Even in his earliest memories, Gil Walter knew he was
somehow
”
different.
”
He didn’t know why, but he did know that as a child, other boys
would spit at him or call him dirty names for no apparent
reason.
Even in his earliest memories, Gil Walter knew he was somehow “different.” He didn’t know why, but he did know that as a child, other boys would spit at him or call him dirty names for no apparent reason. He can still sing the German song children used to taunt him with. It wasn’t until he was older that he understood being a Jew in Berlin during the late 1930s and early 1940s was what made him “different.”
Gil’s sister, Margot, was 12 years older than him, and it was she who told him about the first time he was labeled with the Star of David. In 1939, at just 2 years old, Gil fell victim to a polio epidemic in his family’s apartment building. When he was taken to the hospital, staff members put a large six-pointed star on his window to indicate a Jew inhabited the room.
“As soon as my mother saw that, she told my sister to go to the hospital and pick me up,” said Gil, a Morgan Hill resident who is now 69. “So, my sister came and took me to another hospital. But they wouldn’t take me because I was a Jew and they were afraid they would be raided by the Nazis. She took me to every hospital in Berlin, but no one would treat me. So she brought me home. A couple of days later, the Nazis came to the hospital I had been in and took away all the Jewish patients and the doctor who had treated me. He was a polio specialist, but he was Jewish, so they took him to Auschwitz.”
Gil, his sister, two older brothers and his parents had managed to avoid many overt anti-Semitic acts of violence, such as 1938’s Kristallnacht – night of broken glass – when the Nazis raided Jewish neighborhoods, breaking the windows in every Jewish-owned business. Gil’s father, a baker, was Catholic and the Walters lived near his extended family in a non-Jewish part of Berlin. Because the Gestapo was focused primarily on terrorizing Jewish neighborhoods, the family was relatively safe, especially with a non-Jewish last name. But life began a downward spiral in 1943 when Hans, Gil’s oldest brother, was picked up on the street and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
A year later, Margot, then about 18 years old, was forced to work cleaning Nazi trains. The soldiers would often taunt her, calling her names and spitting at her. She finally got fed up one day and talked back to the Nazis. As punishment, she was kicked off the moving train, badly injuring her leg.
“She never recuperated from that fall – she still walks with a limp,” Gil said. “But after that, she decided she had to leave. A friend helped her change her passport. I remember our passports all had a big black ‘J’ on them, for ‘Jew.’ So, they got this stuff called ‘Tinten Tod’ (which means ‘ink’s death’), and I can still remember how it smelled. It took them hours, but they would put the stuff on the J and we would sit and watch as it faded little by little. Then they changed the names on the passports and they left. They disappeared.”
Taken Away
Shortly after Margot’s departure, there was a knock on the door. Gil’s father and remaining older brother, Werner, were at work. Gil’s mother had invited two elderly Jewish neighbors to have lunch with her and Gil, then about 7 years old. They shared the family’s main source of food, which were crusts cut off pies and bread from the bakery where Gil’s father worked.
“It wasn’t like you see in the movies, with these big guys pounding on the door with their guns,” Gil said. “They knocked very politely, and they said they were looking for the Sterns. My mother didn’t know who (the men at the door) were, so she told them that the Sterns were inside with us, eating. The Gestapo asked about our passports – they asked if we were aware that they needed to be renewed every six months. We said we didn’t know that. So, they said, ‘No problem. When you are done with your meal, come downstairs and meet us outside. There is a car waiting, and it will take you all to the passport office and you can renew them today.’ They were very courteous.”
Sure enough, when Gil, his mother and the Sterns finished eating and went outside, a large truck with benches inside the flatbed in the back was waiting. Gil and his mother climbed on, but the Sterns were elderly and had difficulty climbing into the truck. That’s when the Gestapo’s courtesy ended and Gil finally understood that something was terribly wrong. One of the Nazi soldiers used his heavy booted foot to kick Mrs. Stern. He kicked her hard enough to force her upwards and into the truck.
The truckload of people, most of whom also were residents of the Walter’s huge apartment complex, went to an abandoned school. As the passengers were unloaded, women were told to go left, men right and children straight ahead onto another waiting truck.
“They told the parents that the children were going to be taken to kindergarten, but I had braces on my legs from the polio, so my mother didn’t want me separated from her,” Gil remembered. “So, my mother snuck me into the women’s camp with her. All the other women watched out for me, too. They put me in a corner under a bunch of blankets and they all made sure I stayed hidden. My leg braces saved my life.”
Gil later learned the truck had not taken the children to kindergarten. Instead, the back was sealed shut and a pipe was funneled in. The children were gassed.
In Hiding
For four months, Gil and his mother stayed at the makeshift camp. Meanwhile, the Nazis continued to round up the remaining Jews in Berlin, keeping them at the school until they felt there were enough people to fill a train bound for a concentration camp, making sure the expense of ground transportation was not wasted. But while they waited, the train station, Anhalterbahnhof, was bombed, making train departures impossible. Figuring their prisoners wouldn’t be able to go far in the decimated city, the Nazis released the people they’d been holding.
“My mother was not an educated woman, but she did a brilliant thing – she took me to an apartment where an old rabbi used to live,” Gil said. “He had a bookcase that was actually a secret door. If you knew where to pull it, it swung open and there was a little room behind it. That was where we stayed.”
Gil’s father would come by at odd times, dropping off food and supplies. As a Catholic, he was safe living at the bakery where he worked. Gil’s brother, Werner, then about 15 years old, had removed his Star of David and altered his passport so no one would know he was Jewish. He’d told his boss his apartment had been bombed and was given permission to live at the carpenter shop where he worked, supervising the workers. Werner was known to hide pieces of bread, boiled potatoes and eggs in his pockets and slip them to Polish prisoners working there, too.
When the apartment building Gil and his mother were hiding in was bombed, they moved around until they ended up in a random basement, sleeping on the floor along with several other displaced Berliners. When Werner could come visit, he would do his best to help those living in the dank basement. He would bring what supplies he could, or go out and catch wild rabbits as a source of food for his family and the elderly residents. It was while he was out chasing a wild rabbit in the spring of 1945 that Werner caught pneumonia.
“Werner was taken to the hospital, but there were only Nazi doctors there,” Gil said. “When they were treating him, they saw that he was circumcised and they knew then that he was a Jew. The Russians were there. There were a quarter of a million soldiers ready to liberate the city. They were coming. But the Nazi doctors killed Werner and they buried him in a mass grave.”
Though Gil recounts what happened to his family during World War II with a distinct calmness, when he speaks about what happened to Werner, he has to stop and collect himself.
“They told us that Werner died overnight. We never saw him again after he went to the hospital,” Gil said. “The Russians officially liberated Berlin the next day, but they had already killed Werner. He was one of the finest characters around – he was everything good. He did so much for people, and he was my best buddy. Can you believe, they killed him as the Russians tanks were coming in.”
After the Atrocities
After Berlin was liberated, people tried to restore some semblance of normal life. Gil went to school for the first time in his life. He was 9 years old and he tested into the first grade, which he said was embarrassing. He was the only Jewish child in the school.
Hans, Gil’s oldest brother, managed to return to Berlin from Auschwitz in 1946. He came back with a tattoo on his arm to forever remind him of his time at the infamous camp. He also told the family he watched his maternal grandparents undress and walk hand-in-hand into the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Margot also survived the war, though she rarely talks about her experiences in hiding, Gil said. In total, about 320 people in Gil’s extended family were killed during the Holocaust.
A few years after the war, Hans brought Gil with him to America to try and build a new life. Gil learned English at school and graduated high school at the top of his class. He went on to become an electrical engineer and product safety engineer for Lockheed. He’s taken his four children back to Berlin over the years, because he said it’s important that they see where they come from.
Though the city has been rebuilt from the rubble Hitler left it in, Gil said he often thinks of the Berlin of his youth.
“There is nothing really left for me in Berlin, now – I speak with this (German) accent, but I’m an American,” Gil said. “I’ve lived here for something like 60 years. … But I do not forget what happened to my family during World War II. I do not forget.”
