uables they had and went out to the country, where they would buy ham, eggs, spinach. IB: Your wife was working in the cabaret then, so they must have continued .. . BL: The arts were booming. The impulse to create is greater in people in times of danger. If you are threatened, you are extremely excited; your normal life is threatened and this impulse is the mother of art. If it is a normal time and you can buy anything you want at a grocery store, then there is nothing to excite you. You don’t have any impulse to create; you are sitting there eating what you bought. But if you have to fight for it, you are careful, and if you are careful you have to be excited. IB: Now you said before that in 1937-38 there was a lot of artistic activity going on around Berlin. BL: You know where I was living, near the Kurfursten Damm where all the activities were, it was a sort of enclave. They even permitted one coffee house. Here the Jews could come in and have their coffee. The only place where there was no sign “No Jews Permitted.” It was a very nice coffee house. I went there every day to have my coffee. In the enclave if they wanted to change, they would have to change every shop, every theater, every cabaret. IB: They would lose their business. Lisbeth Loewenberg: But they did it anyway. BL: Till a certain point, then came the time when you could not see a Jew on the streets. They just took them off the streets to the concentration camps. Then was the “Crystal Night,” because a simple-minded Jew in Paris went to the embassy and shot the German consul. Now can you imagine what that meant for the living Jews, that one Jew kills a German Nazi consul. This was the reason for the famous “Crystal Night” when they took everybody Jewish. Every shop was smashed to pieces. IB: In Berlin? BL: In Berlin and all over, in every city. Still, as you know, the Jews were not brought in silence. They are not silent. They made their jokes. They had nothing more to live by. They had their forced labor, digging or whatever, trying to live on these government stamps. At the end of the week, you received maybe 75 cents a day to live, but as the Jews say .. . LL: You get used to your worries and learn to live with them. IB: This is a general question: The Jewish people, do you see them as more speculative people or are they more realistic? BL: They are both. IB: How about in terms of being dreamers, dreaming of something? BL: I think they have every trait. IB: They are not particularly pessimistic or optimistic? So even during the Berlin time or the time in the camp you found the same thing, some were pessimistic and some were optimistic. There wasn’t a sort of general flow? BL: Well, I would say fortunately, in every moment in our life something takes over and helps you to continue your life and you have the greatest pleasure out of life. If you come into a concentration camp or prison your mind changes right away; you are no longer the old person. Where do I sleep? Where do I get my food? These questions become so majestic and go over you so that all the other metaphysical questions disappear. You don’t ask would I live this life over again; there is no such question. The question is, where am I sleeping? What do I have to cover me? What soup will I eat? And then you go to work and there is no other question. There were a few philosophers in the camp, known philosophers, who managed to raise such a question. We dared and we had the strength to think about metaphysics. One of my friends was named Heinemann. He was a very famous politician. He was in the German Landstag [Senate], They caught him and he was there in the concentration camp. And we always managed to come together for work, to get the same handle on the same box of sand to carry up and down. And we talked sometimes, somehow metaphysical talks. But most of the time you have no other idea than to stay alive. IB: When you raised those metaphysical questions, what did you come up with? Blame for the German people? Did you question why this was happening? What things did you deal with? BL: Very difficult to answer such a question. If you are 13 months in a concentration camp, you have how If you come into a concentration camp or prison your mind changes right away; you are no longer the old person. Where do I sleep? Where do I get my food? These questions become so majestic ... all the other metaphysical questions disappear. It is still my habit here in San Francisco. When we go to the restaurant I order a bowl of soup, wonderful clam chowder. Who thought clam chowder in the camps? Nobody. Now all this makes you strong. many days? Almost 400 days to come up with metaphysical questions. Questions which have nothing to do with your naked life, these I call metaphysical. IB: This fellow the politician, as someone in the German political structure, did he offer any reasoning or philosophy behind what was happening? BL: No, we talked about living writers, poets and so forth. He knew under no circumstances would he come out of the camps alive. Because they swore he would die in the camp. There was a whole company of Viennese artists, actors, in the same part I was living. All the famous actors from Vienna were sitting there darning socks. One day I got horrible pain like sciatica, so they sent me to a place where I could sit. This was not great. They only sent me there because if I could not do anything worthwhile for the camp, at least I could darn socks. There we were all sitting, all the Viennese artists. Mr. Grunbaum and Farkas Beda Loehner and Leopolli ... cabaret people, all very sad, nobody was laughing. There was a sign there which you found near the door: “Only birds are singing.” IB: Who put that there? BL: The Authorities — Hitler. IB: Because they knew there were artists there? BL: So that nobody had the idea to sing. Could be that someone starts to sing, ah, ah, no such thing — only birds are singing. Ha ha, I must laugh if I think about it. But I am sitting here telling you about the camp. I should smash the [tape] machine. I didn’t have the idea to tell you about the camp. It was forbidden to me. They swore if I ever told anything about the camp that they would send an undersea boat to catch me on the high seas. They would get me anywhere; I was not supposed to speak about it.... This they told me as I was leaving. IB: So there was absolutely no artistic expression amongst these cabaret people? Did they ever sing, was there any small theater? Any form? BL: No songs, we had no songs. The birds never sang. We had an orchestra, a band. There were professional musicians among the thousands of prisoners, and they formed the band. And every afternoon they played when you came back from work; we came through the big gate to our various barracks where we lived, but before we went to our barracks, the whole camp had to be standing on the parade place to make roll call, every afternoon about 5 o’clock. There was music. On this side there were whipping posts. If you were marked for punishment, you were strapped in on a wooden horse on one side and there would stand an S.S. man with a big whip, and on the other an S.S. man would count one . .. two ... till 25. It happened every day, and during the punishment of the poor fellow, who was very badly hurt, we saw their bottoms all cut, and during their punishment the damn orchestra played the famous band song, popa ... pie ... da ... die. There we had song, we were not only suffering, ha ha. IB: I was thinking, was there nothing amongst the people privately? BL: No, there was no private connection, not even in discussion, not a talk. Silently we were sitting there, not talking. IB: There were no services? BL: No! How could you? You think this is a company, over which is spread a dark cover, a dark thin blanket of dark material, over your head, over your body, and there you will live all day and all night! Only sadness. IB: So that dark blanket extinguished all expression of art? BL: All expression. Terrible. IB: I was wondering if there was any artistic reflection of that experience? BL: My face here [referring to the painting “Ecce Homo”] is from the life in the camp. It makes you bloated. You see every body was blistered off, everybody had sick faces. And the clothes you had ... you could not recognize a person who comes out of the camp. I never met a person who was in the camp. I don’t know who was ever in the camp, because we were all naked. Maybe it’s illusion. Maybe I dreamt it — nobody saw me there. Did you see me there? No. My wife didn’t see me. It’s all an illusion. Hitler is an illusion. IB: Some people are trying to say that now. There are historical groups trying to establish that fact. But in a U.S. court of law it was ruled that it is not an illusion. There really were camps. An historically established fact. BL: And you should think that a story like Hitler’s would be an atom bomb and change the whole of mankind, somehow opposite the Jews. No, not at all; it didn’t take away from anti-semitism .. . not a bit. You think we left anti-semitism? I have nothing to represent of my family, no one. All my aunts, all my uncles, all my nephews, all my nieces, all my cousins there were all killed, all of them. My sister and her little boy, they were all killed in concentration camps. I have nothing to represent my family. IB: But your sister was the one who got the ticket for you to get out? BL: She got a ticket for me, and then she was taken to the concentration camp. IB: Why didn't she get out too? BL: I don’t know; that is another question. Why didn’t I get out before? I was warned, I was repeatedly warned, by well-meaning persons, and I didn’t get out. One day I was sitting in the coffee shop, having coffee, and this fellow sitting next to me turns and says, “Listen, you should not even go home to get your things; you should just leave as fast as possible.” I looked at him as if he were crazy. “Why?” I asked him. “Because we are planning to do terrible things.” “How can you do these things?” I asked, and he replied only, “We are developing ways.” But you can’t go out, if you live in a city that is your home. Better not to mention these things. IB: You don’t think it is important for the young people of today to know these things? BL: What good is it? IB: Maybe the whole world can learn from the mistakes. We as human beings ... BL: Try ... try, you are young enough. IB: So you didn’t follow politics much in those days? BL: Unfortunately, I am completely un-political, apolitical entirely. IB: Is this from your own nature or a philosophy? BL: No, my nature. To live in peace, it is an illusion. I have the illusion I live in peace. I don’t want any arguments. I don’t want to know another man is a Christian. I am invited tomorrow afternoon at six o’clock by a very nice fellow; he is from Lebanon. He was at his window today and he calls over, we always greet, and asks if I can come over tomorrow for a glass of wine. Ho ho ho, with the greatest of pleasure, for a glass of wine I will come over at six o’clock. I don’t want to know if he is Lebanese, if he is anti-Jew or what. Leave me alone. We are human beings; let me have my glass of wine .. . that is all I want. I think a person who loses the basic naivete and spontaneity can hardly be called young. To be creative he needs these two basic qualities, 8 Clinton St. Quarterly
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