Tag: #kissinger_obit

Tag: #rock_concerts

animated projection on the gate to the Alley of Human Rights, Nuremberg Oct. 11, 2023
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Link:

11 years ago: Emails from Israel

Tag: #no_terror_against_israel

(photo: U.S. Department of State)

Tag: #kissinger_100

Tag: #bastards

Tag: #the_who_1967

(collage: Gerhard Jochem)

Tag: #imt_2022

Tag: #bootlegs

USA & Nuremberg - Documents of war & friendship since 1944

Tag: #friendship

Tag: #ld_2021

Screenshot from the CBC program

Tag: #willie_100

Prof. Jack Steinberger 2008 in Bad Kissingen
(photo: Sigismund von Dobschuetz / Wikipedia Commons)

Tag: #steinberger_2020

Tag: #independence_day_2020

Tag: #liberation_day_2020

Tag: #book_vasos

Tag: #liberation_day_2019

The Nuremberg Alamo

None of the participants starved during the event

Our star guest: Mr. Bob Potter

Bob quizzing the crowd, Jeopardy style

Our mascot G.I. Joe as always dutifully on his post

Dog Snoopy joined us to have a relaxed time

Tag: #2018_07_04

The participants of the guided city tour on April 20, 2018 in front of the
arc at the entrance to Strasse der Menschrechte (Alley of Human Rights)

Mrs. Christina Rauch at the reading in her bookstore which was another part of the program

Tag: #liberation_day_2018

Tag: #play_list_en

Tag: #trump

Tag: #mensdorf

Tom Spahr (left) & Bob Potter in Nuremberg, June 2017
(photo: testimon publishers)

Tag: #tom_bob

Gerdi Merk & Robert Day Potter
(photo: private)

Tag: #potter

The crowd listening to Staff Sergeant Mosbacher (Vincent Noel)
(photo: testimon publishers)

Commemorative notes of the participants on the plaque at the on Zeppelin Grandstand
(photo: testimon publishers)

Tag: #remembrance_2017

Tag: #visitors_2016-11

Tag: #stosstrupp_en

Tag: #steinberger_2016

(photo: Nuremberg City Archives)

Tag: #kolb_herbert

Tag: #my_dear_good_rosi

Tag: #navina

(photo: private)

Tag: #reed_walter

Tag: #shame

Tag: #lemmy

On February 8, 2015 five Allied veterans of WW2 and I started an initiative to name a street after the Nuremberg born G.I. Stephen Mosbacher (see link below to his biography) to honor him as an individual and as a representative of the German refugees who contributed to the defeat of Nazism. To this purpose we proposed the renaming of the street in front of Zeppelin Grand Stand at the former Nazi party rally grounds which anachronistically still bears the name of Beuthen (Bytom), a formerly German town in southwestern Poland. From 1945 through the 1990s the area was used by the U.S. Army. In 2011 a memorial plaque was dedicated there for the U.S. soldiers who fell during the liberation of Nuremberg in April 1945 - the perfect setting for a Stephen Mosbacher Street.

In reply to our renewed request in October, we were informed by the Lord Mayor that in nine months his administration for no comprehensible reason had not been able to prepare the necessary formal motion for the City Council which according to the legal regulations was supposed to decide on the matter. In his letter of November 4 he neither showed any regrets nor gave concrete dates for the procedure. He was also not impressed by the fact that in the meantime one of the veteran supporters had died at age 89.

After we demanded from him to proceed and by that to fulfill his administrative obligations, in a letter of December 17 the Lord Mayor flatly denied to pass on our proposal to the City Council without giving any plausible reasons or honoring the argumentation in several supportive statements from Germany and the United States he had received.

My reply of December 20 read as follows:

After months of inaction and completely contrary announcements in our previous correspondence the declaration of your unwillingness even to forward my proposal in this matter to the City Council as the democratic decision-making body stuns me [...].

Thereby you are personally responsible for denying Stephen Mosbacher who fought as a U.S. soldier against the Nazi regime and lost his life in the rescue of comrades, the undoubtedly deserved official honor of a street name in his hometown. But since we live in a pluralistic society, I still hope that there are ways to his public commemoration independent of your opinion, and I will continue to work for them.

I am deeply ashamed towards the German and American supporters of this initiative that such a course of action is possible 70 years after the liberation from National Socialism in Nuremberg.

I will not cease in my effort to remember Stephen and his fellow soldiers in a country that owes so much to them, though the representatives of this city - the city councilors never claimed their decisive competence - ignored our well-founded proposal and therefore do not deserve to call him their own. The historic truth will prevail and shame those who blocked public remembrance ignoring democratic rules.

Tag: #mosbacher

Zeppelin Grandstand, spring 2015
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Tag: #nyt_2015

Bernhard Kolb and Nuremberg's main synagogue shortly before its destruction in August 1938
(photos: Herbert Kolb)

As testimon print we are involved in a program entitled Foerderung zeitgeschichtlicher Forschung in Nuernberg und der Vermittlung ihrer Ergebnisse (short FZFN, in English Sponsoring of research on contemporary local history in Nuremberg and the proliferation of its results). In its second run in 2015 among the sponsored projects there is the publication of the English translation of Bernhard Kolb's memoir Die Juden in Nuernberg 1839 - 1945 by Mrs. Navina Clemerson (New Zealand). The particular fund out of which the translator received EUR 500 is named after Stephen S. Mosbacher, a Nuremberg born G.I. who fell during the liberation of Germany in 1945.

Mrs. Clemerson describes her work as follows:

The memoir which has been translated is a version edited by Gerhard Jochem which appears in German on the rijo-research.de website. Its introduction provides a short summary of the history of Nuremberg's Jewish Community prior to the 20th century, and then goes into detail about the events immediately preceding and during the Nazi period until 1945. It includes an appendix with lists of donors and donations from Nuremberg's Jewish Community, as well as an extended excerpt from Bernhard Kolb's diary relating a description of life in Theresienstadt and the fate of Nuremberg Jews incarcerated there. The translation is approximately 50,330 words long. The manuscript is about 150 pages.

This memoir is of particular importance because almost none of the documentation related to Nuremberg's Jewish Community survived World War II. Bernhard Kolb himself was employed by the Jewish Community's Board from 1923 as their Executive Director. He was also responsible for liaison with the Gestapo during the Nazi period. He was therefore well placed to report about the unfolding events from a Jewish perspective.

The translation work has been supervised and approved by Dr. Monica Tempian of the School of Languages and Culture of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dr. Tempian specializes in translation of Holocaust-related literature from German. She did this work pro bono.

It may be of interest that in 2004, I won a competition run by the Goethe Institut in Wellington in cooperation with Victoria University's School of Languages and Culture, for a translation of a poem by exiled German poet Rose Auslaender.

This memoir will be of interest to the descendants of Nuremberg refugees, most of whom have no knowledge of German. It would also be of interest to historians with an interest in the Nazi era and to researchers of the Holocaust.

I am planning to publish this work as an e-book on Amazon. The grant will go towards payment of a professional graphic designer to design the layout and the cover of the book.

I have lived in Wellington, New Zealand for the last 30 years. Since retiring from my work as a forensic psychologist, I have been occupied with writing a novel about my mother's escape from Nuremberg. In the course of researching this novel, Gerhard Jochem kindly drew my attention to Bernhard Kolb's memoir. The translation was undertaken as a labor of love, in memory of my mother Anneliese Berlin who was born in Nuremberg and managed to leave Germany after "Kristallnacht." She died in Israel in 2001.

Navina Clemerson

Tag: #clemerson

(photo: Susanne Rieger)

At the end of June 2015 our friend Ludwig Berlin (London) with his family visited Nuremberg to celebrate in his native city his 94th (!!!) birthday. Occasionally he - always a man of the world - found the opportunity to relax with a cup of tea and read his English newspaper at an outdoor cafe on Main Market Square (see photo).

Despite his age and severe blows Ludwig is still a walking history book, fervent fan of the local soccer club 1. FCN, an imposing figure and a very charming person who likes to smile wisely and make others smile, in short another example of what Germany and especially Nuremberg have lost irretrievably by the expulsion and extermination of its Jewish population in 1933 - 1945. The happier can be considered who has earned his trust, respect and even friendship.

Hang in Ludwig, for many more years to come!

Tag: #ludwig_2015

Orte juedischen Lebens und seiner Vernichtung in Nuernberg bis 1945 / Places of Jewish life and its extinction in Nuremberg until 1945. Text: Gerhard Jochem (zweisprachiger Faltplan / bilingual city map). Stadtarchiv Nuernberg / Nuremberg City Archives 2015.

Erhaeltlich bei / available at:

Stadtarchiv Nuernberg, Marientorgraben 8, 90402 Nuernberg

Buergerinformations-Zentrum, Hauptmarkt 18, 90403 Nuernberg

Tourist Information, Koenigstrasse 93, 90402 Nuernberg

Tag: #city_map

Our latest long term project: A collection of biographical data of achieving Jewish people whose families were driven out from Nuremberg or Fuerth by the Nazis - applications are always welcome!

Tag: #hof

The so-called Pegida movement is demonstrating regularly in several German cities, among them Nuremberg, though only in numbers of approx. 100 people. They are a strange mix of conservatives and rightwing extremist denying history or at least any responsibility for it and basically against anything - Jews, Israel, Muslims, America, individual freedom - but they admire Russia's Putin. No wonder the demonstrations started in Dresden in the former GDR.

During the war in the Gaza Strip even more crazy coalitions of outright neo-Nazis, leftwing anti-Semites (they call themselves anti-Zionists) and Islamic fundamentalists took to the street preaching hatred against the State of Israel.

Recently the head of the domestic security agency (Verfassungsschutz) stated without being punished for it by the government that it is not safe for Jews in Germany to wear Kippoth in public because some people might feel provoked by it. If anyone does so anyway, he has to face the consequences. The man would not dare to say the same about Muslim women wearing a burka because then he was blamed for intolerance.

It is disgusting to see such developments and we try to counter it with what we are doing, e.g. on Facebook. We must not let these idiots take over Germany.

Tag: #german_spring

The Wexler Oral History Project of the Yiddish Book Center has made available online an extensive video interview which it conducted with our Nuremberg born friend Prof. Arnold Friedmann in November 2011. You can also find his biography on rijo-research.de (see links).

Quote from the interview's synopsis:

Arnold Friedmann, Emeritus Professor of interior design at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1925 into a bourgeois German-Jewish family. Arnold's parents both came from solidly middle-class backgrounds, although he claims that his mother was "more" middle-class. Arnold attended the reform Gymnasium (high school) in Nuremberg, where he was the first in his class. He recalls listening to the other students sing the Horst Wessel song every morning at school during assembly. In 1936 he was no longer allowed to attend the "German" high school and was forced to switch to a Jewish school. His new school, in a small town outside of Nuremberg, was actually a better school; Arnold no longer was first in the class, but rather fourth. To get to school, Arnold and many other Jewish children had to take the trolley and would run from the stop to school so as not to be attacked by children.

Arnold explains that his family was "totally assimilated." Although he went with his mother to synagogue regularly (it was a Reform synagogue), they attended primarily for social reasons. After switching to the Jewish high school, Arnold came home and told his mother he would like to keep a kosher home, to which his mother responded that it was a wonderful idea that he should implement as an adult.

Arnold describes the night of November 9th, 1938, the night of Kristallnacht. He recalls a group of Nazis doing a "Hausdurchsuchung" (house search), carelessly searching through the apartment. After ten minutes the Nazis left. Soon thereafter, Arnold's parents received phone calls from other friends who then arrived to stay with them. Arnold describes the murder of his uncle by SS men. A few days after Kristallnacht, Arnold's father was arrested and mistreated in a Nazi jail. Although imprisoned for only a few days, Arnold's father returned, looking "ten years older." After being reunited with his family, Arnold's father decided it was time to leave Germany. By the end of 1938 they had reached Switzerland and then Italy, and in early 1939 they arrived in Palestine.

Life in Palestine, Arnold explains, was difficult. Upon arriving, the family split up and stayed with various friends. Once their furniture arrived, Arnold's father decided to move to Tel Aviv. With no money to pay for high school, Arnold was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker at the age of thirteen. Arnold's father had planned to make enough money to bring Arnold's grandparents to Palestine, but never managed to. Arnold's grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, and many other relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. Despite the primitive lifestyle in Palestine, Arnold describes a relatively happy youth and the close-knit group of friends that he made.

At the age of eighteen, Arnold joined the British military and was sent to a camp. Almost immediately upon joining Arnold met Jacob, who became his best friend. Arnold was in training for three months, learning to march and shine his shoes and sleeping on concrete in order to get away from the bed bugs in the barracks. Arnold spent two and a half years in Egypt but never saw any action. He was, however, promoted first to corporal and then to sergeant. After being discharged, Arnold moved to New York to attend design school. After he was admitted to the Pratt Institute, the Israeli War of Independence broke out and he returned to Israel to fight.

After the war Arnold returned to New York and attended Pratt, where he studied art and interior design. He then continued at Pratt, receiving his Master's degree. He remained at Pratt to teach until 1972, when he moved to Amherst, MA, to teach at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. At the University of Massachusetts he started an interior design program that he is very proud of.

Tag: #arnold_video

A strange idyll from mid-1950s' Nuremberg preserved in our testimon photo collection: The pigtailed cutie posed for daddy's photo in front of Soldiers Field, the Nazi grandstand which was converted by the U.S. Army into a sporting and parading ground in 1945. Since then she might have grown up in a free country to become a grandmother; the G.I.s are gone and the area has changed its face.

Tag: #soldiers_field

There are things which even cannot be changed by law, revolutions or war - such as the oldest trade in the world. In Nuremberg this fact has turned its own monument in the red light district, for 500 years adjacent to the city wall where generations of ladies have waited patiently for their customers and still do so, fittingly near the gate named after St. Mary (Frauentor).

This postcard from the late 19th century depicts the scene of saying goodnight between a man and a woman (enlarged to the left in her working clothes) whose services he paid for, now departing with a wistful God bless, it has been most pleasant (Behuet Dich Gott! Es ist so schoen gewesen).

We wonder who wrote such cards to whom then as Greetings from Nuremberg (Gruss aus Nuernberg) - surely not the married visitor to his family at home.

Tag: #prostitutes

Isn't he cute trying to look as mean as possible while catching the boy? When you come to town you are supposed to pay him a visit at the left corner of the magnificent St. Lawrence Church. The fountain on the facade of the medieval structure is an addendum from the 19th century telling the tale of a student who cheated when playing marbles with his classmates. Being blamed by them for his dishonesty he vowed: May the devil take me away if I am lying. And so it happened: The devil came and flew away with the struggling liar who lost his textbook and his slate.

Tag: #devil

It is not generally known that (white) South Africans contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany as volunteers in the British Royal Air Force, thus what only can be called a quirk of history they fought against a rabidly racist regime to find their own country introducing the apartheid laws five years after the end of WW2.

On the internet there is a report by Wing Commander F. Lord and Flight Lieutenant P. Fox, both South Africans flying with the British Bomber Command during the war about the disastrous air raid against Nuremberg on March 30, 1944 in which the RAF lost 545 airmen and 108 of 835 aircraft (see link).

Tag: #raf_sa

Let's not forget the lessons of history that a change in the world order - and this is the magnitude of events we are witnessing today - usually comes with a global war, a global confrontation or at least a chain of intense local conflicts.

Vladimir Putin in October 2014 (source: Time Magazine, Dec. 22, 2014)

Tag: #Putin_2014

Screenshot of the obituary on The Telegraph's website

Sir Ronald Grierson, WW2 veteran, British banker, politician and manager, born August 6, 1921 in Nuremberg as Rolf Hans Griessmann died October 23, 2014.

Tag: #Grierson

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Ratings

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Russrope

Tag: #Raspberries

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Kosher

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Jihadists

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #God

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Evolution

(graphics: rijo)

Tag: #Difference

(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Tag: #Aloa_Nuremberg

(photos: Miriam Leikeb)

Tag: #Trailer

A very poignant analysis of Germany today and how it became what it is over the past 2 1/2 decades:

George Packer: The Quiet German. The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world. In: The New Yorker, December 1, 2014 issue

Tag: #Mutti

This is our patented all-the-year, er ... - illuminated U.S. stuffed animals pagoda rocket Xmas tree liberty tower which adorns our kitchen. It comes in handy, especially now during the season. Also no squirrel, woodpecker or real tree was harmed for its construction. NASA already has shown interest in the blueprints.

Tag: #Pagoda

Since 1990 the world has changed fundamentally. Great things have been achieved such as freedom for the people of formerly communist countries, others have been lost, in particular the unifying sense of common values of the Western World which shares the tradition of European Enlightenment.

Instead a shortsighted attitude is prevailing today: Politicians act like traveling salesmen trading their goods to anyone they consider being a potent customer including such beacons of democracy as Russia, Saudi Arabia and foremost China.

The USA ostensibly is turning its attention to the Pacific region as up and coming. This might make geostrategic sense but there it will never find more than military allies from case to case (probably) and economic markets (maybe).

At the same time the majority of European countries led by Germany seems to shun any engagement in foreign politics which exceeds nifty rhetorics. Otherwise they are busy with themselves bloating the bureaucracy of the EU. Money is calling the shots.

An appeal to restore that once exclusive club of nations which emerged after WW2 is not driven by naive idealism or nostalgia: When the going gets tough, it is always the same bunch which has to stand together because its members have common interests & are the first to be called upon for intervention restoring justice and peace. Being a member is both an obligation and a privilege which neither can be ignored nor bartered for some cheap Chinese plastic buckets.

Tag: #Continental_Drift

Tag: #Serious_3

Tag: #Serious_2

Tag: #Serious_1

On June 8, 1999, we launched our bilingual website rijo-research.de under the motto stolen from MIT Don't let the bastards grind you down. Since then we fabricated roughly 1000 texts & 1500 pictures about subjects we care about and have competence in. By doing so we found a steadily growing number of people interested in our stuff including teribloG.

Many thanks to those who are following us and welcome to each and every new visitor!

Tag: #rijo_15

Though 94 years after its initial publication Bolton's book no longer can claim to be up to date with the latest findings, it is still a standard text about the Spanish travels through the Southern portions of what became the United States. The narrative mostly taken from the chronicles of explorers, conquerors and missionaries offers insights into a way of thinking much different from that of Anglo-Saxons in which the sheer greed for gold and the ruthless slaughter of the indigenous population mixed with noble martyrdom of Jesuit and Franciscan priests for their faith in the course of colonization.

Thus Bolton depicts in an essayistic style the complement to the predominant story of the settlers of western and northern European origins heading west from America's east coast. On this endeavor he leaves the reader with cameos like He was merciful to others but cruel to himself (p. 84), a quote from a report about the passing of the Spanish Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1711 who founded missions in Lower California and Arizona and explored the land.

Tag: #Bolton

Good talks and good Bavarian beer: Jake Jacobson with friends in Nuremberg
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

On the weekend of July 4 and 5, 2014 we had the pleasure to welcome Herbert (Jake) Jacobson when he returned to where he served as a G.I. 55 years ago, about which experience he wrote in our book transit nuernberg #4: USA!

Especially at a time when the official German-American relationships oscillate between indifference and outright animosity, it felt good to talk to such a decent, intelligent and open-minded individual discussing the past and present in both countries. This impression was also shared by our friends who joined us in the informal meetings with Jake and convinced us of the necessity of such face-to-face encounters otherwise the meaningful transatlantic bond will get lost.

Come back, Jake (and all the others)!

Tag: #Jake_2014

There is an association in Hamburg called the Suetterlinstube which will transcribe documents written in old German script at no charge. They do take voluntary donations and provide work to people in an elder home who do the transcribing. So if you have family documents you cannot read this is a very good opportunity to get them transferred as a precondition for the translation.

Tag: #Suetterlinstube

This is a personal account of events during the Holocaust by Herbert (92) who lived in Nuremberg where his father worked for the Jewish congregation. In the interview he talks about his life in Nuremberg and the deportation of Jews from there to Theresienstadt.

Here is the link to the video.

Tag: #Kolb_2014

Reverend Henry Gerecke served as an Army Chaplain during World War II. He was assigned to the war trials of Nuremberg. He served with the condemned prisoners, providing them with Christian counsel, up until their deaths.

Here is the link to the report on what he saw and how he reflected upon his experiences.

Tag: #Gerecke

(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Nuremberg online communities

Nürnberg Military Area

The Nuernberg Military Community

Veterans of units once stationed here

17th Artillery Regiment Association

Veterans of the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment

Search for units

Military OneSource

Tag: #Army_Links

Dr. Kurt Hellmann
(photo: Metastasis Research Society)

Thanks to a note from Dr. Rudolf Steiner (Switzerland) we learned that Nuremberg born Dr. Kurt Hellmann, a clinical pharmacologist with an outstanding record in translational medicine, died last spring in his 91st year. He is listed as #3 in our feature about the Jewish students of 1. Reformklasse B des Reformrealgymnasiums in Nuremberg 1932/33 (see links). According to Dr. Steiner Kurt Hellmann vividly remembered his happy youth in Nuremberg and his time at the Reformrealgymnasium, which he attended with his elder brother. When presented with the photograph of the class at his 90th birthday he immediately recognized himself.

Dr. Hellmann led a remarkable life as can be seen in the online texts linked below. In honor of him a Kurt Hellmann Lecture will be delivered at the 15th International Biennial Congress of the Metastasis Research Society 2014 in Heidelberg.

Tag: #Hellmann_Kurt

Street Artist Wooly Worlds' installation on Willy-Brandt-Platz
(photo: Gerhard Jochem)

December 18, 2013, was the 100th birthday of Willy Brandt, one of Germany's most important postwar politicians, federal chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (see link below to his biography on Wiki).

In Nuremberg Street Artist Wooly Worlds (Jutta Leykauff) honored him with a work titled Wir wollen Willy wieder (we want Willy back) in her way by decorating his statue at the square named after the social-democratic politician with crocheted accessories, a banner and red roses. Following her style the installation combined a soft, ironic and happy expression with a sincere message, materialized in panels with quotations of Brandt and a statement posted on the internet as well as handed out to the media. In it Wooly Worlds emphasized the positive symbolic value of the personality and his politics in sharp contrast to regressions in many fields of current society, e.g. education and social security.

This kind of artwork is avant-garde for a city like Nuremberg which otherwise cannot claim to be a center of contemporary art. Its function as a vehicle for such contents adds another quality to the seemingly naive result. There is also an interactive element to Street Art: People started to bring flowers to the statue and express their own thoughts on sheets of paper.

Tag: #Brandt

The synagogue in Forchheim after November 9/10, 1938
(photo provided by the author)

Once more the day of German infamy has arrived and I am sure it is on few peoples' mind.

With so many Germans who witnessed the close-up persecution of Jews in the 1930s, with so many Germans aware of the discrimination heaped upon them - how could anyone avoid the Juden unerwuenscht signs, etc. in so many establishments? -, with so many Germans who participated in the denigration and final extermination of them, those still living are in my opinion mostly senile or dead. For those still alive I am sure November 9/10 and the subsequent extermination of German Jews will not make much of an impression and the event has been relegated to the pages of history. However, the ever-so-much more powerful and readily accessible internet will keep records and the truth can speak electronically to the world, to humanity and to generations to come, truthfully and mercilessly of what really took place in the Vaterland.

First the Nazis stripped the proud German Jews of their citizenship through the infamous Nuremberg Laws, so as non-citizens they had no longer access to German courts to adjudicate injustices. I am sure the brilliant Joseph Goebbels thought of that one!

There are just so few of us left to reflect on the terror, the inhumanities, the total disregard of decency and respect of human life the Germans inflicted on Jews even before World War 2, continuing well into the war years, and finally engulfing the rest of European Jewry with relentless misery, leading to subsequent extermination.

While the Nazis reveled in having so many judenfrei areas, they paid some price for their inhumanity.

With all that blood spilled, will it change human behavior?

I am concerned by the audacity of the officials in my town of birth Forchheim to have the hallow ground of the former synagogue - the sacred ground of a house of worship - become the grounds for a commercial structure, another example of showing publicly the disdain and disrespect for the destroyed synagogue and Jewish community. Yes, they were here and now they are gone - but not forgotten!

Many cities have wrestled with or are wrestling with the problem of what to do with physically non-destroyed, essentially intact buildings which were vibrant German synagogues, places of worship and learning or the grounds where they stood.

There are for example complete synagogue structures in Thuengen and Ottensoos - and they are not museums. I am sure their interiors have been ravaged or destroyed. Then there are the physically restored synagogue structures in Wiesenfeld and Ermreuth.

With the destruction of all prewar German Jewish communities the basic question of what to do with their former places or properties remains unanswered. Yes, there are many Jewish cemeteries, many plaques serving as reminders of what was there and many pictures and documents.

Only the printed word will remain forever and so will the pictures. The accounts cannot be erased.

Yes, the memories of November 9/10, 1938 are intact and will remain on the Net!

Tag: #Bauer_Kristallnacht

In her book Lady Liberty, I love you (ISBN 10-91044-06-6), author Nathalie Salmon reveals a long kept family secret: Her ancestor Sarah Salmon, nee Coblenzer, widowed Laubheim (born Dec. 31, 1844 in New York, deceased June 14, 1904 in Paris), posed for the Statue of Liberty when she and her later husband Adolphe Salmon visited the Paris studio of French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi in 1875. This makes the New York landmark almost a German-Jewish girl: The Coblenzers came from Germany's Rhine-Hesse region, the Laubheims from the hamlet Bibergau in Lower Franconia, the Salmons from Lorraine, a bilingual French-German territory disputed between both nations until 1945.

Nathalie Salmon spent five years of research in private papers & public archives to prove the story right. The result is a gripping book which puts the narrative of the individuals and their families in the wider context of 19th century immigration to the USA.

Tag: #Salmon

Frank Harris with his wife Beri delivering his speech in Fuerth's city hall on July 17
(photo: Susanne Rieger)

Lord Mayor Dr. Jung - Council Members - Honored Guest - Special Friends - Ladies and Gentlemen,

How can I even begin to thank you for this great honor bestowed on me today.

As many of you know I have for all these years refused to return to Germany - since I was forced to leave my birth city of Fuerth at 3 a.m. in the morning on a Children's Transport in March of 1939 with many children, some as young as 5 years old.

I was never ever to forget my feelings of despair, seeing my Dad with other parents running along side the moving train to say a final tearful goodbye to their children who could never understand why they were sent alone to a strange country. Not until they became adults did they understand their parents' sacrifices in saving their children's lives. Unlike myself most of them never saw their parents again. Just last month in London, England they celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Children's Transport that saved 10,000 kinder, quite a few from Nuremberg-Fuerth, including Bernd and Ruth Koschland who attended the anniversary and were welcomed by Prince Charles.

My Dad who spent 5 weeks in Dachau after Kristallnacht was forced to give up his business, his car and other valuables never recovered physically or psychologically from the treatment at the hands of the Nazis - some who were fellow German soldiers of World War 1. He died at a very young 57 years of age and I became the head of our family at age 19. I learned a very valuable lesson on the real priorities in life: Family, friends and health.

I joined the U.S. Army in 1943 became a citizen the same year and fought in North Africa, Italy, France and finally Germany. I was stationed in Marktheidenfeld when we received a report that Fuerth was taken which turned out to be erroneous. I was able to return to Fuerth until some weeks later the very day that my childhood friend Helmut Reissner returned as the only survivor of his family from almost 4 years of torture in numerous concentration camps. His mother was an early victim while his brother and father were murdered on a march just one week prior to liberation. Both of us were determined never ever to return to our birth country and face the very people responsible for the death of our families and friends.

Those Jewish refugees who were able to escape the Nazi terror settled around the world and yes, our roots that had rested for centuries in Nuremberg-Fuerth were scattered around the globe.

In the year 1977 at the urging of another schoolmate, Lee Daniel Fichtelberger, I contacted perhaps around 65 childhood friends. Since then I have published a yearly newsletter that has grown from 65 and one generation to better than 1200 from 5 generations. Our very first reunion took place in 1978 at the famous Grossinger Resort in N.Y. Catskills and the very last of 10 reunions took place in 2012 at Honor's Haven also in the Catskills with a participation of better than 200 from 7 countries and 18 U.S. states.

My return to Fuerth is the very first, except for attending the opening of the memorial at the Jewish cemetery some years ago to light a candle and honor the almost 1000 victims from Fuerth. With the demise of almost all the elderly Nazis this visit will permit me to bring closure to a chapter of my life that I always tried to forget.

I have returned to Fuerth as a representative of all those who were murdered by the Nazis and all those who were driven from their birth city - for no reason other than being Jews. I therefore most gratefully accept the Goldenes Kleeblatt in the name of all from Fuerth and thank you for the hospitality extended to both my wife Beri and myself.

It has been said
that we live in the present,
we learn from the past
and dream of the future.

May the lessons of our difficult past help us to live with one another in the present to allow us to share our dreams of the future together.

The Jewish survivors of Fuerth and Nuremberg extend a hand of peace to one and all.

Thank you.

Tag: #Harris_Fuerth

On his 90th birthday we presented former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger the announcement of his Bar Mitzvah in the newsletter of the Jewish congregations in Nuremberg & Fuerth from 1936. Obviously he liked our gift (see his letter) as the first impression he left in the world of publications - with many more to follow.

Tag: #Kissinger

The honorees in Ottawa, among them Willie Glaser with his multiple decorations
(photos provided by Willie Glaser)

On April 23, 2013 our Fuerth born friend Willie Glaser attended a ceremony in the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa at which the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration and the Israeli Ambassador were present.

On the occasion Willie and 60 other Holocaust survivors were presented with certificates. The event was split in two parts, first the presentation in the parliament and afterwards a commemoration in the Canadian war museum.

Tag: #Glaser_Ottawa

If the NYT considers an article about Nuremberg worthwhile (see link) there must be more to this town than the Nazi past & fried sausages.

Tag: #NYT

(Photo: Susanne Rieger)

She must have had an interesting biography and been faithful: Frances Eliza Gipson of London found her resting place in one of Nuremberg's oldest and most beautiful cemeteries in the town's St. Johannis quarter. The inscription on her tombstone reads:

Sacred to the memory of Frances Eliza Gipson, born London 4th August 1846, died Nuremberg 2nd March 1913. Always a most devoted wife and mother. Just as I am, without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidd'st me come to Thee, o lamb of God, I come!

Additional information in the civic registry state that she was the daughter of the merchant Frances John Wood and his wife Elizabeth, nee Edwards, and the widow of William Gipson. Probably she came to Nuremberg after her husband's passing to live here with a daughter who married a German, because her death in his apartment at Kesslerplatz 15 was reported to the authorities by a Johann Schwemmer, owner of a print shop.

Mrs. Gipson's case shows that already in the 19th century there was an interchange of people and ideas between Britain and Nuremberg, best known from the import of the first locomotive which since 1835 ran between Nuremberg and Fuerth and the engagement of its driver William Wilson who was also buried in the cemetery in St. Johannis.

Tag: #Gipson

Intolerance, paternalism, lying, stupidity, indecent behavior, taking oneself too serious, politics, unfairness, injustice, the German TV program, inflation, bosses, prejudice, smartasses, insensibility, brownnosing, SUVs, vanity, lack of empathy, superficialness, increasingly dysfunctional software by Microsoft, any violation of privacy, avarice, incompetence, cult of personality, arrogance, denial of history, most of today's pop music, people glued to their phones 24/7, hypocrisy, consumerism, bad style, corruption, the establishment, having no sense of humor, the stench of people bathing in garlic because stinking awards eternal life, manipulation, self-pity ...

Tag: #Loath

Former forced laborer from eastern Europe in front of an U.S. Army Jeep on Plaerrer Square in Nuremberg, spring 1945

For a variety of reasons even almost 70 years after the events no one has done substantial research on the Nuremberg DP camps Valka, SS-Kaserne and Fischbach or their inhabitants: At the time of their opening in 1945 not much interaction took place between the foreigners from eastern Europe and the Nuremberg citizens who were preoccupied with surviving in the heavily damaged city. They also heeded considerable resentments against those aliens who for their part had set their minds on returning to their homelands or emigration, not adjusting to the German surroundings. Under the administration first of the U.S. Army, then of UNRRA, the refugees were separated from the German population.

The political circumstances of the times also played an important role: Quite a few of the camp dwellers were suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis when they occupied their countries but during the Cold War the western authorities - American, German or the United Nations - were willing to look the other way because being a staunch anti-communist was more important than past misdeeds. Consequently the sometimes violent frictions in the camps between different nationalities and ideologies gave them a bad name with the local folk.

We want to close this gap in the knowledge of the historical facts at best with the authentic reports and documents of former inhabitants of the Nuremberg DP camps. For this purpose we ask those families to get in touch with us. In lieu we offer our assistance in tracing people who transited Nuremberg in the wake of WW2.

If you are interested, please contact us by email at: info[at]testimon.de

Tag: #DP

(Graphics: rijo)

Here come two more outlets for our visual ideas: Shoe Box Pix is focussed on our own photos and items from our collection while in My Eye we present the results of our efforts in graphics and design. Hopefully looking at the pictures is as much fun as making them.

Tag: #MI_SBP

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