In 2008, when I visited  the glass-box memorial on the tracks at the  train station in Darmstadt, Germany, I found it to be moving, with the shards of green glass aptly portraying how lives fragmented at this location. This was where my grandparents were deported in the late 1930s.

For me, the most stunning aspect of the memorial was simply seeing my grandparents’ names – Siegmund Westerfeld and Frieda Westerfeld – etched on the glass. I have rarely seen my grandparents’ names written on anything, even documents. Since they were murdered in concentration camp long before I was born, I never met them and my mother rarely spoke of them. It was too painful for her to remember.

When I saw their names, I was  struck by the thought that I was standing in a place they once stood and seeing what they once saw. I tried to take in the entire scene – the sights, the smells, the noises. Since we have no shared experiences, I thought, this is the closest I will ever get to them.

But then, I felt sick. I realized that 60 years earlier, I would have shared their fate. Like them, I would have been marked. My heart hammered as I thought about how afraid they must have felt as they boarded the train. My grandfather, a decorated World War I veteran, must have had a deep sense of betrayal; his country and fellow soldiers had turned against him. I felt what I imagined he felt that last time he was at the Darmstadt train station -- a toxic brew of anger and hurt.

Seeing the names of Siegmund and Frieda (I never knew them so I never called them by an affectionate grandparent name) on that glass in that location made the incomprehensible reality of the Holocaust more real for me. It is difficult for anyone to understand the inhumanity and the scale of this horrific genocide, even someone like me who has had to integrate this history into my identity.

The glass memorial in Darmstadt is another piece of evidence confirming the Holocaust. And, given my experiences last week at a school in a small town in Texas, that is critical.

The librarian at the school where I was giving presentations about my books told me that many in this town of German immigrants are Holocaust deniers. “Yet, they live right next door to neighbors who have their Hitler Youth uniforms stored in their attics,” she said.

Though it has been defaced and damaged in recent years, the memorial at the Darmstadt train station isn't hidden in an attic.

Descendants of Nazis delve into past to try to understand

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER Associated Press

BERLIN — Rainer Hoess was 12 years old when he found out his grandfather was one of the worst mass murderers in history.

The gardener at his boarding school, an Auschwitz survivor, beat him black and blue after hearing he was the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the death camp synonymous with the Holocaust.

“He beat me, because he projected on me all the horror he went through,” Rainer Hoess said, with a shrug and a helpless smile. “Once a Hoess, always a Hoess. Whether you’re the grandfather or the grandson — guilty is guilty.”

Germans have for decades confronted the Nazi era head-on, paying billions in compensation, meticulously teaching Third Reich history in school and building memorials to victims. The conviction Thursday in Munich of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk on charges he was a guard at the Sobibor Nazi death camp drives home how the Holocaust is still very much at the forefront of the German psyche.

But most Germans have skirted their own possible family involvement in Nazi atrocities. Now, more than 65 years after the end of Hitler’s regime, an increasing number of Germans are trying to pierce the family secrets.

Some, like Hoess, have launched an obsessive solitary search. Others seek help from seminars and workshops that have sprung up across Germany to provide research guidance and psychological support.

“From the outside, the third generation has had it all — prosperity, access to education, peace and stability,” said Sabine Bode, who has written books on how the Holocaust weighs on German families today. “Yet they grew up with a lot of unspoken secrets, felt the silent burdens in their families that were often paired with a lack of emotional warmth and vague anxieties.”

Like others, Hoess had to overcome fierce resistance within his family, who preferred he “not poke around in the past.” Undeterred, he spent hours at archives and on the Internet researching his grandfather.

Rudolf Hoess was in charge of Auschwitz from May 1940 to November 1943. He came back to Auschwitz for a short stint in 1944, to oversee the murder of some 400,000 Hungarian Jews in the camp’s gas chambers within less than two months. After the war, Hoess went into hiding on a farm in northern Germany; he was eventually captured and hanged in 1947.

“When I investigate and read about my grandfather’s crimes, it tears me apart every single time,” Hoess said in an interview at his home in a Black Forest village.

As a young man, he said, he tried twice to kill himself. He has suffered three heart attacks in recent years as well as asthma, which he says gets worse when he digs into his family’s Nazi past. Today, Hoess says, he no longer feels guilty, but the burden of the past weighs on him at all times.

“My grandfather was a mass murderer — something that I can only be ashamed and sad about,” said the 45-year-old chef and father of two boys and two girls. “However, I do not want to close my eyes and pretend nothing ever happened, like the rest of my family still does. … I want to stop the curse that’s been haunting my family ever since, for the sake of myself and that of my own children.”

Hoess is no longer in contact with his father, brother, aunts and cousins, who all call him a traitor. Strangers often look at him with distrust when he tells them about his grandfather — “as if I could have inherited his evil.”

Despite such reactions, descendants of Nazis are increasingly trying to find out what their families did between 1933 to 1945..

Tanja Hetzer, a therapist in Berlin, helps clients dealing with issues related to their family’s Nazi past. While there are no studies or statistics, she said, many cases indicate that descendants of families who have never dealt with their Nazi family history suffer more from depression, burnout and addiction.

Some grandchildren of Nazis find a measure of catharsis in confronting the past. Alexandra Senfft is the granddaughter of Hanns Elard Ludin, Hitler’s Slovakia envoy who was involved in the deportation of almost 70,000 Jews. After Ludin was hanged in 1947, his widow raised the children in the belief their father was “a good Nazi.”

In her book, “The Pain of Silence,” Senfft describes how a web of lies burdened her family, especially her mother, who was 14 when her beloved father was hanged. “It was unbearable at times to work on this book, it brought up fears and pain, but at the same time I got a lot out of writing it all down,” Senfft, 49, said.

Naperville students reconnect women who fled Nazis in 1938

It was a brief email that rekindled an equally short childhood friendship 73 years ago.

“I have thought of you often and am so thankful that you found me,” Gerda “Gertie” Frumkin wrote from Seattle on April 28. “Can’t wait until we speak together.”

Signed “with love,” the email made its way to 86-year-old Edith Westerfeld in Skokie.

It was the determination — and technological prowess — of an eighth-grade class at Naperville’s Madison Junior High School that made the message possible. Frumkin’s greeting was the first time she had been in contact with Westerfeld since they had spent about two weeks together in 1938 while escaping Nazi Germany.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Westerfeld told the eighth-graders Friday at a reception in her honor. Her daughter, Fern Schumer Chapman of Lake Bluff, described the reunion as a “dream come true.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-13/news/ct-met-naperville-reunion-0514-20110513_1_naperville-students-eighth-grade-nazis

The memories keep you awake

Berce Kahraman (foreground) and classmates carry copies of 'Mutterland' -- a gift from the German Society to Preserve Jewish Culture to Russelsheim schools

03.03.2011 – RÜSSELSHEIM

Von Tobias Riedl

The German Foundation to Preserve Jewish Culture brings the story of Holocaust survivors to schools

“It is important to us to introduce the Holocaust in Rüsselsheims’ schools to get people talking,” says Dr. Bärbel Maul, a board member of the Foundation. Therefore, the Foundation offered the Rüsselsheim secondary schools, the book “Mutterland. Nach dem Holocaust – Eine Tochter fordert die Erinnerung zurück“ (Motherland) at a significantly reduced price.

Euro NOCAP Publisher Christel Göttert (the German publisher of Mutterland) sold the books to the Foundation. Dr. Maul said at the handing over of books on Tuesday that this partnership “heralded a long and intense cooperation…”

The book is about Edith Westerfeld, who was sent in 1938 as a twelve year old to relatives in America, shortly before the murder of her parents by the Nazis. She escaped the death camps, but was completely uprooted. Decades later, she returned to Germany with her daughter, the journalist and author Fern Schumer Chapman…

Peter cross Bach, head of the Werner-Heisenberg School wants to teach he story in politics and history classes. Eventually, the students will have a week of projects dealing with the book.

 

Edith's German school picture

From the German publisher of Mutterland:

Dear Fern and Edith,
Can write us some sentences for the students and children who are able
to read your book, maybe some experiences or impressions after your readings
with children and young people in America and in Germany?
 
As child, my mother, Edith Westerfeld, was labeled as "other" in two
countries. In Germany, she was identified as inferior and undesirable
for being Jewish, even though her family viewed itself as German first
and Jewish second. (Edith's father was a decorated World War I
veteran.) In America, Edith struggled to fit into her new home, new
school, new classmates where she didn't know the culture, the language
or the people. In fact, in America Edith felt so alienated that, 73 years
later, she still remembers the name of one of the only students who was kind and
smiled at her -- "Doug."

One of the most poignant moments my mother and I have shared over the
last years was in a high school in Frankfurt, Germany. I gave a speech
to a group of 80 students who had read Motherland in English. At the end
 of the speech, I introduced my mother to the group. Edith looked around
the classroom and said these words: "I see many different faces in your class,
 students from all around the world. I must ask those of you who have lived in
Germany for a long time, "What do you do to welcome those students who are not
like you? What do you do to make those students feel like they are part of your
community?" 

The wounds of feeling unwanted and unwelcome do not heal quickly.

Tarkington Middle School, Tarkington, Texas

After a two-day visit to schools in Texas, I received this question from a student:

Dear Mrs. Chapman,

You wouldn’t believe I figured out I have German in me, but also some Jewish, like you!! I attend Tarkington Middle School and I’m 12 years old. I asked my mother if we could order Is It Night or Day?, but she said “no,” but today, February 3, 2011, I was attending my 6th period class and my librarian, Mrs. Dillard, whom you’ve met, brought me a signed copy of your book!! I started reading it and found myself in Germany as if I were your mother. If we could go back in time and see what had happened, would you? Ohh and your mother got on a ship to come to America and I thought you said the German government ran the ship, how come they let the Jews come to America? PLEASE WRITE BACK?!!

Dear Emily,

Thank you for your email. I’m delighted that Mrs. Dillard gave you a copy of my book and that you have found it deeply engaging. That is what I had hoped would happen to readers — that they would travel alongside Edith. You asked me if I would like to go back in time and find out what really happened to my mother. Yes, I wish I could and, in some ways, I think I did just that by writing the book.

How interesting that you just discovered that you are German and Jewish. How did you find out?

You ask an excellent question about why Germans allowed the children to travel on a German ship to America. Let me explain. First, it was more difficult for adults to get out of Germany than for children. Adults had to find a country that would take in Jews. That was difficult since there was so much anti-Semitism in countries around the world at that time. In addition, adults who wanted to leave Germany had to find a sponsor to assure that the immigrant would have a place to live and a place to work. That was not easy either because it was the Depression and jobs were scarce.

Before November 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), it was easier to get passports and papers and make arrangements to leave Germany. After Kristallnacht, it was nearly impossible to get out. (As you know, my mother left in March of 1938, before Kristallnacht.) The German government more readily approved passports and papers for children than adults. The government was glad to get rid of the “Jewish problem” any way it could and sending Jewish children to another country removed them from German society. So many children came to America on German ships.

I enjoyed visiting your school last week. You and your classmates were warm, welcoming, and attentive to my presentations.

Best,

Fern Schumer Chapman

Theater in renovated barn on Mina's property on a wintry day

Readers of Motherland might be curious to see this photo. Mina’s son, Juergen, now lives in Mina’s house and he has made dramatic changes to the property. He renovated the dilapidated house and converted the vacant barn into a theater. During the 1950s and 1960s, Mina ran a sanitarium in the barn, offering patients the fresh air and pastoral views of Tromm.

Tromm, Germany

Now, the tiny town of Tromm attracts people from miles around for theater productions. In the summer, Juergen and his wife, Angelika, host an annual children’s theater festival called “Trommer Sommer,” featuring children’s workshops, puppet shows and children’s productions on two stages.

The last time I was in Germany, Juergen and I did a joint reading in the large theater. Many Germans traveled more than 50 miles to hear the two of us read the German and English editions of Motherland.

With his theater in the barn, Juergen has put Tromm — a tiny hamlet with five houses — on the map.

The Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta, Georgia is one of the first to include information on the One Thousand Children. Here is some of the museum’s content:

Telegram that states that Charlotte Dreyfuss and Heinz (Henry) Birnbrey are in the United States and en route to Atlanta.

Like the Kindertransport, the intent of the One Thousand Children effort was to help Jewish children leave Nazi occupied areas. Unlike the Kindertransport, which was sponsored by the British government, the American One Thousand Children project was undertaken by private individuals and organizations. Consequently, fewer children were able to leave Germany.

There were several reasons for the reduced scope of the American operation. First, the United States had some of the most restrictive immigration laws in the world. The National Origins Quota of 1924 drastically reduced the number of immigrants who could enter the United States, from 358,000 to 164,000. It also stated that the number of immigrants from each country could only be, “2 percent of each foreign-born group living in the United States in the 1890 [census].” The primary purpose of this law was to halt Jewish and Catholic immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, who were viewed as being too culturally and racially dissimilar to the dominant Protestant culture. Immigration from Asia, which had been brisk during the nineteenth century, was completely banned. These strict laws were popular with Americans during the Great Depression, when it was feared that immigrants would take away jobs and resources from struggling native-born citizens. Because this law made no distinction between immigrants and refugees, it was almost impossible for Jews fleeing the Nazi regime to enter the United States in large numbers.

Second, overt antisemitism was commonplace in many segments of American society; a Fortune magazine poll in 1938 stated that 67 percent of Americans did not want to provide aid of any sort to Jewish refugees. Consequently, it was difficult to create a government-sponsored program to aid Jewish refugees without alienating antisemitic voters. This is illustrated by the defeat of the 1939 Wagner-Rogers bill, which would have admitted 14,000 German Jewish refugees under the age of fourteen to the United States. A Gallup poll indicated that 66 percent of Americans were opposed to proposed legislation. As American Jews felt particularly vulnerable during the Great Depression, due in part to the common but erroneous view that Jews were responsible for the dysfunctional international banking system, no domestic Jewish organization challenged the defeat of the Wagner-Rogers Bill for fear of stoking antisemitism.

Since the government provided no assistance, an informal network of organizations and activists formed to aid European Jews suffering under the Nazi regime. Children, rather than adults, were the target of this operation because it was believed that their plight would be more sympathetic to the public. Because children did not work, they would not be perceived as being an economic threat in the same way that an adult refugee would.

Concern about the refugee problem began almost as soon as the Nazis came to power. By mid-1933, Jewish organizations in the United States became aware of the dire circumstances that their European brethren were facing. Of particular concern was the plight of German Jewish children. Consequently, the Executive Committee of the American Jewish Congress passed a resolution to attempt to find foster homes throughout the world for 40,000 German Jewish children. Later that year, delegates from the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and B’nai B’rith began finalizing the details of a program that would bring 250 German Jewish children, aged sixteen and under, to the United States. Because it was necessary to ensure that the children would not become wards of the state, another organization, German Jewish Children’s Aid was formed to arrange the details of the children’s immigration and resettlement.

Because immigrants to the United States required an American citizen to sign an affidavit for them, German-Jewish Children’s Aid acted as a corporate sponsor for the unaccompanied children. Once in the United States, these children tried to rescue other family members by signing affidavits and becoming sponsors. The number of German Jewish children that entered the United States varied considerably from year to year. Because there was a fixed number of immigrants that could enter the United States each year, more children could immigrate if the total number of immigrants had decreased. Only a few children could enter the country at any given time, lest the ire of isolationists and antisemites became aroused. According to Sonnert and Holton, the largest number of unaccompanied children arrived in 1941 (260) and the least came in 1944 (9), with the average number being 94.

Prior to the United States’ entry into World War II, the children were brought in small groups (roughly a dozen at a time) based on pre-existing country quotas. After 1941, when Americans were becoming more aware of the brutality of the Nazi regime, refugee children could be brought in larger numbers. A small group of dedicated women acted as chaperones on the ships that brought the children to America.

Upon reaching the United States, the children went to Jewish foster homes. Although some of the children were reunited in America with the parents and siblings they left behind in Europe, most of the refugees became the only surviving members of their families. More information about the lives of the refugee children in America can be found in the sections entitled Staring a New Life and Stories.

While the combined efforts of the Kindertransport and the One Thousand Children saved over 11,000 lives, an estimated 1.5 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.

Here is a link to the museum’s online exhibit:

http://www.thebreman.org/exhibitions/online/1000kids/introduction.html

Gross-Gerau, Germany

GROSS-GERAU – Tenth grade pupils of the Martin-Buber School received copies of the book Mutterland (Motherland). The set for the whole class was donated by the German Association to Preserve Jewish History and Culture on a project day on inter-religious dialogue.

Mutterland, whose author was named Illinois Author of the Year in 2004 for the work, tells the story of a Jewish girl, born and raised in Stockstadt, who had to emigrate alone to the US at the age of twelve during the Nazi era. Her parents were murdered in concentration camp. The book was written by her daughter, who later visited the old country with her mother. Christel Göttert, who published the book in German, was present when the copies were handed over to pupils.

Caption under the picture:
Students of Martin-Buber School at Groß-Gerau reading and discussing with Heiner Friedrich (right), the director of the school. The occasion is a donation of books by the German Association to Preserve Jewish History and Culture in the District of Groß-Gerau.

Translated by Gert Krell