A Curious Coincidence and a Visit to Yad Vashem

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Charlotte Salomon, Judith Shendar, Kristallnacht, Serge&Beate Klarsfeld, Shuli Natan

 

The anniversary of the Pogrom of 9^th November 1938, otherwise known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, is marked every year by Jews all over the world. It is not a religious occasion, but does nevertheless serve to unite Jewish communities in recalling the horrors of the Holocaust as exemplified by that one occasion in which over 1,700 synagogues and prayer rooms all over Germany and Austria were burned, pillaged and destroyed. Thousands of Jewish businesses were damaged, and Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The coordinated and violent effort to destroy the basis of Jewish life in Germany served as the ultimate wake-up call for the Jewish population there, and triggered the emigration of those Jews who were able to do so.

Every year Israel’s Association of Jews originally from Central Europe (i.e., mainly Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia) organizes a memorial service to mark the event, and this is held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. When my parents were alive they would attend this event, but I had other concerns and never found the time to go. This year, however, I decided to participate, and I found myself in the company of many people like myself, the Second Generation of Holocaust survivors, as well as a class of teenagers who had come from one of Israel’s schools.

The programme of the event was long and varied, starting with a brief service and wreath-laying ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance, and followed by a series of talks and lectures by actual Holocaust survivors as well as scholars and writers talking about specific aspects of that time. One particularly interesting lecture described the work of Charlotte Salomon, whose paintings depict her life, first in Berlin and then in the south of France, where she was eventually captured and then deported to Auschwitz. I knew about her work, having seen it in London several years ago and even have the very detailed catalogue of it, but it was nonetheless moving to hear Ms. Judith Shendar, the art curator at Yad Vashem, talk about the artist’s life and work.

In between the various lectures singer Shuli Natan went up on stage with her guitar and played and sang. It was Shuli Natan who made Naomi Shemer’s song ‘Jerusalem of Gold’ famous in the period around the Six Day War of 1967, and her voice is still strong and moving, albeit an octave or two lower now. The singer told the audience that her family was originally from Hamburg (like mine), having emigrated there in the sixteenth century to escape the Inquisition in Portugal. She ended the occasion by playing that self-same song, this time with the audience’s participation.

I used the opportunity, once the event was over, to visit the Yad Vashem library, having learned from reading the joint autobiography of Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, that there were lists of Jews deported to concentration camps by the Nazis in German-occupied France. A few years ago I learned that my mother’s aunt and uncle, Hedwig and Jacob Hirsch, and their three grown-up sons, Sami, Rudi and Kurt, had fled from Germany to France but had all disappeared there. Nothing was known about what happened to them but by a curious coincidence several years ago I met an elderly lady, a painter whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, who told me that she had been engaged to one of them (Rudi, I think), and that they had maintained contact while he was in France and she was in hiding in the Netherlands. She was eventually captured and sent to Theresienstadt, but survived and eventually moved to Israel. I met her (in 1990) at a concert given at Yad Vashem to commemorate the musicians who had been active in Theresienstadt. Because my paternal grandmother had been sent there from Hamburg, and also perished there, I have a special interest in that place.

I gave her a lift from Yad Vashem (who isn’t going to pick up an elderly lady on crutches who is hitch-hiking?) and we agreed to meet for coffee in town. While we were chatting about art and painting and such I happened to mention that one of my relatives, Joseph (‘Boujik’) Hirsch was a fairly well-known artist in Israel, whereupon she exclaimed ‘I was engaged to his cousin!’ That was Rudi, and from her I learned what a wonderful person he had been, and how confident he and his family had been that they would survive the war. My mother and other relatives had also told me about that family and what a terrible loss their passing represented for the family. That lady died a few years ago and I have no way of finding her name.

With the help of one of the librarians at Yad Vashem I traced the documents detailing the route taken by the three brothers, separately from their parents, as the Germans kept detailed lists of all those deported. And so, from the hundreds of pages giving the names, date of birth, place of birth and occupation of each person in every Transport I now know that on 10th August 1942 Sami, Rudi and Kurt Hirsch, aged 31, 26 and 22 respectively, were put on Transport no. 17 from Gurs to Drancy, and thence to Auschwitz, and that their parents, Hedwig and Jacob, aged 54 and 57 followed the same route in Transport no. 40 on 3^rd November that year.

May their memories be blessed.

Pogrom Night 1938: A Memorial to the Destroyed Synagogues of Germany; Synagogue Memorial, Beit Ashkenaz, Jerusalem, Israel

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Cologne, Kristallnacht, Prof. Meir Schwartz, Sprottaum Malcolm Hoenline, Wolfgang Ischinger

 I literally trembled with emotion when I held the two volumes of this monumental work in my hands. Together they comprise over seven hundred pages which are packed with information about the more than one thousand synagogues and prayer rooms that existed in pre-WWII Germany and were burned, destroyed, pillaged or plundered on the night of November 9^th 1938 which was given the derisive designation of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, by its Nazi perpetrators.

 The book contains concise texts giving the history, dates and vital statistics of each synagogue and community, and in many cases these are accompanied by photographs of the way the place looked before and sometimes after November 9, 1938. The work is, in fact, an encyclopaedic account of the life and times of the many Jewish communities that once existed in Germany, as it was defined by its 1937 borders. On a personal note, my heart lifted when I saw that what was once the small town of Sprottau in Silesia, the birthplace of my mother and today known as Szprotawa in Poland, is included.

 The inside cover of the book shows a map of Germany on that fateful day. The map is in gray and is studded with tiny dots of white, giving the impression of innumerable spots of light. These denote the places where synagogues or prayer rooms existed and were destroyed or attacked that night. In one startling and concise graphic image the reader grasps the full extent of the tragedy of the Jews of Germany.

 Forewords have been written by Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German Ambassador and now Global Head of Germany’s Allianz Group, and Malcolm Hoenline, Vice-Pesident of the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, both of whom contributed funds to support the project. But the main contribution and acknowledgement belongs to Professor Meir Schwartz, who instigated the project and has brought it to its final realization over the course of the last twenty years.

 Professor Schwarz, who was born in Nuremberg in 1926, was sent on his own to what was then Palestine at the age of nine. In his professional career, becoming a world-renowned expert on hydroponics, Professor Schwarz helped to make the desert bloom, both in Israel and elsewhere, thus providing sustenance to many millions.

 In his foreword to the book, Professor Schwarz relates that when he visited the town of his birth he found that the memory of the former Jewish community had been all-but erased. This was in 1988, when he happened to be in Germany attending an international biology conference. The local officials he spoke to had no knowledge of the synagogue that had once existed there, although Professor Schwarz remembered being present as a child and seeing it with his own eyes as it burned.

 Thus it was that in 1988 he determined to set the record straight and create a memorial for all the synagogues that had once existed, forming the focal point of the Jewish communities that had once flourished throughout Germany. In the larger towns there were generally more than one synagogue, and these are all commemorated, as are even the tiny steiblach and prayer rooms that existed in the smaller, rural communities. Contrary to general belief, there were many Jews who lived in far-flung towns and villages in Germany, in Jewish communities that often consisted of just a handful of families.

 Volume 1 also contains an extensive illustrated introduction relating the history of the Jewish community of Germany in considerable detail, with particular emphasis on that of Cologne.

 Many people helped to bring this immense project to fruition, and the undersigned is proud to note her own small contribution as author of some of the texts. However, without Professor Schwarz’s guiding hand and powerful vision the book would never have come into existence. Having worked in the past as the editor and translator of publications put out by Israel’s central bank, I can appreciate how much care, time and effort has been put into the production of this complex, comprehensive and above all beautiful work.

 These two volumes constitute a treasure-trove of information and will undoubtedly stand as a resounding achievement as well as a lasting memorial to the once-glorious Jewish communities of Germany.