about Scattergood Hostel | "Out of Hitler's Reach" Video
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about Scattergood Hostel | "Out of Hitler's Reach" Video
|
Far From Hitler:
The Scattergood Hostel for European Refugees, 1939-43
WELCOME to Far from Hitler: The Scattergood Hostel for European
Refugees. From April 1939 to March 1943 about 185 refugees from
Nazi-occupied Europe found an unexpected safe haven at Scattergood, a temporary hostel in
what had been a Quaker boarding school near West Branch, Iowa. Among them
were a large percentage of Jews, as well as political opponents of
Hitler’s regime, Christian religious leaders, artists and others
endangered in the “New Germany”. (The Quaker staff didn’t note which
of their charges were Jews and which were not. A review of the refugees’
names plus information gathered during research, however, suggest that
approximately 85% of those individuals seeking refuge at Scattergood were
either self-identified Jews or identified as Jews
by others.) With the help of the Quaker farmers and idealistic college
students who took them in, the refugees (referred to as “guests” by
staff) sought to overcome the trauma of their experiences in Europe, find a
niche for themselves and build new lives in the New World.
A 13-minute-long, Iowa Public Television-produced documentary
offers a brief overview of Scattergood. The narrative panels which follow
(starting topically with Jewish People and ending with Legacies)
provide an abridged introduction to how the hostel arose in direct response
to the Nazis’ Kristallnacht pogrom, to Scattergood’s staff and
specific refugees whom they aided, to the hostel’s shared daily life,
conditions under which the refugees left Scattergood and the hostel’s
surviving legacy. The unabridged texts are available in an exhibit catalog.
For more information about Scattergood Hostel see Out of Hitler’s Reach
(available from the exhibit’s sponsors) or the related web page at www.TRACES.org. Far
from Hitler
is sponsored by the Iowa Jewish Historical
Society
and supported by a major grant from Humanities Iowa and the National
Endowment for the Humanities. TRACES executive director Michael
Luick-Thrams conceptualized the exhibit
and
oversaw its creation. Former refugees and staff donated documents,
photographs, artifacts and interviews. Scattergood School members
helped transcribe the audio taped interviews. The following institutions
provided supplementary materials about Jewish, Quaker or World War II
history: the American Friends Service Committee Archives, Berlin’s Gedenkstätte
Deutscher Wiederstand,
Haverford College’s Quaker Collection, the Leo Baeck Institute,
the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance Library and Archives,
and Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library. The Central
Campus Home Building Shop of the Des Moines Public Schools assisted
in the physical construction of this exhibit.
JEWISH
PEOPLE
share religious and cultural traditions reaching back to the roots of
recorded Western history. What differentiated the first Jews from their
Semitic neighbors was Jews’ belief in a monotheistic god, when the
regional norm was to believe in numerous gods. While Christianity and Islam
share the same god as Judaism, religious differences plus political
struggles put Jews in conflict with their neighbors and the power elite of
two thousand years ago. After a period of enslavement in ancient Egypt, the
Jews returned to what they called the “Promised Land” under the
leadership of Moses. They lived there until eventually expelled by imperial
Rome. The subsequent dispersal cast many Jews across the world as far east
as India and China, into much of North Africa, and across Europe. The
first Jews in what is now Germany followed Roman armies and colonists into
the region as traders. After a precarious presence along the Rhine River for
a thousand years, between 1350 and 1450 Jews were falsely accused of having
poisoned local wells and causing the Black Death, and thus were expelled
from Central Europe in large numbers during a series of merciless pogroms.
Many of those expellees fled to Eastern Europe. Only as of about 1650 did
Jews return to Germanic lands in large numbers. During the Reformation
Martin Luther conveyed anti-Semitic sentiments common in his time, nation
and church (which held that Jews caused Jesus’ execution). That
anti-Jewish feeling grew and receded over centuries of European history,
influenced in great part by cycles of war, economic expansion or
contraction, natural calamities and shifting political alliances. In
the mid-1800s, Jews became increasingly useful to Germany’s (and nearby
Austria’s) ruling classes as Europe’s most powerful Teutonic states
expanded and unified, industrialized and modernized. The German Kaiser in
Berlin declared Jews emancipated in 1871, so Jews in German-speaking Europe
left the enclaves they had lived in for over a millennium and a half. They
and French Jews would become Europe’s most integrated Jewish population. During
the turmoil in Germany following World War I, the ascending National
Socialist German Workers (“Nazi”) Party increasingly and effectively
blamed the country’s losses and alleged “degeneration” on Jews as well
as pacifists and “internationalists”, homosexuals, “Gypsies” and
others. Once Austrian-born Adolf Hitler took power, the Nazi regime
introduced a spiraling list of restrictions on the rights and freedoms of
these people, until many felt they had no choice but to escape the growing
Nazi terror—even if it meant fleeing to what might have seemed the end of
the known world. QUAKERS
share
a worldview that arose in England during the social foment of the early
1600s. Members of the Religious Society of Friends, “Quakers” (a
nickname given them during persecution) broke new theological ground when
they held that something sacred exists in every person. Given what Friends
saw as each one’s innate, universal insight into “the Truth” and their
belief in the sacredness of each life, they gave birth to two unique
practices: their silence-based “meeting” for worship and their testimony
to peace and justice. According to Quaker practice, in the quiet of meeting
each person tries to draw closer to the “Divine Presence” and anyone who
feels led may express a thought or feeling they experience arising from the
silence. This practice mirrors Quakers’ commitment to honoring “that of
god” in each person—and thus prohibiting war and injustice.
Such views immediately brought early Quakers into conflict with the
power elites of their own day—resulting in persecution, exile and death.
Those conditions led William Penn to create “Pennsylvania”, a “Holy
Experiment” where all might live unencumbered. Having known persecution,
Quakers took up causes like penal reform and relief for the poor or
war-stricken. Of England’s North American colonies, only Pennsylvania paid
for the land and, in turn, was not attacked.
As America’s frontier pushed west, Friends in West Branch, Iowa,
helped slaves flee the South on the Underground Railroad. In the 1870s they
brought Native American youth to Iowa from the Great Plains, believing that
the best way to assist Natives was to give them modern clothing and training
in skilled trades. In the early 20th century North American Quakers worked
for women’s rights and to mitigate the effects of the First World War:
British and US Friends’ postwar relief program fed up to a million German
and Austrian women and children a day; some of those children grew up to be
Nazi officials who tolerated Quakers’ presence and work in Nazi Germany. As fascist
violence began spilling across Europe in the 1930s, British and North
American Quakers again responded to suffering: within months of Hitler’s
seizure of power in January 1933 they jointly began opening over a dozen
refugee centers and programs in Europe, Cuba and the US; German Friends
visited Nazi concentration and later prisoner of war camps, and filed
reports of what they saw. While British Friends helped organize the Kindertransport,
US Quakers tried to replicate such an action, but were blocked by overt
anti-Semitism, anti-immigrant sentiment and indifference. US Quaker
representatives met with Nazi officials in 1938 and attempted to secure
Jews’ passage out of “Greater Germany”—but before that could happen,
Hitler unleashed a premeditated pogrom, Kristallnacht. PERSECUTION
of individuals and groups hated by German Nazi leaders or their supporters
began long before Hitler took power, but intensified immediately thereafter.
The day after the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 (a fire in the
German parliament building to this day claimed by many historians to have
been set by the Nazis, even though they blamed it on a Dutch Communist), the
Hitler regime began closing and destroying its opposition’s offices, and
abusing such groups’ leaders—as attested by one-time Dresden Social
Democratic Party official Gertrude Hesse [refer to Document One in the black
folder in the living room’s magazine rack]. Those not sent to
concentration camps or simply murdered outright were restricted from earning
a sufficient living wage and forced to register daily with the police—such
as in the case of Erich and Lisa Hausen, Communist activists who eventually
found their way to Scattergood Hostel [Document Two]. Besides
political figures, those among the first to flee the new Nazi regime
included dissenting intellectuals and artists like Vienna-born Grete Baeck,
and “non-Aryan” civil servants, which in Germany included university
professors such as Jewish-born Donald Hopf’s father. Ironically, even some
of the early targets of Nazi oppression minimized the threat posed to
“civilized” Germany and, ultimately, almost the whole of Europe.
Nazi persecution of Jews intensified in stages, as related in Viktor
Popper’s story [Document Three]. At first many German and Austrian Jews
thought that the Nazi terror would pass; they felt thoroughly integrated in
the local life and culture—and many had fought enthusiastically in the
First World War, including Karl Liebmann. Both German, then Austrian Jews
soon learned, however, that the Nazis meant business—as was evident by
comments made by the first of Scattergood’s guests. As of the Kristallnacht
pogrom in November 1938, however, German and Austrian Jews no longer could
ignore the imminent peril facing them, were they to remain in Hitler’s
Third Reich—as related in Grete Rosenzweig’s account of the Kristallnacht
spree of destruction in her native Kassel, Germany [Document Four].
A third wave of European refugees fleeing Nazi terror consisted of
Jewish or political exiles from occupied European countries such as Austria,
the Bohemian and Moravian sections of Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Lowland
countries, France and Hungary. Individuals such as Magda Salmon of Warsaw,
and families such as the Schostals from Vienna and later Paris well
knew—firsthand—the effects of the Nazis’ deadly tactics [Documents
Five and Six, respectively], and chose to flee rather than to perish.
Even if they fled Europe against their will or fled to the US only
out of desperation, the refugees who found safety at Scattergood chose
flight over death. FLIGHT
from Nazi Europe was dangerous and costly, but grew worse as time passed. At
first, political exiles, intellectuals or artists could take significant
assets with them. By the late 1930s, though, with a “Jew Tax” and other
restrictions, the last to flee arrived in New York literally with only ten Reichsmarks.
Many running from Nazi terror landed in foreign countries unable to speak
the language and not knowing anyone; older individuals could not easily find
work. Jewish, Quaker and other relief agencies on both sides of the Atlantic
did offer assistance to limited numbers of refugees [Document Seven]. For
political targets still stranded in the Nazi hell, imprisonment threatened
any chance of escape. Already in spring 1933 the Berlin government opened
Sachsenhausen and Dachau to detain political enemies. Individuals such as
former members of the pre-Nazi Reichstag Marie Juchacz [Document Eight] or
Paul Frölich
easily might have landed in a concentration camp, but rather fled to Paris
or Vienna, or later—in stages, usually just one step ahead of the German
Army—on to Prague or the South of France, to Portugal, Casablanca, the
Caribbean and, finally, even to the Iowa prairies. Desperate
to escape, by the tens of thousands German, Austrian and Czech Jews landed
in Yugoslavia, South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Shanghai—and the
American Heartland. Frantic parents, unable to secure passage for
themselves, consented to sending their children to the US as charges of
virtual strangers [Document Nine]. While
the US took in more Jewish refugees than any other country, it could have
taken in many more. In fact, US government officials actively stalled
processing asylum seekers’ applications in order to keep out thousands.
Not once during the Third Reich’s existence did the US grant all of the
slots that the Congressionally drafted quota system would have awarded
Germans or Austrians. One trick the State Department used was to grant visas
only to male heads of households. Still, some men felt so imperiled they
accepted such an unhappy arrangement anyway: in a few cases—like that of
the Weilers and the Seligmanns—the male heads of households were reunited
with their families at Scattergood Hostel. Others, like the Rosenzweigs and
Seligs, were reunited with children they had sent to England with the
Quaker-supported Kindertransport, upon arriving in New York City or
even in rural Iowa. Some parents were able to escape with their
children—but only under dangerous circumstances, as in the case of Gunther
Krauthamer and his mother [see text, below]. In the case of
some political exiles at the hostel, they had been rendered stateless and
arrived at Scattergood in legal limbo. Had they remained in their native
lands, however, they might have been murdered on the spot or, torturously,
in a concentration camp.
SCATTERGOOD opened as a Quaker boarding school in 1890, having
been awarded $4,000 in seed money some two decades earlier by Joseph
Scattergood, a wealthy Philadelphia chemist on a tour of what then was the
frontier. Due to declining Quaker demographics and the Great Depression, the
school closed in 1931 and for eight years remained unused other than as a
local picnic spot and the site of the Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends
(Conservative) annual assembly.
In summer 1938 Young Friends gathered
in Clear Lake, Iowa, proposed bringing European refugees to Iowa as part of
their annual summer work camps. They envisioned a temporary community where
Quakers and refugees might live and work together, as they thought contact
with those from Nazi Europe would be a beneficial exchange. The
letter outlining this proposal arrived at the Philadelphia office of the
American Friends Service Committee (the leading North American Quaker relief
and reform organization) at an auspicious moment, for AFSC director Clarence
Pickett—who had lived in Iowa—had just returned from a fact-finding
mission to Berlin, during which the US Quaker delegation discussed with Nazi
officials a never-realized proposal to visit Jews inside the Third Reich:
Goebbels mocked a post-pogrom delegation’s members as “the three wise
men”.
In response to the Hitler government’s premeditated Kristallnacht
pogrom in early November 1938, AFSC sent a memo to all Quaker meetings in
the US and Canada, asking Friends what they could do to relieve the
suffering in Germany. West Branch Friends immediately offered to convert
their abandoned boarding school into a refugee center where European Jews
and others fleeing Nazi terror might find rest before venturing back into
the wider world.
The AFSC called both wings of Iowa’s divided Quaker community
together in January 1939 to discuss the evolving proposal to opening a
refugee hostel in the former school. As had Quakers across the United
States, Iowa Friends had suffered a contentious split along theological
lines in the last half of the 1800s; the AFSC-convened conference was the
first time that Friends of both the so-called “conservative” (observing
the silent worship of the early Quakers) and “progressive” (now pastoral
and evangelical) varieties had cooperated with each other in almost half a
century. To much surprise, both factions agreed to share the work of opening
Scattergood Hostel: the “conservative” Friends would rent the school to
the AFSC for $1 a year and oversee its renovation, while programmed Friends
would furnish it [Document Ten]. The hostel’s inception facilitated the
reconciliation of two branches of one religious family: that healing served
as a harbinger for Scattergood Hostel’s curative atmosphere.
SCATTERGOOD HOSTEL’S physical creation involved practical as
well as philosophical considerations. Of the first, reconstruction efforts
addressed the damage wreaked upon Scattergood’s physical plant during
almost eight years of disuse. Crews of Quaker and State University of Iowa
volunteers visited the emerging hostel, fixing fallen plaster and leaky rain
gutters, replacing broken windows and missing hardware, reshaping former
classrooms into dormitories or simply clearing and cleaning the mess at
hand. Meanwhile, Quaker farm families dropped off extra chairs or sheets or
books, a bushel of apples, orphaned lambs, a sow or newly hatched
chicks—anything they thought future staff and guests might be able to put
to good use.
Sara Pemberton and her husband Verlin lived on a farm half a mile up
the road from the would-be hostel, at Yankee Corner. Sara served as the de
facto on-site director, although she never before had filled such a role.
Anxious to accommodate the soon-to-arrive European refugees, she wrote to
the AFSC, asking what to plant in the hostel’s garden.
For its part, AFSC had more abstract concerns. Among others, it
identified three goals in bringing refugees to Iowa: 1.)
to avoid an anti-refugee backlash—as already was brewing in the Northeast,
where New Yorkers referred to Manhattan’s Upper West Side as the “Fourth
Reich”, given the prevalence of German spoken on the streets by European
exiles sojourning there; 2.)
to help newcomers learn the language and ways of the US
faster in the America Heartland than in some East Coast ethnic enclave; and 3.) to more easily find useful employment for such
displaced people in the Midwest rather than in the crowded, labor-saturated,
Depression-worn Northeast. To accomplish these goals, the AFSC strove for hostel
population of about 10 staff members and 30 guests. The high ratio of
natives to foreigners was to insure quick language and customs acquisition.
Also, the Service Committee planned to hire a job placement director to comb
the Midwest in search of placements in the US work world, and a dietician to
oversee the refugees’ health. Already early in 1939 the AFSC hired Walter
and Sara Stanley as the hostel’s caretakers. Even as both Iowa and Philadelphia Quakers went to
great lengths to assist newly arrived Jewish and other refugees, they
exhibited contradictory attitudes towards Jews. The AFSC, for one, cautioned
West Branch Friends not to accept “too much” of the local support that
had been offered by Jews in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, lest the
project appear to “coddle Jews”. Later, the staff rejected Chicago-born
Esther Levine application to work at the hostel “on a race
basis”—referring to her being a Jew.
ARRIVAL at Scattergood Hostel marked only the latest station
in the refugees’ protracted flight. Indeed, for the first arriving
“guests”, even the drive from Philadelphia to Iowa proved to be
edifying. On the 10th of April 1939, 22-year-old Friend John Kaltenbach met
four male refugees at Philadelphia’s Y.M.C.A. After breakfast and a
send-off in a borrowed station wagon, the group drove through Lancaster
County’s Amish settlement to Gettysburg, where Kaltenbach gave the men an
overview of the Civil War. From there they drove to Iowa—as recorded in
Vienna-native Fritz Treuer’s detailed journal [Document Eleven].
On Saturday, the 15th of April, the group pulled into Scattergood’s
driveway—only to find far more journalists and photographers than their
own number. Although tired from the three-day journey, the men spoke to the
press about their experiences; the following day a front-page article and
photo of them appeared in the Des Moines Register.
On Sunday morning Friends offered to transport Karel Gam to Iowa City
to attend mass, and the three Jewish guests—Fritz Treuer, Kurt Rosegg and
Kurt Schaefer—to visit Jewish homes in Cedar Rapids for the day. Although
later they would celebrate Chanukah at the hostel and attend synagogue in
Iowa City, the men chose to join Quakers in silent worship. That afternoon a
fifth exile, Heinz Lurie, arrived in Iowa City aboard a bus. That
evening the now-complete group ate dinner with neighboring farm families:
that potluck was the Europeans’ first encounter with their Iowa hosts.
Chosen deliberately as Scattergood’s first residents,
the five male refugees and their Quaker guide came to Iowa from the East
primarily to finish preparing the hostel for its planned future as a haven
not only for men but for women and families as well. On their first weekday
morning at Scattergood Hostel, they started working at the monumental
project of returning the Main Building to a usable state. The men scrubbed
the entire structure and scraped wallpaper off the worn walls, painted,
plastered, carpentered and turned over the garden: “It is surprising how
many floors there are in that little building”, Kurt Schaefer marvelled
[Document Twelve]. The men’s essential work, though, did not proceed
uninterrupted. That first week local Friend Emery Hemingway whisked Schaefer
away to hear a Service Committee representative speak and then, himself, to
address a discussion group. This would prove to be only the first of a
mailbag of invitations to the guests to appear at podiums or round tables in
the region. Despite the curious public’s demands, however, the hostel
finally seemed ready for the second wave of guests to come—and they soon
did, including the first family, the Deutsches from Vienna. Ultimately,
almost 200 refugees would come: each would lend his or her unique imprint to
the emerging hostel.
STAFF at
Scattergood made the hostel’s existence possible. Even though 30 of the 49
individuals who were to work at Scattergood during its four-year existence
would be under the age of 30, they brought with them a vitality and
conviction that guided them even when experience did not. None of the staff
is recorded to have undergone specific training or even general preparation
beforehand—and how could they? Never in history had there been a refugee
crisis of such magnitude and global reach: voluntary, residential refugee
centers were a modern invention. (The AFSC intended Scattergood to be a
prototype for about 20 hostels it planned to establish around the United
States—of which it realized less than a handful.)
And, no one anticipated how varied or sporadic the staff’s requisite tasks
might be. The volunteers and few paid staff at Scattergood took turns
serving as construction workers, gardeners, cooks, janitors, instructors,
chauffeurs, interpreters, editors, correspondents, actors or emcees, public
speakers, immigration advocates, job seekers, secretaries…
Staff at Scattergood, however,
did not only give; many later reported that they received far more than they
ever gave. Camilla Hewson, for one, underwent a profound transformation at
the hostel. Conceived in Russia while her Quaker activist parents worked
with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee during the civil war there,
Camilla graduated a semester early from Des Moines’ Roosevelt High.
Instead of going straight to Earlham College to study sociology, her parents
encouraged her to volunteer a few weeks at the about-to-open Scattergood
Hostel—where she ultimately worked for almost a year and a half. In the
process, Camilla gathered formative and indelible impressions, which she’d
reflect upon and cherish her whole life.
Similarly, Presbyterian-born
Minnesotan Robert Berquist also discovered a new life at Scattergood. Having
read about the hostel in an article by Marcus Bach—a professor of religion
in nearby Iowa City— Robert wrote to director Martha Balderston and
offered to spend his two-week vacation at Scattergood. The quality and depth
of the encounters he experienced there with some of the refugees touched him
like nothing he’d ever known. Once back in Minneapolis, Robert found his
life empty: he resigned from an adjustor’s job at Ministers Life, vacated
his shared apartment and moved back to West Branch to work with Europe’s
rejected. He intended to stay until it closed, but after some 14 months the
US Government drafted Robert as a conscientious objector and sent him first
to southern Indiana to plant trees, then to California to fight brush fires.
After the war, Robert married Sara Way, a Quaker nurse, and moved back to
West Branch, where he taught social studies at the re-opened Scattergood
School for 33 years and was an active, respected Friend.
REFUGEES
came to Scattergood from nine countries. Among them were “non-Aryans”, political and
religious activists, intellectuals, artists, professionals, merchants, a
butcher, elderly ladies, solitary young men and children: the only thing the
186 individuals had in common was that they all had escaped a Europe under
dictatorial rule. Later, many would cite two themes: that Scattergood Hostel
was their first home in the United States, and that the Quakers’ kindness
and the quiet of the Iowa prairies offered them the rest and perspective
they needed both to start recovering from the catastrophe now behind them
and, concurrently, to wade into life in the New World. Even those most
burdened by the trauma they had suffered benefited from Scattergood’s
peaceful environment and daily routine.
Ernst Solmitz of Lüneburg, for one, arrived at the hostel in May
1939. Soon after Hitler seized power the Gestapo took Ernst’s
Jewish-editor father to a nearby prison and beat him to death over five
days. Ernst’s mother subsequently took her children to Berlin. There, she
worked with AFSC representatives, who helped the family flee first to
London, then to Philadelphia. With Quaker support, Frau Solmitz established
a boardinghouse for fellow exiles. Busy caring for other refugees, she could
not stop her son when he stowed away for England—only to land in a
Liverpool prison for that act. The athletic runaway escaped, however, and
roamed England for a month—knowing no one and with only the clothes he’d
been wearing. Ernst Ernst finally was re-apprehended and the British
forcibly returned him to America, to Ellis Island—where the judge yielded
to his mother’s tearful pleas for mercy for her son. Still unable to
accept the idea of living at his mother’s boardinghouse, Ernst grabbed the
chance to drive the newly appointed Scattergood Hostel director’s wife and
two sons to Iowa in his car. In effect, he was “escaping” yet again.
In contrast, Hans Peters struggled to deal directly with external
matters beyond his control. As was often the case for many would-be
refugees, Hans could secure a US visa only for himself. He arrived
Stateside, alone, in December 1938. Hans’ “non-Aryan” wife of 14 years
and their two sons arrived the following autumn; as she strolled down the
gangway, his wife announced she wanted a separation and custody of the
children. Dejected, AFSC then invited Hans to Scattergood. Having heard in
advance of Hans’ misfortunes, when hostel staff picked him up they were
looking for a man “spiritually broken”—but that was not what they
found: the next morning, Hans emerged at breakfast wearing overalls and
introduced himself in perfect English. A non-Jew, Hans quickly took to young
Camilla Hewson—who he soon dubbed his “Blümchen” (“little
flower”) and “Sternchen”
(“little star”); he later married Camilla’s best friend.
WORK
provided both Scattergood staff and their guests the sense of a joint life
that didn’t consist merely of finding a few new friends or sitting down,
taking pen in hand and scribbling out nice words about noble ideas. Rather,
genuine community arose out of a common daily life that provided the
necessary shared context for true friendships to bud and ideas based on
personal experience to bloom. In essence, at Scattergood Hostel the means were the ends, for the very act of living together in an
“American” environment prepared the refugees for the post-hostel lives
on which they ardently pinned their greatest hopes. Along
with organized instruction and semi-organized free time, work offered the
refugees myriad opportunities to learn new skills, adapt to new customs and
values, learn or improve their English and regain some of the
self-confidence which had been shattered by Nazi persecution and their later
flight. The much-touted “rehabilitation” or “integration” of the
Europeans living at Scattergood happened not during some magical, appointed
moment, but during many mundane, spontaneous moments. The hostel’s daily
life afforded the European newcomers a vehicle by which they finally might
“arrive” in America, the land of—if not their dreams—their last
hope; it offered survival. Insofar
as Scattergood staff intended to incorporate the necessary work at the
hostel in their efforts to rehabilitate and integrate their guests, they had
to make a daily plan. All common activities were to be coordinated and then
executed within an agreed-upon structure—or at least, that was the plan.
As “Scattergoodians” soon learned, however, holiday observances and
seasonal changes often threw wrenches into the works without apology.
Similarly, the unexpected offer of a whistle-stop visit by a renowned figure
instantaneously could overturn the most rigorously observed routines—as
happened when Grant Wood came in November 1939 and provided a painting
lesson, or the von Trapp Family Singers stopped by in March 1942 and gave an
impromptu concert. The arrival of summer staff or their fall departure also
forced revisions of the workload; towards the end of the hostel’s
existence, the lack of refugees created a labor shortage. The
all-important language lessons also decimated the ranks of many a hostel
work crew. So did the limited capabilities of the guests: the elderly or
disabled simply could not be expected to accomplish as much physical work as
their younger or more fit counterparts, while other guests lacked manual
dexterity or basic technical skills. Also, over time, since the hostel’s
opening, staff members as well as the refugees living among them had
differing attitudes or needs regarding “work”. Thus, the Daily Schedule
changed daily and without warning. To
illustrate the flow of the typical daily routine at Scattergood Hostel,
staff member Camilla Hewson later wrote that Most folks made it down to breakfast, and many went to Meeting, too.
Crews then got into the work of the day, and those not working were probably
in a class or a one-on-one tutoring session. After lunch, often there was a
trip to West Branch or Iowa City, and a driving lesson for someone. In
summer, the garden took priority, and we had big canning sessions for corn
and beans. Dishes were washed, of course by hand, after each meal, tables
set, food prepared. People were on cleaning crews, washing and ironing, and
often if there were visitors someone was designated to show them around and
answer questions.
After dinner, there was free time, unless a community meeting for
business was scheduled. Group activities (large and small) such as hikes,
movies in Iowa City, jigsaw puzzles, singing, and other games were organized
spontaneously. Visitors gave talks. Sometimes we put on a play for
ourselves. [Staff members] Ruth Carter and Mildred Holmes sang with an Iowa City chorus. People
read, listened to the radio or just sat around talking. A memorable
"snipe hunt” played a good-natured trick on a couple of new arrivals,
and a scavenger hunt was enjoyed by all. In summer there were frequent
excursions to the Quarries, not far away, for picnics and swims (even at
night, on occasion). People were also invited to homes of Friends and
neighbors. Little was regimented; most things were flexible according to
individual tastes and needs.
Everyone did something, and most jobs rotated weekly, with a schedule
posted on the bulletin board.
INSTRUCTION
at Scattergood Hostel played a major role in the “Americanization”
espoused by the refugees’ Quaker hosts. As such, in formulating its daily
plans the hostel staff juggled adequate time for work with ample time for
instruction and recreation; the staff realized that the reason for their
guests’ presence did not consist of changing sheets, flipping pancakes,
gathering eggs or turning the garden. Writing down new vocabulary, cracking
the civics books, mulling over history lectures and opening the door to the
driver’s seat of the station wagon counted as much as other aspects of
hostel life. The
staff’s European charges found themselves in a foreign land with
unfamiliar ways of living and thinking: to make the adaptations necessary to
fully functioning in such a culture the refugees had to become—in
essence—new people, whether or not they wanted to. The degree to which
they would find satisfying niches in American society would directly reflect
the degree to which each was able to release Old World ways of living which
did not fit the New and to tailor their social selves to match a wholly
different set of cultural expectations. In
addition to conjugating irregular verbs, judging cuts of beef, wrapping a
wound or sending a telegram, Scattergood Hostel’s guests learned anew how
to act as self-directed, autonomous individuals. No longer under the thumb
of totalitarian machinery, Europe’s rejected thus reclaimed control over
their lives. At Scattergood, they weren’t only discovering new ideas,
customs and ways of living, but rediscovering what it meant to have choices
and to be able to exercise them freely—what some would call the essence of
American democracy. As Friends said, instruction at Scattergood focused on
creating “New Americans”. George
Thorp served for almost a year as the hostel’s education director. A
trained engineer who previously had taught eleven years at the Carnegie
Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and at an American Friends Service
Committee program for refugees in Maine before coming to Scattergood, in
October 1942 he outlined his vision for “The Scattergood Educational
Program” in a Scattergood Monthly News Bulletin article: A vital part of Scattergood training is its education program. In its
formal aspects this includes individual and group instruction designed to
accelerate mastery of the English language and to present as complete a
picture as possible of the varied aspects of the American scene. In its less
formal approach the program merges largely with the other phases of life at
Scattergood. In the process of sharing the work program, the household
duties and other essential activities and through daily social intercourse
and more pretentious social affairs, this side of the program supplements in
innumerable ways the more formal part of the educational plan.
Instruction in English is fundamental in importance. Each guest, upon
arrival, is assigned to a member of the staff for tuition, in accordance
with his needs. Each person usually receives three hours of individual
tutoring a week. Supplementing this, there are lectures or seminars each
week in phonetics and general English, in which principles and practices are
discussed with larger groups.
Another side of the formal part of the program consists in the
presentation of a variety of facets of the American picture, accomplished
through lectures and discussions on every important aspect of American life.
The plan in effect is to make a complete round of these subjects once in
three or four months, the period usually spent at Scattergood by a guest.
History, from the early settlements to the present, occupies a weekly
place in the program and serves as a background against which the other
subjects are presented. Those range through such varied fields as labor,
government, educational systems, geography, home economics, politics and
racial problems.
Speakers or discussion leaders are obtained from various sources. The
faculty of the University of Iowa is drawn upon frequently and advantage is
taken of the presence of visitors who can make contributions of this sort. Informally, most important education results come
about through daily contacts between Americans and Europeans, guests and
staff. Such situations afford continual opportunities for the practice of
English and for instruction in American customs and habits. Special
festivities such as birthdays, farewells, holidays and sundry celebrations
help very greatly toward preparing for life in America.
RELATIONSHIPS
at Scattergood constituted both the hostel’s intent and its legacy. The
project intentionally facilitated contact between groups otherwise unknown
to each other: it brought US natives and Europeans together to live closely,
so that the latter might absorb some of the former’s ways and
perspectives. In the process, while still at Scattergood and after leaving
it, the intimacy shared and the enduring connections between friends made
while at the hostel enriched both staff and refugees the rest of their
lives.
Although he harbored critical feelings toward other Jewish guests,
Ernst Solmitz—for example—became “special friends” with Camilla
Hewson. Not daring even once to hold hands, the two argued philosophy and
politics; Ernst played devil’s advocate to tease Camilla and “make her
think”. In turn she respected his
reserve and let him teach her German—sometimes up in the maple by the Main
Building. When weekends found floods of volunteer work crews,
reporters, visiting local and out-of-state Friends or mere curiosity seekers
covering Scattergood’s grounds, Ernst and Camilla would “disappear” to
the roof of the Main Building to escape and spy on the hordes. During such
stolen moments, Ernst entrusted Camilla with his family’s tragic story, or
his plan to make his way to Paraguay to join a Bruderhof community. (In the
end—given Ernst’s limited finances and emotional stamina requisite to
chase such a dream successfully—a community in South Dakota had to
suffice.) Then, as abruptly as he had appeared some eleven months earlier
under the guise of helping someone else, Ernst left on a spontaneously
awarded scholarship to Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa.
Like Camilla, Robert Berquist also felt deeply touched by the bonds
he forged while at Scattergood—during both of his two stints as staff.
During his stay there, though, Robert’s involvement in hostel life
remained “less than total” because he had enrolled in university
education courses to earn a secondary teacher’s certificate. On most of
the trips he made to Iowa City, however, he took one or more passengers from
the hostel—and those two parts of his daily routine became closely
interrelated. During the half-hour jaunt from Scattergood to the university
campus Robert became acquainted with various members of the hostel
“family”; he gained deep respect for many of the European guests and
developed close friendships with some of them, as well as with staff
members. After being drafted and ordered elsewhere, Robert wrote in a report
about Scattergood in the December 1941 issue of the Iowa Peace News
that Trying to
put oneself in the place of a refugee and helping others to do likewise is
the greatest contribution anyone can make toward working out this human
problem.
COMMUNITY at
Scattergood arose on the windy, rolling Iowa prairie—an obscure spot where
people and worlds met, interacted and enriched each other, then resumed
their individual journeys, with varied destinations. The basis of that
community consisted of a fluid constellation of single young adults, married
couples, children, infants and the elderly; its only constant was an
ever-changing mix of nationalities, anchored by a core group of American
volunteers. Both staff and their guests formed a community that soon after
the hostel’s founding assumed a character of its own, independent of any
specific personalities residing there. That shared spirit there still can be
felt.
Scattergood’s special community came to represent decency and
continuity for individuals who had not known either for a long time. As
intended by its sponsors, one could gain “membership” in the hostel
community very easily—by daring to care. The pervasive sense of belonging
felt by most (but not by all) of its members provided the stability for
which many had hungered; it also assisted the refugees’ rehabilitation as
more fully functioning members of the larger society they wished to join.
Scattergood’s rich sense of community served as an anchor in the lives of
those it touched—those from the New World as well as the Old.
Visitors to Scattergood scarcely saw the hostel any differently than
its residents. The AFSC’s Mary Middleton Rogers, for one, made a trip to
Iowa to help celebrate the hostel’s second birthday. Although there
numerous times before, Scattergood impressed her anew with its special
atmosphere—as she wrote to its director, Martha Balderston: Spring sees the beginnings of many good things and
so Scattergood had its beginning in spring. The spirit of helpfulness and
understanding, the belief in the right of human beings to be different and
to contribute to the common good from that very diversity of belief and of
culture were woven into the fabric that is Scattergood. The spirit of
dedication of those who started Scattergood has been carried on by many
since then and the splendid part of this heritage is that it is a
cooperative product. Neither Americans nor Europeans could have created
alone this new entity, this Scattergood.
When huge forces seem to be blocking out those things in which we
believe so intensely, the value of a small demonstration of another way of
life is increased. One candle shining in a lighted room may be passed over,
but a candle in a darkened room becomes of great moment. Each of
Scattergood’s guests and staff brings his candle of faith in democracy, of
belief that a new world of tolerance can be built. If our candle is burning
low we can be grateful for this demonstration of the way of light. THEATER
at Scattergood provided both entertainment and edification: it distracted
especially the adult refugees at the hostel from memories of unaccounted for
or even known-lost loved ones back in Europe; it also—largely
coincidentally—exposed them as well as the hostel children to the language
and culture of their adopted homeland. Bona
fide theater pieces at Scattergood included skits, gags and dramatizations
of familiar scenes, around which other entertainment might be built. One
evening, for example, the staff and their guests enjoyed a lively
performance of This is My Scattergood, a play written and directed
specially for the occasion by the young, aspiring Jewish actor from Berlin,
Peter Seadle. It depicted—in an amusing fashion—life at Scattergood.
Afterwards, staff, guests and visitors stood around the piano and sang
American songs until, as one participant later recorded, “The good old
moon then broke through the clouds and smiled down a pleasant ‘Good
Night’ onto us happy souls at Scattergood!” Besides
accelerated acculturation, another “use” of theater at Scattergood
involved providing a vent for the inevitable stresses and conflicts endemic
to communal life—especially for staff, those devoted individuals jointly
responsible for the performance as well as survival of the hostel. The
Initiation of Elsie, The New Staff Member [see transcript in the folder,
below] provided a welcome chance for both staff and refugees to smile over
some of Scattergood’s taxing, regrettable realities. Another
time, the hostel “family” penned a play to mark Robert Berquist’s
invaluable role at Scattergood and his imminent, forced departure. The piece
was performed as part of a special farewell party held for him in November
1941. CELEBRATIONS
took many forms at Scattergood. They also began literally as a given
resident walked through the door: Sara Stanley, the hostel’s kitchen
manager, discreetly recorded each refugee’s and
staff member’s birthday as each new person arrived—and on the
appropriate day “surprised” her or him with a cake and the best wishes
of those gathered to present it. Besides a means of showering the European
refugees with confidence-building recognition, the celebration of all
birthdays provided an excuse for having a good time—as Camilla Hewson’s
account of one staff birthday celebration colorfully illustrated. A
“family” celebrates—or observes, in the case of loss—important rites
of passage: births, birthdays, awards, weddings, anniversaries, promotions,
departures, deaths (Martha Balderston’s husband, for instance). The birth
of staff members John and Josephine Copithorne’s first child found the
hostel community welcoming “Little Susan”, and announcing on the Bulletin’s
front page in October 1942 that the Scattergood family has added a new member to its
circle. Early visitors report that both mother and child are doing well and
that the father has quite recovered. Susan is a chubby infant who squalls
lustily when presented to the gaze of her admiring public. To date she seems
to have inherited her daddy’s looks but not his disposition. Both
staff and guests met mates during their stay at Scattergood. Of Wilhelm
Feist’s union ceremony in August 1942, fellow refugee and former Reichstag
member Marie Juchacz later reported that America has its romances and Scattergood also.
William Feist was a member of the Scattergood family in 1940. Scattergood
gave him, like many others, the first quiet refuge for the preparation of
the new life in America. If Scattergood had visitors, his sensitive feeling
of the good atmosphere in the Hostel inspired him for talking with them
enthusiastically about the purpose and the results of the small but
interesting institution. And it was at such an opportunity when he met Miss
Jean McIntyre of Minneapolis for the first time. In the meantime this native
Berliner and engineer got his first job in Moline, Ill., then went to
Chicago to work; and they were engaged. And now they wished to get married
and wanted that the wedding ceremony should take place under the same,
beautiful old tree, where they saw one another for the first time.
In September 1939 the hostel community hosted an open house: Guests came
from far and near; the place was full from two o’clock till the end. We
offered a big buffet supper in the dining room. All ran easily, however,
with the help of a special schedule, cookies and cranberry juice (complete
with ice from West Liberty—our helper in times of trouble; West Branch
failed us miserably). Gunter Meyer played our faithful old piano, while
Walter and Sara [Stanley]
served as host and hostess. CHILDREN
experienced their own challenges at Scattergood. For adult refugees who had
escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and reached “Amerika”, the steps to
reconstruct their lives were clear: they had to become fluent in the new
language, learn at least the fundamentals of American history and culture,
and find a new job, if not a new career. Regardless of their own confusion
or suffering, as rational, self-interested individuals of legal age, they
simply had no choice but to cope with the conditions placed upon them by
their very displacement. For
refugee children, the path ahead was not so clear. No longer Europeans but
also not yet Americans, they continued to be dependent upon their parents.
Unlike that of their parents, the future that awaited the exiled children
remained wide open. Arriving at Scattergood, refugee children were cast into
an ambiguous role in which each somehow had to carve out her or his own
niche. That was no easy task, given the lack of role models and the fact
that most of the adults around them were preoccupied with other pressing
worries. Naturally, parents cared greatly about what would become of their
offspring: after a certain point, however, uncontrollable or unforeseeable
forces would have much more say about the destinies of their young than they
ever could. West Branch public schools, for example, would be an effective
if de facto center for the Americanization of its newest charges. Despite
appearances at times that hostel staff were not fully clear how to respond
to the special needs of guests not of legal age and despite the difficult attaché
status of its youngest charges, the children, too, became an integral part
of Scattergood’s comprehensive program. Partially by providing much-needed
distraction from the emotional fallout of the traumatic experiences that
their seniors had encountered in Europe, children helped the hostel fulfill
its mission of offering
refugees a place where they slowly could rebuild their shattered lives. Regardless
of how effective an emotional cushion they proved to be, however, the
children of Scattergood were not at the hostel as mere appendages of
displaced adults; although older individuals stole most of the stage most of
the time, the hostel existed as much for the benefit of the young ones as
for their elders. And, the lingering legacy of their sojourn at Scattergood
would have profound effects on most of the 23 children between the ages of
ten months and sixteen years who found refuge in Iowa. Besides two known
exceptions (a future architect and Federal meat inspector), most of them
later went on to become social workers, counselors, teachers or other
people-oriented professionals. Perhaps their early experiences of being
helped in time of need predisposed the children to become adults with finely
tuned sensitivities to the needs of others. While
still a guest, one of them—referred to only as “an 11 year old
child”—wrote a poem reflecting her or his impression of the folks who
made Scattergood Hostel possible: The
Quakers are good and helpful to one, in every way. No
cross or evil words we ever hear them say, Remember
the time the negroes were slaved And
the Quakers did their best to have them saved? They
helped the persecuted across the land Against
the slavers, the Quakers were able to defend, The
helpless and the homeless that were in need And
don’t we today see and read How
the Quakers help us persecuted Jews? They
don’t just say, “How dreadful the news”! That
Hitler is in Germany And
is ruling the people in tyranny But
help as much as they can, and wouldn’t it be fine To
have less sorrow in the world all the time. And
the Quakers are doing their best To
have the world in peace and rest. So
let’s try to cooperate and help the best we can Because
the Quakers are truly good to man.
FREETIME
played a central yet diverse role at Scattergood. At the hostel shades of
“work”, “education” and “free time” could not be so clearly
differentiated. Corn shucking and pea shelling, for instance, did not
constitute purely “work”. Washington’s birthday found hostel staff and
their guests on excursions to the Amana Colonies: if they were only
“educational” why did the refugees derive so much pleasure from that
annual outing? And, little Michael Deutsch delighted in cowboy dress-up,
while Doris Arntal and Bertl Weiler savored endless games of “playing
Indian”: was that these Jewish children’s “Ameri The
“free time” activities which were planned or arose organically between
scheduled shifts of work and classroom training also provided a context for
the refugees not only to restart their lives, but to reorient themselves
according to the differing magnetic lines of a new society. Cultural
excursions from Scattergood Hostel, for example, provided important links
between the lives the Europeans had led in the Old World and the ones they
were yet to be grafted onto in the New. As “the Singers”—Paul and his
fellow-refugee bride Elsie née Kepes—wrote in a joint article in the Scattergood
Monthly News Bulletin in February 1942, Scattergood is like an island, but not an isolated
island, for it is connected with the wide world. The residents have
opportunity enough of learning the American way of living and working, not
only at home, but also outside.
Scattergood
Hostel’s outings consisted, for example, of marveling at technical wonders
(visiting Iowa City’s newspaper plant and the university radio station) or
trying to decipher new norms (reviewing cuts and measurements of meat at the
local butcher shop or gawking at mechanized milk processing at a nearby
dairy). Sometimes while on excursions, though, the refugees themselves
provided the focus of attention—as seen in an account of two of spring
outings in May 1942: Miss Margaret Cheek, who attended Scattergood’s
third birthday party, was so enchanted by the Russian dances of our
children, that she asked them to give a performance at a party for the
International Student Service at the Presbyterian Church in Iowa City one
Saturday evening. Our children showed their artistic talents! Julius
Lichtenstein was the announcer, and of course he confounded the titles of
the dances. But nevertheless Edith and her brother Louis Lichtenstein and
Frank Keller got strong applause. Alfred Adler then told the audience some
of his old stories, but they were new to the people there. We played several
games, such as horseshoes, fish pond and ski-ball, and joined in community
singing.
CONFLICTS
arose at Scattergood between individuals, between cultures and between the
hostel population and West Branch locals. Of the first sort, for example,
Leo Jolles—a Viennese Catholic—and Emil Deutsch were outside once,
digging a new septic tank ditch. As a Jew, Emil was incensed over Leo’s
anti-Semitic comments and soon a fistfight ensued. Jolles later proved to be
a generally difficult “guest”: he was the only one out of 186 ever asked
to leave the hostel. Staff Giles Zimmerman escorted Jolles to Iowa City and
put him on a bus for New York, thinking that a spat of recent troubles with
Leo now would be resolved once the displaced Austrian reached his relatives
on the East Coast. A couple of weeks later, however, Giles was driving down
the gravel road leading to the hostel late one afternoon and saw a
“shadowy figure” jump into the ditch; upon reaching Scattergood, the
excited staff rushed to the car and reported that a woman in nearby Cedar
Rapids had called earlier in the day, seeking a recommendation for Leo
Jolles—who had interviewed that very morning for a position. As Leo had
had an intense crush on the hostel’s blonde secretary, Mildred Holmes, she
and her roommate Camilla Hewson blocked their bedroom door that night with a
broom handle
and shoved furniture in front of it, as they feared that Leo had come back
to stalk Mildred.
Less rowdy than fisticuffs and
less thrilling than a suspected stalking incident, but no less hurtful to
the parties involved, summer staffer Leanore Goodenow (later the director
for several decades of the re-opened Scattergood School) meant well when she
tried to wean the refugees from their European eating habits by holding fork
and knife as is common in the United States. This, the refugees resented no
small bit. For the staff as strange as their guests’ eating habits, on the
night that Albert and his wife Lisa Beam arrived at Scattergood, upon
retiring for bed they placed their shoes outside their door, as in good
European hotel fashion they assumed the shoes would be polished in the
night.
The Europeans seemed strange to more than just some of the
Scattergood staff. As a visiting Des Moines Tribune journalist
reported, A class of
war refugees lay on blankets in the shade of a big maple tree at Scattergood
hostel with their attention on John Kaltenbach, 24, youthful
Pennsylvania-Dutch Yale graduate and hostel director who was giving a
lecture—in English—on the Declaration of Independence. Fifty yards away,
on the road, a bright yellow school bus roared by, raising a cloud of dust.
The heads of school children stuck out of all the bus windows toward
Scattergood. They were yelling wildly. "Hi, yi! German spies. Hi, yi!
German spies!” The reporter jerked his head toward the road—then back to
the solemn-faced group of refugees. The expressions on their faces did not
change. And Kaltenbach, without a change of expression, continued his
lecture.
ART is humanity’s ageless attempt to document, interpret or
celebrate the human experience—and as such was practiced, of course, by
Scattergood Hostel’s staff and their guests. From Camilla Hewson’s early
diary doodling to Lisa Hausen’s quaint folkloric painting on wooden bowls,
from Hans Frey’s woodcuts of Scattergood through Helmut Ostrowski Wilk’s
skilled photography of its inhabitants or Iowa’s pastoral landscape, the
hostel “family” used art to document, interpret and celebrate their
experiences, too. Hans Schimmerling, for example, composed a hymn dedicated
to Scattergood—and, similarly, actress Grete Baeck drafted a never-used
screenplay about the hostel, while Peter Seadle wrote a stage play about
Scattergood. Several of the refugees took Scattergood as a topic for English
classes, poems, farewell songs and the shared Log of Scattergood—or
simply as the focus of their own, personal reflections. Traces of those
various art forms survive, suggesting the richness of Scattergoodians’
creativity.
WAR disrupted
life for all at Scattergood Hostel—yet differently, for different people.
For the refugees, they suffered over the fates of friends and family back
home: in the summer of 1939, as the crisis that had been gathering over
Europe came to a head, their worry for loved ones grew. Already for weeks,
the crisis had dominated Scattergoodians’ thoughts and conversations, as
they all had become concerned about events beyond America’s shores. In
late August, they called nearly 400 young people from the county’s
religious groups together to confer: Meeting
and program were in Mtg. House. John [Kaltenbach]
and [Kurt] Rosegg were
the main speakers. And, even after all that, there were still seven who kept
on till 2 A.M. discussing war, peace, methods of life, etc., in the kitchen,
fortified by lemonade.
Thereafter, for several days both staff and their guests distracted
themselves with corn canning and croquet games, residents’ departures and
a picnic supper at the quarries; some sang far into the night. On the 28th
of August, however, they no longer could ignore the situation in Europe. As
Nazi Germany seemed about to attack Poland, they debated the
attitude of the Hostel in case of war. We deferred any decision until such
time as we might know all legal requirements and determine our own
individual course of action. This is a matter of personal conviction, but
does affect the group as a whole. Hot discussions on the evils of the
capitalist system. On
1st of September 1939, one observer noted in the Log of Scattergood: A
day we will long remember. Beginning of hostilities between Germany and
Poland. Our sympathy and grief for our overseas brothers and sisters is
boundless—but America must not fight! We can only hope and pray for
Peace.
As the hostel’s atmosphere remained tense, on the next day some
residents went to see The Wizard of Oz in Iowa City. Despite
self-imposed distractions, though, Scattergoodians soon faced yet another
crisis, when on the following day, France and England declared war against
the Third Reich. Somehow, amidst the chaos, staff and refugees alike tried
to organize their days as if all were normal: on the 5th of September some
of the staff attended a farm auction—but now to look for cheap appliances
before such items might become scarce.
Twenty-seven months after German bombs fell on Poland, Japanese bombs
fell on Pearl Harbor: Scattergood Hostel found itself in a world at war,
trying all the while to serve as an unflappable island of peace. DEPARTURES
from Scattergood often were bittersweet. On one hand, with some excitement
the European refugees set out for their new lives in the New World—but on
the other, as they passed through Scattergood’s front gate, they were
leaving behind the only home they knew in “Amerika”. Whether or not they
were prepared for it, the fiercest challenge facing the Quakers’ erstwhile
guests since their flight from Nazi-occupied Europe was yet to come: they
were to discover that in the “Land of the Free”, each one was just as
free to fail as to succeed. After weeks or months of language training, cultural excursions, free time recreation and a modest amount of career coaching, the adults among the guests would be tested in a stiff job market—and often disqualified due to their “over-qualification”, the accent with which they spoke English or their house of worship. If they managed to press past those hurdles, they might bump against the blinding fear of or resentment towards foreigners—or even just their foreign-sounding names. To remedy that obstacle, even without prompting from the Scattergood staff, Jewish and non-Jewish refugees altered if not their surnames at least their first names to fit the Anglo tongue: “Wilhelm und Hertha Leitersdorfer” altered their names to “Willy and Hedy Layton”; “Grete Baeck” became “Greta Beck”, and “Adolf und Elisabeth Beamt” chose “Albert and Lisa Beam”, while creative “Karl Bukowitz” transformed himself into New-World-sounding “Charles Bukovis”. “Hans Grunwald” became “Peter Greenwood” and “Hans Neude” “Harry Norton”, “Ljubover Koropatnicky” became “Louis Croy”, “Heinz Lurie” “George Laury” and “Hans Popper” “Jack Potter”; “Ludwig und Kaethe Unterholzer” became know |