I wrote this post over ten days ago, right after getting back from our trip to Lahr, Germany.  I’ve had it sitting in my drafts folder, but haven’t posted it because I felt weird about putting this on the internet.  I went back and forth as to why I felt ‘off’ and eventually realized that it’s just because while we went to Germany as a family, the reason we were there was to learn about our family’s past, much of which was horrific, and so I felt uneasy posting it on the internet.  After waffling back and forth a bit, I decided this should be posted, not only for our own memories of the trip, but also as a way to remember what happened during the Holocaust and how it changed the lives of families and would-be-families all over Europe.  Our family was one of those families, so in the words of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor:

“To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”

So here is everything about our trip.

Slightly edited August 2, 2018.

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A common question in the United States is, ‘what’s your background? Like, where is your family from?’, and unlike basically every other country in the world, each person you ask will have a different answer to that question.  ‘Well, I’m a quarter____, a quarter ____, a quarter this and a quarter that’ is not an uncommon answer. 

Americans are blends of so many other cultures, which I guess is what makes us a special.  When people ask me that ‘what’s your background’ question, my answer is usually something along the lines of, ‘my mom’s family is from Cuba, and my dad is…American’.  It’s the easiest answer, and it’s the truth.  But – like I said – when you’re American, there is usually more to the story.

My Dad’s mother (my ‘Oma’) was from Germany.  Lahr, Germany, in the Black Forest, to be exact.  You’ve probably never heard of it.  Many Germans haven’t heard of it.  That’s because it’s a small village, situated between other small villages you’ve never heard of.  Anyway,  my grandmother was from there, as were her parents, grandparents, and so on (or, at least they were from close-to-Lahr).  Oh, and her aunts and uncles, too.  My family lived in a big house off of a main street in Lahr.

 On the lower level of that house was the family-owned shoe store, where they sold shoes to the people of Lahr.  As you can see in the above photo, it’s no longer a shoe store, but is now a hair dresser.  They were a part of the community, had friends and neighbors, took vacations and did every day life things like eat, and shop, and work, and sleep.  They did the same things their neighbors did and the same things your neighbors do, until they didn’t do those things.  Why didn’t they do those things?  Because they weren’t allowed to.  When the Nazi’s moved through Germany, the first thing they did during their tyrade was deny the Jews of certain freedoms.  They were no longer permitted to do things like shop and work and be in the same places as non-Jews.  Little by little, their freedoms were stripped away and then one night, overnight between November 9, 1938 and November 10, 1938 (Kristallnacht- the night of the broken glass), their lives were changed forever.  Their shoe business and house were broken into and ransacked, things were thrown into the street, windows were broken, and ultimately, they were stripped of what was theirs.  After Kristallnacht, the men (my Great Grandfather and Uncle and the rest of the Jewish men) were arrested, and sent to a detention camp.  When they came back from there a few weeks later, the shoe store that was once Shoehouse Haberer (my family name) was changed to Shoehouse Stolz (the name of the family that ransacked the business).

Imagine coming ‘home’ after being unrightfully imprisoned and coming to home to find that your work, your house, and everything you had was no longer yours.  I can’t imagine it, because this type of evil isn’t something we can imagine.  It doesn’t end there, though.  When they found that their home was no longer their home, my family was moved into the house for Jews, which they shared with the other families that were forced out of their own homes.  At this point, things were going from Bad to Worse for the Jewish people.  My grandmother (who was in her early 30s) was able to secure a visa to the USA, while her parents were still in Lahr.  My grandmother moved to New York, where she spent some time working modest jobs and learning to speak English.  In Lahr, she was a medical technologist, but her qualifications weren’t valid in the US, so she had to work in other jobs until she became qualified in the US.  While she was in the US, she was able to have sparse correspondance with her parents, who, as far as she could tell, had been deported to Gurs Internement Camp, a prison camp in southwestern France.  Again, can you imagine?  Being in another country while your poor parents are going through who-knows-what.  While my Grandmother worked to secure visas for her parents, she also learned to speak English and met my Grandfather (also German, but born in the US).  They married, and had a son (my uncle).  Eventually, my Grandparents learned that my Great-Grandmother (Anna) had been sent to Auschwitz after a very brief (as in, a few days) stay in Drancy, where she was murdered upon arrival.  Leo (my Great-Grandfather) received a visa to go to the United States, where he went after many years of trying to secure that visa.  He arrived to his new home, with his daughter and her husband and their baby and then, eventually, another baby (my Dad), and the rest, they say, is history.  

My Dad started researching our family history over a year ago, and through his research, he became aware of a project called the Stolpersteine Project, which is an effort to put ‘stumbling blocks’ in front of the homes/ businesses of the Jews that were deported during the Second World War.

The blocks give you the names of the victims, when the person was born, where they were deported to and where they ended up (murdered or otherwise).  The blocks are placed into the ground, and small enough that if you aren’t looking for them, you’ll miss them, but when you do see them, it’s nessesary to bend over and read what they say.  The artist’s idea is that you are almost bowing down to the victims as you read the information.

Anyway, my Dad reached out to the contact information on the Stolperstein website, inquiring about how he could place blocks for his mother and grandparents.  A couple days later, he received a response from Doris (pictured above) who said she had been waiting for my Dad to contact her one day.  She knew that the descendents of Leo, Anna, and Hilda Haberer were now in the USA, but with the last name ‘Cohen’ (Hilda’s married name), it would have been impossible to find us.  From that day, Doris and my Dad (and later, the rest of my family as well) have been in contact with Doris, as she sends articles and bits of information about our past.  

Eventually, my parents started planning a trip to Europe and since they would already be on this side of the world, decided to add a stop in Lahr.  My brother and I were able to work it into our schedules as well, and thus- a trip to Lahr was born! We all knew it would be a special trip (also because it was the first time in TWO years that we were all together), but none of us expected it to be as special as it was.  

We arrived on Thursday afternoon (my brother and I met at the Frankfurt airport and took the train together- he looked so GROWN UP when I saw him!)

We arrived at the hotel, and shortly after, my parents arrived!  Big family hugs!  We also got to meet Doris, who is the sweetest, most throughful person and is responsible for making our trip as comprehensive as it was.  Doris went above an beyond and we all feel grateful for that.  

After dropping everything in the hotel, we went right out for a quick tour of Lahr and to see the ‘family house’.

It’s a quiant town, with little shops and restaurants, and it’s probably very similar to the way to was just 75 years ago.  It’s hard to imagine such evil took place, isn’t it?

We were all exhausted, so after saying goodnight to Doris, my family and I had a delicious dinner (at a restaurant called Rebstock if you’re ever in Lahr and need a good place) thanks to Doris’ recommendation.  The fun part was using Google translate to translate a German menu hah!

These were some sort of homemade noodles with a mushroom cream sauce and it was delicious.  Ask me what it was called in German and I have no idea.  I guess it’s strange to include food in this post, but it was a part of our experience, so it will be included here.

After a good night’s rest, we were ready for a full day on Friday.  First- off to the Horticultural Show!  The town of Lahr welcomed us with open arms the entire weekend, but as a part of that, they gave us tickets to their beautiful Horticultural Show, where we got to spend the afternoon with the Town Historian and had lunch with the Mayor!

It was probably the first and last time I’ll ever have lunch with a mayor, so that was cool.  In the afternoon, we walked around the show a bit more, and then we had two interviews with local newspapers about our visit to Lahr.  If you would like to see (and translate) the article, here is one of them.  Apparently we made the first page news.  As part of our interview, we had the opportunity to go inside of ‘the family house’. 

I don’t know how else to describe the experience except for surreal, and a bit strange.  It used to be a two-story home (on top of the shoe store), but has been renovated into two separate apartments.  We were able to go into the lower-level apartment and stand on the balcony where my Great Grandparents stood, walk on some of the floors that they walked on.  To me, the way it felt was ‘this house doesn’t belong to my family anymore, but it doesn’t really belong to the owner, either’.  The current tenants (they rent the apartment) had a clipped newspaper article that shows the house after it was coverted to the Stolz residence and business.  

We think the indicated date on the photo is incorrect, as it did not take the name ‘Stolz’ until after Kristallnacht. 

The day after this, I was quite ill and spent the day in bed.  My parents and brother visited the local Lahr Museum, and then Doris took them to the small village next door to see where my Great Grandfather was from.

The next day, I was able to join them (although still felt incredible weak).  We sat in a circle in front of ‘the family house’ while a local town historian told us the detailed story of what happened to our family, as far as he knew.  From there, we were taken to see a local synagogue, that was destroyed during the war, then later used as a storage facility, and has since been recontructed to what it is today.

Lastly, we visited the cementery where my Great, Great Grandfather and Great Uncle are buried.  If you ever doubted if there was a large Jewish presence in Germany pre-war time, then this is good proof:

And it goes on and on, through many rolling hills.

The next morning, we headed to Stuutgart after saying thank you and good bye to Doris.  We all agreed that this trip was incredibly special for us, and while it’s certainly not a happy reason that we were in Lahr, I think it was a positive trip.  We were able to see where we come from and able to learn more about our family’s history and if you read the attached article (above), you’ll see that ‘putting a face to a name’ (as in- my family is from Lahr) is an important thing.

Thank you to each and every one of these people, for putting the effort into making our trip what it was, and for giving a voice to those that can’t speak for themselves.  An extra big thank you to Doris for everything she did for us before and during our trip- you are a wonderful person.  Thank you.