Remembering the Holocaust: Part 2

At almost 91 years old Mrs. Thea K. Lindauer in Anapolis, Maryland, reflects on coming to the United States and leaving a majority of her family in Germany to face the early Nazi Regime, Hitler and the Holocaust.

In 1934 Thea was a part of a project, The Thousand Children, Inc., which brought children out of Germany to the United States as an experiment in education. The children were placed all over the U.S. with well to do adoptive families that could give them a better education than they could have received in Germany. At 12 years old, Thea was a part of a small group of Jewish children to emigrate to the U.S.

She had a few relatives that had managed to emigrate to the U.S. before her. She was placed with a family in Chicago in November 1934 and eventually she moved to live with another set of adoptive parents also in the Chicago area. She would stay in touch with her Mid-West family and visit with them as much as she could.

Her uncle tried to secure a visa for her father, mother and younger sister to emigrate to the U.S. also. In order for this to be done, the family had to prove that they could be financially secure enough to sponsor the emigrating family members upon their arrival to the U.S. Unfortunately, Thea’s family in the U.S. did not have that kind of financial standing at that time.

In her book, There must Be an Ocean Between Us: Letters of Separation and Survival, she shares letters from her family in Germany and her thoughts about their worsening situation in Germany. She chronicles their lives as Jews in Germany as they became more isolated and restricted by Hitler’s government, as well as her guilt that she was enjoying a luxurious teenage life near Chicago with many new and grand experiences.

In an interview April 1, Thea admited that only after writing the book did she truly experience the trauma, pain and shock of what her family and many other German Jews had gone through during those horrific years while Germany was under Hitler’s rule. Her family eventually, with help from her adoptive parents, was able to emigrate to the U.S. in 1937.

When ask about their reunion in 1937 she said, “my family was not bitter about what they’d gone through in Germany because they had always had good Christian friends that had helped them out.

"Unfortunately many people have horrible memories of those years but I was lucky.”

Because of Thea’s prosperity in the US, she says that she feels that she owes her good fortune and accomplishments to the people who had faith in her and she declares, "I still owe them."

Some of the things that Thea regrets most about her family's final years in Germany were the changes in personality that those years had caused her family.

Her mother, whom Thea called, “very outgoing and a social butterfly,” had become distant and withdrawn from the years of isolation and restricted laws that were placed on the Jewish people interacting with the other Germans.

Thea's younger sister also experienced restrictions that ranged from her not being able to swim with or even play with non-Jewish children.

Before Hitler’s reign, Thea’s family had been a prosperous and lively part of their community, but by the time they emigrated from their home, her father’s business and her family’s socialization with others were all taken away from them.

Oddly enough, Thea recalls that her grandmother’s conversion from Catholicism to Judaism could not be proven, and so her family was not always recognized by orthodox Jews, but under Hitler’s reign, they were not thought of as Aryan either.

"That always left us in some kind of limbo," she said.

Thea's older sister’s Christian husband was forced to divorce her, and that has always been a very painful aspect of their story. And not only did Hitler force divorces amongst mixed couples but he eventually began taking Jewish children away from their parents to be raised by the state, Thea said.

"In the beginning, many Jewish people weren’t afraid of Hitler and actually thought he might be good for Germany," Thea said, "but they had no idea how bad it was going to be."

After their emigration to the U.S. Thea’s family slowly rebuilt their lives, but to this day her younger sister, “never lets me forget that I was the lucky one with all the advantages."

That sister is still living in Chicago, and both women grew up to have marriages, careers and families of their own.

Thea is an artist, author and activist and is heavily involved with the U.S. Naval Academy. She has hosted many Jewish midshipmen and helped to found the Naval Academy’s Jewish Community with her late husband, Harry Lindauer a retired colonel of the U.S. Army, in the early 1970’s.

Thea, her children and grandchildren continue to support and are a part of the Naval Academy, with one of her granddaughters being a Naval Academy graduate. Thea has also received many honors and awards over the years, such as one of 100 Women of Achievement in Maryland in 1998 and the 2006 Anne Arundel County “Life Achievement in Arts” award.

Thea is working on her second book, a book of poetry, and still does public speaking events about her experiences.