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Sula
Hansley in her home, one of the first to
be built on the south shore of Holt
Lake.
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I was born in 1930 in Berlin, Germany. I am 90
years old. My father was Jewish and my mother was
Protestant. I had one sister and one brother.
When I was five years old in 1935, the Nuremberg
Laws came out. Adolf Hitler had proposed the laws
and the German Parliament, made up mostly of Nazi
party members, passed them in 1935. These laws
excluded people of Jewish descent from Reich
citizenship. My German citizenship was revoked
because of the Nuremberg Laws. The laws prohibited
Jews or those of Jewish descent from marrying or
having sexual relations with persons of "German or
related blood." Parts of this law also deprived
Jews of most political rights. These laws provided
a way for the Nazis to systematically persecute
the Jews in Germany.
In 1935, things in Berlin were getting bad for me
and my family.
My grandfather, who I loved very much,
passed away. Being Jewish, my father saw that the
Nuremberg Laws would be bad for him so he left
Germany and moved to Bahia, Brazil. My mother, my
brother, my sister, and I stayed in Berlin. We
never saw or heard from my father again until
1950.
One of the scariest nights of my life occurred on
November 9 and 10, 1938. It was called the
Kristallnacht. This is German for "Crystal Night"
or "Night of the Broken Glass." This was a
"pogrom" in Germany --- defined as an organized
massacre of a particular ethnic group. This pogrom
was a response to the shooting in Paris of a
German diplomat by a Polish-Jewish student. Adolf
Hitler and his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph
Goebbels, urged the storm troopers and people to
engage in violent reprisals against Jewish-owned
businesses.
That night the city was burning. The windows of
Jewish-owned shops had derogatory remarks written
on them. I saw many plate-glass store fronts
smashed and all kinds of clothing thrown out in
the street. I remember the shop across from our
apartment building had very expensive handbags.
They were thrown out in the street in piles and
set on fire. I was eight years old and was getting
ready to go to school. I walked out of the
apartment building and saw the burning piles. I
was terrified. I ran back to our apartment and
cried to my mother. She said: "Just walk to
school. Don’t
look left or right. Make like nothing happened."
That’s what I did.
In 1943, the government ordered that our school
class of thirty be sent to Czechoslovakia. As a
13-year-old I was frightened and I cried when they
put me on the
train. I said to my mother: "Please keep me here!"
She said, "I do not have a ration card for you so
you must go." In 1944, the school sent our class
back to Berlin. They said that the Russians were
invading Czechoslovakia and we needed to go back
to Berlin.
My brother was born in 1925 and at age 16 the
Nazis put him in a retention center. His name is
Alexander. They let him out for a short time and
then came to get him shortly after that. They
seized him and said "we are going to put you in a
concentration camp; do you want to go willingly or
should we put you in chains?" He was
put in a concentration camp. The camp was
surrounded by electric fences. My
brother was trained as an electrician and was very
knowledgeable about electricity. He and two others
were able to disable the electric fences and break
out of the camp. The three of them hopped on a
train and came to Berlin where they hid for weeks
in the bombed-out rubble that was all around
Berlin. About 75% of Berlin was reduced to rubble.
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I painted a picture of the rubble (right).
One day a friend of ours took a picture of Alex
sitting on the rubble of a destroyed building next
door to our apartment (below).
During the war, there was bombing almost every
night. We would hide in the cellar of the
apartment house during the bombing. We spent most
of the nights in the cellar. The apartment house
was huge and the cellar had several rooms. Rooms
were separated by steel doors like you see on
ships. Residents had designated places for
themselves and their families in the cellar. To
this day, I am claustrophobic because of the tight
quarters in the cellar.
When the bombing started, there would be sirens
sounding all over the city. I remember one time I
was coming out of school and the sirens started. I
knew I did not have much time so I went to a
strange shelter. It was very frightening. If the
sirens went off after 12 o’clock at night, we
would not have any school the next day. If the
alarm came before 12:00 midnight, we would have
school the next day. My brother could imitate the
sirens because they went off so much. Because of
the almost nightly bombing, school was hardly ever
in session. I went to school until I was 14....
In 1937, there was a big event. Hitler was coming
into Berlin by airplane. Nazi authorities arranged
for school children to clap and cheer as he was
getting off the airplane. They had picked my
brother’s class to welcome Hitler. My brother was
12 years old and short so he stood near the front
of the group. He had blonde hair and blue eyes
even though he was half-Jewish. Hitler stopped and
looked at my brother. Hitler squeezed his cheek
and shouted to the crowd: "A real German boy!" The
people cheered. When my brother came home and told
us the story, we just laughed because this was
like a joke on Hitler.
World War II was over when I was 15 in 1945 and we
learned to survive in the rubble that was left in
Berlin. One day in 1948, when I was 18, I was
visiting with my aunt and uncle in Berlin. In the
postwar time period, the allies had divided Berlin
into four sectors: American, Russian, English, and
French. Americans could go into any sector.
Germans could go into any sector except the one
controlled by the Russians.
It was a nice summer day so I went for a walk with
my aunt and uncle.
There was a bombed-out opera house with a
restaurant in the basement. At around three
o’clock in the afternoon, an American soldier
walked out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk and
spoke in German to the three of us. In very broken
German, he invited us to join him for a beer. I did
not know it then, but this American soldier was my
future husband, Jerry Hansley.
At that time, I excused myself and my aunt and
uncle went into the restaurant with Jerry. While
they were with Jerry in the bar, they must have
given him my home address. He showed up about a
week later at the apartment where I lived with my
brother, mother, and sister. I was not there
because I was visiting again with my aunt and
uncle. When I got back the next day, my brother
said that an American soldier was looking for
me....
My marriage to Jerry
was complicated because he was an American and I
was a German. Before we could get married the
United States Government had to investigate me.
They sent an investigator to our apartment house
to ask the neighbors about my reputation. We got married
in 1950 in Berlin. I was 20 and Jerry was 24.
Germany had a rule that if a German married an
American, the German had to leave the country
within three months. Our first child,
Jerry Hansley Jr., was born in 1950. Jerry, our
baby son, and I moved to New Jersey where he was
assigned by the Army. Jerry
was transferred to Blacksburg, Virginia where he
taught ROTC at VPI (Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, which is now Virginia Tech). My brother
left Germany in 1954 and came to Blacksburg. His
fiancé came one year later. My brother opened a TV
repair shop and did very well. He lived there the
rest of his life. He
went to visit our mother in Berlin when he was 72
and died of a stroke while he was there. It was
very sad.
Our daughter, Denise, was born in 1954. The next
year Jerry was transferred by the Army to Japan.
In order to go with him to Tokyo, I had to be an
American citizen. I applied for citizenship in
1955 and became an American citizen that year. We
stayed one year in Japan and returned to the
United States in 1956. Jerry had an assignment in
New Jersey. We then were assigned to Louisville,
Kentucky.
After the Louisville assignment, the Army
transferred Jerry to Fort Hood, Texas. From Fort
Hood, we went to Colorado Springs. In one year,
the Army said to Jerry: "You can choose to be
assigned to Panama or go to Potiers, France."
Jerry chose France because he knew that I could
visit my family in Germany. That was in 1961 and
it would have been the first time I had seen my
family in 11 years.
I gave birth to my son, James, in France.
We stayed in France for three years. In 1964, we
moved to Virginia Beach. Jerry was stationed at
Fort Monroe near Hampton, Virginia....
Jerry was a very smart and decorated military man.
There were times when he would go from Fort Monroe
to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. to give input
on different military issues. In 1967, after
three years in Virginia, the Army told Jerry that
he had two choices: go to Vietnam or retire from
the Army. He chose to retire.
It is interesting to note that in those days, the
Army would not transport us by airplane. We only
traveled by ship across the ocean. I traveled by
ship across the Atlantic three times and across
the Pacific twice.
From 1967 to 1973, we lived in a beautiful home in
Virginia Beach. Although he was only in his early
40s, Jerry
enjoyed his military retirement and played golf
most of the time. In 1973, we moved to Holt Lake.
We bought this house, which is on the south side
of Holt Lake, from the Bumgardner family. Mr.
Bumgardner was an engineer at Sylvania in
Smithfield.
The house was built in 1956 by Dr. Butner. It was
the only house on the south side of Holt Lake. It has a full
basement equipped with a bomb shelter that has a
steel door at its entrance. Dr. Alderman’s house
also has a bomb shelter. Our neighbors were Dr.
and Mrs. Upchurch, the Johnsons, and the
Aldermans.... Douglas Johnson was an American
soldier who was captured by the Germans in World
War II. He was prisoner of war in Germany for
several years.
The Shepherds lived in the house at the end
of this road. Mr. Shepherd was a colonel in the
Army and fought in Germany.
It has been so
beautiful to live on Holt Lake. In the 1970s the
road in front of our house was dirt and was a real
mess in the summertime.
2019 was not a good year for me. My son, Jerry
Jr., died in January and my husband, Jerry, died
in June.
I have really enjoyed my life in the United States
of America. I have always felt safe. My husband
was a great provider so we always had plenty of
food. We have always lived in a nice house. We
were never hungry.
Previous
installments in this series may be viewed with
these links:
2-28-19 / 3-28-19 / 4-25-19 / 7-11-19 / 8-8-19 / 9-12-19>
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