“It’s just a phase.” That was what my German-born Jewish great grandmother Henrietta Giballe Previn is said to have remarked on the rise of Adolph Hitler to power in the early 1930s.

The Previns had immigrated to the United States in 1886: Henrietta and Moritz (later known as Morris), with their then three children, my grandmother Rose, and great uncles Arthur (ne Ott0) and Leo. There would be five other Previn offspring: Charles, the first American-born, in 1888, Siegfried (later Stanley), Julius (born Alosius), William Oliver (Willie), and Bess. Their first residence was in the heavily German neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Moritz Previn was a rabbi and a cantor and went by the formal title of “Reverend.” My grandmother, known as Rosie, and her husband Joseph H. Meyer married in 1905. They spoke German at home; my father Gerard was originally Girard, German for strong spear.

When the Great War broke out, my great grandparents, still loyal to their native country, supported the Kaiser.  My father told me that they pretty much considered German culture superior to anything the United States had to offer.  So, they were not happy when Julius (by then Jules) volunteered to serve in the American Expeditionary Force. He was even decorated for valor but came home “shell-shocked,” an old term for PTSD. The Americanized Siegfried, by now Stanley, also served, in the Navy as the war was drawing to a close. At the same time, German cousins were fighting, and decorated, on the other side.

Hitler was never subtle in naming those he said were the enemies within — the lying press publishing fake news, pretty much anyone who criticized him, and, especially, the Jews.  Borrowing from the Book of Leviticus, Hitler was expert at “scapegoating,” and he singled out Jews for such treatment, blaming them for the German defeat and much more. But during the years of the democratic Weimar Republic, his was but a small group of extremist thugs. He also engaged in the big lie, assessing that if repeated enough, despite  the outright mendacity, many people would simply believe it.  Like Haitians eating pet cats in Ohio.

The Jewish Priwins (German spelling) were assimilated, educated secular citizens residing in Berlin.  One was a doctor, another was a barrister and judge; his name was Jakob Priwin, and his youngest, born in 1929, was Andreas Ludwig Priwin, who would become the musical polymath Andre Previn.

Another cousin was Hans Wolfgang Priwin, a successful radio broadcaster and journalist in Berlin who became something of an apologist for the Nazis. Infamously, in 1933, when there were protests against Nazi persecution of Jews, Cousin Hans — a leader in the German Jewish National Bund — took to international radio to declare there were no antisemitic acts in Germany.  He compared such reports to discredited World War I Allied propaganda and said anti-German protests would only make things worse. In heavily-accented English, he said:

“We have had a revolution in Germany—a revolution so bloodless and so quiet as has not been seen in centuries.” Berlin Jews, he continued, have nothing to fear. “Nobody will molest them because of their religion.” German Jews, he said, have roots dating back centuries. “And we shall not let our Fatherland be taken away from us by a rabble which do not realize that we German Jews think first of our Fatherland… We are one with the government in the desire that Germany shall again become great.”  Make Germany Great Again, Indeed!

Soon thereafter, Hans was banned from broadcasting (“canceled”) as a a Jew.  He and his wife fled to Denmark and then to England, where he reinvented himself as John P. Wynn and was a successful radio serial show writer and personality, an author and creator of the popular Inspector Hornleigh films.

The Jakob Previns remained in Berlin until Jewish attorneys, under laws enacted by the Nazi regime, could no longer carry on their profession as before. For a while, they were permitted to perform some limited notary duties. But then late one afternoon, as Herr Priwin was preparing to leave his office, a Brown Shirt he’d represented years before in a criminal matter showed up to return the favor.  Leave immediately, he said, or face arrest by the Gestapo. Thus did Andre’s branch hastily flee from Berlin on a fraught plane trip to Paris, where they stayed for several months awaiting visas to the U.S.

Fortunately, they were well connected. Russian-American violinist Jascha Heifitz was among their sponsors. And, in New York and LA, there was my great-uncle Charles Previn, by now the musical director of Universal Studios, who brought them to Los Angeles and helped launch the young wunderkind Andre at MGM, where he went on to score films, win four Oscars and 11 Grammys, and become a popular jazz pianist, classical composer and acclaimed conductor.  Fortunately, all Priwins got out, save for one, 17-year old Anita Sophie, who relocated to Holland before the Nazi invasion, then was sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in September 1942. Surviving Priwins immigrated to the States, to the UK, Sweden and to Latin America, where descendants still live.

My mother’s family was not so fortunate. They lived in  the small town of Volozhin in what is today Belarus.  In 1918, they welcomed the Germans, who they viewed as preferable to the rulers of Czarist Russia.  But when the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1941 was signed, their town fell under communist rule, which was nearly as bad. They were, after all, capitalists; they owned a tannery and a general store in the market area. So they were almost relieved when German soldiers occupied Volozhin. But the Germany of Adolph Hitler was unlike the Kaiser’s Germany, and over three “actions” in 1941 and 1942, the Jews of Volozhin — including virtually my entire family, my great aunts, great uncles and cousins I never knew — were murdered. Somehow that word was never used in my family. Instead, they all “perished,” the euphemism often used to describe the mass murder of European Jews during those dark days of World War II.

“It’s just a phase,” my great grandmother declared  as the Nazis ascended to power.  There were guardrails. The old guard would restrain Hitler’s worse instincts. The Weimar democracy would somehow survive.

These times bring to mind one of my favorite films of the 1950s, Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd.”  Andy Griffith, in his first movie role, plays Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a down-and-dirty bum whose hillbilly charm and outrageous conduct makes him a national star with a popular TV show (Cracker Barrel) that seemed destined to take him even higher, perhaps to national office.  Rhodes was so influential he assumed he could never lose his followers or the public.

But then the radio journalist who aided his rise, played by Patricia Neal, purposely leaves a mic on when he thinks he’s off the air as he belittles his millions of followers. “They’re like a lot of trained seals,” he says, his contempt for his listeners suddenly exposed to the world. “I toss them a dead finish and they’ll flap their flippers.” And that is the end of Lonesome Rhodes and his threat to democracy.

In 2021, writer Stephen Pierce predicted a similar fate for the 45th president, whom he assured readers would not rise again from his 2020 defeat. Then he concludes: “This country is sticky. There will always be darkness stuck to us. It is simply up to us to choose how to respond to that darkness now, in the present, so that we can brighten the lights for the future.”  But do not worry. As my great-grandmother said as democracy fell in Germany, “It’s just a phase.”