"You don't know my mother," said the son. He held a vigil at her bedside in the hospital. She remained unconscious for days. One morning, she woke up. She whispered, "What day is it?"

"Tuesday," he replied, wondering.

And she said, "Cancel my ten o'clock dentist appointment."

He called the dentist. She did indeed have an appointment. He cancelled it, and returned his mother to the Heights.

The taxi driver from Bombay steering towards Broadway in the Heights chooses his words so carefully that a passenger begins to write them down. He says "I am not willing to be downtrodden", and "If you work hard here you get somewhere. If you don't work, you get no where. America is indifferent and generous to newcomers." He and his family live in a wooden house near the landing strips of Kennedy Airport in Queens. He has driven a cab for the past 24 years, his wife runs a small sewing business at home, his two children have worked after school and on weekends since they were 15. His eldest daughter has just been accepted at Harvard on a full scholarship. "She is interested in economics," says the cabbie.

How did the Fourth Reich affect the generation who grew up there? One had no money and low social status. One took in a lodger to sleep in the livingroom. One spoke english at home to get used to it, one's father was depressed and instead of teaching high school he did menial labour in a factory. Mrs K's two boys worked day shifts in factories and attended night school before going off to study at Harvard and Princeton respectively. Quite a typical immigrant community, really. A study published this June in the New York times showed that immigrant children, regardless of their particular background or race, do better than their american contemporaries in school. But the longer the students live in the United States, the less homework they do. Immigrants have always been America's greatest natural resource.

When Mrs K. returns home, she passes a small boy kneeling on the sidewalk in front of her house playing with Enterprise figures, the Borgks. "What do they do? " a stranger asks him. He looks up, an eight year old with a round head and blazing black eyes, the son of a recent immigrant, and he explains patiently, without the trace of an accent, "Why, they sew, they cut, they blast away, and they assimilate." ( "Na, sie schneidern, sie schneiden, sie ballern und sie assimilieren").

In the late afternoon, Mrs K. needs a rest. She puts away her cane and pillow in a livingroom furnished with sofas and chairs from Germany, and decorated with photographs of her family.

"When my son came to visit, the whole of the Heights was excited. When they asked if I was proud I said, I'm humbly proud. They say my son the doctor. What should I say, my son the aussenminister? " She has just spoken the regional mixture of two languages for the first time that day, but she smiles, her expression rather melancholic..

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AUG 0 4 1997

For Dr Kissinger URGENT!!!

Dear Sir, Dear Friend, Dear ex-Neighbor,

Here is the modest article I cranked out about our old neighborhood, and about
your mother. I liked her so much that I felt I owed her an entire book. This will have to
make do for now.

Please read this and tell me pronto whether I may publish it. (Der Spiegel wants it). If
you give your okay, then I also need a handsome photo of mother and son.

I will try to call her in the next few days. I hope to be in New York again soon, and then I
will visit her, and hopefully I will see you too.

Thanks again for persuading her to see me. Sie ist mir eine grosse Bereicherung.

Love and best wishes from Irene Dische

The Last Citizen of the Fourth Reich

The Fourth Reich lasted nearly twice as long as the Third Reich, but left fewer
survivors. Time has decimated what remained of a generation of German Jewish
refugees that settled Washington Heights, the community that peaks at 269 feet above
sea level, the highest natural point of Manhattan. These refugees never had the chance to
look down on others. Most decamped downtown or to the suburbs by the '70s, after
sending their children to college and upper middle class professions. Nearly everyone
who could escaped the Fourth Reich. But one old woman stayed.

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Mrs K. is 96, with curls on her head, bright blue eyes, and a slender elegantly clad figure she guards with frugal eating habits from "expanding". She is not expansive. She dislikes talking about herself. She prefers to grill a new acquaintance about her family background. This information then falls neatly into place in her memory, the details intact, and she takes pleasure in then. She keeps in touch with the world way beyond the fourth reich, follows the international news in the New York Times, although recently, because of her bad eyes, "it's getting to be a strain and not a pleasure". She still reads the editorials, "if they are well written". For years, she voted for the democrats. She does not say who she votes for now. The ballot is one's own business. "Who do you prefer?" she asks.

On a summer day, she leaves the apartment she has inhabited since 1940 and walks slowly but surely along a steep uphill course till she reaches Ft Tryon Park. The other survivors of the Fourth Reich do the same, greeting each other en route. The gentlemen tip their hats and the ladies stop to chat. They wear formal dress; they look like they are going to a party. The vegetation in Ft Tryon park in June is bacchanalian. Mrs K. wears a trim blue dress and matching shoes, and she carries a cushion with the embroidered message "Old Age Aint For Sissies". There is a spirit of competitiveness among these old acquaintances about the speed and independence of one's walk; the median age must be mid-ninety. They come from the Memel to the Maas, from the Etsch to the Belt, communicating now in a dialect indigenous to the Fourth Reich: half German, half English. Mrs K. does not. She speaks German or English, but she prefers English. Her housekeeper's sloppy grammar worries Mrs K, "I'm afraid she will corrupt my english." Not likely. Mrs K's english is complex, her accent very slight. "But when we speak about the War, then we invariably speak German," she says.

"We" refers to the family. Mrs K. does not enjoy speaking about the war enough to speak in German to an acquiantence. "Tell me about your children," she says.

"Everyone in the Fourth Reich knows Mrs K.," says an old woman on a park bench watching Mrs K pass. "For the obvious reasons. And because she's a lovely person".

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Amsterdam Avenue runs like a river through Washington Heights, dividing the economically established westside population from the newcomers that traditionally squeeze in on the East side. The Spanish newcomers had settled there in the fifties and sixties, and a decade later they crossed the avenue and began to settle to opposite bank. What hadn't left the Western Bank, fled then. "Es war alles deutsch." says one resident who stayed. "Jetzt nicht. Ich will nicht ungerecht zein. Man spricht nur von einem Change."

In the Heights, there are still a few shops left that cater specifically to the Fourth Reich. The drug store near to Mrs K's apartment only stocks reading glasses with maximal magnification. A shoe store specializes in orthopedic shoes. Angelinos coffee shop on the corner of 187 street is an outpost of German-Jewish civilization. It has seven tables, ten counter seats and on a weekday afternoon every seat is taken by a native german speaker. But the cook and the waitress speak English and Spanish.

Lunch time in the Fourth Reich. A sign announces fresh blue fish on special. The fish is leathery and a diner inquires how fresh it is. "Very fresh, " says the waitor, "we got it in on Friday." It is Monday.

"We all eat here," says a German diner. "Because here the people are friendly to us." The dinner guest has been a steady customer since 1938. She might have moved away from the Heights with her son in 1975. But she didn't. "Wir haben unser mind nicht abmachen koennen," she sighs. She adds, "Und jetzt kommt der Russe."

On the eastern banks of Amsterdam Avenue, the Russians are coming. The Spanish population on the Western banks is making its way into the middle class and dreads these newcomers, these Russians. They come from Tashkent and the Ukraine. They have taken over the leases, and given the shops russian names. They are arrogant and energetic. When a stranger enters one of their stores, all conversation ceases. The other Russian customers and the salespeople stare with blatant hostility. At a women's fashion shop, men go in and out. They do not try on the dresses; the dresses are wrapped

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in plastic and pushed in front of the store window so that one cannot look inside. The Spanish despise these newcomers. The Germans like them even less: the Russians are Jewish. That makes matters worse.

But a realtor trying to sell an apartment defends the neighborhood. "The Heights is just multicultural, " he says, slurring the adjective, culcha. "Dr Ruth lives here too. And a lot of models-slash- waitors live here : the Ron Goldman types you find here and in Hollywood. IT's a good place. And Mrs. K. I just got in a fabulous two bedroom unit, would you like to see it?"

Pressed, he admits to change. "Distintegration," he says. "We always had one or two wackos, guys on drugs, dealers. Let's say, 1 in 10. Now its 4 in 10. But it happened a thousand times in a thousand different neighborhoods: one group comes and forces the other out. You still find some Germans, mind you, if you look for them early in the morning, you see them scurrying to the shops to buy their groceries."

On a hot afternoon, Ft Tryon Park is an oasis. Mrs K places her cushion on a park bench, and takes a seat, nodding at passersby. "I wanted to tell you something, but I forgot what," calls a friend and, laughing, moves on. Mrs K. wants to discuss the Middle East. She wants to know what Germany is like since the Wall went down. Like many of her compatriots, she prefers not to talk about the past.

When Mrs K finally acquieses, yielding to questions, she divides her past up into several periods: her childhood before and after her mother died, the years she worked in Halberstadt as an au pair girl until she left the family to marry Herr K., fifteen years her senior, family life with two small boys, leaving Germany on the Ile de France, the first years in America, the middle years when her son became a public figure not only in the Heights, the present time. Asked to be specific about her first few days in America she moves quickly from the personal to the historical. "I saw an apt I liked but we couldnt afford it. The landlady said, 'So you have to move to the lower east side'. The eastern jews were settled there. They looked down on the German jews. Our parents had treated them without respect and this was their thank you. I couldnt blame them."

Pressed, she describes moving into the apartment on 187 st, how everyone went to work to make ends meet, including the two boys, then 14 and 15 -- the youngest

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distributed bread for a bakery, the elder put together shaving brushes on an assembly
belt, and in the evenings they went to school. Herr K worked in a bookbinding factory,
which was as close as he could get to his great love, books. He found it demeaning. Mrs
K. worked for a catering service, as a cook. " I didn't work for German jews" she says , "
I didn't like it, a false pride, I felt as good as they, why should I work for them? You can't
get over those inhibitions."

She returned to Germany for a visit after the War ended, in the '50s, in order the
visit the graves of her parents. Mr K was not a happy man then. He had been a
Gymnasium teacher before the War, "The school, says his wife, " had been his life's
work" He had also run a volunteer course for people who couldnt find employment. In
America he hadn't been able to find employment either, but had no advice for himself.
"He was just too old for America, " his widow says, "52 years old in 1938". When they
returned to Germany, he went straight to the Gymnasium. It had been modernized and
a former colleague approached him, "Nun Herr Kollege, wie ist es Ihnen so ergangen?"
She quotes his reply, "Anfangs wollte ich fast verzagen/Und ich dachte, ich trag' es
nie/ich habe es aber doch ertragen/Frag' mich nice wie."

There were other visits back to Germany. A few years ago she attended
celebrations when her son accepted an honorary doctorate from his Heimatstadt.

"That was Unreality." says Mrs K. "The government sent cars. The lady from the foreign service was put at our disposal. First you get chased away and then you get treated like royalty. It's unreal." Sitting on a park bench on a pretty summer day, she dangles her feet and remarks, "If it weren't for nature, and it weren't for a few friends, life would be pure misery."

"I'm a little depressed," says Mrs K. "Because I'm afraid of the decline." Her eyes are alert but she has glaucoma, and wears a hearing aid. She worries inordinately about money. "My husband warned me, 'you'll make a terrible widow.' She worries about her

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bills, about making ends meet. Her son tried to assuage her anxiety by having her bills
sent directly to him, but then she worried he wouldn't pay them.

Mr K. died ten years ago, at the age of 95. Life wasn't the same afterwards,
says his widow. Her son urged her to move downtown with him, a big beautiful
apartment on the East Side. He argued and cajoled her. She steadily refused. Then one
day she fell in her kitchen, and lay unconscious for several days. Finally a neighbor
found her, and took her to the hospital. The doctors called her son. "We don't want to
prolong her life," the doctors said. They wanted to take her off the life support system.
Her son objected. "I'm a good Jewish boy," he said, "I won't let you kill my mother."

"She'll won't be able to think or speak," argued the doctors.

....................................

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How did the Fourth Reich affect the generation who grew up there? One had no money and low social status. One took in a lodger to sleep in the livingroom. One spoke English at home to get used to it, one's father was depressed and instead of teaching high school he did menial labour in a factory. Mrs K's two boys worked day shifts in factories and attended night school before going off to study at Harvard and Princeton respectively. Quite a typical immigrant community, really. A study published this June in the New York times showed that immigrant children, regardless of their particular background or race, do better than their American contemporaries in school. But the longer the students live in the United States, the less homework they do. Immigrants have always been America's greatest natural resource.

When Mrs K. returns home, she passes a small boy kneeling on the sidewalk in front of her house playing with Enterprise figures, the Borgks. "What do they do? " a stranger asks him. He looks up, an eight year old with a round head and blazing black eyes, the son of a recent immigrant, and he explains patiently, without the trace of an accent, "Why, they sew, they cut, they blast away, and they assimilate." ("Na, sie schneidern, sie schneiden, sie ballern und sie assimilieren").

"When my son came to visit, the whole of the Heights was excited. When they asked if I was proud I said, I'm humbly proud. They say my son the doctor. What should I say, my son the aussenminister? " She has just spoken the regional mixture of two languages for the first time that day, but she smiles, her expression rather melancholic. .