The son of Arthur Schick and Elli Kluge. Born in Berlin on 6th October 1927. His sister Gertrude (Trude) had been born on 26th January 1925.
During his early childhood, Charlie became very sick with double pneumonia, which left him very pale, weak, and thin, the doctors suggested to his parents that they should move to a place for recovering where the air is pure and refreshing, and the overall scenery is satisfying. They decided to move to Switzerland for a year of recovery, and Arthur took on an assignment to work and pay for expenses. In the early 1930’s, the family moved to the outskirts of the lovely city of Bern, where the air was clear and clean.
Trude and Charlie were enrolled in a local school, to learn the language and make friends. They arrived before winter and therefore went to school by bike. When the snow and ice arrived, they changed their mode of transport to skis, small ones suitable for children. As they arrived at school, the skis were just stuck upright in the piles of deep snow outside the school and were always there for their journey home after school. It seems, no equipment was ever lost or stolen. The first few weeks were tough for Charlie, because he had never skied before and he fell down a lot, but slowly he became proficient and skilful and learnt to stay upright. After school and at weekends they went skating and again it took them both a while to get skilful enough to really enjoy themselves and join in the games on ice.
In the centre of town in Bern is a statue call Kinder Fresser – Eater of Children. This statue was used by mothers to instil fear into their kids, saying, if you are a bad boy, or you do not obey me, this monster will come and pick you up and put you in his bag and eat you. The statue was a ferocious ugly man, with a bag hanging over his shoulder, full of children hanging out, he held a child in one hand and had the head of another in his mouth. A really scary sight and the little kids believed this, as did Charlie.
Another interesting site in Bern was the deep pits in the middle of an avenue, covered by steel grating. And when one walked over the grating and looked down, you looked into the eyes of a bear!! Yes, a living bear roaming around in the pit. They were well taken care of by zoo-keepers. The bear is the symbol of Switzerland as the Eagle is to the USA. This tradition had been going on for at least five hundred years.
Sometimes it snowed so heavily that children could not get to school, but staying at home meant they could play outside well dressed up for those conditions.
Another interesting point in the life of the Swiss – foreigners, such as the Schicks, had to report to the nearest police station once a month to let them know that that they were still at the same address, working an planning to stay in the country.
The Swiss speak three languages, German, French and Swiss. It was one of the last countries where people actually voted with their hands, they stood in the square and raised their hands as names were read off, and counted, and declare the winner.
After leaving Bern, they spent some time in Zurich. Then Arthur received a very good offer of a job in Budapest and so they moved Hungary. The historic city, full of history and legends, of Budapest was known as the most intellectual city in Europe, full of writers, musicians, artists, actors etc.
Arthur went to Budapest before the rest of the family to find a place to live and to start his new job. That meant, Elli once again had to handle the move. Belongings were packed up, loaded into a taxi for the journey train station. The journey from Bern to Budapest is a long one, along beautiful valleys, past mountain ranges and through ravines and gorges. The train steadily chugged along until it was brought to an abrupt halt by a raging and huge snowstorm. Very quickly their carriage and of course, the rest of the train, was buried under a mountain of snow. The train was stranded and cut off for hours, the lights began to dim and go out, and the heat stopped coming as it got colder and darker. The train personnel walked up and down from car to car informing all the passengers that they had called the main office for help, and that everyone we should put on their warmest clothes and stay close together in their cabins. They were stranded for many hours and they all became worried, cold and very hungry and thirsty. After a long time, they felt a jolt and a tug, and very slowly the train began to move. Everyone gave a sigh of relieve, and looking out, they saw that in front of the engine was a giant plough that was pulling the train while parting the snow and clearing the rails. They went all the way to Budapest like that, and later found out that a small avalanche had fallen on the train as it passed one of the mountains running along the rails and disabled it.
Arthur placed the two children into a local Budapest school to learn another new language. During Charlie’s first day in class, without knowing the language, he felt the pressure to go to the bathroom to pee. But did not know how ask the teacher to leave the room. He held on as long as he could and then came the moment when he had to let go and urinated into his pants and all over the classroom floor. The teacher comforted him and said that the next time he had to go to raise his hand, look at her, giver her the signal, raise a finger and watch for her signal to leave the room. That was his first contact with Hungarian.
After Budapest, Hungary, the family moved to the Netherlands.
They moved to Holland was in the year 1933/1934. The family settled down in Amsterdam, a beautiful city with wonderful people and a completely different way of life from that of Germany or Hungary.
Charlie recalled the canals of Amsterdam making such a big contrast to life in Budapest, Zurich or Bern. Most of the land of Holland lays below sea level, and most of the current land was all recaptured by building a string of dykes and draining out the areas reclaiming the land for agriculture and living space. There are approximately 1000 windmills in Holland, and they were responsible for reclaiming the land by pumping out the water once the dikes were built. This was about 500 years ago.
Another big difference for us was that that the principle mode of transportation was the bike, for old and young, male and female, there was a constant flow of bikes in the streets, and one had to watch out while walking the streets not to get hit by a bike.
They all got bikes and became used to using it for shopping, going to school, general transportation, going to a restaurant etc.
Arthur took them to the most famous museum, the RJKSMuseum where Charlie’s favourite painting by Rembrandt was on display, called the “Night Watch”. He was deeply affected by this painting and Rembrandt became his best loved artist.
Amsterdam is also know as the city of diamonds, at that time, the diamond market in Amsterdam was the biggest in the world. They went and visited the various shops where the diamond rocks were cut, set and polished. A fantastic experience. These diamonds were shipped all over the world.
Another area of fame for Holland is the Tulip, there are hundreds of tulip fields, and other flower fields when you travel to the country side out of the city. The city has spectacular gardens for visitors and tourists to enjoy, it was a sight to behold and never tiring to walk among the tulips.
Of course, once again Arthur placed Trudy and Charlie into a local school, and soon they were able to speak the language and mix with the folks. As Charlie recollected they found the schools very tough and most of all, very disciplined. But they survived, learned another language and learned a bit more maths and geography.
They did a lot of sight-seeing, especially on weekends, visiting windmills, the flower fields, traveling on the canals or bikes, or both, and always savouring the excellent food.
Their life in Holland continued fairly normally until Arthur and Elli told the children Arthur was going to leave them and travel to the USA, where his mother, Albertina and his siblings, Ida and Oscar had already reached. They had arranged for his visa and trip. The plan was that he would arrange the visas and trip tickets and get them to America. At that time immigration was based on a quota system, and they had to fall into that quota set by the USA before they could apply for immigration. Elli, Trudy and Charlie packed up again and went to Berlin to live with Elli’s parents and wait for their visas and ship tickets to come through. But in fact, it was more than four years before they were all together again.
Their grandparents Maria and Fritz Fiebig lived at number 91 Gitschiener Strasse 91, Berlin. The year was 1934, and Adolph Hitler had just been declared the President of Germany, with Hindenberg stepping down August 19, 1934.
Elli enrolled the children in school right away, the school was very close to grandparents home. They learnt later that it was a special school, most of the kids were children of the top Nazis and foreign diplomats and personnel. Elli was always anti Hitler and never allowed Charlie to join the Hitler Youth Group organization, she also never permitted Trude to join the Bund Deutscher Madels (The Association of German Girls). In fact she avoided saluting the flag, and instructed the children not to salute either, she avoided all talks about Hitler etc. This all was dangerous behaviour during those years, but they obeyed and survived.
The school was far superior to any school Charlie had been to before or after. The teachers were well prepared and worked the students very hard every day. The students sat in accordance with their grades, in other words, the ones with the best grades sat in the front rows, and the rest sat in the back rows also separated by grades. The purpose was to offer an incentive to sit up front and be close to the teachers to hear them better and see the black boards better. Charlie was very bright and sat most of the time in the front row, absorbing every morsel of knowledge. Every morning when they arrived, the teacher inspected their fingers and hands, to check out that they were clean, nails cut, and no wounds. The school had a nurse on duty, had a room with a dental chair and dentist available, health was the theme of the school. Charlie had a lot of dental work done there, all free, as other students had likewise. Later on he discovered that every student had to know how to swim, and before they could advance, and would have to show they could swim at least two length of the school pool. Other sporting activities included gymnastics, rope climbing, working on the horse, bars, rings, etc. Charlie enjoyed this the most. The school was well equipped and staffed, and the curriculum was very difficult, if any student failed to keep up with the pace of the teacher, they were failed. Charlie had two great friends in his class, one was the only black student and was the son of an African diplomat. The other, Heinz, whose father was in the German Army, and he was a hot Hitler Youth Member. The three of them studied and hung around together.
While Trudy and Charlie settled into school like, Elli was busy trying to give them a normal family life under the conditions which were getting worse with each month. All of the German citizens had ration cards, but they were not considered as Germans because they were Czechs and so did not have access to ration cards. That presented a serious problem for Elli. Their grandparents did have ration cards and were willing to share with Elli, Trude and Charlie but that did not provide enough food for them to survive. Elli decided that she had to get work and managed to get odd jobs, helping other women with cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, taking care of babies etc. – but she would not accept money in lieu of her work, she asked to be paid with food – eggs, milk, bread, meat, potatoes etc. etc. And that is how they lived for years. Given that Elli had been a ballerina and once lived in a big house with her husband with plenty of money. It was very tough on her and Charlie thought it eventually took a big toll on her long term health.
But back to Berlin. Things started to happen as soon as Hitler took over the country. His major desire was to conquer Europe, using the excuse to reunite all German speaking people under one roof. Anways, early on he walked into the Rhineland and took it back from the French without a shot. Then on March 12, 1938 he walked into Austria and annexed the country again without a shot, but with a lot of help from Germans living in Austria. This was called the “Anschluss”, and the Berlin city government decided to give Hitler, aka as the Fuhrer, a welcome reception. Charlie’s school was chosen to represent all young kids had to prepare a small group of students to go before Hitler and hand him a bouquet of flowers and thank him. As it worked out, they decided to choose the top student of the class to do this, and it so happened that that was Charlie. So he was designated to hand flowers to Hitler and thank him for his victory, all against the wishes of his mother. On the day they were marched to Hitler’s palace, Charlie skipped out of the group and went home. A bit later there was a knock on our door and a voice asked: does Charlie Schick live here? and Ellie answered yes, the voice demanded that he come out and go with him back to the group of students on the way to Hitler’s palace. Charlie had to go ended up handing the flowers to Hitler, who tapped his head and said thank you. Around Hitler were all the big wigs like Gobbels, Goering, Himmler etc. Quite an experience for a young boy. A moment never to be forgotten.
Life continued, but everything was becoming more difficult. Food was in short supply, food was held for the military. Hitler was preparing the country for war. As an example, leather was in short supply because of the need for the military. When Charlie had holes on the bottom of his shoes, Ellie placed newspapers in the shoes so they would stay dry. Rationing was down to a small bottle of milk per month, a few eggs per month, a small stick of butter per month etc. Charlie did not see or taste chocolate or candy until he reached the USA. They learned to eat horse meat and blood sausages, and Ersatz coffee was made from the barks of a tree. They lived through all this, but many Germans did not. On birthdays, Ellie begged her friends for flour and eggs to make a cake for them. It was tough going.
Just an aside, one day when Charlie was on the street, a contingent of SA soldiers were marching past, with a high flying flag. Everyone knew that they had to salute the flag, but Charlie, not seeing them, did not raise his arm in salute, and as a result two burly SA men came and beat him up, kicking him until he fainted. He was taken to a hospital for recovery, his stomach was damaged and other organs, but he did recover. And later the pogroms started against the Jews. The SA men, or known as brown shirts, as opposed to the black shirts SS, the notorious state police. The Jews were persecuted, their stores were busted and pillaged, books written by them were burned, and many were sent to concentration camps. Ellie was always worried that they would do this to foreigners also, but they seemed to be safe. Ellie and her parents were not Jewish and the children did not seem to be aware that their father was born Jewish.
Every night, they could hear groups of SA or SS men marching through the streets, and as they heard the noise of the marching boots, they prayed that they would march right past their house. If all of a sudden the noise stopped in front of their house, they knew that someone was being picked up and taken away. But they let out a huge sigh of relief when the noise of the marchers slowly faded away. Fear was all around them. As an example, Charlie’s best friend Horst, a fanatic Hitler Youth, turned in his parents saying that they had been critical of Hitler. They took his parents away and a week later he received two boxes of ashes. That was the end of their friendship. A sorry example of a misguided youth.
One day, when Trudy and Charlie walked home from school, they witnessed the fatal beating to death of an elderly Jew, it was horrible, and they could not interfere because the thugs would have turned on them. Yes, Hitler had spurred these fanatics to perform horrible acts. Charlie was forced to witness the burning of books. Everyone was forced to throw at least one book on the pile that was on fire, and that hurt because they loved books. Week by week and month by month the situation worsened.
At long last Arthur obtained entry visas for them. he sent the visas and the tickets to them in Berlin and they started to dream of going to America. The tickets for the ship, SS Europa, was scheduled for June 13th, 1939.
At the end of May, one day, when Charlie was sitting school listening to their teacher, suddenly all the desks started to shake, the hanging lights started to swing, and a terrific sound could be heard outside the class room. The students ran to the window and looked out and up and there, a sight to behold, they saw waves of military airplanes, bombers and fighters, by the hundreds, flying over us. They did not know then, but the military was getting ready for the invasion of Poland and the start of the war.
Two days before we were due to board the Europa, Ellie’s best friend rushed to her and informed her that the SS police were going from house to house confiscating foreign passports. Ellie did not hesitate. She moved very quickly to prepare to leave immediately, letting them take only one item each, and a small bag of clothing. She took them to the railway station and on to Bremerhaven where the ship was docked. She did not let them talk to anyone in the fear that they would not let them go. they arrived at the port and started to walk up the planks to the ship, where they were stopped by the SS men who inspected our papers and looked at what they were carrying. They confiscated Charlie’s Stamp collection and took away Trudy’s favourite book. When they finally reached the deck, they went straight to their cabin, and Ellie would not let them out on their own. They only left the cabin to eat in the dining hall, or to sit out on the deck to get some sun and air. She knew they were still on German soil, the ship, and they could arrest us any time and take them back. But she was a strong woman and handled the situation well.
On their last day on board the ship, the captain put up a list of the passengers and asked everyone to guess what time the ship would pass the Statue of Liberty, at the mouth of NY. When they finally arrived in NY and saw the wonderful lady with the torch, Ellie took a deep breath and thanked God that they had made it. However, she was still cautious because they were still on German soil and were constantly being watched. The children asked their mother how they were going to recognize their father after an absence of five years, and she said, don’t worry, he will recognize you. The ship slowly moved into the dock in Manhattan, the gangplank was lowered and one of the first people to rush up was their father, he ran to Ellie hugged her and then the children with all of them crying and laughing at the same time. Arthur helped them carry their baggage down the plank and to the Immigration Officials, they were checked through and out, and finally were in America. They took a taxi to 251 East 84th Street, Manhattan, called Yorktown, where a lot of Germans lived and worked. Arthur wanted to make their transition to American life and english slowly. It was a walk-up furnished apartment. But a few months later they moved to the Bronx where they settled down for a few years. New furniture was bought, the apartment slowly filled with new belongings and they were signed up for school and started to blend into the American life style.
