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Margarete Fallat: Living through Hitler's rise, fall

by David Gunter
| March 6, 2010 8:00 PM

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<p>Margarete Fallat, right, shown with her mother, Elisabeth Pagenburg, and her daughter, Elisabeth Maria, in 1948</p>

SANDPOINT - You've seen the photos: German citizens being marched through concentration camps at the end of World War II, forced to witness the carnage of Hitler's mad design to engender a master race by exterminating the Jews and anyone else that stood in his way.

Many of those people said, "We didn't know." And forevermore, history has judged them on the basis of that protest. They should have spoken out. They should have stood up to the Nazis. They should have done, well - something.

But ask yourself this question: Faced with the certainty that you and your family would be packed off and murdered if you so much as hinted at resistance, what would you have done in the same situation?

It is a troubling, serpentine conundrum - one in which Margarete Fallat was bound every day as a young girl growing up in Germany.

Her own father was beaten to death for refusing to join the Nazi Party. Her one brother was drafted at 15 and sent off to the front. That left a young girl and her mother to stay behind and bear witness as, at first, an intellectual here or an artist there began to disappear, along with the Jews who had not already fled her hometown.

And then the trains started rolling by. Stock cars by the hundreds packed, unimaginably, with human cargo from Poland, bound for the death camps.

Today, Margarete Fallat takes every opportunity to keep the memory of this dark chapter alive because she can't bear to see it rewritten. In her travels to high school classes, she shocks her young listeners with nothing more complicated than the truth of what she saw with her own eyes.

"I don't mince words when I tell them what happened," she said in a crisp accent that still carries the lilt of her native tongue. "What I saw was horrendous and they just have to find some way to digest it.

"I had to - and so must the youth of today."

What is your first recollection of knowing that something was changing as Hitler came into power?

Well, when my father was asked to join the party and he said, 'What's the party? Why should I join?' They told him, 'Because you want to be a shining example to your people.' My dad said, 'What have you done that's so great? I just see people in brown uniforms running around on the street and smashing windows. I don't think that's so great.'

They told him, 'That's because we have to cleanse the population.' I was too young to comprehend and I had no idea what they were even talking about. But my dad told us that a very dangerous thing was coming in - that there was going to be war in the future.

What did your father do for a living?

He was in administration for the railroads. In Germany, that was a very big deal. I suppose you would say he was an authority, because he had hundreds of people under him. He was a very kind man and very well thought of.

So your father resisted, even as support for the Nazi Party was sweeping through Germany?

He refused to join and they said, 'Evidently, we have to show you what we stand for and show you why you should join. So we're going to send you to a 'work camp' where we will demonstrate to you what the party is all about. Once you see it, you will then understand what we're aiming for.'

My father was gone for six weeks and we had no idea where he went. Rumor had it, later on, that he was in Dachau, where they tried to convince him to join the party by beating him. He was brought home by ambulance and they took him straight to the hospital. We turned him over and saw all these stripes on his back. His kidneys had ceased to work and his stomach was all swollen.

Mother - she collapsed. I went to the hospital and held his hand as he died. His dying words were 'Gretelein' - he called me Gretelein - 'Don't ever give in. Don't give in.' And he died.

That was ingrained on my brain for life. And I told my own children, if you have a conviction or a faith in something, it is better to give your life than to give in to something evil. I learned that from my dad - and that's why I am the why I am.

How quickly did things move in Germany from that point on?

Well, my dad died Feb. 6, 1936, and it was a known fact that we were anti-regime. So mother and I and my little brother were shunned. They didn't beat us or anything like that, but we were ignored and treated like third-class citizens. I still went to school, but I could not participate in anything. I was not allowed to. I was the undesirable. I was an outsider.

'Who wants her? Gretel? Don't you know what happened to her dad?'

Many of my so-called friends were in the BDM - the Bund of German Girls - and they had parties and dancing and all kinds of festivities. And then, they also had the Hitler Youth for the boys. Everybody wore a uniform. It was a crazy thing. Everybody had to have a uniform.

What was the position of the Catholic Church in Germany at that time? Did it accede to the Nazi Party or turn a blind eye to what was going on?

No. Mother and I went to daily Mass every day at 7 in the morning. And on Sundays, it was made obvious to us that you weren't supposed to go to Mass, you know. The Hitler Youth would come and march in front of the church, play the drums and play their trumpets and make all the noise that they could possibly make while we were at Mass, so that you could barely hear what the priest was saying.

But we went and they would make fun of us, call us dirty names. We didn't care. We stood our ground and went to Mass every day and on Sundays.

The reason the church did not speak out is because the priests who did speak out were killed. In Dachau alone, there were thousands of nuns and priests.

And yet, Hitler's plan was starting to play out right under everyone's noses and everyone knew what was going on?

Exactly. The newspapers were not allowed to report anything, except for how great the party was and that Mrs. Such and Such had a party for Mrs. So and So. If you wanted to know the truth, you took your radio and you went under the feather bed at night and listened to the truth from London. But if you got caught, that was the end of you. Many, many people disappeared.

There was one man who had a mentally troubled child and she loved radios. He always got the news and he also raised wonderful vegetables, so everybody met there and got the truth. Well, that child was into everything and also into his radio. Suddenly, blaring all over the neighborhood, the London news came on.

Well, needless to say, he disappeared. His wife disappeared. That child disappeared. Never to be heard from again. And all their stuff was confiscated.

That was the period where people feared the midnight knock on the door. At what point did the Nazis begin taking the Jews away en masse?

After the war started. I would say that in 1939-40, you could see the trains passing through from Poland. They would ship them, not in passenger trains, but trains you would use to transport animals - that's what they put the Jews in. They cut out windows and put wire over them for air, but there was no food, no water, no nothing.

Most people had no clue, at that time, why the Jews were being transported. Of course, I knew a little bit more, because we'd heard and we discussed these things. We asked ourselves, 'What can we do?'

Nothing. We could do nothing. You couldn't try to save them. You'd get shot. So we were helpless, the ones who were in the know.

But not every German knew what was going on. There were a lot of people who were oblivious. It was actually true - they didn't know.

Was there some point, though, where that truth became inescapable? With trainload after trainload of humans passing by, people must have realized "Something evil is happening here."

Well, I'll grant you they should have. But, as I said, you couldn't discuss it openly.

I remember one day when I was a young girl, I came from the dentist and I had just had four molars drilled and had temporary fillings in them. Cotton - very light fillings.

I was on the streetcar with friends of mine and I said, 'Hey, did you hear the newest joke about Goering?' It was a well-known fact that he loved uniforms, every kind of uniform. The joke was that if they delivered milk to his house, he had a milker's uniform on. If they delivered coal, he put on a miner's uniform.

As I was telling the joke, all of a sudden this big fist came in my face and just slugged me a few times. I was bleeding all over and my teeth were flying and this man yelled, 'You don't talk about our Fuehrer that way!' I said, 'I was talking about Goering!'

All of a sudden he lifted his lapel and showed me that he was a member of the Geheime Staats Polizei, also known as Gestapo. You didn't know. It could be your uncle; it could be your brother who was a member. You had no idea.

There were big signs all over town that showed a finger across the lips that read, 'Silence! The enemy is listening.' Well, the enemy was our own people. And I learned that the hard way.

There is a common viewpoint that Hitler unified the German people by vilifying the Jews and making them "the enemy." Is that an accurate picture of what you saw happen?

You must remember that Hitler was a fantastic orator. He was extremely articulate. He had the people mesmerized. He used to dwell on 'Our Fatherland' and "Germany over everything" and 'Everybody will have a job.' It was true, everybody did have a job, but Hitler was building ammunition. He was working on the V-1 and V-2 (rockets) - he was preparing for war.

If the other countries had read his book, 'Mein Kampf,' he spelled it all out. But nobody read his book. He spelled out what he was going to do and he did it. He said, 'The arch-enemy is the Jew, because he clutches business and he cheats.'

Oh, my Lord. They had made caricatures of the Jews that were atrocious.

As the Jews were passing through on the trains, could you see their faces? Did you ever have any firsthand encounters with them?

I don't recall the purpose of it, but one time, they were - it sounds terrible to say - 'unloaded' in Oppeln, which was known as a district where all the trains for the territory would cross. This train stopped there and discharged these people and they marched them through our town. It went like a wildfire: 'They are driving the Jews through town.'

Mother was preparing for a big party and wanted to make a potato salad, so she had boiled a mess of potatoes. She said, 'Here, go and bring these to them.' So I got the container of potatoes and I ran out and gave one to every one of them I could reach, because they were starving. And then we had milk, which we thinned down with water so they would at least have something to drink.

The guards were just people and one of them said, 'Ich siehe nicht, Ich siehe nicht,' and he looked up in the air like he didn't see what we were doing. So then, all the other neighbors, all the women on our street, they all came with whatever they had in the house to give to those people.

I don't know whatever happened to those people or where they went. All I know is that they were marched through town and the town did whatever they could to help. The myth that all Germans hated the Jews wasn't true. The ordinary people didn't hate. We cried and prayed.

You mentioned that the women came out to help. What were the men doing during this time?

There were no men left! We gave up all of our men to be killed. And for what? People would say, 'What is this war all about? The man is insane.' And yet, the people who loved Hitler had portraits of him with a halo around his head. Mother would say, 'That's Satan. What are they putting a halo around him?' So there were those who despised him and those who adored him. You go figure.

As the war was nearing its end, the German people had the Allies moving in from the west and Russians coming in from the east. Can you describe what happened at that time?

In 1944, when we saw the cannon fire of the Russians, we ran. We got on the last train out. But that was also when the German army was retreating from Russia via Poland. We went into the center of Germany, which was Thringen, where the Americans came in. There was fighting going on right there in that town and I can still see the Germans giving up raises both hands above her head.

Since I spoke English, I was engaged by the American troops as a translator, a mediator between them and the German army. They were there for a few weeks and then Maj. Rice, the commanding officer came to me and said, 'Well, blondie, we're going to get out of here. We got the word from Washington to stop right here and turn everything over to Ivan.'

I said, 'Who's Ivan?' I had no clue about the language they used.

And he said, 'The Russians. The Russians are coming.'

He wrote me a letter of recommendation and told me that, as soon as the Russians marched in, I should try to get out and get over to the American Zone. Everything was going to be zoned, he told me, and Germany was going to be divided up like a pie.

Given the German invasion of Russia, there was a lot of fear about having to face the Russians, wasn't there?

Oh, you bet. I remember the Americans leaving and the Russians coming in. The first troops that came in looked Asian and they came on horseback. We were in Goldlauter and there was a small city nearby that had a clinic for ladies to give birth. There were 28 women in the clinic at that time who had just given birth. By the time the Russians got through with them, there was only one alive. They were raped and every one of them was killed, except for one woman who lived to tell.

The excuse the Russians used was, 'Oh, those poor men hadn't seen a woman in months.' Well, the Americans hadn't either and they didn't do anything like that.

How did you finally get away?

Well, we had nothing to eat. We had gotten some sweets from the Americans, they were very generous, but then the Russians came in and immediately built a 'no-man's land' between them and the Americans. All I knew was that I wasn't going to stay there. No way. There was a man who would guide people from the Russian Zone into freedom, but you had to have a job over there.

I said to mother, 'You stay put. I'm going to go and I'll be back for you.' In 'no-man's land' you had to go on your hands and knees in dark clothing when the moon wasn't shining. But I made it. I had my letter from Maj. Rice and I got a job as an interpreter at the quartermaster depot in Nuremberg and I was also instrumental as a translator at the Palace of Justice there.

So back I went and I got my mother. That was hard, because she insisted on praying out loud as we crawled across the 'no-man's land.' She would go along on her hands and knees and the stop, you know. 'Our Father, who art in Heaven ...' The guide told her, 'Shut up! Don't make all that noise!' I had been gone a few weeks and, by that time, they had erected fences and they had lights and armed guards patrolling with dogs. But with God's help, we made it.

And as we poured ourselves into that ditch that the Americans had prepared, they had cocoa and everything ready for us, because they were watching us coming. It was the most wonderful moment in my life, when I was a free person.

What was behind your move to the United States?

I married my husband, Jim, who was American. Scripture has it: "Whither thou goest I go." We were married in 1946 by the American law. Oh, my Lord - what I had to go through. I arrived on Christmas Eve, 1948, in New York. I told my husband, 'See? They knew I was coming. Look how they lit up the place.'

Can you tell me a little bit about the Chalet Motel?

Well, we ran the place from 1965 to 2000, and I'd probably still be at it if it hadn't been for the Idaho Transportation Department. They said, 'Oh, we have to have that property, we have to have 40 feet of right of way.' The 40 feet went right through my swimming pool, right through my lodge. So all of that had to be destroyed.

They bought the frontage because they were going to widen the highway and it put us out of business. That was in 2000. We were forced to sell that property. 'Everybody else already did it,' they told us. 'You're holding up progress.'

It has been 10 years. And do you see any widening of the highway? We lost income for all those years - and I lost my husband. He was very upset by it all and he just went into his own shell after that. There was nothing to do anymore, he said. And he died in 2003.

How much of your world view comes from the conversation you had with your father on his deathbed?

All of it. Totally. My dad was a wonderful, loving, giving man, but he always said, 'If you have any complaint about anybody, don't hedge - go right into the lion's den. Stand up for your principles. Be true to yourself.' I followed that advice and I passed it on to my two girls.

Date of birth: Feb. 14, 1924

Family: Widowed; two daughters; six grandkids; 10 great-grandkids

Education: Graduated with degrees in business and accounting

Number of hours on average you sleep in a night: 6-7

Hobbies: Reading, politics

Favorite travel destination: Europe and visiting family in Utah and Washington

Favorite movie: A good mystery

Favorite book: "The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough

Favorite type of music: Oldies from the 1940s and '50s

Favorite spectator sport (or leisure activity): Soccer and baseball (Mariners)

Any one person who most influenced your life: My father

Quality you admire most in person: Being unpretentious

Best advice you ever received: Be true to your own convictions.

Any one thing you would say is your greatest accomplishment: I outlived Hitler!

Favorite quote: "I don't get headaches - I give them!"

Historical figure you would most like to meet: Von Hindenburg, so I could ask him, "What were you thinking?!"

Date of birth: Feb. 14, 1924

Family: Widowed; two daughters; six grandkids; 10 great-grandkids

Education: Graduated with degrees in business and accounting

Number of hours on average you sleep in a night: 6-7

Hobbies: Reading, politics

Favorite travel destination: Europe and visiting family in Utah and Washington

Favorite movie: A good mystery

Favorite book: "The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough

Favorite type of music: Oldies from the 1940s and '50s

Favorite spectator sport (or leisure activity): Soccer and baseball (Mariners)

Any one person who most influenced your life: My father

Quality you admire most in person: Being unpretentious

Best advice you ever received: Be true to your own convictions.

Any one thing you would say is your greatest accomplishment: I outlived Hitler!

Favorite quote: "I don't get headaches - I give them!"

Historical figure you would most like to meet: Von Hindenburg, so I could ask him, "What were you thinking?!"