Mr. Flamm was a beloved
educator and mentor at Talmudical Academy, where he taught first and sixth
grade and also prepared students for their bar mitzvahs, including my brother
and me. He and my family were members of Shearith Israel on Glen Ave in
Baltimore, and the Flamm family were longtime customers of my father’s
business, Wasserman and Lemberger.
For many years, Mr. Flamm kindly
drove me to school each morning because my father left early for work. Although
many people assumed he was a rabbi, he never received semicha and insisted on
being called “Mr. Flamm.” In addition to teaching at Talmudical Academy, he
also taught at other day schools and synagogue Hebrew schools from the 1960s
through the 1980s. He was deeply loved and respected by generations of students
and synagogue members.
I found the article below in an old
issue of the Shearith Israel Bulletin and thought young readers would
find Mr. Flamm’s story an interesting and inspiring part of Baltimore history.
Remembering the Past
As told by Mr. Kurt Flamm
I was born in Kitzingen-on-Main in
1910 and married in 1936, although our children were born in the United States.
I studied at public school from 1915 until 1926 and then attended the yeshiva
in Nuremberg for one year. The rosh yeshiva was the gaon Harav
Avrohom Yitzchok Klein.
Long before Hitler came to power in
1933, there was a great movement of the Nazi party, and many Germans followed
Hitler’s direction and were misguided by his promises. There was an increase in
antisemitism even before Hitler became fuhrer, and this made it hard for
us to have a pleasant youth in Germany. For example, in 1925, I went on an
outing with my high school in Nuremberg. On that outing, the teacher told the
students to sing a Nazi song which contained the words, “Jewish blood will be
spilled.”
Even though there were five Jewish
boys on that outing, the others sang the song. I went home most upset, and the
next day, my father went to see the principal. The principal told him, “Mr.
Flamm, what can I do?” He was afraid of losing his job. Because of the
difficult circumstances, my father found it necessary to suggest that I look
for a profession. I entered the Wurzburg Teacher’s Seminary in 1927 and
graduated in 1930. This was, of course, a strictly Orthodox teacher’s seminary.
I obtained a position as a teacher
and a shochet in the town of Heilbronn, which is near Stuttgart. There
was no Jewish day school, and I was employed as a teacher by the Orthodox
congregation. This seemed to me a position which would not make it necessary to
think of a change in our way of life. My wife saw things more clearly and urged
that we prepare for emigration.
I think it is somewhat ironic that
both Hitler and Roosevelt came to power in January, 1933, and both lived for 12
more years. Hitler, of course, spoke of a “1,000-Year Reich.” He made no secret
of his goals, and it is all spelled out in Mein Kampf. Many Jews were
optimistic and thought that Hitler would never carry out his wild rantings.
Only a few made plans to leave. Day after day, more restrictions were decreed
against German Jewry. One of the most disturbing was against shechita. We
had no meat or fowl except for a small amount that came from South America.
Once, I put myself in danger to do
a special favor for someone. This individual pleaded with me to slaughter a
chicken for Shabbos. I came to his house on Thursday evenings, and we went down
into the basement and closed the shades and turned out the lights. I schechted
a chicken by the light of a candle. Shortly afterwards, I received a
message from the Rav of Stuttgart to come to see him and to bring my kabbala
for shechita with me. When I arrived, he asked to see my kabbala,
and then he told me, “This is it. I will not return it to you. I don’t want
you to put yourself in danger.”
I will now describe the most
important event of that time, Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938. I vividly
remember that I woke up at 6:00 a.m. as usual to go to shul. I saw that
the sky was red and fire engines were rushing from all over to the square where
the large and beautiful Reform temple stood. Lo and behold, the building was on
fire. The fire engines encircled the building but did nothing to put out the
fire. Their only concern was to prevent its spread to the surrounding houses.
As I stood there, I overheard two German goyim talking. One said, “Oh,
no! Now they have started with the Jewish G-d. That will be the end of them.”
At that moment, I did not yet know
that the same thing was happening all over Germany. Jewish property, homes,
businesses, yeshivas, mikva’os, and shuls were destroyed.
Later that day, I had an appointment with a non-Jewish doctor. (Jewish doctors
could no longer practice medicine.) While I was sitting in the waiting room,
two Nazis came in. They screamed, “Where is that Jewish pig Flamm?” The doctor
asked what I had done, and they replied that he was not to ask any questions. I
was handcuffed and taken away.
I saw from all sides that other
Jewish men were in the same situation. We were gathered at the Gestapo building
and then loaded onto 20 buses for an unknown destination. We rode for six hours
in the bitter cold and arrived in a large building with an iron gate on which
was written the word “Dachau.” Immediately, our hair was shorn, and we were
given prison clothes.
Dachau is near the Bavarian Alps.
It was a huge prison surrounded by towers, Nazi guards with machine guns, and
vicious dogs. You may ask, “How did you ever get out of Dachau, and why were
you there for only four weeks?” The answer is that at that time, a Jew could
still leave Germany if there was another country that would let him in. My wife
and I were lucky to have an uncle in Brooklyn who sent the necessary papers,
called an affidavit. I was awakened at 5:00 a.m. in Dachau and called to the
office with 10 other prisoners. We had no idea why we were being summoned. We
had behind us the experiences of four weeks of mental torture. We were forced
to stand still and not make a sound from 6:00 a.m. till noon and from 2:00 till
6:00 p.m. Any little violation was severely punished by beating and torture.
We were told that our papers had
arrived and we would be returned to our homes on condition that we left Germany
within two months.
It is impossible to describe my
feelings on regaining my freedom.
As soon as I returned home, I put
on my tallis and tefillin for the first time in four weeks. My
wife served me breakfast, and I devoured two loaves of bread. Our next worry
was to plan our departure from Germany. Nothing was to be taken along as the
Nazis had already stolen anything of value. I left behind my parents and a
married sister with three children. We left Germany about three weeks before Pesach
in 1939. We arrived in New York and spent our first Pesach with the
parents of Mrs. Trude Kranzler.
Soon after Pesach, Rabbi
Shimon Schwab, who had arrived as Rav of Shearith Israel in Baltimore two years
before, called me in New York. He invited me to move to Baltimore and be a part
of Shearith Israel. In September, 1940, after having learned some English, I
was given a position as a teacher in Talmudical Academy by Rabbi Hyman Samson.
The first day I arrived in
Baltimore, Mr. Martin Bamberger sent me to Shearith Israel on Glen and Park
Heights Avenues. As I arrived at that corner on a rainy day, a window opened.
It was the president, Mr. Rauneker, looking for a 10th man to make
the minyan. So, I made the minyan at Shearith Israel, and I’ve
been here ever since.
Reprinted from the Shearith Israel Bulletin,
Autumn, 1992.
