A TRIBUTE GERHARD BUCK CHARLOTTE MAYENBERGER JOHANNA RAU FRITZ REUTER HELMUT URBSCHAT & MANFRED KLUGE THE OBERMAYER GERMAN JEWISH HISTORY AWARDS

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1 A TRIBUTE THE OBERMAYER GERMAN JEWISH HISTORY AWARDS PRESENTED TO GERHARD BUCK CHARLOTTE MAYENBERGER JOHANNA RAU FRITZ REUTER HELMUT URBSCHAT & MANFRED KLUGE Abgeordnetenhaus, BERLIN JANUARY 23, 2008

2 DEALING WITH THE PAST The Obermayer German Jewish History Awards were established to pay tribute to Germans who have made outstanding voluntary contributions to preserving the memory of their local Jewish communities, including their history, culture, cemeteries, and synagogues. The awards are now recognized as the most significant honor these individuals can receive, especially since they come primarily from Jews who have a full appreciation of the horrors of the Hitler era. These awardees are prime examples of how Germany has dealt with its past. Today, the German government and people are quick to recognize the slippery slope from arrogance to bigotry, intolerance, hatred, repression, dehumanization and barbarity -- and are among the first to say, never again. Today, Germany can be an example for the whole world of how a terrible period in a country s history can continue to impact on the psyche of its inhabitants for future generations. OBERMAYER FOUNDATION, INC. 239 CHESTNUT STREET NEWTON, MASSACHUSETTS USA WEB: TEL:

3 ENRICHING THE FUTURE his year marks the eighth annual presentation of awards that were created to honor the past and enrich the future. German life was once filled with contributions made by Jewish scholars, writers and artists. Music, science, literature and architecture were often collaborative efforts that brought diverse talents together. The collective history of Germans and Jews was profoundly connected and served to benefit the world. The Nazi regime and its obliteration of the German Jewish community ended a long period of collaboration and mutual trust. However, many German citizens, ranging from academics to those working in business and professions, did not let go of their interest and commitment to Jewish history and culture. Many worked at great personal cost to preserve and reconstruct aspects of Jewish life, which had contributed to the cultural richness of their lives and the lives of their respective communities. These individuals have researched, reconstructed, written about and rebuilt an appreciation of Jewish culture that will enrich life today and in the future. Diverse individuals, without thought of reward, have helped raise awareness about a once vibrant community. Their ongoing efforts pay tribute to the importance of Jewish subject matter and its value to German society as a whole. Many volunteers have devoted years of effort to such projects, but few have been recognized or honored for their efforts. The German Jewish Community History Council and its cosponsors believe it is particularly important for Jews from other parts of the world to be aware of this ongoing work. The annual Obermayer German Jewish History Awards provide an opportunity for the Jewish community worldwide to acknowledge German citizens who have rekindled the spark of Jewish thought that once existed in Germany. The award winners have dedicated themselves to rebuilding destroyed institutions and ideals. Their achievements reflect a personal connection to Jewish history and a willingness to repair a small corner of the world. 1

4 Awardee GERHARD BUCK Idstein-Walsdorf, Hesse Nominated by Abraham Frank, Jerusalem, Israel; Marjorie Holden, New York, NY; and John Paul Lowens, Point Lookout, NY Gerhard Buck s earliest memory occurred when he was two years old and his parents took him to see the town synagogue burning. He can still recall the leaping flames and the certain idea of destruction that Kristallnacht imprinted on his mind. Adding to the trauma is Buck s lifelong doubt as to whether his own mother, when the Nazis came to her door asking for help, provided matches used to set fire to the building. People often say we didn t know what happened in those twelve years [under Hitler], but everybody knew, Buck says from his home in Idstein, a small Hesse town where he s been healing history s wounds his own way: by dedicating the last quarter century to writing articles and books that resuscitate the local Jewish past. Apart from helping to restore the nearby Steinfischbacher Jewish cemetery, Buck has also worked tirelessly over the last eight years to build up a Jewish genealogical database that now encompasses 70 of the more than 200 towns and cities in the Hesse/Nassau regions. The personal, emotional past makes it more inspiring to write about Jewish history, says Buck, 71. I am still under the influence of this terrible time in which many people did cruel things. One starts thinking about mankind what mankind does to other people, what is the character of man that s what I think about all the time. I was always caught in this subject of Jews in our town and driving them away. The son of an electrician who survived World War II assisting German army medics behind the front lines, Buck found his passion for history and languages early on (he learned Hebrew at Gymnasium in order to read the Old Testament). After studying history and English at universities in Münster, Tübingen and Leicester, England, Buck earned further diplomas in social studies and law from Frankfurt University. He established himself in Wiesbaden as a teacher until 1972 when, married with two children, he moved to Idstein where my work as a writing historian started. I came to a village that was celebrating its twelvehundredth birthday and my academic director asked me to help with the research, he recalls. Right from the beginning I had the impression that the noble families the dukes, the counts, the princes stood in the center of all the books and articles that had been published to date. So I turned to the common man. I wanted to write about the farmers and the craftsmen, the minority, the people who did not appear in the history books and that is how I arrived at the Jews. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Buck published a revisionist at the time controversial account of local Jewish history entitled Die jüdischen Idsteiner, (Jewish Idstein) , which helped him get elected to the prestigious Historische Kommission für Nassau (Nassau Historical Commission) despite his not having a doctoral degree. Among the novel claims Buck made, and which he defends passionately to this day, was the assertion that the Church rather than the Jews did most of the money-lending in the 17th and 18th centuries. I touched the subject in an unconventional way, he says. And it s for that hard-nosed accuracy as a historian that others have been praising him since. Gerhard s work has a healing quality, says Abraham Frank, a descendent of Hesse Jews and coauthor of Buck s 2003 book, The Eschenheimer and Nachmann Families. Frank, who saw his own family story rehabilitated by Buck, adds: He documents his texts with great rigor, but his work is characterized by a humanistic interest in the life of ordinary Jews. It preserves the past of the Jews of this region, it supports the efforts of Holocaust victims and their children to locate their relatives, [and] it preserves proof through pictures, texts and inscriptions of a lost way of life. Indeed, digging up long-lost details about rural Jewish life from 18th century family wills and property lists to what kind of furniture a man owned and how much wine was drunk at his wedding is no easy task. For one reason, Buck says, so many of the historical records no longer exist; for another, the shift by Jews in the early 19th century from the patronymic to the family name often means three or four pairs of names can refer to a single person, complicating matters enormously. Despite the obstacles, Buck who suffered a stressrelated vocal cord sickness 12 years ago that forced him to stop teaching says he manages to scan through archive documents at a rate of two pages every three seconds, and continues compiling biographies on 200 new people each week. It s not just the search for a precise genealogy that drives him. I get more than only names I get life, he says. I want to bring this long historical line back into the minds of the people to get back, with the help of archives, to other centuries and to reconstruct families. In normal history books, there are no Jews on the page. By researching their names, by getting information about their lives, I get them back I get an idea of how the Jews lived. Motivating Buck above all else is his desire to tell the Germans what really happened I will stick to Jewish history all through my life. 2

5 Awardee CHARLOTTE MAYENBERGER Bad Buchau, Baden-Württemberg Nominated by George Arnstein, Washington, DC; Ann Dorzback Louisville, KY; Fred Einstein, West Orange, PA; Theodore Einstein, Silver Spring, MD; and Hans Hirsch, Bethesda, MD While working as a tour guide in her native town of Bad Buchau, Charlotte Mayenberger faced a frequent question from foreign Jewish visitors: Do the gravestones of our forefathers still exist and is there someone who can tell us where? That was what motivated me to investigate, she says, and in 1990, Mayenberger began photographing all 827 gravestones in the town s recently reopened Jewish cemetery, and compiling information about the people buried there. An exhibition two years later was followed by a CD entitled Der Jüdische Friedhof Bad Buchau (The Bad Buchau Jewish Cemetery) in which Mayenberger s grave-by-grave catalogue decoded the symbols, interpreted the ancient and in some cases vandalized script, and helped dozens of relatives locate and learn about their deceased family members for the first time. I ve simply done it because no one else has done it, she says. Indeed, the Jewish legacy in this Baden-Württemberg town of 4,000 is no ordinary one: Albert Einstein s parents came from here. So did the parents of physiologist Joseph Erlanger, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in With a Jewish history that dates back more than 600 years, Bad Buchau was not only a thriving center of Jewish industry and the seat of a district Rabbinate, but its synagogue was one of only two or three in the world that had a bell a gift of the philosemitic 19th century King Wilhelm I. Now, according to Theodore Einstein, a distant cousin of Albert Einstein who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, Mayenberger s personal energy and success in networking have fostered the memory of that community. Mayenberger, who has written articles, brochures and books, delivered talks and produced videos and other exhibitions about Bad Buchau s Jewish history, calls herself a teacher who didn t study to be one. After training in sales and marrying at 20, Mayenberger who is now 51 and has three children learned everything she knows about Jewish culture and tradition through her own investigative reading. Her research started in the 1980s, she recalls, when she plumbed the Buchau archives for information about Moritz Vierfelder, a former café owner and the leader of Buchau s Jewish community, who emigrated to the U.S. in For decades, Vierfelder kept Buchau émigré Jews in contact through his Buchauer Blättle (Buchau Pages) a story Mayenberger found so fascinating that she decided to write a book about him, Moritz Vierfelder: Leben und Schicksal eines Buchauer Juden (Life and Fate of a Buchau Jew), which she published in Other achievements include her biography of the Holocaust survivor, Oskar Moos, Von Buchau nach Theresienstadt: Dr. Oskar Moos ( ) (From Buchau to Theresienstadt); her 2003 DVD about the centuries-long Einstein family legacy ( Einstein s Swabian Roots ); and perhaps most impressive, her CD Die Buchauer Synagogue: Eine virtuelle Rekonstruktion ( The Buchau Synagogue: A Virtual Reconstruction ), in which Mayenberger and local architecture students graphically recreated the town s famous synagogue that was built in 1839 and destroyed on Kristallnacht. About half of Bad Buchau s 200 Jews perished in the camps, Mayenberger says, and it was many years before residents here felt prepared to remember and start talking about the town s Jewish heritage. She herself fell victim to the silence: as a child Mayenberger remembers passing the closed Jewish cemetery each day on her way to school. No one talked about the cemetery or even considered entering it, she says. We knew it was a Jewish cemetery but nothing else. Before, people were careful and didn t ask about a lot; the war is over, leave it was the attitude. Now they ask so many questions and it continues getting better. There are many more young people interested. Mayenberger recalls a tour she gave last year in which parents and children from the area showed up in droves. So many people came wanting to know about the town s Jewish history. They know so little, she says. Another of Mayenberger s successes has been her integration of children into the performance readings she organizes each year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Now, unlike in the past, residents of Bad Buchau are excited to connect with the names, with the history. Charlotte Mayenberger serves as the unofficial repository of written and photographic information about the former Jewish community in Buchau, says Theodore Einstein. And she is not slowing down, either. Mayenberger is busy preparing an exhibition scheduled for 2008 about the personal lives of the 200 Jews who lived in Bad Buchau before the war, and who still have no biographies. In the future, she says while noting the difficulty to do so she would like to open a museum about Buchau s Jewish legacy. In school I leaned to read, to listen, to write that s all I need to do research in the archives, and to speak with people, she says. Mayenberger s personal library contains some 900 books on Jewish subjects, and she is adept at mining the internet for information used towards her research. Having arrived indirectly at her task, Mayenberger sees the clear reasons to continue rescuing and preserving Bad Buchau s Jewish memory in the future. It would be a shame if it were forgotten that s the motivation to do it, she says. And so that it never happens again. 3

6 Awardee JOHANNA RAU Kalbach, Hesse Nominated by Mr. & Mrs. Morton David, Ardsley, NY; Marion Freilich, Brooklyn, NY; Judith Halberstadt, Kiriyat Motzkin, Israel; Ann Randall Kelley, Las Vegas, NV; and Nancy Reicher, Kansas City, MO Johanna Rau and the town synagogue were like two friends destined to meet. She, a Protestant pastor who had learned Hebrew, lived in Jerusalem and dedicated herself to Jewish studies. It, a dilapidated 19th century house of worship in the small Hesse town of Heubach which, after World War II, had served as a Rathaus (city hall), a temporary residence for families and even as a motorcycle gang squat before Rau s impassioned campaign saved it from decay and certain destruction. Now, thanks to her efforts, the former Heubach synagogue has been reborn as a community center where Germans across the region are engaging in the rediscovery of Jewish history and heritage. Rau has led tours ranging from women s groups to school classes, and she has organized theater shows, concerts, readings and lectures exploring the local Jewish past. Indeed, rebuilding the synagogue was a personal dream for Rau, who created the pride of the region from an abandoned collapsing building. Driven to succeed in her task, she vigorously pursued her dream and spearheaded action at every stage until that dream became a reality. Johanna Rau s boundless energy, intellectual curiosity and serious scholarship resulted in a resounding success for her twin goals: restoration of the physical symbol [of the synagogue] and ongoing education about Judaism, says Randee Kelley of Las Vegas, Nevada. Through her extensive genealogical research into the lives of Heubach s Jews as well, Rau revived the spirit and the essence of Jewish life in that region, rescuing it from almost certain historical obscurity, unearthing a Jewish past in a community with no current Jewish experience for decades. Today when you visit the renovated two-story former country synagogue of Heubach (Ehemalige Landsynagoge Heubach) as some 2,000 out-of-towners, and nearly all 750 local residents have done since its doors reopened in 2006 the fresh-painted walls, new tile rooftop and well-tended lawn reveal little about the long, extraordinary history of the region s last standing rural synagogue. The person who knows that story best is Rau, 43, a pastor and pastor s wife and a mother of three who first got interested in Jewish culture and religion while studying theology at Heidelberg University. There, she immersed herself in books by Elie Wiesel and Martin Buber, and discovered the photographs of Roman Vishniac. Following her growing passion, Rau studied Hebrew in Vienna before spending a year in Jerusalem where she formed relationships with Russian immigrants and dove into Talmudic studies. I found someone who helped me study the Talmud and I loved it. I can t say I fully understood it but I liked the way of thinking, the concept of learning. It wasn t long after she and her husband came to work as pastors in Heubach that Rau got the idea, in 2002, to buy and renovate the abandoned synagogue. Built in 1843, the structure looked really, really shabby, she remembers. The roof was rotted and leaking. The walls were broken and in some places missing altogether. Plywood covered up the window frames instead of glass. A once-flourishing Jewish community which at its high point in the 1890s numbered nearly 100, Heubach saw its Jews trickle off to cities like Würzburg and Frankfurt until they finally disappeared altogether in 1937, the year the city bought the synagogue. No effort had been made in Heubach to commemorate the building s past nor the 40 former Heubach Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Rau knew the time was running out before the building collapsed or the authorities razed it, so she hurriedly formed a committee, researched renovation plans and drafted a series of funding proposals. Within months money started to pour in: 200,000 euros from the European Union s program to preserve rural cultural heritage sites; 200,000 from Hesse state; 100,000 from the Landsamt fur Denkmel Pflege (State Office for Memorial Preservation), and private donations from companies and individuals bringing the total to 780,000 euros, or more than $1 million. Enough, it turned out, to complete the task and nowadays visitors can even see a mikvah ritual bath that Rau s team uncovered in the renovation. For people in the village I think it has to do with mending the collective memory. Before there was a lack and now they can fill it, says Rau, who sees the building as a sort of bridge connecting rural Heubach to its Jewish past. Whether it leads them to be more interested in their own personal history, I don t know. But at least the Jewish people who lived in Heubach have a place in the memory again. Rau admits that the absence of Jews in Heubach today puts limits on people s understanding of Jewish culture and traditions. We are beginners. We are passing on the knowledge we have, knowing that it is a non-jewish point of view. But, she adds, At least we can say that Jewish life [in Germany] today exists. Indeed, says Joan David of Ardsley, NY, It is this type of exposure to non-jews that most helps to stem anti-semitism. The visual and written story of the synagogue s restoration is online at along with biographies Rau compiled of the Heubach Jews claimed in the Holocaust. But based on the thousands who have already flocked here in person to see it, Rau is confident that the restored Jewish landmark will only grow in importance to the community over time. It s something that s in the area, just around the corner, she says. People just have to come and use it. 4

7 Awardee FRITZ REUTER Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate Nominated by Marga Dieter, Brookline, MA; Miriam Gerber, Portland, OR; Eric Mayer, New York, NY; Stella Schindler-Siegreich, Worms/Pfeddersheim, Deutschland; and Gerhard Spies, Mamaroneck, NY Fritz Reuter established the first post-world War II Jewish museum in Germany, helped restore the oldest Jewish cemetery in Europe, and rehabilitated a synagogue that represents one of the most flourishing Jewish communities of the Middle Ages. What for me was the most important thing, however, he says, was the book Warmaisa because it s gotten so many people interested. We wanted to end that sense of foreignness people feel toward the Jewish religion, Jewish life, Jewish buildings we wanted to show them it s possible [for Christians and Jews] to live with one another. Worms was a thriving, pivotal center of Jewish life and culture in medieval Europe. And in his half century of work, Reuter has rediscovered and largely succeeded in rehabilitating that memory. Not only is Warmaisa: 1,000 Jahren Juden in Worms (1,000 Years of Jews in Worms) the first and still perhaps the most thorough history about the rich Jewish legacy in Worms. In 1995, Reuter also co-founded the organization Warmaisa (which means Worms in Hebrew), dedicated to publicly preserving that heritage. And as former Director of City Archives, he led tours, published books and articles, and was the human face behind Worms revitalized Judengasse, or Jewish quarter, which today stands as one of the lead attractions for visitors to old Jewish Europe. In the words of Worms-born Gerhard Spies, who emigrated to Mamoroneck, NY, Reuter never tired when it came to finding the resources to recreate the Jewish soul of Worms and give it eternal life. He believed it was imperative to educate the post-war population of Germany about the rich heritage in art, architecture, philosophy, and history that the Jews left behind. Reuter, 78, would be the first to admit his job was no easy one nor the road straight in getting there. The son of an industrial chemical salesman, Reuter originally studied music with the hope of becoming a concert bassoonist or contrabass. While working for nearly a decade as a printer, he studied nights in Mannheim and earned his Abitur (the equivalent of a high school degree) at the late age of 28, after which he studied German history at Mainz University. It was only in his 30s when he took a job as an archivist in Worms that Reuter saw what meaning the Jewish community had on the development of the city, from medieval to modern times, and engaged himself in recuperating in a basic sense, retelling that history. We re trying to awaken the consciousness of Worms citizens, so they realize what the Jews did here, he says. Starting in 1961 after completion of the rebuilding of the Worms s medieval synagogue, which was burned on Kristallnacht, Reuter has played an instrumental role bringing this one-time center of Jewish culture in Europe back to life. In the following decade he helped research and restore the thousand-year-old Heiliger Sand (Holy Sands) cemetery. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the 1982 founding of the town s Jewish museum known as the Rashi House named after the 11th century Talmudic scholar who studied in Worms on the grounds of the former Jewish community s dance hall. Having tracked down hundreds of old objects and artifacts (from plates to menorahs to Torah scrolls) and recreated educational models of Seder and wedding scenes, Reuter s work stimulated a new era of discussion in the community. Awakening the curiosity in young people for Jewish culture is one of [Reuter s] remarkable accomplishments, says Marga Dieter, originally from Worms and a resident of Brookline, Massachusetts. Indeed, Reuter recalls, It was hard at the beginning when visitors came to Worms looking for Jewish sites and didn t know where to find them. And for a lot of local people it was still something foreign, it was barely known they were simply not interested. He says, Now they show a great interest. Now they come and ask questions. I know a lot of people who are thankful for the work we started. One of those people is Bill Clinton, who as the then-governor of Arkansas visited the Rashi House in 1987 and talked with Reuter for an hour on subjects ranging from Jewish business history in Worms to stories about the Judengasse. He was also honored by U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ) on behalf of the U.S. Senate. Reuter s research into the lives of Worms Jews killed in the Holocaust has given rise to memorial tablets and some 40 Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stones, created in their names. Reuter enjoyed the dedicated support of his wife Paule, who was not only his life-long companion but worked alongside him building the museum and leading Jewish tours until she passed away in His daughter, Ursula, is carrying on the tradition with a PhD in history and a specialty in Jewish studies. Having himself once been a member of the Jungvolk (Young People) and the Hitler Youth, Reuter s work rescuing the Jewish memory of Worms offers living proof of ways individual can try to reconcile with and move beyond the hard truths of the past. Now, his greatest wish is to see Jewish life take root once more in Worms (where some 120 to 150 Jews live today) the way it s starting to in nearby cities like Mainz, Mannheim and Heidelberg. I hope the museum can grow and that a Jewish community begins here again, he says. Only with a living new community can we guarantee that Worms will be a Jewish city, not just a Jewish museum. That s my hope. 5

8 Awardee HELMUT URBSCHAT & MANFRED KLUGE Vlotho, North Rhine-Westphalia Nominated by Susan Alterman, Jacksonville, FL; Nancy Moss Cohen, Royal Oak, MI; and Ingrid Moss, West Palm Beach, FL As a high school teacher who decades ago found himself aghast that the girls and boys hardly knew anything about their town s Jewish history, Helmut Urbschat wrote a letter to his local newspaper, organized a meeting and, in 1965, founded the Mendel Grundmann Society with the aim of restoring Jewish memory to Vlotho, a community of 20,000 on the Weser River in North Rhine-Westphalia. Alas, the organization dissolved in a few short years. Some of its members died. Urbschat himself took a new teaching job in the Ruhr district. And it looked, he recalls, as if we wouldn t get on our feet again. Nearly 20 years later, Manfred Kluge, a fellow teacher and more importantly, a talented researcher, writer and administrator came along to help do just that. It was November of 1988, the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and Kluge collaborated with Urbschat in organizing what they called Jewish Week. They unveiled a commemorative stone at the place where the Vlotho Synagogue had been destroyed; released a co-authored book entitled Sie waren Bürger unserer Stadt: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Vlotho ( They Were Citizens of our City: Historic Contributions of Vlotho s Jews ); and welcomed back 21 descendants of Jews from Vlotho whose presence, from points across the globe, marked the rebirth of the Mendel Grundmann Society. Their dedicated, symbiotic relationship has been steadily bringing Vlotho s Jewish heritage back to life since. We ve been an excellent team, says Urbschat, 75, a multilingual religious scholar who has studied at universities in Germany and Toronto, held political posts in Vlotho, and is the voice and vision of the Society. By contrast, Kluge takes charge of most of the work behind the scenes, pouring through archives and overseeing the lengthy research projects that have resulted in a wave of books and exhibitions about Vlotho s Jewish past. We complement each other s talents: one person s weakness is the other one s strength, Urbschat adds, and in the end, the history is our common field. Neither man, in fact, arrived directly at an interest in Jewish history. For the polyglot historian Kluge, 68, it was about choosing to specialize in a field that excited him the more than any other. My hobby is writing about regional history. I ve written about communist history, school history, Christian stories from the 11th century it s all interesting, he says. But what s especially interesting to me is the Jewish history. Urbschat, on the other hand whose father, a Protestant minister, died as a Russian prisoner of war in 1945 was marked by several boyhood experiences, like the time he watched a transport train filled with Jews leaving Frankfurt for the east, and his intriguing exchange with an elderly Jewish man with whom he once shared a hospital room. Finally, though, it was the ignorance and resistance that Urbschat confronted years later in his high school students which galvanized his work. Most of the people [in Vlotho] felt shame for the Nazi years and just didn t want to talk about what had been going on. The organization was founded to fill that gap, he says. The Mendel Grundmann Society was named in honor of the 19th century Jewish industrialist who gave charitably to Vlotho s poor, factory-employed families. One of the stirring local Jewish histories it unearthed involves U.S. immigrant Stephen H. Loeb and the shoebox of letters his parents wrote to him from Vlotho on the eve of World War II, before their deportation and deaths near Riga. In 2003, Kluge wrote text and culled excerpts from the more than 500 pages of letters provided by Loeb s widow, Betty, to publish Wir wollen weiter leben, ( We Want to Keep Living ) a book that has since been dramatized and performed in popular readings attended throughout the region. Perhaps the strongest visual reminder of Vlotho s Jewish past are the 41 Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stones, that Urbschat and Kluge had recently installed, commemorating the town s Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In conjunction with the stones, they mined the regional archives and obtained data from Yad Vashem in Israel to produce detailed biographies of every victim, which will be published as a book later this year. Their knowledge of these people is so extensive as to make one think that they actually knew them, says Susan Alterman of Jacksonville, Florida, whose father survived Buchenwald and who herself returned to Vlotho for the installation of eight stumbling stones dedicated to her relatives. We hope that with these actions we have reached many people who didn t know about the Jewish history here and now can think about it, says Urbschat. With the stumbling stones, our Jews have returned symbolically to the center of the town. As a result of Urbschat s and Kluge s work, local schools have steadily incorporated more Jewish history into their curriculum. But not everyone is supportive. A volatile neo-nazi group in Vlotho known as Collegium Humanum is right under our noses, Urbschat says. Which is why continuing the Society s activism and organizing protests like one in 2005, in which 800 people marched against the extreme right continues to be so important. What is crucial, says Urbschat, is that the Jewish theme, above all, is not forgotten, and is talked about. We re thankful to give people in Vlotho the opportunity to think about it. 6

9 BOARD MEMBERS AND JURY German Jewish Community History Council The jury is composed of seven prominent individuals who have taken a keen understanding and appreciation of the contributions Jews have made to Germany and an awareness of what non-jewish Germans have done to preserve that memory. Each year, the international media is made aware of the availability of these awards and the formal nomination procedure, and the jury selects the five most worthy nominees for awards. In the first year, every nominator happened to be a Jewish survivor. Most nominators find these awards to be the best way to demonstrate their personal appreciation for outstanding work done in the community where their Jewish ancestors once lived. ERNST CRAMER a journalist, is chairman of the Axel Springer Foundation (Berlin). Born in Augsburg, Germany, he succeeded after a stay at Buchenwald concentration camp following his arrest on Kristallnacht in 1939 to emigrate to the United States. During WW II he served in the US Army and later with the US Military Government for Germany. From 1958 to 1999 he held top journalistic and management positions at the Axel Springer Publishing group, the largest European news enterprise; he still writes for the papers of this firm. KAREN FRANKLIN is director of the Family Research Program at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. She is a past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and a past chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums. Mrs. Franklin currently serves on the board of ICOM-US (International Council of Museums), and the International Committee of Memorial Museums of ICOM. She was the only director of a Jewish museum ever to be elected to the board of the American Association of Museums, and currently serves on numerous international boards. ERNEST KALLMANN has been publishing articles in various journals about Jewish-German genealogy and history, prompted and illustrated by his own family research. He was born in Mainz in 1929 and escaped with his parents to France in He has received his education and engineering degrees and has lived there ever since (except ). He worked as an executive in the telecommunications and computer industry and also as a management consultant. Since 1995 he has been a member of Cercle de Généalogie Juive, Paris. WERNER LOVAL was born in Bamberg and at 13 escaped to England with the Kindertransport. He then lived in Ecuador and the United States before immigrating to Israel in Until 1966, he served in the Israeli diplomatic service in the United States and Latin America. He is a founder and director of Israel s largest real estate brokerage company; former president of Har- El, Israel s first Reform Synagogue; and a governor both of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of B nai Brith World Centre. In 1999, he was named an Honorary Citizen of Jerusalem. He is a frequent visitor to Germany. WALTER MOMPER, President of the House of Representatives of Berlin and historian, was advised and supported by Lothar Funke. Walter Momper has been active in city politics and was Governing Mayor of Berlin when the wall came down in Funke has been head of the protocol department in the House of Representatives since SARA NACHAMA was raised in Israel, moved to Berlin over 25 years ago, and has worked for German national TV program SFB (Channel 3) and ZFD (Channel 2) editing documentary films. From 1992 to 1999, she organized as a volunteer the annual Berlin Jewish Cultural Festival (Juedischen Kulturtage). From 2001 to 2003, Mrs. Nachama was the executive founding director of the Berlin branch of Touro College (NY); in October 2003, she became Dean of Administration of Touro College Berlin and remains its executive director. Since 2005 she is a vice president of Touro College. ARTHUR OBERMAYER is a high-tech entrepreneur in the Boston area who has been involved in many philanthropic activities. He is an officer and board member of the American Jewish Historical Society, chaired the Genealogical Task Force of the Center for Jewish History, started a Jewish museum in his ancestral German town of Creglingen, was on the board of the Internet genealogy supersite JewishGen, and initiated its German component. In 2007 he received from the German President the Bundesverdienstkreuz-- the Cross of the Order of Merit -- the highest tribute given by the Federal Republic of Germany. 7

10 SPONSORS GERMAN JEWISH COMMUNITY HISTORY COUNCIL. The organization operates under Obermayer Foundation, Inc., which has sponsored and directed projects in various parts of the world. In Germany, it has also provided the seed funding and continuing support for the Creglingen Jewish Museum. In the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it produced about 20 popular television programs on market economics. In Israel-related activities, it has focused on a variety of projects related to achieving peace with its neighbors. In the U.S., it supports programs related to economic justice and international affairs, as well as provides strategic internet advice and support to nonprofit organizations. For more information, go to obermayer.us. OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF BERLIN. President Walter Momper sponsors these awards. For many years, the Parliament has been commemorating the German Holocaust Memorial Day of January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The decision was made in the year 2000 to have this event as its principal observance. GERMAN JEWISH SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP OF JEWISHGEN. This is an internet-based organization with almost 1400 daily participants who are involved in German-Jewish genealogy. It has been operating since 1998 through its discussion group and web site at /gersig. PREVIOUS AWARD WINNERS Past award winners originate from almost all the states, and from both urban and rural Germany. Ranging in age from their 30s to their 80s, they come from such diverse professions as bankers and stonemasons, artists and physicians, teachers and mayors. What they have in common is a love of history, a great curiosity for what was, and a dedication to social justice. All are committed to confrontation with their German past. Most have devoted years of volunteer work to such projects, but few have been recognized for their efforts. The aim of the Obermayer German Jewish History Awards is to honor these unsung heroes. Hans-Eberhard Berkemann Lothar Bembenek & Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler Gisela Blume Günter Boll Johannes Bruno Gisela Bunge Irene Corbach Heinrich Dittmar Olaf Ditzel Klaus-Dieter Ehmke GUNTER DEMNIG JOHANN FLEISCHMANN Inge Franken Joachim Hahn GUENTER HEIDT ROLF HOFMANN Gerhard Jochem & Susanne Rieger KURT-WILLI JULIUS & KARL-HEINZ STADTLER Ottmar Kagerer Cordula Kappner WOLFRAM KASTNER Monica Kingreen ROBERT KRAIS ROBERT KREIBIG Lars Menk Josef Motschmann HEINRICH NUHN Carla & Erika Pick Gernot Römer Ernst Schäll Moritz Schmid Heinrich Schreiner JÜrgen Sielemann Ilse VOGEL Christiane Walesch-Schneller Wilfried Weinke Profiles: Michael Levitin Translator: Heike Kähler Editors: Ernst Kallmann, Betty Solbjor 8