WORST GUEST EVER: Frau Hahn

MWI
September 2016

Mireille Taub

I met Frau Hahn when we were living in Paris. She was the purchasing agent of a
very large well known international German industrial presence. David had frequent
business dealings with her for a number of years. She mentioned to him that she
would be in Paris on a certain date. They made arrangements to continue their
business conversations in Paris, and perhaps, dinner, possibly at our home.

As per their arrangements, Frau Hahn called David when she arrived in Paris; he
invited her to our home the following evening giving her our address. I was at the
park with my two children, returned at the end of the afternoon to find her on at
the front entrance of our building, much earlier than the planned time.

She apologized for being early but had finished her business sooner than expected
and decided to come in this direction. “Oh well, come up stairs, relax while I put
dinner together; David will be arriving a bit later.” She handed the children a
beautifully wrapped gift which they eagerly opened. Ooohs, Aaaahs, a miniature
Bavarian village to be placed around a Christmas tree or with a train display. After
thanking her, I put it on a shelf in their room so that it wouldn’t be accidentally
destroyed when they played.

Elizabeth and Peter asked if they could play with Christian (our across the hall
neighbor) before settling down. Yes, it was OK with Heidi, my German-from-
Dresden neighbor and so, a few more minutes of play before baths and dinner.
There were only two apartments on the floor, mine, and Heidi’s. The doors were
frequently left open so that the children could go back and forth.

I was a little taken aback when Frau Hahn followed the children into Heidi’s
apartment without being invited. This was not a part of French mores, nor was it a
part of German mores, both far more structured and rigid than our informal
American customs. Heidi gave me a look; I shrugged, trying to put dinner together,
inviting Frau Hahn back into our apartment for a drink, snack, TV, perhaps?

I didn’t speak German, she didn’t speak French, but her English was excellent, and
we had no problems communicating. I called David at the office, telling him, “She’s
here, come home now!”

“Coming honey,” but there’s no accounting for Paris traffic and it would be at best
at least 30 minutes before he could get home.

Elizabeth and Peter took their baths, had dinner in the kitchen while I worked on
the final dinner preparations. My time was mostly in the kitchen and with the

children and so, I told Frau Hahn to make herself comfortable, watch TV, play a
record, kick off her heels (figuratively speaking) and relax.

David came in, finally, took one look at Frau Hahn and quietly asked me what was
going on. Frau Hahn was sitting rigidly in the armchair with a very peculiar
expression on her face. I noticed that she had gone through our records and
pulled out several recordings reflecting Jewish themes. None had been played.
The TV was on, filling the space with sound. In looking around her, observing some
of the Jewish artifacts, music, that she hadn’t realized before and now understood
that David and I were Jewish.

David greeted Frau Hahn in German. She sat, still rigid and very, very quiet. We
passed the hors d’oevres, the children said goodnight, thanked Frau Hahn again,
and David served more wine. It was a very strange evening.

We painfully chit chatted our way through dinner trying to overcome resonating
silences. David and I looked at each other, not sure where the conversation was
going. We talked about jobs, first work experiences, etc, how that impacted upon
our lives. She told us about her first job as a guard in prison camp. She noticed a
young handsome Dutch prisoner and would meet him at night to pass him extra
food. She commented that when he was liberated, he never took the time to thank
her, in fact, she never saw him again. She commented, “How ungrateful of him,
after I probably saved his life.” We said nothing, not sure what could be said.
David later told me that he was thinking that the smoke signals from the
crematoria were hard to decipher.

David took her downstairs, put her in a taxi. I cleaned up after dinner. When he
returned to the apartment, I asked him what he was thinking about. He told me
that he had been contemplating picking her up and hurling her through the back
windows, onto the no longer used railroad track curving around our building. He had
already rejected throwing through the front windows because of the splatter
effect in the courtyard. I took the miniature village, put it into its box and gave it
away. My children never played with it; it was mentioned once and I said it was too
fragile to leave out, and then they forgot.

David returned to Germany two weeks later to visit and conclude his business with
Frau Hahn. She was no longer working there. She left abruptly immediately after
her return to Germany; nobody had any idea where she was; it was thought very strange.

Several years later, after our return to NY, David attended a lecture given by
Simon Weisenthal. The topic was recognizing war criminals now living in our midst.
Since David did a lot of business in Germany, obviously with former Nazis, he was
fascinated. He was told that one of the most frequent strategies used by people
hiding their connection to the Nazi hierarchy was to pull up stakes, move away,
leaving no forwarding address, escaping like smoke in the air; obliterating their past.

Was Frau Hahn self avowed concentration camp guard a former war criminal? In
our minds, the answer was undoubtedly, “Yes.” Proof? No, just suspicions, hunches
underscored by her complete and obvious discomfort at having discovered that we
were Jewish and not transplanted Germans.

We understood, once more, the Nazis among us often appear benign, friendly, and
even intelligent and remain dangerous.

A WOMAN OF INFLUENCE

MWI Writing Group
Mireille Taub, November 21, 2025

She was tiny in stature and gigantic in determination, resolve, and ambition and,

perhaps unbeknownst to her, in influence. I am not citing the influencers in today’s

cyber-tech world. Her influence went far beyond trendy fashions. She had

miraculously survived unspeakable conditions. She defined resistance at several

different levels, touching many as well as changing the odds of survival from zero to

success.

She spoke at least 4 languages, faultlessly, was driven by an insatiable quest for

knowledge and success, seemingly untouched by the horrible vicissitudes that life

had in plan for her.

She arrived in New York, penniless, homeless with little to call her own and almost

no tangible objects that could link her to her girlhood and past. Within weeks, and

with the help of extended family, she (and her mother and younger sister) found an

apartment, starting a new lifestyle. She quickly enrolled at Hunter college to

complete the education which she had been denied for so many years.

As tiny as she was, she was a force of nature, encouraging her younger sister to

also enroll in Hunter to complete her education. Her mother had no specific

professional training, but like many women of her class, had skills that could be

useful. She encouraged her mother not to give in to the despair of having lost

everything; husband, home, family members. This was a new country; a page had

been turned in the great rollercoaster of life. She pushed “Mamushka” to add

English to her personal repertoire of languages and to apply for a position as a

seamstress in the vibrant post war NY garment industry. She encouraged her

mother to define their new lives, make new friends and tighten the family bonds

of her NY family.

My mother and father enjoyed speaking to Irena, her mother, Fela and her sister,

Danuta, in Polish. It brought back the culture of the country that each of them

had separately left as teenagers to immigrate to France. As they, to my ears,

clackety clacked in Polish, I paid little attention. Polish was not my language,

English, French, Yiddish were. I saw smiles, tears, heard laughter. The next day,

upon questioning my parents, I was filled in on parts of the conversation that I had

missed. I understood the laughter and smiles, was appalled by the description of

the reasons for the tears. Irena hid Danuta and Fela in a convent outside Warsaw.

Irena remained in Warsaw, as part of the underground resistance, smuggling

weapons and supplies as a courier, hidden in plain sight because of her totally Polish

looks and affect.

I was in awe of this pint-sized dynamo. She took time to talk to me, get to know

me and, understanding my love for art and design took me, the youngest of 4

cousins under her wing and tutelage. Oh yes, she was attentive and kind to my 4-

year older sister, my 3- and 2-year older cousins, Ira and Marcel, but I was the special one.

My mother, although enjoying her company called her raffish and bohemian. I

wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but I think that Mom was alluding to Irene’s

style of dress and perhaps her life stye. Irena was not at all the white glove

fashion model and beauty that my mother was. I think that she thought that 12-

year-old impressionable me would follow that path. However, they had no

objections when Irena offered to take me to the various NY museums

she had grown to know and love.

Of course, I had visited museums before, either in the company of my parents or
on school trips. I was familiar with the Brooklyn Museum and the Met. But once a
month, my parents would escort me on the subway to meet Irena for lunch.
Sometimes we ate with my parents, sometimes just we two (almost giggly girls) and
as time passed with her now fiancée. He was as tall as she was short; at least 6
foot 3 or 4. Larry Urdang was a philologist, the editor of Random House dictionary
and I remember having lively discussions the use of language, word origins and
their relationships to other languages.

However, the best part of these outings was our museum trips. She introduced me
to MOMA and to the newly expanded Whitney. The art blew my mind as we walked
through exhibits, Irena carefully explaining the importance of the artist and his
work. By this time, Irena had finished her degree and opened what would become a
thriving antique business specializing in the decorative arts of the Art Deco period,
with some futuristic 50’s pieces thrown in to spice up displays. She married Larry,
bought the Dickinson Witch hazel estate on the Connecticut Sound which she used

as a showroom. In addition, she was a well-known, active speaker about resistance
in Poland during the war.

To say the least, she was a profound influence on my life, exposing me to art and

exciting ideas.

In retrospect, I could not have asked for a better mentor and guide. She was
thrilled when I told her that I was studying art at the Brooklyn Museum with
Rafael Soyer and over the moon when I told her that my Brooklyn College art
teachers were Ad Reinhardt and Jimmy Ernst, well known abstract expressionists.

I think that she hoped that I would become more than a bourgeois little girl from
Brooklyn. She also reached out to my two older children, encouraging my daughter
to think about a career in ballet and my son, Peter, to follow his passion for design.

She passed away several years ago. I believe she knew and understood the
profound influence she had on so many people in her life. Could one ask for a better

obituary?

Irena Urdang deTour was born in Warsaw, Poland, the daughter of Seweryn Ehrlich vel Sluszny and
Felicja (Lubelczyk) Ehrlich. In November 1940, she was confined, with her parents and sister
Danuta, to the Warsaw Ghetto where she worked in an Electropol factory. She escaped the ghetto
to the Christian section of Warsaw in March 1943, where she acquired false documents and worked
as a maid. In September 1944 she joined the underground, building barricades, organizing shelters,
and working for the Red Cross. Following the suppression of the uprising, she was sent to a slave
labor camp in Berlin with her aunt who also possessed false documents. There she worked in the
Schwartzkopf factory manufacturing war material. At the end of the war de Tour walked to
Warsaw to search for family members. Her father had died in the Warsaw uprising, and she and
her mother and sister were placed in the Bindermichl Displaced Persons Camp in Linz, Austria,
where she worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as an interpreter
and secretary. In July 1946 the family left for New York City. deTour was employed as a
bookkeeper, secretary, buyer, and was a fiction and feature editor for TOWN AND

COUNTRY, GOURMET, and the PARIS REVIEW. In 1952 she married Laurence Urdang, a lexicographer;
they had two daughters, Alexandra and Nicole. She received her B.A. from Hunter College in 1956.
A writer and poet, deTour also ran an antiques business for many years and was involved in a number
of charitable organizations, including CARE.