Community Center Dedicates Garden Honoring Righteous Christians Who Saved Jewish Lives During Nazi Holocaust

In honor of the Righteous Gentiles who at the risk of their own lives and the lives of their families, saved Jews during the Nazi Holocaust (1933-1945).

Please join us in dedicating The Garden of the Righteous Gentiles on Sunday, December 11, 1983 at 2:30 P.M.

at the Jewish Community Center

101 Garden of Eden Road

Wilmington, Delaware 19803

“These were the Righteous in their Generation.”

Genesis 6:9

Memorial Is Dedicated

Sunday, Dec. 11, 1983, is a historic day for Delaware — at once a solemn and a happy day. At 2:30 p.m. begins the ceremony formally dedicating Wilmington’s Garden of the Righteous Gentiles. The Garden is the first monument in the United States to honor Christians who, at the risk of their lives and the lives of their families, saved Jews from the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

On Nov. 16, 1981, a crowd gathered on the lawn in front of the Jewish Community Center to witness a tree-planting ceremony by Holocaust survivors residing in Delaware. Those trees, each of which honors specific Christians, were the beginning of the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles.

Now, two years later, permanent bronze plaques replace the temporary wooden markers which had been unveiled by survivors or their representatives at the tree-planting ceremony. And a formal landscaped entrance greets visitors to the Garden. Raised lettering on a cement background proclaims:

THIS GARDEN HONORS RIGHTEOUS GENTILES WHO SAVED JEWISH LIVES DURING THE NAZI HOLOCAUST 1933-1945

Nine of the Christians whom we honor in our Garden saved Jews who later came to live in Delaware. In another case, the survivor’s daughter lives in Delaware. The names of two Righteous Gentiles, unknown by the survivors they saved, are honored with a tree dedicated to The Unknown Righteous Gentile.

One Christian couple, honored in our Garden for their heroic efforts in Holland, now reside in Delaware.

In still another case, a Christian is honored by a Delawarean whose fellow townspeople in White Russia were saved.

One tree honors Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews. And one tree honors the people of Denmark, who saved most of their country’s Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis.

The Christians we honor here, in this Garden that will grow and blossom in our front yard for as long as life and freedom exist on this corner of the globe, are truly among the heroes of human history.

By risking their lives to save Jews from death during the Nazi Holocaust, they rose up to proclaim with their actions that love and decency could flourish amidst the most unthinkable barbarism the world has ever known.

On the following pages, we proudly present their stories in print for the first time.

Six Million of our brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, went to their deaths because they were Jews, and the world stood silent. We, the Jewish community of Delaware, hereby dedicate this garden to a few of the Righteous Gentiles who chose to act rather than to remain silent. We honor these brave souls for all time.

 

Righteous Gentiles Whom We Honor Here

Pierre Piprot D’Alleaume

France

A devout Catholic and a highly educated man, PIERRE PIPROT D’ALLEAUME opened a hotel school in Marseilles to save about 15 Jewish girls whom he took in as employees. Among them was LORE BEITMAN, who now lives in Wilmington.

She was born Lore Bermann in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, in what is now West Germany, in 1925. In the first deportation in Europe, Lore was deported from the Pfalz region with her mother and other relatives, and sent to the Gurs camp in the Pyrenees, where her grandmother died of malnutrition.

When the large deportation started in September 1942, Lore’s mother was sent to Auschwitz, and died either there or along the way.

In early 1943, Lore was taken in by Pierre Plprot D’Alleaume and given an assumed name to make it seem that she had come from the Alsace-Lorraine region. Lore became Jeanne Durst. She was 18.

To cover up his employment of the Jewish girls, Piprot took in an equal number of French non-Jews. Piprot’s hotel was an island of sanity and freedom amidst a sea of horror. With the Germans positioned on the mountains overlooking Marseilles, Piprot nonetheless was able to protect Lore and the others from even hearing of the Nazi barbarism and slaughter of the Jews. The girls felt completely free.

The Unknown Righteous Gentile

Among untold numbers of Jews who survived the Holocaust because of the actions of Unknown Righteous Gentiles, DOROTHY KRAUSE FINGER of Wilmington was hidden by a Christian man in a barn in Stanislavov.

Most Righteous Gentiles remained anonymous for self preservation: If they had been found out, the Nazis would have killed them and their families. Others wished to stay anonymous for various personal reasons.

Born in Stanislavov in August 1929, Dorothy Krause was locked up in the attic of a barn for three days in March 1943 while the city was being rid of Jews. She and 11 other Jews, including her mother, had paid the man to hide them there.

Their lives thus having been spared during the Nazi purge of their city, Dorothy and the other Jews left the man’s house at night and ran to another small city which still had a ghetto.

Dorothy subsequently survived through the war in three ghettoes, a labor camp and the forest near Przemyslany in Galicia.

Living a nomadic forest existence, she lived in the forest with six other Jews for exactly a year, from July 27, 1943, until the area was liberated by the Russian army on July 27, 1944.

Odille Ceulemans-Gryson and Betty Shain

Louis And Odille Ceulemans-Gryson

Belgium

LOUIS CEULEMANS, a carpenter, and his wife, ODILLE CEULEMANS-GRYSON, lived in the countryside near Brussels, where they saved a Jewish baby named Betti Blaugrund, who grew to become BETTY SHAIN of Wilmington.

Betty was born in Brussels in July 1942. A month later, the Nazis began raiding and rounding up the Jews of Brussels, storming into their homes and removing them in masses to be taken to their deaths.

To survive, Jews went into hiding. Because babies cry and make noise, it became dangerous for  Betty’s parents to keep her with them. They were advised to hide her.

Through some friends, Betty’s parents located a police chief who had a sister-in-law living in Aaroschot, a small country village in the Belgian province of Brabant. Her name was Odille Ceulemans-Gryson. She and her husband, Louis—who were in their 40s and had a married daughter who was about 20—were willing to take in a child.

The couple fed Betty well, gave her the best care. Every month, at the risk of their lives, the couple took Betty to her parents, who were hiding in Brussels, so they could see her.

The couple told others that Betty was a child of working people in the city. They could never tell a soul that Betty was Jewish.

The couple kept Betty until the war ended, constantly showing her the photographs of her real parents. The pictures were kept in a cupboard in the house. Betty began referring to her parents aMother s Cupboard and Father Cupboard.

Betty was 2 years old when Belgium was liberated in September 1944.

Many documented cases exist of Christian families who adopted Jewish children during the Holocaust, in order to convert them from the religion of their birth. But Louis and Odille Ceulemans-Gryson, both of whom were Catholic, never attempted to convert Betty. As soon as the war ended, they willingly returned her to her parents.

Louise Ceulemans passed away a few years ago, but his wife is still alive in Belgium.

Noel Barrot

France

In the small town of Yssingeiux in the Haute Loire region of central France, a pharmacist named NOEL BARROT took the responsibility to save BLANKA FALEK and her son, GEORGE, from the hands of the Nazis.

Born Blanka Israelovitch in Tarnow, near Karakow, Poland, she studied at the University of Krakow, then moved to France in 1935.

With George, who was 4 years old, Blanka moved from place to place in 1942 as the Nazis began deporting Jews from France. In the mountains around Marseilles, Blanka  befriended a Mr. Malecinski, a Polish diplomat who had been a military attaché in Moscow before the war, and his wife. Because he was a high military of­ficial, he and his wife were protected in a Polish camp in Marseilles. Mrs. Malecinski, a Polish aristocrat, told others that Blanka was her cousin.

Through Mr. and Mrs. Malecinski, Bianka and George met Noel Barrot, who gave them a room next door  to his pharmacy in Yssingeiux, where they stayed in 1943 and 1944. In addition to making sure they had  enough to eat, Barrot provided moral support to the young mother and her child. Barrot saw to it that  Blanka  obtained a document saying her name was Irakovitch. No one bothered her, because she was in the company of Barrot.

Barrot instructed Blanka to knock on the wall between the two buildings if trouble approached, and he would come to her aid. Several times, the Gestapo came to the town. But they did not bother Blanka and her son.

Bianka’s  brothers,  sisters,  and about 70 other members of her family, all were murdered in Poland. But Bianka and George were saved because of the courageous action of Noel Barrot.

After the war, Barrot became mayor of Yssingeiux, then was elected congressman from the Haute Loire region in the De Gaulle government. His son, Jacques Barrot, became minister of health under Giscard-D’Estaing.

During a 1964 session of the French National Assembly, Noel Barrot suffered a heart attack and died in the arms of a colleague.

Blanka Falek lives in Dover, where she is retired from a teaching career at Dover High School. Her son, George, lives in Wilmington.

Leopold Socha and Stefan Wroblewski

Poland

Under the city of Lvov, ten Jews lived in a sewer for fourteen months, never able to stand up, never seeing the sun. Although the sewer systems of European cities served as hiding places and passageways for many Jews during the Holocaust, these 10 Jews constitute the only group known to have survived such existence for that length of time. They are probably the only group ever to have lived in a sewer for so long.

Among them was a young lady, barely in her 20s, named Halina Wind. Although she weighed 70 pounds when she emerged from the sewer on July 27, 1944, her strength gradually returned to her. It was that strength which enabled her, as HALINA WIND PRESTON of Wilmington, to  teach the Holocaust to all who would listen, for more than 30 years.

She never forgot those who perished. Likewise, she never forgot those Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews. And so, in November 1981, when she arranged a tree-planting ceremony in front of Wilmington’s Jewish Community Center to honor Righteous Gentiles, she saw to it that two of the trees honored two Christian sewer workers who  had   saved   her:   LEOPOLD SOCHA and STEFAN WROBLEWSKI.

Socha was the leader of a three-man sewer worker team that toiled in the area of the Jewish ghetto of Lvov. A deeply religious Catholic, Socha made a deal with a Jew named Ignacy Chigier to save a small group of Jews, including Chigier’s wife, Pepa, and their two children, Pavel, 4, and Kristina, 7.

On the night of the liquidation of the Lvov ghetto, Halina Wind found herself among more than 200 people who went down into the sewers. Most of them drowned, or were caught and shot. On the following day, Halina was among the 21 survivors.

For 14 months, Socha and Wroblewski faithfully provided for their Jews, moving them when their safety was danger, feeding them, washing their clothes, visiting them every day except Sunday.

“Finally, the money ran out. Someone suggested that since it had been Chigier’s money, he should stay in the sewer with his family, and the others should go. But Socha said: Either you all survive, or nobody. As long as you are under my jurisdiction, and I am responsible for you, you are all equal. How do you know which one of you is destined to survive?’

Only 10 of the original 21 survived the 14-month ordeal. A few were unable to take it anymore, and chose to be shot on the outside rather than to live with rats in the sewer. The oldest among   them, a  grandmother died quietly in the night, and they let her body  float  away.  The  youngest, a baby who was born in the sewer, was left to die because they could not risk the noise of a crying infant.

After the Russians liberated the city, Socha came to liberate the 10 Jews from the sewer.

“They came out slowly. When it was Pavel’s turn, he began to cry. He was now little more than 5 years old, and he had forgotten what the sun and sky looked like. ‘I’m afraid, I’m afraid,’ the boy said. ‘I want to go back to the sewer.’*

But none of them ever had to spend another night in a sewer.

Socha and Wroblewski are honored at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as Righteous Gentiles.

Socha was run down by a truck in Gliwice, Poland, in 1946. His wife still lives there.

Wroblewski and his wife also are living in Gliwice.

Halina Wind Preston died a year ago, on Dec. 2 1982, after open-heart surgery at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. She was 60 years old.

*©  1983   The Philadelphia  Inquirer. From  A  Bird  in the Wind  by David Lee Preston, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, May 8, 1983.

King Christian of Denmark, the Danish Church and the Danish People

Denmark

Copenhagen’s Freedom Museum stands today to tell the dramatic story of the Danish resistance during the German occupation from April 9, 1940 (when the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter headlined the news of the invasion “Germany Saves Scan­dinavia”) until the Allied victory in 1945.

When the Danes were not blowing up ships and railroads, radioing intelligence to the Allies and otherwise defying the Nazis, they were busy smuggling Jews out of the country or hiding them in the homes of Christians.

Because of the heroic stand by the Danish king and his countrymen, most of Denmark’s 8,000  Jews escaped arrest by the Gestapo and deportation to the concentration camps.

Raoul Wallenberg

Hungary

Because of the great numbers of Hungarian Jews whom he saved through personal intervention with the Nazis, the Swedish diplomat RAOUL WALLENBERG stands alone among Righteous Gentiles, occupying a special place in the annals of heroism and in the hearts of our people.

In Wallenberg’s name, a tree stands in Wilmington’s               Garden of the Righteous Gentiles, planted by VERA LORANT of Wilmington, one of the estimated 100,000 Jews whom he rescued from certain death in Budapest at the hands of SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann, chief logistician of Hitler’s Final Solution.  Wallenberg performed a heroic role of legendary proportion in what was the last substantial urban Jewish community left alive in Nazi-dominated Europe. Eichmann was determined to  deport all the Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz;  Wallenberg was equally resolved to rescue as many as possible—a task he had volunteered to carry out on behalf of the U.S. War Refugee Board.

In a bitter twist of fate, this fearless young man was arrested as spy by the advancing Russian liberators on Jan. 17, 1945, while trying to approach them about helping the Jews of Budapest. According to reports, he may still be alive today in the Siberian Gulag. If he is, he would be 71 years old.

Sent to Budapest by the Swedish. government to extricate as many victims from Hitler’s grasp as possible, Wallenberg created special passports—which he designed—and for a time the Nazis were thwarted. Soon he had a staff of 400 “protected” Jews working for him, their offices spread throughout the city.

Wallenberg biographer Kati Marton provides a glimpse of one confrontation between the Swede on the one side and Eichmann and Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann’s deputy in Budapest, on the other:

“…A voice, unemotional, strong, with just a trace of an aggressive edge, a voice ready to do battle, had spoken. Eichmann and Wisliceny spun round. ‘I’m Wallenberg, Swedish Legation” was all the explanation he provided.

” ‘You there!’ The Swede pointed to an astonished man, waiting for his turn to be handed over to his executioner. ‘Give me       your Swedish passport and get in that line,’ he barked. ‘And you, get behind him. I know I issued you a passport.’ Wallenberg continued, moving fast, talking loud hoping the authority in his voice would somehow rub off on these defeated people. Eichmann did no relish public confrontations. He preferred             a quiet, well-ordered passage from life to death. He would have to spare a few bodies for this strange, determined Swede.

“The Jews finally caught on. The started groping in pockets for bits of identification. A driver’s license or birth certificate seemed to do the trick. The Swede was grabbing them so fast; the Nazis, who couldn’t read Hungarian anyway, didn’t seem to be checking. Faster, Wallenberg’s eyes urged them, faster, before  the game is up. In minutes he had several hundred people in his own convoy. International Red Cross trucks, there at Wallenberg’s behest, arrived, and the Jews clambered on. Wisliceny resumed his interrupted head count. ‘Funf and vierzig, sechs and vierzig…’

“Wallenberg jumped into his own car. He leaned out of the car window and whispered, ‘I am sorry,’ to the people he was leaving behind. ‘I am trying to take the youngest ones first,’ he explained. ‘I want to save a na­tion'”**

By January 1945, Eichmann had fl­ed the city.

Oct.5, 1981,President Reagan signed the resolution by which Wallenberg joins the Marquis de Lafayette’s descendants and Winston Churchill in being thus distinguished. It is more than a symbolic memorial. The members of Congress hope to have more impact on the Kremlin when pressing for further information regarding the whereabouts of an American citizen.

Born Veronika Scheer in Debrecen, Hungary, in 1926, VERA LORANT of Wilmington owes her life to the personal intervention of RAOUL WALLENBERG.

Living with her parents in suburban Budapest, Vera was in her final year of gymnasium when her father received a call from a Jewish friend in the early morning hours of March 18, 1944.
The message was deliberately cryptic. The professor had found out that the Germans were on their way to Hungary, and he wanted Vera’s father to bring his family out of the suburbs immediately.

Vera’s parents did send her to Budapest on the first train, but unfortunately they decided to stay behind for a couple of days to put their house in order. Vera, who was 17 and an only child, never saw her parents again.

In Budapest, Vera took a job in the professor’s hospital, where he trained her and his daughter as surgical nurses.

Vera’s cousin, his wife and their son rented a house from the Swedish embassy in Budapest, next-door to the
embassy. They knew Wallenberg well. When they told him that Vera’s mother had been arrested, Wallenberg went to find her. He went to a camp in the outskirts of Budapest where Jews were being gathered for transport to Auschwitz. Armed with schutz-passes, or passports, which he had created to make all the Jews in the camp Swedish citizens, Wallenberg arrived at the camp — only to find that the previous night the Germans had moved 1,500 people to Auschwitz. Among them was Vera’s mother.

Vera   continued  working  at the hospital until the Germans  took  it over in August 1944. Vera’s cousin then brought her to the Swedish embassy set up by  Wallenberg,  where she took a job.

Wallenberg twice saved Vera from death at the hands of the Arrow Cross. One of the close calls happened as follows:

Wallenberg had set up his organization to assist with food and medical care and security at Swedish protected homes along a five-or six-mile stretch from his embassy. Vera and the other workers were expected to arrive at checkpoints along the way for security reasons. If someone did not show up, a search party would be sent out.

In late December 1944, Vera was two blocks from her destination in this area when she was caught by Arrow Cross thugs who refused to accept her identification. They took her to the banks of the Danube, where Jews were being shot.

Wallenberg, alerted to Vera’s absence from the checkpoint, rushed to the river, where he was able to rescue her.

Acknowledgements:

© 1981 John Bierman, Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg, Mission Hero of the Holocaust (The Viking Press, New York)

** © 1982 Kati Marton, Wallenberg (Random House, New York)

Ger And Gerard Van Raan

Holland

“We did it because we felt we ought to do it.”

That is how GER VAN RAAN matter-of-factly sums up the valor of herself and her husband, GER, during the Nazi occupation of their native Holland, when they protected two Jewish boys in their home in The Hague.

The Van Raans, who now live in Ardentown, Del., north of Wilmington, are true heroes in our midst, and they are honored with a  tree  in our Garden.

In 1942, the Van Raans were newlyweds.

Ger was a nurse, and one of her friends was a nurse in the Underground. This friend, who found shelter for Jewish children and took food coupons to people who harbored Jews, approached Ger and Gerard and asked if they would care for a Jewish child.

Despite the tremendous risk involved, the newlyweds said they would.

RUDOLF KLYNKRAMER was 8 years old when the Van Raans picked him up from his parents in Amsterdam.

Then a couple of months later, the young couple were asked whether they also would take in an 8-month-old boy, RUDOLF LIEBKNECHT. The Van Raans agreed to accept this add­ed responsibility.

The Van Raans told others that these two children were sons of Gerard’s oldest brother, who they said was in Indonesia and unable to return to Holland because of the war. They said the man’s wife was ill in a hospital and thus unable to care for the boys.

Because both boys were named Rudolf, the Van Raans gave the baby the name of Peter to distinguish him from his “brother.”

Still, there were many close calls.

The Van Raans had a friend who was engaged to a Jewish man, to whom they gave Gerard’s identification card in case the Nazis should grab him.

One day, while Gerard was in bed with pneumonia and Rudy was fishing in the park, this friend came to the Van Raan house in tears.

“Last night my fiance was picked up from a trolley car and sent away,” she said urgently. “You have to go.”

Because the man had been holding Gerard’s identification, it would be unsafe for the Van Raans to remain. They picked up and went to stay with an aunt of Ger’s in a little village for a few days.

Later, after they returned home, they found out that the Jewish man produced no papers at the police station. Wisely, he had discarded Gerard’s identification. This man never was seen again. His name was Sigmund Boekdrukker.

And so, in an ironic twist of fate, the Van Raans owned their lives to a Jew whom they had tried to save. When they had a son of their own later, the Van Raans named him Sigmund.

The baby, Peter, now resides in Israel, where he is known by his true name of Rudolf.

Also honored were Terry Danemann of Dover, Josef Tunkewicz, now deceased, of White Russia, an Mr. Krivienko of Poland.

Mrs. Dannemann, born in Przemysl near the Carpathian Mountains in Galicia, was saved by an unknown Christian. Tunkewicz saved the live of at least 10 Jews. Krivienko and his wife saved the life of Minna Kassow Kraut, now living in Philadelphia.

Thanks to many contributors to the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee who made this memorial possible.

Memorial Only One Of Its Kind Outsid­e Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem, the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, was established in 1953 as a museum and resource center to honor the memory of the Six Million. One of its features is an avenue of more than 600 evergreen carob trees through which visitors walk to reach the museum. It is called the Avenue of the Righteous.

The commemoration is not bestowed lightly. Much documentation is needed before the authority awards the title of Righteous Gentile. More than 2,000 additional cases are awaiting consideration by a special committee headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice. In addition to a tree honoring a Righteous Gentile, Yad Vashem bestows a medal with the Talmudic inscription:

“Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he had saved the whole world.”

THE GARDEN OF THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES is a project of the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee of the Jewish Community Center. The idea for the Garden, patterned after the Avenue at Yad Vashem, belonged to Halina Wind Preston.

Mrs. Preston was a Jewish educator and lecturer on the Holocaust for more than 30 years. As a young lady barely in her 20s, Halina Wind hid from the Nazis for 14 months in a sewer in Lvov, Poland. She dedicated her life after the war to keeping alive the memory- of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Mrs. Preston located Holocaust survivors living in Delaware—and in one case a Christian couple who had saved Jews—and compiled a list of area Jews who owed their lives to Righteous Gentiles. The 1981 tree-planting ceremony coincided with an Expo celebration at the Jewish Community Center, during which various elements of Israeli life were recreated.

In filing a 1981 report to the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center on the success of the tree-planting ceremony, Mrs. Preston wrote:

“… The trees, planted in honor or memory of those valiant Christians who saved Jewish lives during the Nazi era, will remain — we trust — an eternal symbol of unity between Jew and Gentile, then, now and for all time; a veritable Garden of the Righteous on Garden of Eden Road.”

It was her dream that the Garden eventually would be enhanced into a permanent monument, which would serve as a focal point for educational programs on the Holocaust.

In March 1982, the board of directors of the Jewish Community Center approved the idea of making the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles a permanent memorial.

Mrs. Preston died a year ago, on Dec. 2, 1982, at the age of 60 following open-heart surgery at Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia. After her death, the Holocaust Education Committee which she founded was renamed in her honor. Harriet Wolfson assumed the chairmanship, and the committee voted as its most urgent priority to formally dedicate the Garden as a permanent monument to the Righteous Gentiles of the Nazi era.

Some of the funding came from the contributions of more than 300 individuals and organizations locally and around the world in memory of Mrs. Preston.

It’s Giving Tuesday

It’s Giving Tuesday, the day we give back to organizations that we believe in — and we hope you will consider a donation to the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware.

Our Fall 2018 newsletter was just released and mailed to our members. You can read a copy here and learn about all the exciting developments at the JHSD.  We want to do more and reach more members of our community in our efforts to preserve the documents, and tell the stories of Delaware’s Jewish community.

Your tax-deductible donation will make a big difference for the future of the JHSD. As we move forward towards an exciting future, demonstrating the support of our members and growing our membership is so important.

Become a member today and support a future of preserving the past.



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Essen’s Alte Synagoge A Personal Perspective

Benjamin K. Raphael
Newark, Delaware

Jewish Voice, January 20, 2008
Jewish Voice, January 20, 2008

Reading Dr. Howard Berlin’s article “Essen’s Alte Synagoge that Survived Kristallnacht” in the December 2nd issue of the The Jewish Voice excited me and I feel that I must add to Dr. Berlin’s account.

I was born in Essen in 1929 and my family belonged to the “Alte Synagoge”. Why it was called that, I don’t really know. It was known as the “Neue Synagoge” when it was built in 1913, and usually, European buildings have to be around for hundreds of years before they are considered old. But it looks like the “Alte Synagoge” and that’s what it is called.

The day before Kristallnacht in November of 1938, my father was arrested and taken to the local jail. The reason became apparent the next morning when a band of hooligans broke into our home. and demolished everything in sight, sparing only the canary. My mother tried to explain that the house had been sold, but had no proof on hand. However, this may have been enough reason to keep them from setting our house on fire. Our Catholic housekeeper stayed and saved some of our belongings. My mother and I fled with our Scottie, wandering through the city. We eventually ended up at my uncle’s former home, where we lived for about a month. The main part of that house had been burned, but the rear of the house was habitable. My uncle and his family were living in Italy at the time, but his mother-in-law and sister-in-law lived there and were kind enough to let us stay with them. Due to the efforts of our (Gentile) family doctor, my father was released from jail after about a week. About a month later, after being turned back at the border once for lack of another newly enacted huge “exit tax” we went to Holland, where we stayed about three months before emigrating to the U. S. After living in Yonkers, NY for a couple of years, we settled in Wilmington.

I don’t remember much about those weeks in Essen after Kristallnacht. My school, the Jewish Community Center, and most Jewish private homes had been burned. I visited the synagogue and saw the devastation after it had been burned.

The first time I returned to Germany after the war was in 1966. My father had died two years earlier, and my mother, my former wife, and I stayed in Essen for three days. The synagogue was still there, of course, but the Jewish population was so small that it could not begin to support a building of that size. It was now a museum dedicated to German industry. We took the guided tour. The very young tour guide explained that the building had been “damaged during the war”. I didn’t bother to correct her. There was no remorse or admission of guilt. On the exterior there was a plaque with inscription that illustrates the mood at that time:

“MEHR ALS 2500 JUDEN DER STADT ESSEN MUSSTEN IN DEN JAHREN
1933-45 IHR LEBEN LASSEN.”

(My translation: “More than 2,500 Jews of the City of Essen lost their lives during the years 1938-1945”)

One thing happened that I will never forget. My mother wanted to visit a former friend, a lady who had lost her husband and two sons fighting for Hitler. Both my wife and I rebelled. Neither of us wanted any contact with any followers of “Der Fuehrer”. But Mother insisted, and, as usual, she got her way. We arrived at the lady’s house unannounced and rang the bell. Mother’s friend answered the door and the two women just stared at each other for moments. Neither spoke a word. Then they fell into each other’s arms, sobbing.
I was back again in 1989. The Alte Synagoge was still a museum, but now it was dedicated to Essen’s Jews. My grandfather’s business (M. Stern A.G.) was mentioned. There was a monument inside as a tribute to the Christian gravediggers who, as they were working during the day of Kristallnacht, saw what was happening and hid the torahs from the synagogue in an empty grave to save them from being destroyed. And there was a new plaque on the exterior:

“DIESES HAUS DER EHEMALIGE SYNAGOGE DER JUEDISCHEN GEMEINDE IST EIN STUMMER ZEUGE EINES FURCHTBAAREN GESCHEHENS DAS WIEDERGUTZUMACHEN UNS ALLEN AUFGETRAGEN IST.“

(My translation: “This house, the former synagogue of the Jewish community, is a silent witness to terrible events for which we must all atone.”

In 2002, I was back again. This time I was a guest of the City of Essen, as part of the atonement for the Holocaust, an annual event in cities all over Germany. My present wife and I, along with a couple of dozen others from the U. S., Israel, and South America, were wined and dined beyond belief. The first evening we were feted at a welcoming dinner, hosted by the Oberbuergermeister (Lord Mayor) and a number of city officials. We were seated with a Catholic priest and a retired Bishop of Essen, Heinrich Gehring. It was Herr Gehring who had caused the plaques on our synagogue to be changed, and made many similar attempts to atone for the sins of the Nazis. He also had a historical marker erected in the center of the city, across the street from the railroad station.

My translation: “During the period from October 27, 1941 to September 9, 1942, over 2,000 of Essen’s Jews were transported on trains from Essen’s main railway station and its freight station to ghettos and death camps in eastern Europe. Almost all were murdered there. The transport took place during daylight hours, in full view of townspeople and other passengers. Armed guards made any escape efforts impossible. Normal train service was not interrupted.”*
He, more than any others we met, truly regretted the sins of his fathers. As a token of our appreciation, we gave him a memento of ours, an iron medal which had been presented to my mother by the German government during WWI in gratitude for some of her gold jewelry which she had donated to the war effort.
In addition to the museum, the building hosts a research team that will continue to collect data and oral testimonies from Holocaust survivors and refugees for a few more years in order, I assume, to reconstruct records of the lives and fates of Essen’s Jewish citizens. The team consists of Jews and Gentiles, working together. Graduate students host the returning “Wandering Jews”.
Essen had been bombed heavily during WWII. The Krupp industries were prime targets for Allied bombers. Our former house was hit and, after the war, was replaced with an apartment house. The area around the synagogue was devastated. Almost every building in downtown Essen had been rebuilt or newly erected after the war. Miraculously, the synagogue survived the Nazi terror and the air raids. The damage from the Krystallnacht fire had been limited to the interior and the windows. To the Nazis the empty building was an eyesore, and preparations were made to raze it. However, the structure was so massive that they were unable to allocate the necessary explosives to demolish it.
Will the “Alte Synagogue” ever be used as a house of prayer again? Probably not. In 2002, Essen’s Jewish population consisted largely of Russian immigrants, too few to support such a large building. But, the climate has changed and slowly, more Jews are returning to Germany. Maybe some day.

This article was originally published in The Jewish Voice on January 20, 2008.
Addendum:

* My wife and I returned to Essen for a brief stay in the summer of 2015. The plaque had been removed. However, On the adjacent sidewalk there was a small Stolperstein, one of many (presumably) all over Germany. Translated literally, it is a stone over which one can stumble or trip. Actually, it is anything but. It is a small brass plate which has been substituted for a brick or cobblestone in the sidewalk, and it bears the inscription of the name of the Jewish family which resided there before the Nazi era.