On Catchers and Clerks

Stella Goldschlag was a German Jew from the Berlin provinces who worked with the Gestapo during World War II, identifying Jews stuck in Berlin who were masquerading as Aryans. Those German Jews who performed this betrayal service for the Nazis were called “catchers.” There were many in her profession, more than one would like to think, their Aryan good looks protecting them.

They could pass, at least for a while, unless a catcher turned them in.

The Jews in hiding — also protected by a non-Jewish mien — were referred to as U-boats, after German submarines, taking refuge underwater, false identities, so to speak, coming up for air in busy public avenues that they thought were the safest.

With Stella’s Nazi collaboration, the U-boats’ cloak of concealment became a shroud for those German Jews she unmasked.

She was a great-looking Aryan-type German Jew who, to be fair, had suffered an arrest, torture, and imprisonment by the Gestapo. Then a release, because her captors understood the potential Stella had in their racial cleansing of Germany.

Raised in 1930s Nazi Germany, growing up with Hitler, Stella Goldschlag attended a special school, the Goldschmidt School, for Jewish children founded after the Nazis removed all non-Aryan, that is, Jewish, children from public schools.

Her family did not get away while getting away was possible, while one could go to Hamburg, take a boat to Shanghai, where no visa was required and important Jews were looked on as Europeans, as opposed to their non-Aryan brand in Europe. Her father had failed to swiftly ask his St. Louis relatives for an affidavit of support then needed for Jews to emigrate to America, to the United States, to be more precise. Basically, the U.S. was not too sympathetic to migrants.

First, to save her family on a promise from the Gestapo that, with her complicity in disclosing Jews in disguise, they would not be deported to the death camps, Stella betrayed other Berlin Jews, the U-boats who were living in public as Aryans. When the Nazis reneged on the deal and shipped her family off with the others, however, Stella continued her work for them, to save herself. She would eventually become known as the “blond poison.”

The adage “one becomes what one does” applies to this Jewish woman whose self-serving tip-offs aided the Nazis in their Jew-hunts. Stella Goldschlag was responsible for the capture and subsequent deaths of hundreds. And she continued to help the Nazis long after her family was deported.

She would sit in an outdoor cafe on the main drag, and when she recognized a Jew she would high-sign the Gestapo agents who were there as well. They would efficiently leap — no, trip over each other — to action, to pull in the prey. She stalked and hunted down German Jews — U-boats — for the Gestapo, as well.

What is one willing to do to survive? We cannot know about ourselves in similar circumstances. But clearly, to this writer, the first step is the critical one. That is, the first step can embody all the others. The logical extension of an act flows from that first decision.

In the two major Western religions, Christianity and Judaism, the first believes in mercy, forgiveness, and love, while the second subscribes to justice, that is to say, acts have consequences for which we are responsible.

In Western philosophy, Kant writes that humans are responsible only for the intent of an act or decision, because consequences are out of one’s control. For the ancient Greeks, however, like Aristotle, referred to as the Philosopher by early Christian theologians, remorse is not a virtue. Sorry just won’t hack it.

Would any of us be Stellas, be catchers in Nazi Germany to save our family’s life? To save our own? Remember, the first decision is the trap.

So, more about Stella and the catcher crews some other time. She had three trials after the war, and her one daughter moved to Israel and would have nothing to do with her.

But now we look today at the Kentucky clerk jailed for not issuing a marriage license to a gay couple. She was put in jail, pleading that a higher morality she held to would be transgressed if she did her job, that is, if she followed the law of the land, in this case.

Now let’s go to the post-World War II Nuremburg trials. Nazi judges were tried and convicted for crimes against humanity because they did follow the laws of the land at that time, Hitler-time.

Oops! Are we hypocrites? Is an act a crime if and only if we don’t sympathize with the cause for which it was done? Hmm. And what kind of decisions would you entertain in order to survive?

Survival, betrayal, immigration, marriage licenses . . . if you live long enough there’s too much to think about! Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it?

Lona Rubenstein moved to East Hampton more than 50 years ago. Her books include “Itzig,” a novel set in Germany from 1900 to 1935.