A TRIBUTE HANS-DIETER ARNTZ KLAUS DIETERMANN MICHAEL DORHS BERNHARD GELDERBLOM ERNST & BRIGITTE KLEIN THE OBERMAYER GERMAN JEWISH HISTORY AWARDS

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1 A TRIBUTE THE OBERMAYER GERMAN JEWISH HISTORY AWARDS PRESENTED TO HANS-DIETER ARNTZ KLAUS DIETERMANN MICHAEL DORHS BERNHARD GELDERBLOM ERNST & BRIGITTE KLEIN Abgeordnetenhaus, BERLIN JANUARY 27, 2009

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 ninth 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 HANS DIETER ARNTZ Euskirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia Nominated by Miriam Bruderman, Kfar-Saba, Israel; Doris Doctor, Wayne, NJ; Emmy Golding, Edgware, UK; Yvonne Gradwolh, Basel, Switzerland; Evelyn Heilbronn, Modesto, CA; Charlotte Hillburn, Forest Hills, NY; Leo Hoenig, New York, NY; Janet Bernd Isenberg, Glen Rock, NY; Wolf Murmelstein, Ladispoli Italy; Ilse Nathan, Birmingham, AL; Esther Eckstein Schwarz, Bridgewater, NJ; Laura and Scott Shields, Campbell, CA; Ruth Siegler, Birmingham, AL; Shulamit Spain-Gayer, Glasgow, Scotland; Doris Ruhr Strauss, Riverdale, NY; and Gerald Weiss, Forest Hills, NY Hans-Dieter Arntz s passion for Jewish history began in 1978 on the 40th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when nobody spoke about that, nobody knew anything about that, and as a teacher at gymnasium I wanted to teach my pupils especially about that part of history nobody wanted to talk about. It was the same year the television series Holocaust appeared sparking a nationwide discussion about Germany s past, and Arntz took it upon himself to delve into the regional archives. He uncovered never-before seen documents and managed to track down old Jewish survivors of Euskirchen, his city of 50,000 just west of Bonn. When his first speech and slideshow drew a crowd of 200 fascinated locals, he knew, that was the beginning. Since then, Arntz, 67, has worked tirelessly as a teacher, a successful activist and a prolific writer one whose skill and patience to connect living individuals to their histories has impacted hundreds of Jewish families across the globe. I see myself as a connection between the area where I live and that place where its former Jewish people live now, he says. Arntz s meticulous research providing details about where Jews lived, where they worked, and which ones were sent to prisons or to concentration camps, has in some cases allowed Israeli retirees to claim pensions they would not otherwise receive. Other times he has tracked down rare documents permitting Jews from around the world to reclaim possessions lost in the Holocaust. More often, he has been a magnet and a fountain of information for relatives of Jews who make the long trek to Euskirchen seeking information about their past. In the 1980s Jewish people came to our house. They wanted help getting documents, he recalls. They knocked on our windows. So many people I can t say how many Levi s and Weiss s came to our door and I showed them around to the houses of their parents and grandparents. I am that point where everything comes together; when somebody comes to our town, they send them to me. When Arntz isn t busy talking to people, he is busy writing about them. The author of hundreds of articles and 14 books his 30-year-long archive can be viewed on his polished website, Arntz achieved special recognition, and also notoriety, for his first book, Judaica: Jews in the Voreifel, ( Judaica: Juden in der Voreifel ) (1986) a foundational work on Jewish history in the region around Euskirchen. At first everyone wanted to know, Why are you researching something like that? No company wanted to publish the book. Even the administration and town council did not want to give any money to print the 600-page text filled with undiscovered documents and pictures, he recalls. But when the Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll heard Arntz discussing his efforts on a radio program, Böll contacted him and offered to help. The famous author made a few phone calls and suddenly everyone wanted to help me. In the libraries there were lists you could write your name on so that you could buy the book if it were published. Even the shops were interested. The book ran through three printings and was followed up by successes like Arntz s giant, 800-page work based on groundbreaking research, Persecution of the Jews and Help in their Escape from the German-Belgian Border Region, ( Judenverfolgung und Fluchthilfe im deutsch-belgischem Grenzgebiet ) (1990) about the German organizations and individuals who helped Jewish refugees from Austria flee across the border to Belgium. His most recent book, Reichskristallnacht, was published in Yet Arntz s activities extend even beyond teaching and writing, into politics, where he has fought for some eight monuments and streets to be named after Jews in his area. His first struggle involved building a monument to Euskirchen s Jews on the green space where the former synagogue stood, which he succeeded in establishing in Another battle to name a street after a popular Jewish doctor who helped Euskirchen s poor took 10 years to resolve and finally resulted in 1994 in the naming of an entire square, Doktor Hugo Oster Platz. Two years ago Arntz pushed for a street name in honor of Josef Weiss, the legendary oldest Jew of Bergen-Belsen who carried back from the war a personally compiled list of thousands of Jewish dead from the region. Although the mayor and town council have yet to agree, Arntz says, I can tell you I will be successful. Arntz s confrontational approach and his productivity dedicated full-time to two professions did not come without costs. He claims he often slept three or four hours a night while engaged in research, yet missed only nine days of class in a 40-year teaching career. A higher price, perhaps, was the spate of anonymous letters, phone calls and threats he received including having his car tires slashed for his dogged investigation of Jewish history in the Euskirchen area where some 600 Jews once lived. People did not like to see what I did, which included speaking at schools, adult education centers, youth organizations and church communities on the subject of Jews persecution, he says. I got abusive letters even from as far away as South Africa. When you write books and worry about monuments and write articles and give speeches, you are the feigenblatt, or fig leaf, exposing the nakedness of the communities. Most people, however, support Arntz s work, and he continues to have a wide and constructive influence following what he considers his most important motto: Overcoming the past. Simple and normal fates are important for me [to write about] because I can help more than if I write about prominent people, he says. It makes me proud to publish this kind of work, motivated by so many personal contacts which end in friendships not only with grandparents, but with parents and their children, too. There is no end, he adds. There will never be an end because there are always new connections. 2

5 Awardee KLAUS DIETERMANN Netphen, North Rhine-Westphalia Nominated by Bianca Emberson, Abergavenny, Wales; Roger Herz-Fischler, Ottawa, Canada; Uri and Tamar Hibl, Netanya, Israel; and Gary Wolff, Los Angeles, CA It was once a synagogue destroyed in Kristallnacht, later a bunker, that is, a bomb shelter where hundreds of Germans hid and prayed from 1941 to 1945, and then it became a city storage site. Today, the Active South Westphalian Museum (Aktives Museum Südwestfalen) commemorating the Jewish history of Siegen is something of a small miracle one that owes itself to the educator s instinct of Klaus Dietermann. Dietermann was born and raised in this small city 100km north of Frankfurt and east of Cologne. Ten years ago, he rejected the Bundesverdienstkreuz, (Federal Cross of Merit), the highest German honor, insisting that one does not have the right in Germany but the duty to repair what our parents and their parents generation did. It was that perseverance that led him to fight for four years to get the former bunker-turned-storage building made into a museum, even as local authorities pushed him to choose one of the other 11 bunkers still left standing in the town. No, it must be this one, he recalls telling them. Today, vindicated by the growing popularity and success of the community building, he and others can celebrate his decision. When you re a teacher you look for ways to teach, and the synagogue museum has become that. Dietermann became drawn to Jewish history while studying pedagogy at university, when he came across a work by Walter Thiemann entitled On the Jews in Siegerland ( Von den Juden im Siegerland ). Fascinated with the discovery that Jewish tradesmen once inhabited his region in large numbers, Dietermann pursued the subject and wrote a Masters thesis, The Investigation of the History of Siegerland s Jews during the time of National Socialism ( Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Juden des Siegerlandes zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus ). But he didn t stop there. There was so little known about Jewish life in the Nazi time, he says, and my interest in that history never diminished. I researched and researched the Jewish past; it fascinated me, [especially] that so many people said they did nothing. Dietermann, now 59, went on to be elected in 1974 to head the Siegerland Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Gesellschaft für Christlich-Jüdische Zusammenarbeit Siegerland), where he wrote essays, articles, school material and a dozen booklets covering different facets of regional Jewish history, from family biographies to synagogue and cemetery histories. Especially popular was his Jewish Life in Siegen City and Countryside ( Jüdisches Leben in Stadt und Land Siegen ). But he also reported in depth on the scale of damage wrought by the Nazis, for which his book Siegen: A City under the Swastika ( Siegen: eine Stadt unterm Hakenkreuz ) sold out 12,000 copies in four printings. Dietermann says he always wrote with a view toward students, his essential task being to produce short works that were cheap enough to buy and easy enough to read. He wanted to bring the regional history closer to people through writing that is not complex, that is simply written, that can be understood. His communicative skills, though, went beyond the pen and paper. In 1983 exactly 50 years after the Nazis assumed power Dietermann wrote a guidebook and initiated what he called an alternative tour through Siegen in which we don t show the good, touristic sides of the town but the places where the Nazis had their government, the places of resistance, the memorials to Jews. He has also led more than 200 bus tours through the region highlighting Jewish history and places of persecution. It was only in 1992, while organizing an exhibit at the site of the former synagogue commemorating the anniversary of Kristallnacht, that Dietermann thought to reclaim the defunct building and turn it into a museum. He helped found the Active South Westphalian Museum and got efforts underway to turn his dream into a reality. After four years of often strained dialogue with officials and the owners of the building, Dietermann saw one floor of the building leased for his purposes. Now, with some 3,000 to 4,000 people visiting it each year including tours of 60 to 70 school classes, and many church groups he intends to expand to another floor by ( When we make a third floor, he laughs, then I will resign. ) Not only focusing on the fate of Jews under the Nazis, the museum emphasizes the persecution of Sinta and Roma, communists, disabled people, Jehovah s Witnesses and others. The active in the museum s title, he says, means that we do tours, we do special education for children. We re not only a museum, but we expand on what people find interesting. The Jewish community in the area around Siegen only began in 1817 when the Prussian king changed the law, finally allowing Jews to live there. Half a century later, a new train from Cologne brought waves of Jewish businessmen and tradesmen; nonetheless, by the 1930s Siegen only had a population of about 200 Jews, half of whom were killed. We must speak about this history so that nothing of this sort ever happens again, says Dietermann, who has been teaching German history for 35 years and is now on the lookout for younger people with new ideas to replace the older generation and carry on the work of Jewish remembrance. Some people are called to do this, he remarks, but not everyone. On trips he has made to Siegen s sister city, Emek Hefer in Israel, Dietermann encountered ex-siegen residents who left the city before the war. A Wehrmacht soldier s son, who never wanted to ask his father what he had done in that time, Dietermann is committed to the notion that everyone must do something to salvage and try to reconcile with the past. In his case, both growing relationships from afar and welcoming those visits by Israeli relatives who want to know their family s former town. People are so comfortable and so lazy that they wait, and that s a problem. We must also do something for our democracy, and not just let it be, he says. We cannot just wait. 3

6 Awardee MICHAEL DORHS Hofgeismar, Hesse Nominated by Chanan Frank, Herzelia, Israel; Dan Frank, Afula, Israel; and Gideon Frank, Moshav Beit-Chanan, Israel As a young theology student preparing to become a Protestant minister, Michael Dorhs did the unexpected: he helped establish a department of Jewish history in his hometown museum of Hofgeismar, to preserve the German Jewish heritage of our region. We didn t have anything, maybe 20 books at first, Dohrs recalls. So he placed announcements in newspapers like Aufbau in New York and Israel Nachrichten in Tel Aviv, asking Holocaust survivors and the descendents of Jews from the North Hessen region to contact him and tell their stories. Some 30 years later, following his publication of dozens of articles and seven books exploring local Jewish history, Dorhs has awoken memories and ignited interest among both communities from Hofgeismar the Jewish one that left it, and the German one that stayed. I want German non-jews to have a feeling that Judaism is a part and a root of our religion, our culture. That it s not their history, it s also our own history, says Dorhs, 48, whose most recent book The Eighth Light: Jewish Contributions to the Social and Cultural History of North Hesse ( Das achte Licht: Beiträge zur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte der Juden in Nordhessen ) addresses that subject. At the same time, he says, it s important for Jews to see that in their former Heimat their homeland they are not forgotten, that there is a special house where people are interested in their fates, in hearing and collecting their stories and in preserving their experiences, in order to show what happened to them. Dorhs journey into the Jewish past began in grade school, when he was assigned to photograph gravestones in Hofgeismar s Jewish cemetery. At 18, seeing the TV film series Holocaust was the first time I came in touch with a single family from the Holocaust and connected with that history. At university in Tübingen he poured through Hofgeismar s archives to write a lengthy paper about the Church s position in Nazi times. His persistent investigation of North Hesse s Jewish past, and his efforts to teach students about that history, have grown ever since. I know names. I know stories. When I guide students [through the museum] I don t tell them all the things they can read in history books about Auschwitz or Poland, he says, but stories of human beings, men and women who lived in their home town. They see the street names and the houses and they can imagine what happened to the people here. It is like a bridge from the past to the present. Dorhs himself has a past that is many ways hard to reconcile. The destiny of being a refugee was a topic in my family, which came from East Prussia, he says, and where his grandparents and aunt were killed by Russian troops trying to flee during the Second World War. His father was a Nazi soldier who later became a police officer. I asked him, What did you do in this time? Dorhs recalls. His father told him nothing, but I m not sure whether this is the truth or not, and I never got an answer. Having taught for seven years as an assistant theology professor at university in Margburg, Dorhs now travels around his Kurhessen-Waldeck region, north of Kassel, educating pastors often on Jewish topics. He has written widely on subjects of Jewish interest from synagogue and cemetery histories to individual biographies and stories of Jewish assimilation and persecution in Nazi times. Dorhs also edited important works like the Israeli Meta Frank s memoir, Shalom, meine Heimat, (1994), a groundbreaking and intimate document of one family s history in the region. Frank s book shined a new, personal light on the Holocaust and became a hit; it ran through three printings thanks to Dorhs, who succeeded in getting one of Hofgeismar s streets named after her in Dorhs achievements include helping to discover and preserve an ancient Mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, in the nearby town of Trendelburg, and mounting commemorative plaques at the two Jewish cemeteries in the Hofgeismar area. But what has brought him perhaps his greatest joy has been combining that interest in Jewish history with teaching not just to Germans but to both sides of the divide. For the children and grandchildren of emigrants who visit our museum, they can [finally] see the truth about what they have heard in their families, he says. Until then it s abstract. But when you come to the region, to the roots of your family, you see the name of your aunt on the list of names: it s written down. Apart from the voluminous data, personal objects, photographs and documents he assiduously collected, Dorhs established a room in the Hofgeismar Municipal Museum that consists of a large board chronicling the fates of the region s former Jews. The message was always to retell, not to accuse. I have had some very emotional situations in that room with the grandchildren of victims, he adds. For me the most important point was to come into contact with so many Jewish people, young and old, who lived, or whose relatives lived, in our region before and during the Nazi period. The knowledge that people in Germany are interested and have collected their family histories is very important to the [relatives]. Indeed, for the 100 or so Jewish families Dorhs has kept contact with over the years from Israel to America to Holland and beyond the appreciation is lasting. Michael s passion for Jewish history seeps into his professional activity, say Dan, Chanan and Gideon Frank, relatives of the author Meta. As an educator and advisor of newly ordained pastors, he [is] spreading the knowledge and consciousness of the tragic past among the future spiritual leadership in Germany. 4

7 Awardee BERNHARD GELDERBLOM Hameln, Lower Saxony Nominated by Steven Altman, Johnston, IA; Barbara Andrusz, Cumbria, UK; Susanna Aronson, Tel Aviv, Israel; Veronica Forwood, London, UK; Ruth and Benjamin Grossmann, Ramat-Efal, Israel; Nancy and Thomas High, Boston, MA; Irina Pirogova, Hameln, Germany; Ute Siegeler, Borken, Germany; Felicitas Tesch, Berlin, Germany; and Ruth Torode, Dublin, Ireland In 1985, gymnasium school teacher Bernhard Gelderblom made a life-changing discovery when he stepped into the Jewish cemetery in his hometown, Hameln. It was a big place and an absolutely forgotten place, overcrowded with green, he recalls. It fascinated me. That was the entrance for me. Soon after, he got to work researching and documenting literally dozens of other Jewish cemeteries in the towns southwest of Hannover, in Lower Saxony, and recovering stories about former Jewish life that people there had never heard. I gave lectures in the villages and sometimes people came who had never talked about what happened in the Third Reich with the Jews, he says. Now they started to talk about it, about their fathers and grandfathers. That was very important to me: to confront small communities with their history. It is something that Gelderblom, who is married with three children, never got to do within his own family. Born in 1943 on the Weichsel River town of Schwetz in present-day Poland, he was the son of a Nazi soldier whose task was to Germanize the Polish region. It was never possible to speak with my father about the Third Reich and what he did, not even when he was elderly and dying, Gelderblom says. The youngest of three siblings, Gelderblom and his mother fled to Magdeburg as Russian forces entered, and after several family moves, grew up in the small Westphalian city of Herford. He studied theology between 1964 and 1970 in Münster, Vienna, Bonn and Göttingen, where he earned a Protestant priest s diploma. But he left the religious fold in favor of history and politics, which he has taught since 1976 in Hameln. Besides publishing numerous newspaper articles in that time, Gelderblom has penned eight books, notably The Hameln Jewish Cemetery ( Der jüdische Friedhof Hameln ) (1988) and They Were Citizens of the City: The History of Jewish Residents in Hameln during the Third Reich ( Sie waren Bürger der Stadt: Die Geschichte der jüdischen Einwohner Hamelns im Dritten Reich ) (1997), which he took a one-year sabbatical to complete. Indeed, in the 20 years since he first encountered his town s Jewish cemetery, teaching about the truths of the Nazi era has become a moral priority. It is necessary to speak about those things which happened in Hameln, not only in Berlin and so on, he says. In German schools students say, We have to deal with this subject too often, and sometimes I m afraid they are right. We mustn t do it so often, he adds, but when we do it we must do it well. My principle was to confront students with real people s stories, real historic places so they could imagine [what it was like]. It s not necessary to know a number, six million, because you cannot imagine it. To confront them with one family and the history of that family this was my aim. Gelderblom, who retired in 2006 after 30 years in the classroom, faced a distinct denial of the past in his town a place most famous as the site of the Brothers Grimm legend about a rat catcher who abducts the town s children. There was an attitude of ignorance and indifference, he recalls. People believed, we have this story and we don t need to bother about our [true] history. But as Gelderblom taught, so did he travel and speak and organize, spreading his curiosity and insights about local Jewish history across Lower Saxony. The town of Duingen, population 3,000, had a [Jewish] cemetery that was absolutely destroyed, he says. It was a terrible place. They had hit the gravestones with axes and hammers, and I succeeded in finding a group in the village to help restore the cemetery. The people provided their labor and their money to build a new wall and to restore the tombstones, he says, and in October 2008 they celebrated its opening. For me it was one of my greatest successes: to make it possible for a small village community to do this work themselves. A former member and secretary for 14 years of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Hameln, he also helped assemble the memorial book of all deported German Jews at the Federal Archive in Berlin. And in what is maybe his most visible achievement, Gelderblom was responsible for installing five large, bronze memorial plaques at the site of Hameln s former synagogue, which burned down on Kristallnacht, inscribed with the names and deportation dates of the town s 101 Jews deported in the war. Gelderblom further awakened the collective memory of the region with the Anne Frank exhibit he oversaw there in the early 1990s and for which he received threatening letters, phone calls and even a bomb warning from a radical rightwing group that rejected his work. Many more people, however, have supported Gelderblom s efforts. And through his two websites and gelderblom-hameln.de he continues to make his decades of research and activism available to a global audience. Barbara Andrusz of England praises Gelderblom s determination to keep alive the memory of people who were once an integral part of Hamelin society, but who would surely be forgotten were it not for his efforts and dedication, while Veronica Forwood, a descendent of Hameln Jews, says: He has carried out the most meticulous archival research to recreate the genealogy of the Jews of Hameln and the neighboring villages I owe it to Mr. Gelderblom s painstaking research that I know where my ancestors were buried. That sense of the personal touch whether it was tirelessly investigating archives from Hannover to Israel; erecting a gravestone to the so-called angel doctor of Hameln, Siegmund Kratzenstein, who was killed shortly after Kristallnacht; or walking patiently with the descendants of Hameln s Jews through his town, showing them landmarks, sharing his knowledge and explaining to them their past may be what Gelderblom has succeeded at best. 5

8 Awardee ERNST & BRIGITTE KLEIN Volksmarsen, Hesse Nominated by Carol Davidson Baird, Solana Beach, CA; Bern Brent, Farrer, Australia; Leah Joan Dickstein, Cambridge, MA; Larry Hamberg, Mahopac, NY; Ilse Lichtenstein Meyer, Louisville, KY; Ralph Mollerick, Lake Worth, FL; Harold Nassau, Cambridge, MA; and Karl Heinz Stadtler, Waldchen, Germany In 1985, on the occasion of Volkmarsen s 850th anniversary, Ernst Klein helped research his town s rich Jewish legacy and was angered when just two of 500 pages in the new Volkmarsen history were dedicated to recounting that past. So he and his wife Brigitte organized a group of a half dozen citizens interested in making our own research into the Jewish history, and with this work came the idea that we must rediscover where the people who came from here went to [after the war] and tell their stories. What grew out of the group was Flashback Against Oblivion ( Rückblende Gegen das Vergessen ), a charitable society that has rebuilt the town s Jewish cemetery, established an education center devoted to Jewish history and as its centerpiece, invited and reconnected the relatives of former Volkmarsen Jews to the town in ways more intimate than were ever imaginable. Many of those we invited asked, Why are you doing this, why should we come? They felt afraid and uncomfortable; they didn t want to step foot in Germany, recalls Klein, who runs a door and window construction business with his wife. His response to them was: We only want to know what you have lived through and to show you that people in Germany today are different, that other people live here now. Since 1996, Jewish families from Australia to Israel, from Seattle to New York, have been showing up every two years in Volkmarsen to take part in 10-day, town-sponsored visits to explore their north Hessen past. Meanwhile, they have lodged with families they did not know, stayed up nights telling their life stories to the Kleins and other locals, and formed lasting bonds and friendships that have spanned the generations. One memorable example was when the Kleins told Ilse Lichtenstein Meyer about her relative, a town tailor, who saved Ernst Klein s grandfather s life in World War I, but was later killed in Sobibor. Ilse Meyer took his arm in tears and said, I felt 50 years of only hatred towards Germany and all that happened here, and with this visit my hate is gone. A lot has changed in the thinking of the people here, says Ernst, 64, who has worked alongside Brigitte, whom he married more than 40 years ago. Many years ago, the Kleins started their own door and window construction firm, which they continue to run successfully today. Most small business owners have little free time to heal the world, but the Kleins felt the need to do more. They have been partners in an untiring effort to remember the Jewish past. One sees that there are so many questions, Ernst reflects. Young and old, they ve discovered through individual, personal histories many things they never knew. As a boy himself, Klein recalls the times his father led him on walks through Volksmarsen, pointing out the places where Jews, who numbered around 200, used to live and work. Who lived there and what happened to them afterwards was always my question, he says. It wasn t until 1985 that that question reawakened in him, and he and some 20 others in 1994 founded Flashback Against Oblivion in an effort to answer it. I thought we must do it soon because the people will not live much longer, says Klein. We must find these people. Now comprising more than 125 people from 30 towns across the region, the society boasts a solid list of accomplishments. One is the Volkmarsen Jewish cemetery, where Nazis destroyed 118 tombstones during the war and where today, a rebuilt entrance and an 18-meter-long memorial wall constructed, symbolically, out of Polish sandstone commemorates the Jews killed in the Shoah. All 22 victims names along with their dates of birth and death are engraved on wall plaques outside the cemetery. Now, many people who had never thought about it can, through this wall, know and interest themselves in this Jewish chapter of history, say the Kleins. Ernst and Brigitte also led efforts to establish a museum and education center devoted to the history of Volkmarsen s Jews, using documents and stories collected from survivors. Formerly housed in a local school, the museum has relocated to a handsome 100-year-old villa which is awaiting renovation. Rich in text, what the museum now needs, Ernst Klein says, is more photography and video in the run-up to an exhibition planned for early Twice a year, they have helped arrange memorial events on November 9 for Kristallnacht, and January 27 for the liberation of Auschwitz to further keep local memories alive in the region around Kassel, winning respect far and wide. Carol Davidson Baird of California praises their extraordinary work raising awareness of Volkmarsen s former Jewish residents and their contributions from their earliest arrival until the last Jews were deported during the Shoah. On a personal note, says Larry Hamberg of New York: The Kleins and their group have allowed me to teach my kids where they came from, and why they were forced to flee. They have been tireless workers in educating their countrymen, especially the young, about the lessons of the Holocaust. In November of 2008, Hessen s state minister Wilhelm Dietzl and the German President Horst Köhler honored Brigitte with a Federal Medal of Service (Verdienstmedaille des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) and Ernst with a Federal Cross of Service (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) for their work. The extensive work they initiated can be viewed on the society s webpage, What can t be viewed, of course, is the sense of deep connection and a desire for reconciliation that the Kleins and their supporters have built with Holocaust survivors and their relatives from around the world. I have so many letters from people saying, We went home with a much better feeling than we came with. They had angst, they didn t know what to expect, they had bad memories then they came and after two days found new friends, he says. Forging a new future between Germany and Jews can t happen just in Volkmarsen, the Kleins know. But when friends from overseas come, they see what our small city has done and it s nice to be able to say we re not alone, that there are groups like ours all over Germany who through honest work are seeking understanding. 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 a guest curator at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan. She is co-chair of the Board of Governors of JewishGen, 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 Stefanie Pruschansky. Walter Momper was Governing Mayor of Berlin when the wall came down in Stefanie Pruschansky became head of the protocol department in the House of Representatives in August 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 flms. 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 was 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 GERHARD BUCK 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 CHARLOTTE MAYENBERGER Lars Menk Josef Motschmann HEINRICH NUHN Carla & Erika Pick JOHANNA RAU FRITZ REUTER Gernot Römer Ernst Schäll Moritz Schmid Heinrich Schreiner JÜrgen Sielemann HELMUT URBSCHAT & MANFRED KLUGE Ilse VOGEL Christiane Walesch-Schneller Wilfried Weinke Profiles: Michael Levitin Translator: Heike Kähler Editors: Ernst Kallmann, Betty Solbjor 8