freely and openly step up to any person and ask direction to a concentration camp. Had I been a relative wanting to visit a prisoner I would have looked humble and maybe even afraid. In other words, I would have been suspected of something and probably subjected to quite unpleasant grilling and landed on one of their lists.

       Had I wished to be a heroine and immolate myself on a public square it might never have reached the public at large the way we are used to seeing  nowadays. Since I didn’t have access to a radio I have no idea what was reported other then victories from the front. I am not trying to deny any of the atrocities perpetrated under the Nazis but am just trying to show how different times were then.  

Nazi years part II

 Until we moved into the new apartment I had never seen people with the Star of David  on their coats. Hitler had ordered  so-called  Full-Jews to be identified in this way. Neither was it advisable to associate with them. In spite of these restrictions I went across the street and introduced myself to two the two girls who were playing hop-scotch. They were polite but shy and let me join the game. A few minutes after we had started their parents appeared at thefront door of the apartment building and called them inside. When I told my mother of this incident she explained that it was equally dangerous and forbidden for either of us to form a relationship.

       It was ordered that one had to greet with Heil Hitler when entering a store. We never did. If a store-owner or clerk admonished us: ”Here we greet with Heil Hitler!” We never went in again no matter how badly we wanted a sorely needed item. And then there was the woman who ran the green-grocer’s store. Whenever a very badly handicapped Jewish boy from our street limped into her store she would invariably call him ahead of every-body so that he could limp home sooner. Once, when there was nobody in the store I asked her where she got the courage and she huffed: "They should  dare say something to me. I have six brothers on the front, I have done by duty!”  have never forgotten her and was delighted to meet her again after the war in at my father’s green-grocer’s out in the suburb.

        One sunny day,coming home from school, I was walking absentmindedly along the rail embankment  to my left, vaguely noticing a freight-train standing above. Such trains rarly stopped there and if, then only a few minutes. The walk from the station exit to the intersection at which I would have to cross,is quite long and  whatever kind of train would stop above would long have moved on before I reached my crossing. I had to pay close attention to traffic, looking mostly left and straight ahead.When I had almost reached the other side I became aware of a small group of people huddled together with suitcases and bundles at their feet, not talking. In front of the group were the two girls from  my street. The group was being guarded by several females swinging clubs, ready to pounce if necessary.The school in front of which they stood was closed, behind them are the University grounds, in other words there is no everyday foot traffic. It now became clear to me that the freight train standing on the embankment was waiting for them.

        At home, my mother was sitting on the porch with one of her publishers who was a Swiss  citizen and therefore had better access to current news. They both looked very serious and knew about the transport but assured me that nothing could be done.

         We did know, that our phone was tapped and my mother knew that her mail was being  opened. In other words, we were under constant surveillance. All of our acquaintances had something “wrong” with them. Either one in the family was partly Jewish therefore could go certain places but I don’t remember what it was they were not able to do. I think my piano teacher, who was married to a Jew, was not allowed to teach but did anyway. In other words, I was surrounded by “Antis”and felt totally at home in that environment. Could we have done something? I once, after Hitler had marched into Austria, dreamt of  killing  him. I think I was about fourteen years old. But I couldn’t figure  out how to get near him. So I was certainly no heroine, nor was I a Nazi...

The Nazi years

I cannot remember a time that I was not disgusted with the man who ruled Germany for all of my formative years.True, I was influenced by both of my parents. By my father, who stormed through the apartment, fuming” That man means war” as well as by my mother though in a calmer fashion. Aside from the fact that my parent’s large circle of friends started to leave the country to settle in Sweden or Denmark or even Amerika, our childrens' lives were being invaded by urging us to join the Hitler Youth. At first just by trying to entice us:”Don’t you want to come to our meetings?” Once, I have to admit, for about one minute, I was tempted. I was walking with my mother and saw a group of my class mates in their uniforms standing around their leader listening to her attentively. When my mother noticed my curiosity she asked if I would like to join such a group. By the time she was done asking I had already decided that I didn’t want to.
      I certainly in no way want to give the impression that I was somewhere heroic by not joining the BDM (Bund Deutscher Mådchen), I was simply not a joiner. Every time we moved someone would come and extend an invitation to come to a meeting. So I went. I think in total it was about three or four times.Maybe I was simply too much of a snob sitting with a group of girls watching a slightly older girl (the leader) read from some sort of propaganda book, mispronouncing every foreign word. Since I had both English and French in school I shuddered when I heard her pronounce the airplane Spitfire “Spitfeere."
      Though I did like to sing I hated the kinds of songs they sang which glorified Blood and Soil. In other words, I did not fit. Also, I had a very good friend, for a while my best friend who had a Jewish parent which meant she was termed “half-Jewish” and excluded from all Nazi activities.Which made these girls somehow outcasts.Not that the other classmates did or said anything derogatory to her or people like her but the simple fact that they could not wear a uniform on days when it was required to do so, such as a national holiday, separated them from the rest of us. Somehow I managed to have enough of a uniform (black skirt,white blouse black triangular kerchief) to pass inspection.
      In History class I had started to talk about “non-arians“ instead of Jews because I detested the way the word was pronounced, always with a kind of sneer. Clearly I did not endear myself to the teacher who then proceeded to tell me the difference between Arians and Non-Arians. This aversion to just say the word Jew remained with me until quite a few years after the war. I learned to be at ease with it only after I had been in this country for a while and gotten to know and befriend American Jews.
      In the spring of 1935 my parents separated and my mother and my sister and I moved into town into a formerly mostly Jewish neighbourhood. As the train passed the synagogue my mother told me that it had been heavily damaged a few nights ago by Nazi rowdies.When I mentioned this to a classmate of mine,who I knew was and ardent admirer of Hitler she exclaimed, she wished she had known about it so that she could help When I tried to argue that I thought this was an awful way to treat people and that Hitler had people tortured,she vehemently denied that he would ever permit such a thing. There was clearly no point in having any discussions with people like her. And I never tried again.

Picasso

The summer of 1951 my husband Tom who was a painter, our baby daughter Catinka and I spent in Paris staying in the apartment of friends in St. Germain.Tom’s hero among modern artists was Pablo Picasso about whom he knew everything at that time knowable. Every painting ever published, every sculpture, every book,every apartment or studio he had ever lived in in Paris, Tom knew them all. He also knew that Picasso had an apartment and studio not far from where we stayed, at the rue St.Augustin. While Tom painted in the dining room I played the piano in the living room and Catinka, age eight months,crawled on the floor,exploring. Every so often she arrived at the piano,tickling my toes. When Tom needed a breather he would go for a walk which inevitably led him to Picasso's building. One day he came home excitedly. Picasso was in Paris. His car was in his courtyard. Now there was no holding Tom.He knew that the woman who took care of the building was the former flower girl whom Picasso had dis-covered by the roadside somewhere in the south and whose name was Inez. So he went up to her apartment, introduced himself in broken Spanish and asked if he could meet the maestro. Of course he could not.The maestro wasn’t in. So he went back the next day, and the next and so on.Once I even went with him. Then, one day, when Inez had delivered her friendly but firm denial, a voice behind her said:yes, he was here and asked Tom to come with him up to his apartment.Tom spent about thirty minutes with Picasso who kept asking him questions about his student years in Nazi Germany when “entartete Kunst” was forbidden.Later Tom complained that he really had not wanted to talk about himself, he wanted to talk to Picasso about painting. Nevertheless he was in seventh heaven, specially since Picasso asked him to come back again and bring his wife and child.So one day we went to visit the great man. Upstairs Picasso greeted us with a big smile and an even bigger one for Catinka whom I carried, riding on my hip. Then he opened a door behind which was a spiral staircase which led to the top floor. Slowly walking up the stairs we passed assorted sculptures such as the cows head fashioned from a bicycle saddle and the handlebars photos of which had been published. None of these items were displayed. They were just standing there in storage. After negotiating the narrow stairs we arrived at the top and entered a very large room without any furniture, just an easel. All around the wall were paintings, three and four deep with the face toward the wall. Picasso invited Tom to turn over any painting he wanted and as many as he wanted. Since I am not a painter, do not speak Spanish and had a child sitting on my hip I have no idea what they were talking about.But clearly both of them got along very well, Picasso as the maestro and teacher and Tom as the pupil At one point Picasso turned to me and told me that his wife,Paloma,carried their child the same way I did.When we were leaving he patted Catinka's cheeks lightly and gave her a small kiss. This is, what I have taken away from our visit with the giant of the modern art world.I have no profound in-sights but neither do I regret having had the experience. To me Picasso was a warm and friendly man,full of energy.Though Catinka has become an artist she has stayed away from any abstract art.Neither has her father ever followed the abstract style.