- 1942, May 18, Monday afternoon – Dr. Magnus, the orthopedist with whom I shoveled snow, was stopped on Stübelplatz. A man jumped out of a Gestapo car: “You wretch, why are you walking around here, why aren’t you at work? This is the second time we’ve seen you.” And spat in his face. Magnus is working at the Jewish cemetery now **p53
- 1942m June 2, Tuesday toward evening – Someone who is “working” is supposed to be treated a little more leniently Steinitz thereupon registered with the Jewish Community and is now, like Dr. Magnus, employed in an “honorary” capacity at the Jewish cemetery. I met him after his first day at work, in shirtsleeves and barefoot. **p65
- 1942, June 10, Wednesday morning – Yesterday evening I went to see Steinitz for a while. At first only his wife was there, with whom he lives in a state of conflict, whom he fears, but who behaves reasonably to me. He came back from the cemetery only toward seven. He is afraid of house searches, deliberately comes home late (Magnus does likewise). **p71
- 1942, June 19, Friday morning – The question arose of who would go to Friedheim’s funeral service—a long walk, since we are banned from tram and Great Garden and the cemetery is at the end of Fürstenstraße. Frau Pick is afraid of being alone. (“If they come …”). We promised to help […]
In the afternoon to the Jewish cemetery with Ida Kreidl, who complained incessantly. One and a half hours: Strehlener Kirche, Reicker Strasse, Rayskistrasse, Grunaer Weg, Grime Wiese (Gusti Wieghardt’s district!), Haenel Claus Strasse, Borsbergstrasse. Dresden is lovely: the dark hills, the abundance of nursery gardens, the magnificent flowers and aromas… **p81 - 1942, June 23, early on Tuesday – To see Steinitz for a moment in the evening. He is afraid to come back from the cemetery before seven; his wife bickers with him even in my presence; furthermore she does not tire in expressing her contempt for the English and her conviction of Hitler’s final victory. Very unpleasant minutes.**p84
- 1942, July 4, Saturday morning – The Jewish Community is notified of Jewish deaths in concentration camps and in prison, the corpses and urns handed over to the Jewish cemetery (sometimes also, [as in] the Friedheim case, the corpse is removed for incineration after the funeral, and the urn interred later).**p92
- 1942, July 5, Sunday toward evening – The whole morning occupied with the cemetery. In considerable heat, the walk, in my coat, was even more of an effort (there and back three hours) than recently. But the summer view on Grunaer Weg (blooming nursery gardens, fields of grain, the chain of hills beyond) again very beautiful. At the cemetery everything even more wretched than before. Some twenty women, some thirty men. All of them look miserable and hungry. Particularly dreadful is how the top hats slide down into the men’s emaciated faces… **p95
- 1942, July 25, Saturday toward evening – Mood of despair at the Steinitzes’; they have also been given notice for September 1, which has particularly affected the hysterical wife. In addition, the murder of the foreman, Goldmann, had made a deep impression. Working at the cemetery, Steinitz had heard the description by the people who had brought the dead man from the Police Presidium: The corpse lay naked in a pool of blood. **p107
- 1942, July 29, Wednesday afternoon – Steinitz weighs only 105 pounds now and he really looks his almost 68 years; he’s still writing, in English, the history of the Bohemian coal company, which employed him for forty years, an “anecdotal history” he says. He wants to send the manuscript to his boss in America and hopes to be remunerated for it. At the same time the thing is language practice for him. But in good weather he passes the day as a voluntary cemetery worker. He feels safer outdoors. Just like Dr. Magnus. **p111
- 1942, August 10, Monday morning – I once again had an opportunity to see the boundless misery, for which our rulers are knowingly to blame. Yesterday at the Jewish cemetery for the third time: funeral for Joachimsthal. There was a fairly large number of mourners: such shocking emaciation, difficulty in recognizing a person whom I have not seen for a couple of months. **p118
- 1942, August 16, Sunday afternoon – Today Frau Schott informs us that Grete will be buried at Weissensee cemetery on Wednesday. I have already written to Frau Schott on Friday that I am forbidden to leave the environs of Dresden. Eva would undoubtedly not receive permission to travel either. **p122
- 1942, August 20, Thursday evening – verything went very quickly. At about twelve Katz confirmed rigor mortis, death about five hours earlier, and arranged everything else: The police were here half an hour later, half an hour after that the hearse with the people familiar to me from the cemetery and the equally familiar transport and ceremonial coffin, of which there is evidently only one specimen. God knows where the corpses that are not burned and stuffed into a little urn end up. **p128
- 1942,September 12, Saturday afternoon – Yesterday afternoon at the cemetery with Eva, less than half an hour from here, to visit Steinitz and Magnus, who are gardening there. They were on the brink of leaving, early closing because of Jewish New Year, beginning of the Jewish high holy days. We had heard that an hour earlier from Frau Ziegler also, that in Berlin and all other towns any kind of religious ceremony had been banned. **p144
- 1942, September 18, Friday morning – … I discussed payment for the suit with Hirschel at the cemetery in the afternoon, after the urn with Julia Pick’s remains was laid to rest in the family tomb. Pinkowitz officiated in the usual way for the last time—it was the most wretched funeral that we had attended so far. Exactly twelve people, including the two of us. The men apart from myself only there out of duty or by chance. Jacobi, the cemetery administrator and urn bearer, the cemetery gardener; Steinitz and Magnus, who pass the day out there as “workers”… **p147
- 1942, October 9, Friday toward evening – Gloomy birthday, even gloomier than last year. Then I was not yet acquainted with house searches, also there was not the constant threat of murder. Hope of survival has become very faint. Also material things count: Last year cigars, sweetener had not quite disappeared, the potato did not dominate so unconditionally. — And Eva had not yet grown thin as a skeleton. — In the morning I scrubbed the kitchen. In the afternoon I went to the Jewish cemetery—ominous route—to invite Steinitz for Saturday instead of Sunday. **p152
- 1942, October 29, Thursday toward evening – The real tribulation of yesterday and the one that filled the day was the hauling up of four hundredweight of potatoes. […] So I hurried—heart trouble—to the Jewish cemetery on Fiedlerstrasse. The Community’s little handcart was there and free; I took it, trotted back to the greengrocer with the squeaking thing; the woman there helped me load two hundredweight. I arrived here with the load, very drained and exhausted, was helped by Eva, the caretaker, and above all by the tall Jew, Eisenmann, **p159
- 1942, November 6, Friday toward evening – … I also saw yesterday’s military bulletin: further large-scale attacks by the English in Egypt, orderly withdrawal to second positions. Passionate hope. Perhaps we shall be saved after all. I went back by way of the cemetery to invite Steinitz for tomorrow afternoon. Again the three of them were sitting over their grotesque game of skat in the gardeners’ shed behind the graves. Steinitz was full of hope, Magnus was vacillating between hope and fear, Schein could no longer believe in anything good happening… **p164
- 1942, November 28, Saturday morning – … A dental technician, who had worked with the cemetery gardener, deposited this packet there—now Eichler is to pick out what can be used and pay the going price for it. But he must not know where the goods come from. Secret teeth from the Jewish cemetery; it sounds as gruesome as a fairy tale—but it is crazy enough even in reality, and how easily it can lead to catastrophe. Sufficient cause for prison and “attempted escape.” **p170
- 1942, December 18, Friday evening – At the cemetery Jacobi said that yesterday he had had to go to the police presidium to fetch the body of a non-Dresden Jew, “deceased” en route to a concentration camp. He was hard-boiled, thanks to his job, but he had almost fainted at what he saw. **p175
- 1943, January 17, Sunday toward midday – I spent the morning at the Jewish cemetery, where the urn of Arndt, who “had been shot while attempting to escape,” was interred. Jacobi, the cemetery custodian, read a proper little sermon in an unctuous monotone from a sheet of paper. Ghastly. “He was so well liked.” {…] It had snowed during the night and was still snowing; it was an effort walking to the cemetery, and I was worried all the time about [being ordered] to shovel snow once again. **p190
- 1943, January 14, Thursday afternoon – A language teacher called Kronthal was arrested at about the same time as Eger. Mixed marriage. No property—but is said to have made incautious remarks and given private lessons beyond what he was permitted. (To Hirschel’s children, for example, and Hirschel was inside as a result.) Now news of death from Auschwitz—the urn will not be sent. Jacobi, the cemetery custodian, told me that yesterday. **p188
- 1943, January 30, Saturday late afternoon – I borrowed the handcart at the Jewish cemetery from the custodian, Jacobi; he is very well disposed to me, ever since I described his oraison funebre for the murdered Arndt as “very dignified.” He gives me a little tobacco and makes refined conversation, when I visit his apartment at the cemetery. He told me there will be seven funerals next Wednesday, of which six have to be kept secret. The bodies of Jews from the Protectorate, who were condemned to death. They were brought to Dresden for execution. In the county court building on Muenchner Platz, there is an electrically powered guillotine, a head every two minutes; not just Jewish ones; **p196
- 1943, February 5, Friday afternoon – At the Jewish cemetery yesterday—I am now almost at home there—to fetch the two-burner gas hot plate borrowed from the “Community.” Reichenbach had sent it that far for me from the “furniture store” […]. Chatted to the three “volunteer workers”; they were putting compost on the vegetable beds behind the rows of graves. The never-ending guessing game: How much longer? Defeat or debacle? Will we survive? **p197
- 1943, February 14, Sunday midday – I mentioned the six executed Jews from the Protectorate whose corpses had recently been handed over to the Jewish cemetery. He: An acquaintance had been transferred to the county court at Münchner Platz and had the job of seizing the valuables of those condemned to death; Richter knows from this man [… ] how busy the guillotine here is: Recently 21 (twenty-one) heads had fallen on one day, by no means only Jewish ones. **p201
- 1943, February 20, Saturday afternoon – … when I think of Goebbels’s speech of February 18 in the Berlin Sportpalast, then I take Richter’s opinion and warning completely seriously. Richter gave me the Dresdener Anzeiger of the nineteenth with the text of the speech, and I want to pick it over immediately for the LTI. They were already very depressed about it at the cemetery yesterday, because the speech contains a threat to proceed against the Jews, who are guilty of everything, with the “most draconian and radical measures” if the foreign powers do not stop threatening the Hitler government because of the Jews. **p202
- 1943, March 4, Thursday evening – At the cemetery yesterday. These three: Magnus, Steinitz, Schein at their usual tragicomic game of skat in the gardeners’ shed behind the graves. Very depressed; they assume separation of mixed marriages is imminent. I.e., either the wife divorces her husband, or is declared Jewish and is evacuated with him. All three share the same point of view, which is ours also: The women stay here and save what can be saved. P206
- 1943, March 10, Wednesday morning – …every forty-eight hours or so I pull myself together and go to the cemetery or to Steinitz’s rooms or to the Community and on the way attempt to buy some cabbage—usually in vain. **p208
- 1943, March 14, Sunday morning – At the cemetery Steinitz pointed out a woman to me. She came here every day, decorated an urn grave with fresh flowers and printed texts. A Frau Bein, an Aryan. Her Jewish husband and her son, who had been declared to be a “Jewish mischling,” were arrested for unknown reasons and shot a couple of weeks later “attempting to escape **p209
- 1943, May 9, Sunday midday – At the cemetery more terrible news: a) three arrests at the Enterlein factory, among them two Jews with privileged status. The Community was instructed to call the people to Zeughausstrasse at half past seven this morning for “Sunday duty.” Gestapo officers were waiting for them. Thus people disappear in utter secrecy, b) Kornblum, our hussar with the spine problem [.. . ] has been summoned for tomorrow morning. There’s a story to that… **p226
- 1943, May 11, early Tuesday morning – Now one is afraid: children with the star and Aryan children together! It can cost the Jewish parents their heads. Frau Eisenmann saw (or thought she saw) a man repeatedly observing the Jacoby property for a long time—”so we are being ‘watched.’ ” The Hirschel children have been sent away. The only place left for them to play is now the Jewish cemetery; the vegetable patch behind the graves. **p228
- 1943, June 5, Saturday morning – “Just because Eisenmann sees pink elephants. I’m not supposed to visit you!” Steinitz recently said to me at the cemetery, and yesterday it was arranged via Eva, that Steinitz will come here on Sunday (tomorrow), and we shall be their guests on the second day of the Whitsun holiday. **p236
- 1943 June 7, Monday morning – Troubles of this time: [… ] The Hirschel children had been sent to play in the Jewish cemetery [see above]. There they were noisy and romped around in an unseemly way, also got on badly with Jacobi’s naughty little daughter. That made things even noisier, and now the cemetery is also to be closed to them. **p236
- 1943, June 22, Tuesday morning – Wretched dreariness of the day shift, not mitigated by the radio. A new man has been added: Jacobi, the cemetery custodian. **p240
- 1943, July 11, Sunday toward evening – Saturday afternoon I went to the Jewish cemetery, and Eva went there, too. It had been arranged: Steinitz was on duty alone, his workmates and enemies had the day off. We sat in the little glass (and skat) house behind the graves with the Steinitzes, with Jacobi and Bar, the gardener, and chatted a long time and with excited optimism about the military situation. *p243
- 1943, July 19, Monday morning – Sunday afternoon as I was coming from the cemetery, an elderly gentleman—white goatee, about seventy, retired senior civil servant— crossed Lothringer Strasse toward me, held out his hand, and said with a certain solemnity: “I saw your star and I greet you; I condemn this outlawing of a race, as do many others.” I: “Very kind—but you must not talk to me, it can cost me my life and put you in prison.” — Yes, but he wanted to say it and he had to say it to me. — The chorus of voices of the people. Which voice dominates and will be decisive?**p245
- July 26, Monday afternoon – Stem appeared at about ten o’clock; he must let us know immediately: Early this morning German radio broadcast news of Mussolini’s resignation and the order to men on leave returning to Italy [..] On the way back, I dropped by at the Jewish cemetery for a moment. There, too, they already knew what I knew, but no more; there, too, they wanted to be happy but no one dared feel happy because the possibility of renewed disappointment, and the possibility of a final pogrom weighs on everyone. **p248
- 1943, August 2, Monday morning, 11 a.m – With respect to Gestapo jokes: At the beginning of the week they were at the Jewish cemetery, sequestered the vegetable plots of the reserve strip, found some cabbage from there in Schein’s briefcase. One pulled his revolver: “I could shoot you, then your grave would be handy. — You’re all thieves!”**p251
- 1943, December 11, Saturday morning – Did I make a note of the Gammann case? His Aryan wife collapsed in the street and died in the hospital. He had difficulty getting permission to enter the cemetery for the burial. He has now been deported to Theresienstadt. Jacobi related in strictest confidence that a large Jewish transport to Theresienstadt passed through Dresden in the last few days. An eighty- six-year-old woman died on the way. The corpse was turned over to Jacobi. **p277
- 1944, May 23, Tuesday morning – I envy Steinitz, who frequently comes to see us now. He is half-blind following a cataract operation, he works all day at the cemetery, he occupies himself intensively but unproductively with English and yet is absolutely content, evidently certain that he has another twenty busy years before him—he is especially proud of his grandmother’s grave, which he tends; she lived to be one hundred and four years of age and still went to the opera at a hundred—but evidently also completely calm and composed at the thought of death, although he will be seventy this year.**p317
- 1944, June 4, Sunday midday – the Jews’ mistrust of one another: The pair of us only learned of the business long after the event, everything was passed on furtively as whispered gossip; not only our house, but also the cemetery already knew it a day and a half ago. **p322
- 1944, June 18, Sunday morning – My walk yesterday was short; I came upon the Jewish cemetery employees in the neighborhood of Sachsenplatz. Some were more, some less anxious on account of the “new weapon,” but knew no further particulars. Meanwhile (radio heard by Eva) it seems to be more a means of reassuring Germany than a truly decisive weapon. Rocket projectiles, with a range as far as London, just as “Long Max” shot at Paris during the First World War. And the battle in Normandy appears to have stalled. **p325
- 1944, June 21, Wednesday midday – Factory work begins again tomorrow. Fear of the horrible loss of time. Certainly, the length of the day at home often weighs on me, because I have no distraction at all and shrink back from every errand—yesterday I literally had to force myself to walk to the Jewish cemetery, where in the gardener’s shed, with its threesome, the same old things were being talked about **p326
- 1944, July 1, Saturday morning – To go out in the open air a little every day—despite the star—is the hardest thing. Once along the river to Sachsenplatz, once to the cemetery, the news center with its unchanging routine, once to Steinitz with the now- fulfilled, now-unfulfilled hope of a cup of sweetened coffee, a piece of cake… At home reading, falling asleep, reading, falling asleep. In the evening, however, the day was never quite as empty as in the times of the factory. […]
The Frischmann couple were now arrested and at the same time Ruth Spanier and Edelmann from our house. […] Frischmann is very much missed, because today is haircutting day. He is also indispensable as a cobbler and for us wearers of the star truly “one of a kind.” **p330 - 1944, July 9, Sunday morning – Circular from Neumark to the factory chargemen: In future haircutting will be performed by Bar, the cemetery gardener, and shoe repairs by Saslawski, whom I do not know. With that Frischmann, the imprisoned barber and cobbler in one, is replaced and can be forgotten. […] And again and again I tell myself, I, too, shall not survive, deep down I, too, am apathetic and quite without hope, can no longer imagine myself transformed back into a human being. **p332
- 1944, August 20, Sunday afternoon – After hours of work making notes on Stresemann, I had forced myself to take a long walk for health reasons. On Saturday afternoon one en- counters only the Jacobi family at the cemetery, it’s weekend for the trio of workers. I was sitting with the Jacobis on the bench in front of their house, when Werner Lang turned up, and I walked home with him afterward. **p347
- 1944, November 6, Monday toward evening – Yesterday morning I was considerably annoyed by Steinitz. He frequently comes to see us on Sunday after his haircut. (Since Frischmann was sent to labor camp, this is now performed by Bar, the cemetery gardener, who lives on the first floor.) Steinitz said: “You are a hysterical optimist. In fact, at least 80 percent of the Germans still believe in Hitler, and it is National Socialist ideology that makes them offer such tremendous resistance,” **p373
- 1944, November 14, Tuesday morning – I was fetching coal from the cellar. Working close by was a woman from the house, with whom I have exchanged a few words without knowing her name. I told her Cohn was dead. Whereupon she, upset: “But at least his wife knows how he died, she was there! But I! But I don’t know how my husband and my child died!” So that is Frau Bein, whose husband and son were shot “attempting to escape,” i.e., were murdered in a concentration camp and who goes to the urn graves at the cemetery every day. **p375
- 1945, January 27, Saturday morning – Curious sign of the wind turning, reported in the same way by Bern- hard Sthler and at the Witkowskys’: Jacobi and another couple of Jews were to prepare a mass grave at the [Aryan] cemetery. (Every day long columns of the air-raid dead in the newspaper.) An Aryan worker was supposed to dig with them. He refused, he was a “skilled worker.” The cemetery inspector ordered him to do it. “No, not with Jews.” At which the inspector: “Then do it yourself!” and sent the Jews home. **p397
- 1945, February 13, Tuesday Toward 7:00 PM – Why are the Jewish children being taken as well? Lisel Eisenmann can’t do work duty. Why does Ulla Jacobi have to go alone—as cemetery superintendent her father is still classified indispensable. There are murderous intentions behind it. And we who remain behind, “we have nothing more than a reprieve of perhaps a week. **p405
- 1945, The Destruction of Dresden on February 13 and 14 (Tuesday, Wednesday) – We were still standing together after our first greeting when Eisenmann appeared with Schorschi. He had not found the other members of his family. He was so low that he began to cry: “In a moment the child is going to ask for breakfast—what can I give him?” Then he pulled himself together. We would have to try to find our people, I would have to remove my star, just as he had already taken off his. Eva thereupon ripped the star from my coat with a pocketknife. Then Eisenmann suggested going to the Jewish cemetery. It would be undamaged and be a meeting point. **p406
Credit: AltesDresden.de
- The Old Jewish Cemetery still exists in Dresden Neustadt, on the other side of the Elbe river
Quotes:
- **I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945, Victor Klemperer, Publisher : Modern Library; Illustrated edition
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