Adolf Loeb Lustig, the stern disciplinarian and crusader for financial repatriation for victims of Nazi Germany, passed away suddenly from a heart attack in 1962. 

Lewis and Eve named their next-born child, Anne, after him.

During 1937, Adolf was incarcerated in Dachau for three months. The attachments to this timeline entry are documents from various archives. Here are Adolf's own memoirs, dating back to Melbourne, Australia, 1944, as given in a talk to a literary audience
on his experiences in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. (Down the bottom of this page are observations from Naomi KingSmith's visit to Germany in 2016.)
 
Ladies & gentlemen, I was invited to give a talk on my experiences in Nazi Germany. In having accepted the offer, I feel it necessary to apologize for that. I am speaking to an audience that is used to hearing literary topics. The cruelties of the Nazis have been told by men more capable than myself.

Having arrived here in Australia at an advanced age it was not possible for me to acquire a full knowledge of the English style and pronunciation. I am going to give you a report about my personal experiences, not because they are especially interesting, and not because I was of any prominence, but only because they are really typical and because you can expect to hear things from me that have really happened to me from the time that I became a barrister and solicitor in Munich, Germany.
I was asked years ago to speak on a similar topic and refused it I was then still a German subject, I had relatives and considerable capital over there, and I was afraid of the consequences. I have heard people say that it was bad-mannered, or even a sign of a bad character to tell negative things about one's former fatherland.

But I do not speak about Germany. I speak about the Nazis, and, what is more important, the Nazis deprived me of my German citizenship. Just last week, I took the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown, being now a newly created British subject in the Commonwealth of Australia.

I know when the Nazi movement was founded and developed. It was at a public meeting at election time in 1920 after WWI when I saw Hitler rise and speak during the discussion. He was then a completely unknown man, the leader of a new Party, with a membership of 7 people. Born in Austria, he came to Munich before WWI as a house-painter. He volunteered for the German army, and advanced during WWI to the rank of Lance Corporal, employed mostly as a messenger on the staff of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment, in which, incidentally, a brother of mine had fought in the frontline for eighteen months without ever having met, heard or known anything of Hitler.

You know of course that the defeated Germany was treated very harshly through the Versailles Treaty by the British and its Allies towards the Weimar Republic. You also know that Germany went through an inflation where practically all savings were lost, and later, through the World Depression, when the numbers of the unemployed reached the enormous figure of six million men. Reactionary people joined those suffering economically and became members of the National Socialist Workers Party, subsequently called the Nazi Party. Speaking to people who are versed in literature, I recommend reading the book "The Success" by Leon Feuchtwanger, whose family in Munich I had personally known very well. It is a most interesting book, written about three years before Hitler came to power, a work of fiction which does not actually mention Hitler or the Nazi Party, though everybody understood who the characters referred to.

By 1923, the German Republic was in such disarray, that an uprising took place by a few hundred thousand hungry, unemployed, and disenfranchised men from all over Germany. In Munich, where I lived, the insurrection was crushed within twelve hours by the Bavarian Government with the ready assistance of the military forces. Time was not ripe yet The Allies of the last war still occupied the Rhineland. The shots fired on the 9th of November which I heard while I was having lunch, killed about a dozen Nazis and wounded many others, Hitler and Goering escaping unscathed. They were later arrested and tried for high treason. As a barrister, I was allowed to be present at the trial for a few hours, though entrance cards to the Court House were hard to get. Sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, those who took part were unfortunately granted amnesty and were released after a short time in prison. The man who ordered the release was later in the 1934 purge made Minister of Justice of Germany.

Hitler started his Movement again as soon as he was released, and was appointed Reichs Chancellor by the then senile President Hindenburg on January 30th, 1933. While Hitler was in the Landsberg, Munich prison, he wrote his famous book "Mein Kampf” (My Struggle). There is no doubt that he was assisted in writing his book by fellow inmates in the prison, especially by the well-known Rudolf Hess, the latter a disciple of Professor Haushofer, the exponent of the idea of Lebensraum, "Living Space" for the German Master Race, and the "Drive to the East". I and many others did not believe that this scheme could be put into reality. His most important aim which he wanted to achieve was to tear to pieces the Versailles Treaty, to smash the British Empire, and to extinguish the Jewish population of Europe, to destroy Bolshevism in Russia, and to make the Nazis overlords of Europe and finally, the world. I was in good company in thinking he could not succeed, be it in Germany or abroad. I made the same mistake as the Allies who did not stop Hitler in time, for instance when he occupied the demilitarised Rhineland with military forces in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles. Responsible opinion in Germany who were not Nazis thought in 1933 that Hitler had no chance to achieve his aims and that his cause would be hopelessly lost.

These were not ordinary times. In ordinary times Hitler and his followers would have been tried as criminals, they would not have been able to reign with terror and establish concentration camps if they would not have been able to establish a secret state police called with the abbreviation "Gestapo", and if they would not have made up their mind to never surrender the power that they had obtained through Hitler being appointed as ReichsChancellor. They used force with the voluntary assistance of the military. The Nazis started immediately to arrest, to kill, and to imprison into concentration camps everyone from whom any opposition could be expected. Thousands of officials were removed from their positions and replaced by Nazis. Only a few politicians of former prominence escaped, then mostly living in England, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States. As a Jew, I had to expect the consequences of Hitler's antisemitic purge. There was a wave of antisemitism in Germany, people who were prejudiced against Jews as there were in no other countries. Antisemitism began in Germany in the 1880s, but was, in my opinion, practised by a tiny minority of not more than 3% of the population before the time when Hitler came to power. The Nazis, many of them not anti-semites at the outset, never got a majority at the elections, not even when Hitler was in power, as long as you could speak of regular elections.

Jews had settled in what is now Germany as far back as Roman times. I personally was born in a small village in Franconia where both of my parents were born and where my ancestors had lived peacefully in full harmony with the population for centuries.

Three months after Hitler came to power he published a law that Jewish lawyers not yet 50 years of age must be struck from the register of lawyers. I suffered this fate with about 40 other fellow barristers in Munich alone, and with thousands of others in all of Germany. The same thing happened sooner or later to all Jews from all walks of life Those who suffered at the beginning were, in the long run, the more fortunate, as those without a job and no other means of earning a living were compelled to leave and emigrate early. Those leaving in the early 1930s and emigrating then, were in a more fortunate position than those who wanted to leave later because they were able to transfer some of their savings elsewhere compared to those who left in the latter part of the 1930s who were forbidden to take out their substance and possessions.
It will interest you to know that the population at large was, for the most part, not antisemitic and that Hitler's antisemitism did not spread rapidly during the 1930s. Even with many Jewish businesses intimidated, lawyers, doctors, and other professional men who remained in Germany had the unshaken belief that Nazism was a passing phase. Even with S.S. guards standing outside the doors of Jewish businesses to dissuade the customers from entering a Jewishly owned business, and denouncing the customers who ignored them in the press were of no avail. Even the notorious Nuremberg Laws which intended to make life for a Jew intolerable, could not influence great numbers to leave the country until it was too late.

I belonged to the great majority who had to turn to other experiences when I lost my legal practice in 1933. I did not think it necessary to leave because I had sufficient means and was able to live comfortably from the income of my savings. I believed that the political thunderstorm would pass. While I was recuperating from serious surgery in April of 1933, I was assaulted by two Nazis at my place of residence, stormtroopers in Nazi uniform, against one of whom I had won a lawsuit. We were unable to inform or call the police for fear of reprisal. We already had some experience in matters such as this. A friend of mine, a well-known lawyer had done so a few weeks earlier. He was nearly beaten to death at police headquarters, led through the streets of Munich barefooted, with the sleeves and trousers cut and a mob behind him. A snapshot was secretly taken, brought to England, and published in the London Times in Aril 1933. But Great Britain still believed in appeasement five years later when Chamberlain was in power.

During 1938, Hitler confiscated all the homes, property, and other assets owned by the Jews of Germany. Hitler made an agreement with the Pope regarding the persecution of believers but did not keep to his promised agreement. The attitude of the Nazis can be read in Rosenberg's book "The Myths of the Twentieth Century", a validation of the spiritual and intellectual conflicts of our time. Alfred Rosenberg, born in the USSR, one of the Baltic States, was one of Hitler's educators in the early Munich days and retained influence over Hitler ever since. He is still the educator for the intellectual training of the Nazi Party. His book was the next bestseller to the book "Mein Kampf'. It is directed primarily against the Roman and Evangelical faiths. Its various aspects may be studied in many pamphlets published in Great Britain. It preached that the Old Testament must be done away with and all its superstitions. They, and those who were known to have Socialist or Communist leanings, were sent to prison or a concentration camp. Many of them were not released even after ten years' incarceration if they survived the treatment meted out to them.

The same thing happened to those who had advocated peaceful relations with their German neighbors. The press, the schools, and universities, all clubs and sports associations and its members were politically coordinated and governed by the Nazis. If its members refused, the association or organization was either dissolved, and those obstinate enough to refuse, were sent off to a concentration camp. The democratic constitution of the Weimar Republic was abrogated, and there was no freedom of speech, assembly and of the press. Writers who wrote against the Nazi Party were imprisoned. One hundred thousand books written by Jewish authors and others not in favor of the Nazi regime were publicly burned. The youth, from an early age, was regimented and estranged from their families and educated in Nazi style. Thousands of officials known not to be Nazis were dismissed, especially those in the higher echelons, and were replaced by the Nazis without any regard to their effectiveness in the positions which they now held. It was compulsory to join the Nazi Party unless one was willing to risk the loss of one's position, one's property, and one's life, or risk being incarcerated in a concentration camp.

My family and I lived comparatively quietly from 1933 until 1937, in the vain hope that the Nazi tyranny might end one day. My eldest brother, the proprietor of a large clothing factory with 800 employees, had left with his wife and children for Palestine in 1933, as did my sister and her family. They urged me to likewise, but I did not follow their advice, although, at that early time, I could have brought out my not inconsiderable means.

I met my fate in 1937. Having been honorary secretary of a Lodge (B'nai B'rith), an organization similar to your Freemasonry Lodge, the Gestapo appeared at my place of residence at 6 a.m. on April 19th of 1937, searching through my documents for hours. They took me to Gestapo headquarters where already many of my friends were assembled. We were asked some questions and were released. Four weeks later they came again, this time arresting me, and then after a few days took me to the notorious concentration camp of Dachau, only ten miles from Munich. There was no warrant, no trial, no information at all regarding why I was arrested. I was not told why or how long I had to stay there.

I anticipate that by now you have read or heard in the news descriptions of what a concentration camp is like. I personally have later read during my voyage to Australia, a book by Seeger, titled "Oranienburg". Seeger is a former member of the German Reichstag, who was able to manage to escape from Oranienburg and is now living in the United States.
Everything that you have learnt and read about concentration camps are only a shadow of its cruel reality. The purpose of such a camp is not to merely to detain you. Germany still has regular prisons where criminals are locked up after trial for theft, murder, and other crimes of that type, and where you are still treated like a human being. Concentration camps are torture camps for political reasons, where you are brought to be broken mentally and bodily or often to be murdered. The guards of the S. S. are chosen only for their capability to be sadistic, with nothing in mind than to torture the prisoners.

When I was in Dachau, there were 2,000 prisoners in the camp, many incarcerated for being Jewish. A good many of them were there already for four years who had no chance whatever of their being released. You found people from all walks of life, many among them from the Reich and State Parliaments, doctors and writers, clergymen and businessmen, men with the finest characters and from the cream of society, and of course some bad people too who would sell you to the guards for a glass of beer. You were compelled to do pick and shovel work for 11 hours daily, apart from the work you had to do in the huts cleaning and washing seven days a week without a break. The ages ranged from 16- to 75-year-olds. Food was insufficient and lodging inadequate. There were 8 guards for each group of 200 men working, standing behind you, watching, shouting, and driving you with lashes to a mad tempo which you would find unimaginable. With notebooks in their pockets, they would report you to the camp commander for pretended laziness or other trifles, very often for nothing at all, possibly because they did not like your looks, especially if you were a newcomer to the camp, like an intellectual, or if you wore glasses, or only if you wore the yellow badge which distinguished you as a Jew, a badge which was visible for 200 yards. Being reported on had many serious consequences. You were sent to a special solitary prison within the camp. You received 25 lashes, tied to a tree, and after that, you were put into solitary confinement in a dark area for a long period of time, slept on wooden boards, and fed on bread and water without a hot meal for three days at a time. The guards came and manhandled you. The sanitary conditions were indescribable. I personally was confined in such a cell for the first two weeks that I was incarcerated at the camp for undisclosed reasons. I heard the nightly screams of fellow prisoners in neighboring cells and I saw the wild dog which was used to tear prisoners to pieces. I saw the chains in my cell with which others were battered. I know of tortures that surpass the worst chapters of cruelty in the Dark and Middle Ages. I saw persons arrested in the camp and witnessed their burial the next day. Many did not survive, and this was in 1937, two years before WWII. Last week's issue of the Pix pictorial magazine showed photographs depicting how prisoners were treated. I can only tell you that after my own experience, these illustrations are certainly genuine and true.

You will certainly ask why were these people treated in such a way, and why were they brought to the concentration camp? Some knew the reason, some did not. Some were told, and others were not. At the beginning of 1933 they brought in Communists or those antagonistic to the Nazis. In later years you were brought in at the will of the Gestapo. The reason might have been that you were more successful in winning the attention of a girlfriend than a competitor Nazi, you might have won a lawsuit against a Nazi, you might have been the proprietor of an estate or a business that you refused to sell to an envious Nazi. I could tell you for hours the stories that fellow prisoners told me. A good number were brought in for being members of the Christian church which did not favor the edicts of the Nazis.

When I was released, my wife and family were fortunate to have relatives here in Australia who obtained for us the papers to enable us to immigrate to Australia. Before I left, I was honored by the Bavarian Association of Jewish Congregations to take with me to my future community a scroll, handwritten on parchment, containing the Pentateuch, the Old Testament, used at services in all synagogues and now at the Liberal Temple Beth Israel on Alma Road, St. Kilda.

I want to mention what happened to my former Rabbi, a man who was highly respected and beloved by his congregation in Munich, Germany who escaped and who is now the leader of a large congregation in New York. I want to mention what happened to him, and you will get an impression on how they treated clergymen and priests. He was arrested and taken to the Gestapo. They told him that he would be shot and placed him against the wall with rifles aimed at him. They were amazed when he told them calmly that he was not frightened at all, and that he believed in a Higher Power. He was a bearded man, and I was told that they started to try and pull his beard out.

One strange feature of one's stay in the concentration camp at that time was that this was not damaging to your reputation outside. You were only there to be in protective custody. This had a double meaning. You might be quite an honorable person, but you were for political reasons dangerous to the Nazis, and the Nazi covenant must be protected. Another reason might be that a Nazi or a group of Nazis had a grudge against you and they felt that you must be put away into a concentration camp.
Having told you the reasons why many were incarcerated, the sense of fair play became a farce, the longer the Nazi government reigned. Although you were treated like the worst criminal, worse than an animal while in camp, nobody would keep you in less respect, on release. You were only regarded as a political prisoner, incarcerated for political reasons. A friend of mine, a retired mathematics professor from Goettingen University was compelled to return to Germany. He had lived in Paris for some time and wrote a letter to the German Government asking for his retirement pension to which he was entitled. The reply came that indicated that he could and would receive his retirement pension only if he would return to live in Germany. He returned, received his pension, and was promptly sent to Dachau concentration camp as a returned emigrant like others who fell into the same category.

When I was released, the camp commander asked me whether I had learnt enough during my incarceration. I did not reply. However, I was cured of the love of my country, where I and my ancestors were born and had lived for centuries. I had made up my mind that we had to leave. After my release and with the permit to immigrate to Australia, we arrived here six years ago. To enable us to leave, we were compelled to pay the German government a statutory tax of 25% of my capital which I had accumulated. Additionally, I had to pay a ransom sum of money to enable my family to take out our furniture and personal effects. Nine months after my arrival in Australia, my wife and I as well as my children were deprived of our German citizenship, and at the same time they confiscated all my capital that I was compelled to leave behind as well as valuable real estate. I was not informed of this fact, but this was published in the German Government Gazette, which an uncle of my wife's, himself a barrister and solicitor, had spotted and sent me before WWII broke out The Nazi government could do as they pleased and one had no recourse as people who were considered as having acted against German interests.

Beginning in 1933, there were very prominent persons on this list, including the scientist, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Mann, the writer. Later on, they considered it a crime to have left funds behind when you emigrated and they appropriated all assets of those who had left the country. I had left Germany just before the time in 1938 when Hitler invaded Austria. Things became worse after that. One day, Hitler passed by the Synagogue in Munich, a magnificent Gothic building. He ordered it destroyed within three days. After that, this was a signal to his followers. The Gestapo were let loose to plunder and smash homes, warehouses, and factories, and to set fire to all synagogues throughout Germany. The Jews did not receive any reparations for the damage done, just the contrary. They were held responsible for the damage done and had to pay the equivalent of the damage to the Nazis, and besides that, pay 20% fine of their capital out to the Nazi party. By this time, I was already out here in Australia with a legitimate passport issued by the Nazis. However, they confiscated 20% of all my taxable property. It did not make much difference to me since the remainder of my assets were taken some time later.

Speaking of Germany during Hitler's time, I want to give you a short picture of its Administration. The German Empire, was, before WWI, constituted of more than 20 larger or smaller states. After WWI, in 1918, all of them became single republics, some of them no larger than greater Melbourne, today. Each of the small states had its own legislation and administration, although all Germany is only a little larger than our own State of Victoria. When there is a referendum about increasing the power of the Central Government, you will be interested to learn that Hitler did not break completely with the past. But a general centralization followed. Germany was for all practical purposes a Dictatorship governed by Hitler and his group. The greatest gangsters were appointed to the Reichstag, which was only occasionally assembled to listen to a speech by the Fuehrer and to rubberstamp a resolution. Germany was divided into about 20 districts, with one of the most trusted Nazi chiefs as district leader. However, they did not care at all for law and justice. Each district was governed in its own way by the leader with the assistance of the Gestapo. There was no appeal, no remedy at all against the actions of the leadership.

A few weeks after Hitler was given power, all constitutional rights were abrogated. There was no freedom of the press, speech, or assembly. As a former barrister and solicitor, I will give you a glimpse of the administration of law. A former solicitor in Munich by the name of Frank, ten years younger than I, a most mediocre man whose father had been a solicitor too, and who had embezzled money belonging to his clients, was struck from the list of those practising law. This man re-instated his father a few days after he was appointed Attorney General of Bavaria. This created a stir among all ethical and decent persons in the legal profession, but no one dared to say a word in public. He told the German judges and law courts that there was no need to adhere to laws at all. He told a meeting in the city of Leipzig that justice is what serves the interests of the German nation. Goehring told the German people, "The law and the will of Adolf Hitler are one!" When Hitler instigated his famous purge, another 1000 more Nazis suspected of plotting against him were murdered.

The above-mentioned Frank, was already some years ago appointed the Governor General of Poland, and has been responsible for literally millions of murders committed against Poles and Jews. The time is near when he will meet his fate, hopefully the gallows. Speaking of the end of these criminals brings me to the conclusion of my talk. It is my fervent hope that we will very soon see the end of all suffering which Hitler and his gang have wrought all over the world and that just retribution will be meted out to them.

I could have spoken to you for hours, but I expect that it might be tiring for you to listen to my accent and errors in pronunciation. But I am ready to answer any questions on matters that I have mentioned which might be of interest to you. I would like to recommend to you to read a Penguin special titled "What Hitler wants" by E. O. Lorimer. As I conclude my talk, I remember that I am in a literary circle. Among the authors whose books were burnt, was a poet of world renown, the German Jew, Heinrich Heine, who lived one hundred years ago, as famous as your Lord Byron. He lived during the last part of his life in Paris, recognizing the character of the Germans and wrote about them: "Christianity, and this is its greatest merit, has occasionally calmed the brutal German's lust for battle, but it cannot destroy that savage joy. And once that restraining talisman, the cross, is broken (you know it was replaced by the swastika), the old stone gods will rise from unremembered ruins and Thor will leap to destroy the foes of the gods".

The poet was right.

The thought always precedes the act as the lightning precedes thunder. Never doubt that the hour will come, and as you know, it has come.

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Note from Ruth: When reading the notes of the above talk given in 1944, during WWII, Adolf had been in Australia just a few years and had to learn English while also struggling to make a living for his young family. He was in his middle fifties. Forty years after his death, we can only marvel at his command of English in his newly adopted country of Australia. Lewis and Ruth found the above-penciled notes among their mother’s family memorabilia after she died in 1986, twenty-four years after Adolf passed away.

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Observations from Naomi KingSmith's visit to Germany in 2016: 

We found Fechenbach, where Opa was born,  to be a delightful small village in Central Germany and the house (11 Schlosstrasse) is down the street from the church - we still are trying to figure out how a nice Jewish family ended up there.

One of our visits also included a trip to Dachau last Thursday morning to the archives where we met with a wonderful archivist, who provided the information to us in many of the photos attached.

Photos P1040894 and 895 are of the original architectural plans for Dachau.  In 1937-38 the camp was built like this, and after being arrested, upon arrival, Opa was taken in May, 1937, to an underground bunker in solitary confinement for 3 weeks. Upon release from solitary confinement, Opa was "assigned" to the 4th room of the sixth barrack, on the end of the group of 6. That barrack is in the row of 6 rectangles in the 2 drawings where you see of 2 sets of long rectangles  (1 set of 5, and 1 set of 6). There were about 2-3000 prisoners that were sent there that year.  By the end of 1938, the camp buildings were torn down by the prisoners and the camp was enlarged by them under brutal conditions to house more (maybe 3-4000), but it was never meant  to hold the 30-40,000 that were sent there as soon as war was declared on September 1, 1939.  Opa was released only because he had friends (we think - not sure) and was going to leave Germany, which was the Nazi strategy early in the years in power - to make Germany Judenrein. After war was declared, no one could leave Germany, or any other country, even if they had immigration papers, and then the killing machine began in earnest.

Photos P1040893, 896 and 897 are from a book that lists the biographies of Jewish lawyers in Munich and elsewhere, I think, in 1938, and a description of Opa.  If you can translate the pages from the German, I think you will find them interesting. He was considered impertinent at one point by a judge and received a reprimand - sounds like our grandparent!

The last 3 photos are also very interesting.  Opa had his law practice on Prielmeyerstrasse in Munich.  This photo you see of the street and his office in 1938 was printed in a book written by a professor, David Clay Large,  at Montana State University in 1999 about the rise of Hitler in Munich - called "Where Ghosts Walked".  We have no idea where the photo came from or how it came to him. He talked to Ruth before he wrote the book, in 1998, and had this illustrative photo of the Nazis in Munich after they came to power, with the sign for Opa's office on the right.  This photo was printed in Professor Large's German version of the book, not the English one, which they had in the archives office at Dachau, in German. They brought the book out when we mentioned it - which shows they really respected his work.  The corner on Prielmayerstrasse is still there today, but the building is no longer there - probably bombed. We think, due to the diagonal look to this corner of the new building on the same street, that this photo, and the new one we took last Saturday that I have also attached, is approximately where the corner was - and there is now a huge department store called Karstadt in that spot.

Regarding Opa, two police officers came to their door in Munich one evening in 1937 and said they needed to talk to him at the police station. He told Kate he'd be back soon. At the police station they arrested him and sent him to Dachau, and one of the police officers who arrested him that night was someone he had successfully prosecuted some time earlier for theft. He was released after 3 months, with 3 weeks in solitary confinement, which is a shorter time. I think the police and others were just arresting anyone they could think of, especially Jews, but many others, for any reason. Combined with this, the goal of the Nazi government at that time, we were told, was to get Jews to leave Germany. So they could have held onto to him longer, but they didn't, which is not what usually happened. We knew after his arrest Kate sent the kids with a nurse to Fechenbach and spent that time approaching everyone she knew in Munich in the government to get him out, while trying to get immigration papers to get to Australia. They knew a lot of people. Opa was told when called into the Kommandant's office upon release, that he was being released and if he ever told anyone what was going on there they would come to the ends of the earth and bring him back to Dachau.

I did not know this, but Dachau had a gas chamber and ovens for the prisoners, added, I think, in the camp when it was rebuilt in 1937 and 1938. Probably one of the first.

There are small 3 towns, including Fechenbach, very close to each other on the Main river in that little valley that decided about 20 years ago to combine into one town, probably for practical purposes, and they named it Collenberg. But they know which town is which, as people don't move away that much. Each has a town square with a church, but they are really far from large towns.  Closest to Frankfurt, but a long commute if you have a job there.