Ruth Rewald

Ruth Rewald (1906–1942) was a German writer of children's books. In 1938, after five months in Spain, with the publication of "Vier spanische Jungen" she became the first mainstream author to produce a German language book about the Spanish Civil War written expressly for children and young people. By that time, however, her family home was a 50 m2 apartment in Paris to where, for reasons both of race and of politics, she had relocated following régime change at the start of 1933 in Germany. She was deported to Auschwitz in July 1942 and is believed to have been murdered shortly afterwards. Her daughter, born in 1937, suffered a similar death slightly under two years later.

Ruth Rewald married a young lawyer in 1929, after which for many purposes she used her married name. She continued to write under her former name, however, and it was during the early 1930s that some of her most commercially successful books were published. Sources may identify her either as "Ruth Rewald" or as "Ruth Schaul". a densely populated former village to the southwest of Berlin into which it had been subsumed during the final years of the nineteenth century. For Berlin the period was one of rapid expansion and social change as farm workers were drawn to the city, attracted by the growing differential between farm wages and factory wages. The economic success of the city also attracted immigrants from further east, many of them escaping the acute austerity and politically driven repression that had become defining features of the Russian Empire. Ruth was her parents’ only recorded child. Ruth's father, Artur Markus Rewald (1880–1957), was a businessman whose own father had come from Pomerania and who would end his days, following a further move west of his own in 1938, living in Willesden (London, England). Sources differ as to the name of her mother, who is identified in birth records as Rose Wilhelmine Hirschfeld. The family was of German-Jewish provenance, classified in the terminology of those times as “assimilated German Jewish”. In 1929, finding her university studies unfulfilling, she dropped out of university and for several months worked in a children's day-care centre. He would later emerge as a left-wing political activist and fighter in the Spanish Civil War. At some point between 1933 and 1939 Schaul joined the (outlawed in Germany) Communist Party). Although there is no indication that Ruth Rewald ever joined any political party, her general political beliefs aligned with those of her husband. More overtly political was her book "Müllerstrasse, Jungens von heute " (‘’loosely, " Müllerstrasse: Boys today”’’) published in 1932. In it the author described the oppressive conditions for working class children in Berlin who manage to overcome their aggressive urges thanks into creative group activities and finding “something meaningful to create”. This first full-length book, with its unmistakable echoes of the already much revered Erich Kästner, was well received by critics and, indeed, by book buyers.

Regime change in Germany: exile in Paris In January 1933 the National Socialists were able to exploit the parliamentary deadlock created by the polarisation of German politics to take power, a development that was rapidly followed by a switch to one- party dictatorship. One of the first pieces of legislation passed following the abolition of democracy was the so-called Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service passed in 1933. This was designed to remove Jews and political activists opposed to the Hitler government from public sector employment. Hans Schaul was effectively excluded from his chosen career as a lawyer in the German justice system. In May the couple relocated to Paris, which during 1933 became home to large numbers of political and race-driven exiles from Germany and indeed quickly emerged as one of three unofficial locations for the party leadership of the exiled Communist Party of Germany. (The others were Prague and Moscow.) In July 1933 their book collection and other possessions caught up with them, or more precisely were delivered to "Maison Biblion", a bookshop where later, for a several months starting in July 1934, Rewald was employed. Meanwhile, she continued to progress with her authorship work. Schaul's first employment following their arrival in Paris was as a photographer. Money was short and they were both obliged to take work where they could find it. During 1933/34, their first year in Paris, they lived at four (or more) different addresses in succession, from which some commentators infer that perhaps they did not intend to remain in the French capital for very long. They nevertheless quickly became well networked and closely integrated into the community of political refugees of which they were a part. Their circle included other exiled German authors, including Käthe Hirsch.

Spanish Civil War and motherhood Despite his wife's pregnancy Hans Schaul went to Spain and joined the Chapayev Battalion of the XIII International Brigade during or shortly before November 1936.

Madrid and "Four Spanish Boys" Slightly more than three months later, on 30 August 1937, Rewald received what one source describes as an "official invitation" from Heiner Rau, a former member of the Prussian State parliament who was now a political exile from Hitler's version of Germany. Earlier during 1937 Rau had become a political commissar with the XI International Brigade in Spain (of which by 1938 he had become overall brigade commander). Rau's invitation was that she should travel to Spain for an extensive study-visit at the "Ernst Thälmann children's home" which his communist brigade had created in Madrid. Rau made his thinking very clear: “The situation of these children is extraordinary and – we believe – it deserves to be immortalised in a fine book and to be known by everyone. We know about your special interest in writing for children and we think you are an author capable of writing the book in question. So we invite and implore you to live for a few months among our children, to study their situations, and to write a fine book on the subject”.

In October 1937, by which time Anja was five months old, Rewald felt able to entrust her infant daughter to Louise Pollnow, described variously as a nanny and/or a friend, while Rewald made her way to Madrid in response to Rau's invitation. She remained in the Spanish capital and the surrounding region until February 1938. (According to some sources she only spent three months in Madrid, but that finding appears to have been superseded by later investigations.)

War In September 1939 Poland was invaded from the west by Germany and, two weeks later, from the east by the Soviet Union. The French and British government reacted promptly to the first invasion with declarations of war against Germany, but on the streets of Paris (and of London) there were few obvious changes for more than six months. That was not the case for Communists and/or Jews who had fled from Germany during the previous six years, however. Thousands were identified as enemy aliens and detained. Hans Schaul was arrested during or shortly before December 1939 and detained at Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle near Orléans. He spent the next four years in a succession of internment camps.

Anja had enrolled at the little primary school at Les Rosiers towards the end of 1941. During the immediate aftermath of her mother's arrest she was looked after by a neighbour. Then in October 1942, her teacher at the school, Renée Le Moine, took the child into her home. Anja wrote regularly to her father. Mlle. Le Moine was a keen photographer who loved to capture images of Anja's childhood, which was thereby unusually well recorded during these final years of her life. She preserved these carefully, and in 1995 was proud to show them to Daniel Queyroi, the history teacher from the school who visited her during her retirement at Saumur, and who was leading a major research project on Anja Schaul. The child lived with Mlle. Le Moine for approximately eighteen months. Then, on 26 January 1944, German police turned up at the school and arrested her in front of her classmates. She was taken to the Drancy internment camp near Paris, which had become a collection point for Jews (and others) arrested in France for onward transportation to the death camps in the east. Anja Schaul was one of those conveyed "Convoi n° 68" a train that left Drancy for Auschwitz on 10 February 1944. Her death date is recorded as 15 February 1944, which is believed to correspond with the date on which the train arrived at Auschwitz/Oświęcim.

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