Holocaust

"It was from that apartment [on Freiherr von Steinstrasse]
that I watched the flames leap up from the beautiful Westend Synogogue on that night in November 1938, and saw the firemen standing by, making sure that the neighboring buildings did not catch fire. . . . It was a moving experience for me to be [again] inside the apartment . . . where I had seen my mother for the last time."

John (formerly Hans) Neumaier, on a return visit to Frankfurt in 1988.

(All images on this page, unless otherwise credited, are part of "A Voice Silenced," an exhibition of documents and photographs about the life of Leonore Schwarz Neumaier.)

Emigration was an agonizing decision for many of Germany's Jews. Finding the means to leave was often even more difficult. Few nations in the 1930s were willing to welcome German immigrants into their borders. The record of the United States in this regard, while better than those of other nations, was still nothing in which the nation could take much pride.

When Leonore and her husband decided to leave Germany in 1938, they sent applications for visas to the American consulate at Stuttgart. Dr. Arthur Neumaier, Leonore's stepson, was already living in America. He had signed and sent Otto Neumaier an affidavit of support, so the Neumaiers expected the process to go smoothly. But, as Leonore's son Hans later explained, this was not to be the case. "My father requested that my mother be given a non-quota visa like the one he was getting, on the basis of the affidavit provided by his American son, my half-brother. The official who headed the United States Consulate at Stuttgart (widely known to be an anti-Semite) refused the request." Since Leonore was not Arthur's natural mother, the consulate ruled that she could not receive a non-quota visa, but instead had to wait for a "quota visa" -- and there were already thousands of others on the list ahead of her. Leonore and her husband made the difficult choice that he would go on to America while she would remain behind and wait. "As a result," Hans recalled, "mother's number on the list of the small U.S. immigration quota did not come up until 1941, too late to save her life."Hans himself managed to leave earlier. In 1939, he went to England, where he lived with an English couple who he had met in Switzerland four years earlier. He was able finally to to leave for the United States on May 9, 1940. He changed his name to "John" because he discovered England that his fellow workers had trouble pronouncing the "H" in Hans. "It usually came out as Ants."

The Frankfurt Opera, where Leonore had performed, was decorated with swastikas during the 1930s. Bombed during the war, it was rebuilt in the 1980s. The original photograph was taken by Hans (John) Neumaier.

After January 1940, Leonore was on her own. While waiting in hope of receiving a visa, she had to endure many humiliations as the Nazis increased their persecutions of the Jews. In 1941 she began wearing the yellow star patch that the Nazis ordered all Jews to wear. Still hopeful of reaching America, she packed her belongings -- including many of the opera programs, photographs, and recordings that documented her career.

What happened next was explained to John in a letter he received from one Leonore's Frankfurt friends. As John relates in one of his writings about his mother, "In 1942, she had a conference about money matters with a Frankfurt banker at her home. Most of my parents' funds had been confiscated. Someone observed this meeting between an 'Aryan' and a 'non-Aryan' and denounced the banker, who was then taken to Gestapo headquarters." He was a banker with a large family. In spite of the obvious danger, Leonore went at once to Gestapo headquarters "to help the banker by explaining their meeting. The Gestapo arrested her then and there and would not even let her go home to pack one suitcase, which deportees were allowed."

Leonore was sent to Majdanek death camp in Poland. She was likely murdered almost as soon as she arrived at the camp. The German chronicle of deported German Jews, published in Cologne in 1988, list Leonore as verschollen (disappeared) at Majdanek in June 1942. More than 11,000 Jews from Frankfurt were deported to their deaths.

"Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory." (Shelley)

Click below, to listen to a short sound clip of Leonore Schwarz Neumaier's voice.

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