Tutti’s Promise contains a scene in which a concentration camp guard lets my grandfather smuggle vegetables out of a root cellar to his wife and children. This really happened and my mother remembers it well. She has told me that my grandfather even said that he would have testified for leniency for this particularContinue reading “The Hotel Bristol – Berlin”
Tag Archives: Wickrath
Spiersfelde
A few years ago I was looking through my grandmother’s photo album. One of the most striking pictures shows thirty-one people in a group portrait. They are nicely dressed and posed in a purposeful composition with the family patriarch and his wife, my great-great-grandparents, sitting in the center. My grandmother stands slightly to one sideContinue reading “Spiersfelde”
Stumbling on the Stumbling Stones
Gunter Demning is a German artist who has made a name for himself installing stolpersteine (translation – stumbling stones) in front of the final residences of Holocaust victims. I was lucky enough to be invited to help set the stolpersteine for my great uncle and his wife in Tilburg in January 2014. This past weekendContinue reading “Stumbling on the Stumbling Stones”
The Value of a Life
After finding out at the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen that there were Gestapo files on several of my relatives I was very excited that our next stop was Duisburg. This is where the State of North Rhine Westfalia (NRW) Archives are located. The building is on the waterfront of the inner harbor ofContinue reading “The Value of a Life”
K Heidi Fishman (Popje and Me) 