I would like to apologize to my readers for the break from the blog this past month. I needed to do some revisions on my manuscript of Scraps of Hope. Last week, for the first time, I sent it off to be reviewed by a potential publisher. Hopefully, it will be accepted – but I’ll have to wait to find out.
Back to news about the trip to Europe.
After we left Prague on the City Night Line train we spent the weekend in Osnabrück, Germany. Osnabrück was the home of Justus Nussbaum, one of the seven metal Jews. Nussbaum owned a scrap metal yard along with Alfred Gossels, who also appears in some of the “metal Jew” correspondence.
The weekend was highlighted by two events –
1 – a visit to the Felix Nussbaum House (more about that another day) and
2 – my being interviewed for a documentary
About a year ago a received an email through this blog from Mark Mathew. What he told me was astounding:
I am researching a story re my Grandad Wilhelm Hellmeister, who in 1937 in Osnabrück worked for Alfred Gossels and Justus Nussbaum. In July 1937 my Grandad drove Alfred Gossels to the Netherlands. And we have reasons to believe that apart from Alfred, Justus Nussbaum, his wife Sophie and his 2 year old daughter Marianne were also in the car. I would like to find out more, especially about Alfred Gossels, and maybe we can exchange some info.
Mark and I have been exchanging information ever since. He has been working on a docu-drama with he daughter (working title “Escape was in Vain”) about the Nussbaum and Gossels families’ escape from Germany to the Netherlands. His research and mine overlap as we have been trying to figure out how the Germans treated these metal-Jews and why some survived and others did not.
The morning of the filming was intense for me. Mark and his film crew, sound tech, and several still cameras all flitted around me like moths around a candle. I was hooked up with a mic and the cameras started to roll. I do not like being in font of a camera, but after several minutes, I got used to the feeling of being “in the spotlight.” It was an exciting and productive day and I’m looking forward to the final film.
K Heidi Fishman (Popje and Me) 
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