Escaped Nazis and found a second chance in Bayside. Fund at The Trust supports food insecurity and people with disabilities in New York City.
Marianne Edelstein Orlando (1918-1990)
For Marianne Edelstein, growing up in Berlin in the 1920s was a happy time. The only daughter of a prosperous German-Jewish family, she knew a life of comfort and security—unmarred by any hint that this life would soon be turned upside down as a nation’s sentiments turned against the Jews and the world moved closer to war. Yet, from the beginning, a strong sense of family—especially her relationship with her father and maternal grandmother—forged an indomitable spirit and fortitude that would serve her well throughout her life.
The younger of two children, Marianne was born to Margarete Pagel Edelstein and Julius Isaak Edelstein in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, on May 12, 1918. The principal family holdings were a porcelain factory in Kürs, Bavaria, and another factory in Soldin that manufactured bicycle chains.
It was in Soldin, her mother’s hometown, that young Marianne and her brother, Werner, spent many summers with their grandparents. Their grandmother, a particularly strong influence, instilled in Marianne the importance of seriously applying oneself to realize success. When, for instance, Marianne expressed an interest one summer in learning to swim, swimming became the object lesson, and every day, rain or shine, hot or cool, Marianne was in the water practicing her strokes.
The Family Uprooted
Marianne was 14 when life for her and her family, along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews throughout Germany, started to unravel. As a result of allegations made by a senior employee of Julius Edelstein’s, the family was uprooted and sent to live in Rudolstadt on the grounds of a porcelain factory. But Julius Edelstein was no longer an owner—the factory had been confiscated by the Nazis, and he was retained as manager.
Though her parents could not leave the premises, Marianne was allowed to attend the local school—the only Jewish child enrolled. Classes went smoothly until a member of the Nazi Party became her teacher. Recognizing that their daughter would ultimately become the focus of an increasingly virulent prejudice against Jews, her parents sent her to a school in Zürich, Switzerland.
Marianne’s brother had already left Germany, spirited overnight to Palestine after he assaulted a Nazi on a street in Berlin. Other family members were leaving, too, including her mother’s two brothers and sister who went to the United States. Though access to money was becoming more difficult, there was still room to maneuver—to secure needed visas and move people out of the country. As the eldest of her siblings, Marianne’s mother planned that after everyone else had left, she and her husband would follow.
Education Disrupted
Marianne arrived in Zürich in the winter of 1935-36, to attend Voralpines Töchter Institut. In the spring of 1936, when her parents found that they could no longer get sufficient funds out of Germany to cover the tuition, Marianne left the private academy and enrolled in Gaudemann’s Handels-Schule, a business and secretarial school, where she studied German, French, and English stenography, along with other courses. One year later, it became impossible to get money out of Germany, and 19-year-old Marianne, after returning home briefly, was sent to Rome to live with her mother’s cousin Ulla, whose husband, Aaron, was a member of the British diplomatic corps. She made what money she could by teaching English. When Benito Mussolini came to power, she left and rejoined her parents, who had been moved back to Berlin.
As life for German Jews became increasingly oppressive in the face of eroding liberties and freedom, Marianne exhibited a steely, quietly defiant side. By late 1938, even as Jews were forbidden to be seen in public places, she continued to come and go as she wished. On the infamous Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, she and a friend attended the Berlin Opera unnoticed. Walking along city streets after the performance, with the sky illuminated by many fires, Marianne instinctively understood that she was witnessing an event of unbelievable horror. Throughout Germany and Austria on the nights of Nov. 9 and 10, nearly 2,000 shops, synagogues, factories, and dwellings were torched and destroyed, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This was the opening salvo in the ensuing campaign aimed at the destruction of European Jewry.
Marianne’s father was one of the Jews picked up by the police. Ignoring her family’s entreaties to avoid danger, she went alone to the station house to plead his case and waited several hours with great apprehension outside the steel door of the interrogation room until her father was finally released. Her courage spared her father on another occasion, when she learned of an impending police raid in time to help him take refuge in the home of a Christian friend who had worked for the family.
Time to Leave
Such brushes with the authorities only served to heighten the family’s resolve that Marianne must again leave Germany. This time, Ulla and Aaron, now living in England, arranged for their neighbor to hire Marianne as a domestic—surely an unlikely role for a young woman whose upbringing had presented little need to learn cooking and housekeeping. Conversations with her cousin over the backyard fence helped fill in the gaps, and Marianne was able to uphold her end of the bargain as cook, housekeeper, and nanny. In 1940, marriage ended her days as a domestic. Her husband held British citizenship that was automatically extended to his wife.
Up until this point, Marianne was still in contact with her family, albeit through heavily censored letters that took months to arrive. In June 1940, however, all correspondence with her parents and relatives stopped. Years later, the silence was explained: Her maternal grandparents had been sent to a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, where her grandfather died. Her grandmother survived to be sent to Auschwitz, where it is presumed she died. As Marianne wrote years later, “Had she lived in different times, the world would know of her.”
Julius and Margarete Edelstein were deported Nov. 27, 1941, to the camp at Riga, now part of Latvia. Marianne’s mother was 49, her father 59. Their inner strength and will to survive had been stretched to its limits, but now they, too, became victims of the Holocaust.
Marianne’s husband was serving in the British Army overseas, and she worked for her in-laws in their import-export business. Life in wartime England was often difficult and included many hours crouched under the neighbor’s kitchen table during air raids.
Return to Germany
At war’s end, intent on getting back to Germany to confirm what she suspected had befallen her family, she secured an appointment from the British Foreign Office as a captain on the staff of the Allied Control Commission. She was assigned to the Interpreters Group, Land North Rhine/Westphalia, headquartered in Düsseldorf. Fluent in German and English with a working knowledge of French and Italian, Marianne worked first as a simultaneous translator. Later, she made highly confidential written translations for, among others, Konrad Adenauer, the German statesman and first chancellor of West Germany.
As soon as possible, she traveled to Berlin. Checking out all the addresses she knew, she remembered the house where her father had been hidden. And there she learned a remarkable story. Sometime before they were deported, no doubt fearing the worst, Marianne’s mother and grandmother had filled a trunk with family memorabilia and buried it in their Christian friend’s backyard. Among the contents were a photo album, various items of silver, an ornate perfume bottle, porcelain dishes, and damask towels with hand-embroidered E’s on them. Now, in 1946, the woman who had been a Good Samaritan was gone, also a victim of the concentration camps. But her sisters knew about Marianne and the trunk. Unearthed, it too carried the scars of war. The impact of shrapnel hitting above ground had pierced the lid, but the contents were precious reminders of the family’s past.
Marianne’s Foreign Office appointment was terminated in December 1949. That same year, she and her husband were divorced. In 1952, her persistence produced written verification from the German government regarding her parents’ fate.
A New Country and Career
Her brother had served during the war in the British Army, and in the late ’40s, he emigrated to the United States. In 1950, when Marianne visited the brother she hadn’t seen in 17 years, she, too, decided to stay in the States. Choosing to be a Manhattanite, she took a room at the Midston House, a residential hotel, and in 1951 joined Interscience Publishers, a company specializing in technical books.
The company was owned by two German émigrés, who quickly saw Marianne’s potential. Here was a woman of few words who could understand an idea, dissect it, and present it again succinctly and clearly. The work at Interscience meshed well with her talents, and she moved steadily up the ranks of sales and marketing.
In 1956, she had married Philip Orlando. The couple had a house in Bayside, Queens, and a weekend retreat in Westchester County. They had no children together.
When Interscience was acquired by John Wiley & Sons Inc. in 1961, Marianne was vice president of sales. Continuing at Wiley, she was successively marketing development manager, director of international marketing, and vice president and general manager of Wiley’s international division in New York and of all foreign subsidiaries and joint venture companies. She also was a member of the board of directors of John Wiley & Sons Inc., as well as the foreign subsidiaries. After retiring from full-time work in 1983, she continued with the firm as a consultant.
A highly regarded and successful business executive, Marianne was honored at the YWCA’s 1981 Salute to Women in Business as a member of the organization’s Academy of Women Achievers. In private life, she was an avid Ping-Pong player and swimmer, a voracious reader, and a music lover.
Her husband died in 1987. Marianne died in Vancouver, Canada, April 11, 1990. Shortly before her death, she had rejoined a friend from her earlier days in Zürich. But she had never forgotten her parents and their devoted efforts to help their daughter and other family members survive the terrors of the Nazi era. Before she died, Marianne made provisions in her will for the creation of the Julius and Margarete Edelstein Fund in The New York Community Trust. Grants from this fund have helped nonprofits such as City Harvest, Food Bank for New York City, and VISIONS/Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.