Germany: Roots & Remembrance

[First, some housekeeping: To see my latest post, and to scroll back through prior posts, always go to nancysgermanyroots.com/home .]

I have been interested in our family history for decades, asking my parents to share their stories. Getting a feeling for how my relatives lived fascinates me. Understanding the Nazi period is hard. As my family lived in Germany from the 1600’s (if not earlier) until 1942 (when the last of my relatives who had not escaped was murdered), much of the genealogical information is in old Gothic German script and is hard even for natives to read.

Some Germans have dedicated themselves to recording the Jewish experience so it is not forgotten. They teach children, and find and post old documents online. Fortunately, I have met some of these warm, intelligent, selfless people. They are Freunds indeed. As many of you know, Freund (“friend” in German) is my maiden name. (Americans have trouble pronouncing it; my mother would say, ”just add an ‘n’ to the last name of Sigmund Freud.”)

One Freundin is my friend, Iris. We were introduced via email and met in person on this trip. Bilingual in German and English, Iris has helped many Jews with translations and tours.

Without Iris, my research on cousin Louis Joseph (the savior who helped my family when America was ready to bar the door and God was silent) would not have been possible. It is Iris who found and translated the missing family link.

Iris is kind, smart, understated and modest. She arranged and joined us on several private family history tours and took us herself on a grand tour of Aschaffenburg.

Iris has a 1920 phone book that lists the Freund family. It was eerie to see so many familiar names written in old German with their residences, occupations and phone numbers. Call 599 for my great uncle the engineer!

In other times, Iris and I would be neighbors as well as friends. Delightful Iris would have been a Freundin of her contemporaries in the Freund family, were my cousins still in Aschaffenburg.

Sadly, there are no Freunds here.

There is no Jewish community here.

Iris and I will remain pen pals and Freunds.