Charlotte Markus was born in the village of Bad Pyrmont, Germany, on June 19, 1921.  Her name at birth was Charlotte Julie DeHaas.  Her father was Max DeHaas, an agent for the Hartkorn Spice Company as well as Hazzan at the only synagogue in town where his father was the rabbi.  Charlotte’s mother was Margarethe Frohsinn.  She was a housewife as well as an assistant cook in the family hotel business that Max’s family owned.  The village of Bad Pyrmont was a spa town and people from all over Europe would come to take the baths and drink the mineral waters.  The family’s hotel Haus DeHaas was the only strictly kosher hotel in the area and as a result all the guests were Jewish families.  Since the hotel was very small, many of the Jewish families stayed at other hotels but ate their meals in the Hotel DeHaas dining room.

Charlotte and her family, which consisted of her parents, Sister Miriam, and grandparents Marcus and Tillie Simonds DeHaas lived in the hotel.  In the winter Charlotte and her family lived on the 2nd floor and her grandparents lived on the first floor.  In the summer Charlotte and family moved up to the 3rd floor while guests occupied the rooms on the 2nd floor.

Grandmother Tillie and Mother were the main cooks for the hotel’s kosher kitchen.  Apprentices and servants came from the country side to help with the cooking, cleaning, and serving.  Apprentices, young girls, would go to the market to buy the fresh fruits and vegetables needed and a clerk from the grocer’s store would come to the hotel kitchen to take orders for staples like sugar, flour, rice, etc every week.  Charlotte remembers that one of the clerks was sweet on one of the hotel’s apprentices and he managed to show up more than one time a week to take orders for food just so he could sneak a visit with the young girl.

Throughout the ‘20’s and ‘30’s there was an underlying anti-Semitism that Charlotte’s father referred to as “healthy anti-Semitism.”

One year, 1929 or 30, a Dutch family of two parents and 13 children came to stay at the Haus DeHaas.  Charlotte remembers this quite vividly because on Shabbat the family gathered around the candles and challah and sang the most beautiful version of “Adonolom” that she had ever heard.  She remembers it to this day and sings it for the video tape.   She also remembers one morning when the baker came into the hotel with the day’s order of fresh rolls,  the Dutch family happened to be there just as early for their breakfast before everyone else had awaken.  In no time at all the rolls disappeared and new rolls had to be immediately ordered for the other guests.

The synagogue was used mostly for the High Holidays and other holidays and not on a weekly basis because the Jewish population had dwindled during the years.  It was hard to gather together a minyan.  Jewish people from all over the surrounding country attended the little synagogue.  It was a small orthodox shul.  Women sat upstairs.

On Friday evenings, Charlotte’s father would buy the most beautiful fresh flowers from the town’s greenhouses and bring them to the hotel for the Shabbat dinner.  The family didn’t skimp on anything for the hotel.  Everything was of the highest quality.  Occasionally, father would also help out in the kitchen.

Because Charlotte was sickly and suffered from anxiety, she was sent away to a children’s home in Hanover.  It was like a health camp or health spa for children.  She was very homesick and only stayed for a month.  Then she was sent to her other grandmother Terese Frohsinn who was a widow and lived in Elberfelt. Charlotte liked being here in the small apartment with her grandmother Terese.  They went to shul on Saturdays.  Oma had a beautiful gas lamp with beads hanging all around that Charlotte remembers.  And she remembers that Oma would boil milk for her and pour it into a little china bowl.  The cream that remained she delighted in as a special treat after drinking her milk.

Another place Charlotte was sent to for health reasons was also in Hanover.  She was there for 2 weeks and hated it.  There was a dark dingy basement where the children would receive their baths and shampoos.  After hearing about this terrible place her mother took her out.

The next year, Charlotte went to the North Sea at a nicer spa for sickly children.  She was still homesick but she did have a better time playing cowboys and Indians on the beach.

Charlotte’s best friend lived across the street from her.  Her name was Ilsa Zastrov.  Ilsa and her parents lived on the 2nd floor while her grandmother lived on the first.  The kitchen was in the basement.  Charlotte was asked many times to join the family for meals, but she had to decline because they were gentile and she followed the dietary laws of kashrut.

In 1933 Ilsa had another friend named Gerta.  She was not Charlotte’s friend but the three of them did get together.  One day, the three of them were standing together and Gerta whispered something into Ilsa’s ear about how no one liked Jews.  This was a first indication to Charlotte that things were changing in her life.

Charlotte remembers the national elections of 1933 because she accompanied her grandmother to the voting polls at the high school.  She did not realize at that time that this would be the last free election for Germany for a long time.  Hindenberg won and Hitler was made Chancellor.  Hindenberg died soon after and Hitler took over.

Charlotte’s parents listened to Hitler’s speeches on the radio.  She remembers how violent they were towards Jews.  Her father felt that this would all blow over and that “we were German like everybody else.”
        
Charlotte’s family did not speak Yiddish and looked down on those who did.  German Jews thought themselves more educated and cultured than the Jews from Eastern Europe.
        
In the early 1930’s the family had to give up the Haus DeHaas Hotel because of the onset of the Nuremburg Laws.  The building belonged to a German and the family had rented it for the little hotel business.  The owner wanted the family out and his own daughter in.  The family then moved to a newer house on the Kaiser Platz.  It was a beautiful location with a park in the middle.  They resumed their business, however, on a smaller scale.
        
For many years, Charlotte’s father’s cousins from Rochester, N.Y., Miriam and Julia Seligman, would come every year to visit them and specifically the grandmother.  They were quite well-to-do and had gone to Switzerland for finishing school.  They had never married and were quite eccentric.  They were responsible for introducing Charlotte to music and the playing of the flute.  They hired the first flautist of the Dresden Philharmonic, housed in Bad Pyrmont for the summers, to be her teacher.
        
As the 30’s became more restrictive, there were no more Jewish guests from Eastern Europe.  But, the two cousins came until 1933.
        
One day during the school year of 1934-5, Charlotte was coming home from school and she saw a sign plastered on the lower balcony of where she and her family lived.  It stated , “Jews are living here.”  There were boycotts of Jewish stores.  Uniformed Nazis handed out signs to customers telling them not to go into these establishments.   Most people were afraid but a few went in anyway.  Charlotte attended the Real Gymnasium, a co-ed school. There, the teachers totally ignored her and never called upon her.  Students shunned her.  Her best friend Ilsa’s father was one of the first in the village to become a Nazi party member.  He was like a sheriff patrolling the village, and confiscating things from Jews.
        
Charlotte made a new friend, Giselle Von Korff.  Her mother had a little girls club and invited Charlotte to join.  This was very unusual because it was very evident that no one wanted to associate with Jews.  The little club would meet at the Von Korff home.  They would sit around a table in the living room and knit while Frau Von Korff would read from the classics.
        
During the years after the elections of 1933, the whole school would gather together to raise the Nazi flag in the school yard and salute.  The officials of the town organized torch light parades, and all students including   Charlotte, were required to march alongside the Hitler Youth who sung “hate” songs along the parade route.  In 1935, while on a torch light parade, the group went through the village to the main street and into the center of the town.  There Charlotte witnessed piles of books burning.  During these parades, Charlotte’s parents did not prevent her from going.  All students and others shunned her.          

It was during these years that Charlotte suffered from panic attacks, which she still suffers from today.  It was only when she went swimming did she feel relief.  But thanks  to the Nuremburg Laws, that would not happen.  In 1935 on a hot summer day, Charlotte took her towel and walked to the town swimming pool.  On the gate was a sign, “Jews are not allowed.”  She was devastated and went home sobbing. 
        
In 1936, Charlotte’s parents received a letter that she could no longer attend school any more.  Her parents made plans to send her to Aunt Ella Frohsinn in Hanover.  She was the head buyer of a large department store, Tietz.  As she was very outspoken, Aunt Ella had gone to prison for speaking against the government, then she was released with a stern warning.  After losing her job at the Tietz Department Store, Ella became the housekeeper for a Jewish doctor in Hanover.  Charlotte was sent to her aunt for health reasons and she ended up helping around the doctor’s house.  This was a good time for her.  She was away from the troubles of the village and nobody knew her.  She was able to make a few new friends, non- Jews.  Her aunt was strict but loving with her.  She gave Charlotte an allowance and arranged for Charlotte to go to a convent to learn fine sewing.  Charlotte looked forward to going once a week.  The doctor, Hans Freudenthal, who Aunt Ella worked for was kind, and allowed Charlotte to accompany him on house calls.

          
Charlotte lived in Hanover with her aunt from 1936-1937.  Then she returned to Bad Pyrmont.  She became an apprentice to master dressmaker Hannah Berens, who was Jewish.  There were two other apprentices Lotte Bose and a Maria, who were not Jewish.  Lotte was not afraid of anybody or anything.  In the summer of 1938 Lotte invited Charlotte to go on a bicycle tour through Basil land to the Eichemborn village where she lived with her grandmother.  Lotte asked Charlotte’s mother permission for her to go.  Charlotte’s mother asked her wasn’t she afraid because “we are Jewish.”  Lotte said no and that the Nazis could “kiss her butt.”

While Charlotte was apprenticing she also had to attend a trade school where she learned basic dressmaking.  The teacher knew she was Jewish.  Her name was Anna Multhapt and was a master dressmaker who once had made dresses for Charlotte’s mother.  She wore the Nazi party pin on her dress.  One day she came over to Charlotte and whispered, “Tell your mother I said hello.”
        
The week of November 9, 1938, Charlotte left the apprenticeship.  The night of Kristallnacht, most synagogues and Jewish cemeteries were destroyed.  The little village’s synagogue was not because it had been sold to a gentile and all the religious artifacts removed.  The cemetery however, was razed. 
        
In the village when people greeted each other, they raised their arms in salute and “Heil Hitler.”  The spice company that Charlotte’s father worked for kept her father as long as they could and he left in 1937.  Whenever her father entered a store with his spices, the prescribed greeting was “Heil Hitler,” but he got around that by saying “God’s greeting” instead.
        
November 9, 1938.  Charlotte is 17, her sister is 14 and Grandmother Tillie DeHaas is living with the family.  The night of November 9th, Lotte woke up because of a noise in the middle of the night.  She opened the door to the hallway and saw 3 uniformed men carrying large sticks.  Her parents were dressed – father in a suit and mother in a dress.  Her mother saw her and sternly told her to “Go to bed and close the door.”  Charlotte started shaking.  Her sister came to her and asked “what is the matter?”  Charlotte could not answer.  In the morning when she arose, only her grandmother was up, her parents were gone.   Soon her mother came home.  Charlotte noticed a great change in her…her hair was gray and old. She did not say much.  She asked Charlotte to go with her to the Quaker house for support.  A Mr. and Mrs. Fredericks ran the Quaker House.  On the way, they passed the Jewish cemetery and saw that it was destroyed.  There were no grave stones and the grass, ivy and myrtle were all gone.  Her mother almost collapsed.  Till this day, the town denies that the cemetery was ruined during Kristallnacht, however, a convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph was nearby and they heard the destruction of the cemetery going on.
        
After leaving the Quaker House where they received emotional support and some help, they went back home.  Her mother told her to go to their doctor Dr. Sturmthal, a Jew, and see what she could find out.  All the Jewish men had be taken along with the women but kept separate.  The men were beaten on the way.  The Nazis took all the wedding rings and jewelry and in the morning let the women go.  The men were taken to a concentration camp.  When Charlotte knocked on the doctor’s door, there was no answer.  He was gone. She went home. 
        
Eventually, her mother found out that her father was being held in Buchenwald.  Many died here…there was no water, people were sick, and many were beaten.  Out of the 5 Jewish village men who were taken there only 3 came back.  Her father was lucky and after one month he returned home after recuperating in the hospital for a week.  He had been beaten and was severely bruised. When he got home, the family decided that they needed to get out of Germany right away.  Charlotte’s father had made plans to leave Germany long before he had been taken away by the Gestapo. 

He had applied to the US for a visa and was sponsored by the Seligmann sisters who had visited them every summer until 1933.  He was waiting for the family’s quota number to be called up.  In the meantime he knew that they had to leave so he made contact with a distant relative, Achberg, in Sweden.  The relatives agreed to sponsor the family’s temporary visit to them  in Sweden.  Charlotte and her father went first because he was in grave danger and she was suffering from severe anxiety.  Charlotte’s mother and sister, Miriam, stayed behind while the authorities supervised the family’s packing. 

Grandmother DeHaas, in the meantime, died.  The family was able to smuggle some jewelry out before they left as well as hiding jewelry in their belongings that were being shipped.  This was a big risk that they took.     They were lucky and nothing was found. All the jewelry they had hidden was recovered when they reached the U.S.  They were in Sweden for about a month before their American quota number was called.  They then left from Oslo, Norway stopping along the Fjiords, and finally heading out to sea from Bergen.  As they were leaving the harbor in Bergen they saw German freighters in the harbor.  The next day Germany declared war.
        
The trip to America took 10 days.  While they were sailing, the captain of the ship took down the flag of Norway because German U-boats were all around.  They were a ship without a country’s flag.
        
The Statue of Liberty was a welcome sight to be seen.  The two Seligmann sisters, Julia and Miriam, were at the dock waiting for the family.  They were taken to the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel in Manhattan and were greeted by relatives.  Then a few days later Charlotte and her father went by bus to Rochester with Miriam Seligmann.  Charlotte’s mother and sister went by train with Julia Seligmann.  The family moved in with Miriam for a few months and then they moved to 555 Meigs St.  Charlotte’s father got a job landscaping and her mother had a little alterations business.  The family prospered and did well.

Biography witten by Jane Rushefsky