Hot Off the Press!

A blog post by associate director Anita Kassof.

This past Monday, I traveled to Cheverly, Maryland with the Fleischmann family and Amy Freese, designer of Lights & Shadows, Arnold Fleischmann’s memoirs. Lights & Shadows, which I edited, is Arnold’s account of his family’s flight from Nazi Germany, his service with the U.S. Armed Forces, and his participation in the postwar transfer of power in Germany. The book is lavishly illustrated with historical photos and documents that trace Arnold’s journey.

Those photos and documents were one of the main reasons we traveled to Cheverly, home of Mosaic Press, which is printing the book. We wanted to make sure that as it came off the press, the photographs printed well, the colors were true, and the reproduction quality was consistent.

So, what does a press check consist of? Fortunately, Arnold’s son, Alan, snapped some photos of the process.

Arnold Fleischmann, the author, with Chief Quality Control Expert (his granddaughter, Natalia), waits in the “hospitality lounge” at Mosaic. He’s looking at PDFs of the book, which Mosaic had produced for Amy Freese and me to review before things went on press. A couple of weeks ago, she and I checked these proofs to make sure all the text and photos were in place, and the pages were in the right order.

Here’s Arnold with one of the first press sheets. (Though it came off the press first, these pages are actually in the middle of the book.) Groups of pages are printed more or less at random, cut down, and put in the right sequence. The press sheet is in a light box that enables you to see the colors as accurately as possible.

After approving the first press sheet (it looked great, though we did ask them to add a little more varnish to the photos to really make them “pop” off the pages), we toured the press room. With several huge machines running at once, the racket was quite something. Mosaic operates its presses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here’s a sheet about to come off the press.

The pressman checks a sheet at random as it comes off the press to make sure the colors have remained consistent.

I’m standing in back next to Arnold, and Alan is in front, next to the press. Dafna Tapiero, Alan’s wife, holds their daughter, Natalia. Amy Freese, the book’s designer, is on the right.

Dafna, Natalia, and Arnold with some “make ready” sheets. Make readies are the first sheets to come off the press on a given print run, and they’re generally discarded because sometimes the color isn’t consistent. I sure hope these folks recycle!

This is a cutting machine. Once all the big sheets come off the press, they are collated, cut, folded, and then sent to the bindery where they’re bound and finished. And then . . .

We celebrate! Please join us at the Museum on November 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. for a book signing event with Arnold Fleischmann and see for yourself what a beautiful book we’ve produced.

Light & Shadows: Excerpt IX

Arnold stays in Germany for two years after the war, working as an interpreter and serving as a deputy security officer with the U.S. forces in Berlin. He returns to Baltimore in June 1947.

Arnold married Laura Buxbaum on February 21, 1960.

When I returned to Baltimore from Berlin, I didn’t realize at first how profoundly my experiences overseas had changed me. But as I settled back into life in the U.S., my convictions began to take shape. I was aware of my own good fortune and grateful to have had the opportunity to fight for my adopted country. But I had seen enough by the age of twenty-one to be realistic about the world. Although the things I’d experienced didn’t make me pessimistic about human nature or doubtful about my own prospects,
they did make me intolerant of injustice.

My first priority after I got home was to enroll in college and start preparing for a career, so I set up an appointment with the dean of admissions at Johns Hopkins University, where I’d been placed on the waiting list. As I sat across from him at his large desk, I glanced at my folder, which was open in front of him. To my surprise, I saw the word
“Hebrew” boldly stamped on one of the pages. “Do you have a quota system for Jews?” I cried, jumping up from my chair. When my interviewer responded that, yes, Hopkins did limit the number of Jews it admitted, I felt a rage rising within me. I’d never felt a rage like that before, and I can’t say that I’ve ever felt it again. When I’d faced discrimination
and outright persecution in Nazi Germany, I was just a boy and I assumed I couldn’t do much about it. But I was in America now, the land of the free. I had fought for this country, and I deserved better.

Light & Shadows: Excerpt VII

After being wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, Arnold volunteers for transfer to SHAEF, the headquarters of the Allied forces created by the British and the Americans at the beginning of 1944 to plan and carry out the Allied invasion of Europe. After the invasion, its headquarters moved from London to Versailles, and later to Reims, where Arnold encounters General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Arnold poses in his Eisenhower jacket, Versailles. On his shoulder,
the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces insignia indicates his current service.
Below that is the stripe showing that he has been promoted to Private First Class.
On his left lapel is a “U.S.” button and below that, just above the pocket, is his Combat Infantry Badge.

The day after the surrender, I wanted to see the map room in the Little Red Schoolhouse, site of the historic signing. I guess I thought that I had an obligation to my future children and grandchildren to see the place where the Germans had surrendered. I knew the sergeant who was guarding the room, so I asked, “Do you think I could take a look?”
“I don’t think there’s anybody in there,” he answered, “Why don’t you just open the door and see?” When I did so, the first thing I saw was a cluster of five stars. Slowly, I raised my eyes and found myself looking right into General Eisenhower’s face. “What do you want, soldier?” he demanded, looking pretty surprised. He wasn’t angry, but I don’t think he appreciated the interruption. “I just wanted to take a look, sir,” I replied meekly. “Well, take a good look, soldier, and get out!” he said. I looked, and that was my rendezvous with destiny!

Light & Shadows: Excerpt VI

Chapter 6: When the United States enters the Second World War, Arnold volunteers for induction. After Basic Training, he is sent to Europe. He finds himself in the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of Bulge, one of the most notorious military encounters of the Second World War.

Arnold in Basic Training at Fort McClellan, Alabama.

By the time I finished Basic Training it was the end of November 1944. The American Army had already fought a lot of bloody battles and had suffered many casualties. Since replacement troops were desperately needed, the Army shipped us out as quickly as they could.

I was in Camp Blanding near Boston Harbor for only a day or two before boarding a Liberty Ship, one of the relatively inexpensive and quickly produced ships that the U.S. built to supplement its fleet during the Second World War. It felt as if there were thousands of men on our transport, and we were packed in like sardines. The troops slept near the bottom of the ship, in cots stacked five high and lined up row after row.

We sailed in convoy, and I know that one of the other ships, a destroyer, was hit by a German submarine. When we looked across the water we could see that it was smoking, and then it was no longer able to keep up. I do not know whether it sank or whether any men were lost; we never heard an announcement about what had happened. But we had seen enough to be frightened for our own safety.

Light & Shadows: Excerpt IV

Chapter 4: Arnold and his family (without his mother, Nelly, who died prematurely in 1939) emigrate to the United States, settling in Baltimore, where they begin their life anew.

The extended Fleischmann family in Baltimore, c. 1940.

Arnold is in the front row on the left, sitting on his father, Ludwig’s, lap.

On March 4, we spotted land. Soon the outline of the Statue of Liberty came into view, and the passengers crowded to the side of the ship for a better look. I did not know much about the Statue of Liberty at that point, but I did know that it was a symbol of American freedom and, despite my regret about all I had left behind and my apprehension about what lay ahead, I was eager to start over in a new country.

We headed to Baltimore, where our relatives lived. After only a few weeks, it was time for me to start school. I was enrolled in the eighth grade at PS 49/69, which was some distance down Park Avenue from our apartment. Although people were kind and patient, many things remained confusing to me. At one point, my new friends were having a conversation about dates, and I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I pulled out my English/German dictionary and looked up the word, but when I discovered that the translation of date was dattel—a small piece of fruit—I only became more puzzled. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why my friends were talking about fruit with such enthusiasm! A great many words and phrases didn’t make sense to me because they were American slang, and I could not find them in my dictionary.

Lights & Shadows: Excerpt III

Chapter 3: Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—was a coordinated attack on the German Jewish people and their property in November 1938.

Arnold’s German identification card, issued February 24, 1939.

Like other Jewish boys and men, the Nazis forced him to adopt the middle name “Israel.”

It was the Wednesday night before my bar mitzvah. Heinz and I wanted to be rested for school the next day, so we had gone to sleep early. The Blums lived in a third floor apartment, and Heinz and I shared the bedroom right near the front hallway. Suddenly, we were awakened by a loud pounding on the great, lead-framed glass front door. Before anyone could answer it, the door was smashed down and we heard the sound of shattering glass raining down onto the hallway floor. The force of the blow was so great that shards flew into our room.

All at once, the bedroom was flooded with light. I opened my eyes a crack and saw what appeared to be three giants in brown shirts, black pants, and leather boots standing over me. These giants—for that’s what the Nazi Storm Troopers looked like to a boy of barely thirteen—wielded long daggers. They hardly needed the weapons to intimidate me. I was already paralyzed with fear. Instinctively, both Heinz and I lay stock still and cowered in the corners of our beds, pretending to be asleep.

To our immense relief, the men turned around and left. But within seconds we heard a thundering crash. At that time, German kitchens had cupboards instead of built-in cabinets. The men had gone into the kitchen and overturned the Blums’ china cupboard so that all the dishes smashed to the floor. They did the same thing in the dining room.

The other men continued systematically to destroy the apartment. My curiosity overcame my terror, and Heinz and I got up and crept tentatively out of our room. In horrified silence, we watched as the intruders pulled from the shelves megillot, antique Hebrew manuscripts, and precious scrolls—all part of Herr Blum’s painstakingly maintained library. Then, they rolled back the carpet to clear a space on the living room floor, piled up the books like kindling, and set them aflame. Until my dying day, I will remember the smell of burning parchment, leather, and paper, as the holy books blazed in the middle of the Blums’ living room floor.

Lights & Shadows: Excerpt II

Chapter 2: The Nazis ascend to power and begin
to persecute and discriminate against Germany’s Jews.

Arnold Fleischmann with his mother, Nelly.

My mother’s bridge club was made up primarily of the non-Jewish women with whom she had gone to school. Most were the wives and daughters of German military officers who were stationed near Bayreuth. Mutti had known some of these women for her entire life, and she enjoyed their company. The women got together twice a week, frequently at our house—where I enjoyed snitching chocolates as they played cards.

It must have been 1933, around the time the Nazis rose to power, when some of the women came to my mother and said, “Mein Mann, mein Vater, mein Bruder, sie haben Bedenken.” (My husband, my father, my brother, they have concerns.)

“What are their concerns?” my mother asked.

“They say we should not associate with Jews,” my mother’s friends told her. “I’m afraid we cannot have you as part of our bridge club any longer.” The ladies were tearful and expressed regret, but like many German women at the time, they were subservient to their husbands. Almost overnight, my mother’s friends seemed to disappear.

New Book from the JMM: Lights & Shadows

Arnold Fleischmann was a schoolboy in Bayreuth, Germany, when Hitler came to power in 1933. For nearly seven years, his family endured the cruelties of Nazism before fleeing to the United States and resettling in Baltimore. At eighteen, Arnold returned to Europe with the U.S. Army, determined to help defeat the regime that had destroyed life for Jewish families like his own. He saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge and served as an interpreter and deputy security officer with the U.S. occupation forces in Berlin, positions that allowed him to witness and actively participate in the wartime and postwar transition of power.

Arnold’s story is one of loss, but it is also one of redemption and renewal. It is a poignant account of a child’s confusion over seeing his world fall apart, a young refugee’s desire to settle the score with a homeland that cast him out, and a patriot’s service to his adopted country.

But most of all it is a story of family. Arnold can trace his family tree back centuries in Germany. The strength and tenacity of this extended family enabled many of its members to survive the Nazi onslaught, organize their flight to the U.S., and succeed in the painstaking ordeal of rebuilding their lives. Since transplanting itself to these shores, the family has continued to grow, setting down roots that promise to run as deep as they once did in Bavaria.

Lights & Shadows is an intergenerational collaboration between Arnold and his younger son, Alan. It is inspired by Arnold’s remarkable experiences and nurtured by Alan’s dedication to preserving and telling the family’s story.

Arnold Fleischmann was born in Bayreuth, Germany in 1925 and settled with his family in Baltimore in 1940. He was married to Laura Buxbaum from 1960 until her untimely death in 1988. They raised three children: Steven, Nicole (Niki), and Alan. For many years, Arnold ran a thriving law practice. Now retired, he lives in Baltimore County, Maryland. He travels frequently and enjoys spending time with his children, his and five grandchildren, and his longtime loving companion, Rosalie Rosenzwog.

Excerpt from chapter 1: Arnold returns to his childhood home in Bayreuth. His family fled the Nazis in 1940 and as soon as he was old enough to enlist, Arnold enlisted in the US Army and went back to Europe as a GI.

Arnold Fleischmann in the garden at Badstrasse

I was not quite twenty on that summer day in 1945 when I stood in front of Badstrasse 30 in Bayreuth, the house where I was born. I remembered mychildhood there, hours spent sliding down piles of hay in the barn, playing with my toy steam locomotives, conducting amateur chemistry experiments that once almost cost me my eyebrows. I pictured the changes that had taken place—in myself and in the world—since my family had left the house and fled Germany five years earlier, and thought about how it felt to leave my homeland and return as an American GI.

My reverie was interrupted when an old woman with a gravelly voice touched my shoulder. “Bist du nicht Fleischmanns Arno?” she said to me. I was dumbfounded. There I stood, an American in an Army uniform with a .45 caliber pistol strapped to my side. How could I possibly be recognizable as the young boy who used to chase chickens in the yard? But the scratchy-voiced woman had known me since my birth. Frau Strössner had apparently weathered the Second World War in our house.

Keep your eyes on the blog for more excerpts from this great publication!