The veiled bride
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 33: Such Is Life
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Carolijn Visser
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Carolijn Visser’s biography and other articles by this writer
THE synagogue was still there: an inconspicuous brick building in a poor part of Shanghai where tower blocks had not yet risen, on the far side of Suzhou Creek. The narrow houses were two storeys at most, with the ground floors given over to grocers and to brothels disguised as hairdressing salons. They were built wall to wall, and the doors and windows opened onto narrow pavements. Not a tree in sight. The only thing special about the neighbourhood was its ongoing resistance to modernity.
The Ohel Moishe synagogue was built by Jews who fled Russia in 1917, after the Bolsheviks seized power. As soon as they could afford it, they moved out to more expensive neighbourhoods, leaving the Ohel Moishe to its fate. In the late 1930s Jews who had been driven out of Europe by the Nazis arrived to renovate and revitalise the building, making it the focal point of their lives.
More than half a century had passed since that era as well. Now the synagogue served as a museum, with the elderly Mr Wang giving tours through re-renovated rooms. Photos hung on the walls. The holy atmosphere of prayer and song had evaporated; the dry parquet sighed under our feet. ‘At one stage there were more than fifteen thousand Jews who were living in this neighbourhood, Hongkew,’ Mr Wang announced in very proper English.
He had seen the ships carrying refugees moor at the nearby dock. The photos showed open trucks ferrying people to reception centres where soup kitchens and rows of bunk beds awaited them. The same box-shaped Chinese houses lined the streets, but dark, attractive Europeans were strolling the pavements – slim-looking men in well-cut jackets and elegant women in calf-length coats and dresses, with flamboyant hats on their heads. ‘They were hard workers,’ Mr Wang commented approvingly.
He had lived near the synagogue, surrounded by Jewish neighbours who taught him English and made him their interpreter. Later, when a Jewish family left in a hurry, he bought their house and furniture. Mr Wang pointed to two chairs in a corner: the leather seats were worn and the curved wooden arms had been repaired more than once. They were all that was left of the old furnishings and he had donated them to the museum. Mr Wang was grateful to the Jews for the prosperity they had brought him. ‘If there had never been any Jews in Shanghai this job as a guide would not exist,’ was his practical conclusion.
We stopped in front of a wedding photo. Although she wasn’t wearing a white dress, the bride was holding a large bunch of white flowers in her arms. A light veil hid her face. ‘That wedding took place in this synagogue,’ Mr Wang determined from the background, because he hadn’t been present at the event. In those days he never visited the synagogue itself, he explained apologetically. ‘I did know him by sight, though,’ he said, pointing to the groom. ‘He was a doctor.’
I could tell that the doctor was quite a bit older than the veiled bride, as he was the same age as her parents, who were standing next to her. Her father was wearing a bowler and looking expectantly at her mother, a magnificent woman with dark crescent-shaped eyebrows and made-up lips. She, in turn, was looking tensely and anxiously at the rabbi who was marrying the couple. According to the caption, the photo had been taken in 1940. In Europe the Holocaust was underway while here, in this strange world, these people were trying to build a new existence.
I kept searching for traces of the Jews of Shanghai and eventually obtained the name of a Viennese woman who spent the war years there: Edith Linden. She had settled in Sydney half a century ago, and I had recently telephoned her. Her voice was frail and hard to understand. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet me.
After arriving in Sydney I called her from the airport but she didn’t answer. I settled into a friend’s flat and called again. Again, Edith Linden did not answer. When the phone kept ringing the next day as well, I decided to visit the city’s Jewish museum. ‘Edith Linden?’ the staff member said. ‘She died last week.’ My heart sunk: I had left it too long. ‘But there are other Jews in Sydney who knew Shanghai well,’ she went on. ‘Bettina Streimer’s on duty this afternoon, as a volunteer. She was there – I’ll introduce you.’
Across from the Holocaust exhibition a small woman sat on a bench with an expansive purple shawl wrapped around her shoulders, waiting to answer questions about the gruesome photos on the walls. ‘Oh, have you been to the Ohel Moishe synagogue?’ Bettina responded happily. ‘Then you must have seen the wedding photograph.’
‘The one where the bride’s wearing a veil?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, that one. That’s me. In a dark dress: I had nothing else to wear.’ For a moment she was lost in her memories. ‘Ah,’ she sighed. ‘When I married Dr Streimer I was just sixteen. He was much older. Thirty-seven.’
In the photo Bettina’s face had been hidden behind the veil, but behind her gold-framed glasses I now saw her mother’s lively eyes. I sat down next to her and asked how she had met her husband.
‘I will tell you about Dr Streimer,’ Bettina said softly, ‘but first I want you to understand just how German my family was, how the events took us totally by surprise.’
She described the country of her childhood: Beselich, a village near Frankfurt, and the farm she grew up on. ‘The Heimstätte was owned by the family, but my father administered the estate for his brothers and sisters. He had fought in the German army in World War I and had been awarded the Iron Cross for bravery.’ She glanced at me to make sure I realised what a high decoration that was. ‘Every Sunday afternoon he and his old comrades in arms would get together at a bar in our village. They would sit in front of the fire, like brothers, at the Stammtisch.’ Bettina pronounced the German names and words perfectly, making it easy for me to imagine her as a Mädel with immaculate plaits, off to buy cakes at the local Konditorei.
‘Beselich was a Catholic place of pilgrimage,’ she continued. ‘At Easter a lot of people would come to our village on foot, lighting candles in chapels along the way. There was a large convent near our house. When I was little I went to school there. My mother used to fill baskets with food for needy families, and I would take them to the nuns and they would distribute them.’
She seemed to be combing her memory for more convincing details. ‘Both our cook and maid were Catholic,’ she said. ‘They were part of the family and taught me all about the Holy Virgin.’
I imagined a German farm kitchen with people chatting around a table. One of Bettina’s uncles had come to stay. The cook had baked fresh bread and a goose was roasting in the oven. A delicious Kuchen was steaming on the sideboard. Bettina’s father, the man with the Iron Cross, the man who sat around the Stammtisch every week with his fellow veterans, was called Strauss. It was hard to imagine a more German family.
It never occurred to Bettina’s father that Hitler’s rise to power, in 1933, would mean the end of their peaceful life. She was ten at the time. ‘An older cousin was the only one to foresee the disaster at that stage. He began planning his emigration to America, but that was something my father refused to consider. “The Germans won’t go along with Hitler: in a few months he will resign and everything will go back to normal” – that was his prediction.’
But Hitler retained power. There were only ten Jewish families in the area and a few soon moved to South Africa. Eventually, only the Strausses and one other family were left. At school Bettina was having a hard time of it. She was excluded from all sports. She was no longer allowed to speak in class. Her best friend, daughter of the local head of the armed branch of the Nazi Party, wanted nothing more to do with her. Unable to bear it, Bettina went to stay with an aunt in Frankfurt, where she could complete her education at the Jewish school, the Philanthropin. In Frankfurt she became friends with the daughter of the American consul, who provided her with quota numbers to apply for US visas. When Bettina showed the documents to her father, he tore them up. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he insisted. ‘This is our country. Where they speak our language.’ There was no recrimination in Bettina’s voice, even though her father’s actions could have had catastrophic consequences, because soon not a single country was admitting Jews. ‘My father was like that,’ she said, raising her hands in the air. ‘Germany meant that much to him.’