DANCING AT THE GATES TO HELL: CHAJA GOLDSTEIN
The chances that a child of impoverished Polish Jews from a shtetl in Russia-occupied Poland - a child born in 1908 and only several years before the world around her imploded in a catastrophe known as the First World War and pogroms that followed its end - would one day stand on stage in Berlin and Amsterdam, enchanting her public with a rare mix of humour, talent and gentle mocking of her parents’ Orthodox Judaism, were slim.
Yet Chaja Ruchel Goldstein (later Hanna Goldstein) managed to become a brilliant dancer and cabaret performer mainly because of a decision taken by her parents. Jakub and Łaja: to escape the pogroms they decided to move with their children to Germany. To what was about to become the Weimar Republic. They decided to move to Berlin.
In Berlin Chaja discovered a world that seemed to be made for young people like herself: curious, fearless and determined to follow what they felt was their call. She began taking acting and performing lessons at Max Reinhardt’s drama school but soon had to admit that although Reinhardt was a genius, his school was nothing that Fräulein Goldstein would consider as worth of her time.
Instead, she took up dancing lessons with a Berlin-based Norwegian teacher. Her debut in 1931 was praised by the local press - she clearly had that “gewisses Etwas” (that special something) that could have brought her real dancing fame.
Instead, she went for a different kind of stage - she became a cabaret artist and could be seen (and heard - the girl could sing, too) at, among others, a tiny Jewish theatre “Der Kaftan” on Kudamm.
You can probably guess what came next.
Once the Nazi regime took over control over the country, full-blown antisemitism and open persecution of Jews forced many of them to leave Germany. Chaja Goldstein did not wait- she fled to Holland. There she joined a German exile cabaret the “Ping Pong” led by Dora Gerson (another fascinating and tragic Berlin character whose story you can read in the highly recommended “Psychology and The Cross” substack here). Having picked up co-operation with a Dutch ballet troupe, Goldstein also performed as a dancer. In 1937 she married a film director and camera operator, Theodor Güsten - a marriage which several years later would save her life.
Chaja - now Hanna - Goldstein kept performing in Amsterdam, where she joined a large German exile community of artists, journalists, writers and intellectuals who, having changed countries, believed themselves save from the Nazis. But nothing could be further from the truth - with the occupation of Holland, the Third Reich dug its claws deep into their flesh and wasn’t going to let go.
On December 30, 1942 (exactly 82 years ago tomorrow), Goldstein was arrested by the Gestapo and with many others brought to the Westerbork transit camp from where nearly all Jews would be sent to die in the death camps built by the Nazis in the East.
To us the idea that captured people would dance and sing and perform cabaret pieces in such horrid places, under such frightening circumstances, might appear odd and almost grotesque, but it was those performances that helped many of those about to be sent into a certain death retain hope. Among both the audience and those on stage. At Westerbork Hanna Goldstein joined a cabaret troupe of Max Ehrlich, a great Berlin artist and director, who like another member of their group, Willy Rosen - Berlin composer, song writer and cabaret performer - would be murdered in 1944 in Auschwitz.
And this is when Hanna’s marriage played a key role in her survival. Being married to a non-Jewish (“Arian”) film director, employed by the influential German UFA film studios, she was unexpectedly released from the camp and thus did not have to share the fate of almost all other prisoners at Westerbork, most of whom were “sent East” (a term used mockingly instead of saying “murdered in a death camp” or “exterminated”).
Hanna and her husband survived the war and in 1948 the two emigrated to New York. But the Big Apple was not kind to Chaja / Hanna, who did not manage to build a stage career there. Worse! She got ill and nearly died as a result. Eventually, disappointed with the US (a feeling that many German Exilanten (exiles, immigrants) shared during and after the war), Goldstein returned to Europe. They settled again in the Netherlands.
It wasn’t until her husband had died that she decided to move to Israel - her brother, Eli Goldstein, managed to escape the Holocaust as well and lived there with his family. And this is where Chaja / Hanna Goldstein spent the next eighteen years of her life. She died in Israel at the age of 90 in 1999.
And now, looking at the photo of Chaja again - her graceful movements, her charming AND witty costume, and her joyous face - you know what it is that kept people like from debilitating despair: it was hope that humour could dampen the blow.
Thankyou for this story. So many stories like this. Such is the burden of history.