Peter Philipps is a Holocaust survivor and a former staff writer and editor for The New York Times and Business Week magazine. His previous stories have appeared in Jewish Fiction, The Arlington Literary Journal, and Washington Writers Publishing House, among others.

He is a previous participant in the Festival. You can read that story here.

Feature Presentation

That Sunday, for some long-forgotten reason, we took the streetcar to Villa Brandt rather than walk, as we’d always done in the past. That got us there half an hour before the first garden concert of the season was to begin. As my father and I opened the gate and let ourselves in, Dr. and Mrs. Brandt and their three daughters were getting into position around their ornamental water fountain for a formal photograph. Against a backdrop of apple trees beginning to bloom, it made for a captivating tableau. A passerby might have concluded that God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

The by-invitation-only concerts were a popular attraction among Berlin’s elites. The musicians, all gifted amateurs, met from time to time for the sheer joy of making music. Dr. Brandt was a distinguished surgeon. He and my father, an internist who played both the violin and viola, had been friends since medical school.

The other kids teased  me for accompanying my father to every one of the concerts, but they didn’t know—and I was determined not to let on— that it wasn’t Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms that drew me there, but Anneliese Brandt, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired Anneliese, the oldest of the Brandts’ daughters and the girl I hoped one day to marry. Never mind that she was Protestant and I Jewish; or that life for the Jews of Germany was becoming progressively less safe; or that the world was moving ever closer to an unimaginable catastrophe. We were still at that awkward age—no longer children and not yet fully  grown—and acted as if the news keeping my  parents awake nights was happening a world away.

The concert began with Dr. Brandt and my father playing two Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano. During intermission, while two uniformed maids came around with trays of dainty sandwiches and crystal goblets of sparkling punch, Anneliese and I snuck off to her beloved swing in a corner of the garden. I still remember her hilarious laughter when I pushed the swing as high as it would go, sending her slender legs into the bluest of blue skies.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Schubert’s effervescent “Trout” Quintet. Hardly had it begun when my father, playing first violin,  hit a few wrong notes, causing some in the audience to gasp.

“Your father looks exhausted,” Anneliese whispered part way into the first movement.

“It’s probably just the heat,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

When the piece finally ended, I asked my father if he felt ill. No answer. Face white, mouth grim, he returned the violin to its case without giving it its customary dusting and slammed the lid shut. Meanwhile people were drifting into the library for refreshments. I suggested calling a taxi, but my father shook his head. “I want to walk home,” he said in a strange-sounding voice. As soon as we passed through the gate he said, “We Jews are finished.” He then set off at such a fast pace that I could barely keep up. After a few blocks he stopped for a moment to rest. “We will never set foot in Villa Brandt again!” he said, looking me straight in the eye.

“Why, Papa?” I asked, stunned.

“Because the Brandts are Nazis!” he answered sharply and started to walk again, only slower this time.

As soon as we got home he headed straight for the kitchen and told  mother something I will never forget. During the intermission, he said while trying to catch his breath, he had meandered into Dr. Brandt’s library to look at his first-edition book collection when suddenly he came face to face with a large, autographed photograph of Hitler. “When an intelligent and cultured man like Walter Brandt becomes an admirer of that guttersnipe, it’s all over for us,” he said, as white as the freshly laundered tablecloth my mother was ironing.

“Unbelievable,” said my mother and tore off her apron. “Unbelievable.”

“I am in complete shock,” my father continued.

“Did you say anything to Walter?”

“What was there to say? I couldn’t wait to get out of there,” he said and dropped into a chair. He added: “Anyone who still thinks this will blow over is living in a dream.”

“What now?” my mother asked with a hand on his shoulder.

“The thought of playing Mozart with that man—in his house—makes me sick. First thing tomorrow morning we are going to the consulate and apply for exit papers.”  He paused. “And whatever other documents we need.”

I couldn’t believe my ears and went to my room in tears. Anneliese, I kept telling myself, can’t be one of them. I refused to believe it. That night I barely touched my mother’s schnitzel and went to bed early.

On hearing the news of my father’s discovery, all but two of the regular musicians vowed to boycott the Brands.

Weeks of anxious waiting followed, with almost daily reports of disquieting news. And then one night my father came home and told my mother and me that one of his patients, a retired piano teacher named Trude Wanzel, had offered to make her home available for chamber music recitals. “Her house is nothing like Villa Brandt,” he said, “but it will do.” In the morning he rounded up his colleagues by phone and arranged an informal concert at Mrs. Wanzel’s  for the following week. “Mozart über alles,” he declared in a rare display of good humor.

Two or three days later Mrs.Wanzel appeared unexpectedly at our door, visibly beside herself. Her brother, she told my parents, had been arrested as a suspected Communist. “I have nothing against you or your Jewish friends,” she said fighting back tears, “but a large gathering in my home is certain to attract the Gestapo. I’m afraid I must— ”

“You needn’t berate yourself,” my father broke in. With a mixture of sorrow and resignation, he assured Mrs. Wanzel that she was right to renege on her offer.

“Even decent Germans are cringing with fear,” my father lamented  after seeing Mrs. Wanzel to the door. My mother pulled up a kitchen chair and clasped her hands as though in prayer. “God only knows what we would have done in her shoes,” she said.

During endless weeks of nervous apprehension before my parents and I set sail ahead of the coming inferno, it was thanks to the Brandts’ brave kitchen maid that Anneliese and I were able to exchange a few brief notes. “If Father ever finds out,” Anneliese wrote, “he would kill me.” In what would be her final message, she wrote that her father had dismissed her piano teacher for no other reason than that he was a Jew. “I feel so sorry for the poor man,” she added. “I’m sure he needs the money to feed his family.”

For some time after the war ended I considered trying to contact Anneliese, but I kept vacillating and finally gave up on the idea. Yet I still have  moments when I think how differently everything might have turned out.