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Episode 18
November 9th 2008 was the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. I was back in Altenburg. The first visit disrupted my equilibrium, as many stories, and unprocessed emotions competed for my mind’s attention.
I had written to Altenburg’s Mayor, der Oberbuergermeister, Michael Wolf, speaking of a need for more somber remembrance, than had been possible during the first visit. Each year, he said, they marked Kristallnacht with a small ceremony. The coming one would mark the 70th anniversary. I decided to go.
This is the date in the calendar when Germany remembers a major turning point for European Jewry.
Between the night of the 9th and morning of the 10th of November 1938, more than 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms, thousands of Jewish-owned homes, hospitals, shops and cemeteries were damaged or destroyed across Nazi Germany and Austria.
At least 91 Jews were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, and sent to concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen
It’s hard to believe, as I stood at the ceremony, just a short distance from what had been M&S Cohn’s, that it had only been 70 years since my grandfather had been taken from his bed, and dragged through these streets in his pyjamas. Barely one person’s life span ago.
Needing solemn remembrance, I was far from at ease with myself, but grateful for a long black coat, bought in a sale, before leaving England. I knew I would need a serious barrier to the cold.
Pupils from a local school, the Spalatan Gymnasium, had researched the family’s history in the local archives, including looking through the local papers of the time. They spoke at the memorial, held adjacent to a stone set in a wall for Altenburg’s lost Jews, together with a speech by the Mayor, and a rectal of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Some residents of Marianne Bucky Haus, l had met on my first visit had helped decorate stones for the family. It moved me that a couple of them dropped into the memorial service. I laid the stones by the wall with flowers brought by some Altenburgers.
The students had prepared an exhibition about the family from their research , and were excited to tell me of their discoveries, in particular that Hitler had had an apartment in Altenburg around 1932.
I was astonished to find his address had been right behind M&S Cohn’s, close to the site of the memorial stone. I imagined him walking past the department store and seething at its popularity. I wondered if he had ever crossed the threshold.
Inside the hall, were more presentations, along with a truth and reconciliation session, organised by the Mayor, who had also provided me with a translator.
People who were involved in the Nazi times spoke if their experiences. Ingolf Strassman, sat second from the left and to my right, spoke of life under the Nazis, as a Jewish boy in Altenburg. His family fled to Palestine, and he returned to the town in the 1990’s, researching the fate of Altenburg’s small Jewish community, which he detailed in a book.
The most intense presentation, came from an elderly man, who had been a guard at Auschwitz. He spoke of Mengele’s selection process, which took place, after people descended from the cattle cars onto the camp’s arrival ramp. He described how some were chosen to be sent one way by the Nazi Doctor and his associates to immediate extermination, or the other way, if they were deemed useful in any way.
I remember as he articulated ‘links’, German for left, and ‘recht’, German for right, talking through the whole process. He concentrated hard while he spoke. I was fully focused. Curiously, I felt more grounded. Truth matters. I thank this man, who had stood on the wrong side of history, in a place of hell, for daring to bare witness.
The council had paid for four memorial stones to be set in the pavement outside, what had been M&S Cohn’s; stones for its co founder Marianne Cohn and her husband Sally, and for my grandparents Albert and Franze Levy.
The Christian Pasteur attached to Marianne Bucky Haus had gently prepared me for the townsfolks’ curiosity. So you will expect it, she said, many will stare at you. Her kind attention made me more at ease when surrounded by a crowd of onlookers as the stones were set in the pavement.
The Stolpersteine project, translated as stumbling blocks in English, is the initiative of a German artist Gunter Demnig. He began in 1992, to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror, and either escaped or was deported to a camp. The Stolpersteine project is the world's largest decentralized memorial. From Gunter Demnig’s Own website::
(we remember) the victims of National Socialism by installing commemorative brass plaques in the pavement in front of their last address of choice.
There are now STOLPERSTEINE (lit. “stumbling stones or blocks”) in at least 1200 places in Germany, as well as in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine.
Gunter Demnig cites the Talmud saying that "a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten". The Stolpersteine in front of the buildings bring back to memory the people who once lived here. Almost every “stone” begins with HERE LIVED… One “stone”. One name. One person.
Marianne Bucky
Sally Bucky
Albert Levy
Franze Levy
Gunter Demnig makes each stone himself, and always attends to lay the stones with his own hands. Our paths will cross again.
To be continued…….in two weeks on Sunday May 1st
When out of the blue, I receive an email from Amsterdam………
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O