The following is a speech given by Fritz Ottenheimer. Fritz will be a featured speaker at Seton Hill's annual Kristallnacht Remembrance Service, on November 11, 2008, held in St. Joseph Chapel at 6 p.m.
Unto Every Person There Is a Name
By Fritz Ottenheimer
April 30, 2008
Yom Hashoa in Latrobe, PA
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have a thousand memories of Germany that I would like to share with you. Some memories are horrid, others are beautiful. Some are old, others are very new. I shall start with the most recent ones.
I was invited to visit my old hometown of Constance last month for a very unusual ceremony. Initiative Stolpersteine is a German volunteer organization with a mission to honor the memory of the people who were persecuted or murdered by the Nazi regime. Its members have installed some 15,000 brass plaques all over Germany in front of buildings where victims of Nazi persecution used to live. The Constance chapter of Initiative Stolpersteine decided to honor the Ottenheimer family in this way on March 17, 2008. As soon as I accepted the invitation, seven younger members of my family decided to come along.
When we arrived in Constance, I got the impression that we were being viewed as representing all the Jews who used to live in Constance. None of us will ever forget the excitement, the enthusiasm, the love with which we were received by so many residents of Constance. Nearly all these people were born after the demise of the Nazi regime; but they are now determined to keep the memory of the murdered and evicted people alive, people they had never met.
The ceremony was brief but moving. Günter Demnig, an artist who originated the idea, makes and installs all the plaques himself. Using a pneumatic drill, he cuts an exact opening out of the sidewalk, then installs the plaques, which he has previously mounted on small concrete blocks-one for each member of the family. A member of the Initiative recites a very brief biographical sketch of the person or persons being honored, and a moment of silence is observed. If a surviving relative is present, he or she is given single roses to place next to the plaques.
For our family, a public meeting was arranged for that evening after the ceremony. I had been asked to prepare a speech- in German- about my early life in Germany. The following is an English translation of that speech. (This is where we reach back to my old memories of Germany.)
Ladies and Gentlemen (I said in German) - Meine Damen und Herren!
On behalf of my family, I thank you for this commemoration, and for your invitation to attend the ceremony. This day has great significance for all of us.
Tomorrow just happens to be exactly 83 years since I was born right here in Konstanz. We were good Germans- but we were Jews. Some 75 years ago, the government told us: You are no longer German; you are inferior, you are our enemy. Get out!
We couldn’t comprehend that. Doesn’t the government know that my father was a German soldier during the World War and that he was seriously wounded during that war, fighting for his fatherland? Doesn’t the government know that we have always been honest and conscientious, in our little shop as well as in our personal lives? And if the government doesn’t know that or doesn’t want to know it, the people ought to explain it to them. We listened for the voice of the people but heard only the loud voices of the Nazi radio broadcast and Nazi newspapers- and they all yelled: The Jews are our misfortune! But what were the people saying? We heard nothing from the people. The people were afraid. We could understand that. But if the people didn’t defend us, who could help us? We were lost, we were abandoned.
We lost our store. Our synagogue was blown up. My father was arrested and imprisoned in Dachau, only because he was Jewish. He came home a month later, seriously ill. In 1939, we had to, but were barely able to emigrate from our beautiful, silent Konstanz to a foreign land.
Life in America was very difficult at first for my parents. They didn’t know the language and had to slave away in menial labor. But my far the heaviest load they had to carry were the worries about our relatives in France- my mother’s younger sister, her husband, and little Gigi. We lost contact with them. At the end of the war, our worries were converted into deep, hopeless mourning. Three precious young lives had been snuffed out in Auschwitz. We were horrified- we were despondent.
In 1963 (18 years after the end of World War 11), there came a surprise. A woman who had immigrated to the United States from Konstanz two years earlier called on my parents to offer her friendship. Her name was Caroline Wueschner. Caroline met my parents quite often and talked with my mother by phone nearly every day. Every time, the conversation turned to the beautiful days of the former Konstanz - and the tragic events after 2933 - and Caroline never failed to express her deep, sincere compassion during these conversations. My father once told Caroline: “Since we know you, my Claire is able to laugh again!” That’s how Konstanz regained its voice with my parents.
And that’s how I feel this evening, ladies and gentlemen (I told my German Audience).
You are not silent about the evil times; you speak openly and honestly about them, even when it is embarrassing. You have not forgotten the events or the people.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a freedom fighter for America’s black population. He said it well: “In the end, we will remember not the words of out enemies, but the silence of our friends.” We must learn from our past: when injustice occurs, we cannot remain silent, especially today when speaking is no longer dangerous.
They didn’t speak in Germany in those days. What were they thinking? What was the opinion of the people about the persecution of the Jews?
I came back to my Fatherland in 1945 as an American soldier. Auschwitz had just been liberated. The whole world was shocked when they discovered what was done there. The Germans also seemed to be shocked. “Good God,” they called out. “That is terrible!
We had no idea!”
No idea? Really? Granted, the government tried to keep these atrocities secret. At the entrance of every camp was the misleading inscription “Arbeit macht frei” - “Work will make you free,” so that entering prisoners as well as nearby neighbors would think that it was only a labor camp. But the killing of millions of people was a huge operation, involving thousands of perpetrators, guards and bureaucrats. Did none of them speak?
Or did nobody want to hear?
Yes, uncomfortable rumors can be easily ignored. But before the “secret” mass murders started, there were other acts of persecution that were not so secret. Couldn’t everyone
See that decent Jews were driven out of their business, out of their professions, out of their country? Didn’t everyone hear when the synagogue was blown up in Konstanz? And when the Jewish neighbors were arrested by the Gestapo in November 1938 and came back deathly ill - or didn’t come back at all - what did people think about it?
It is often said: “We couldn’t do a thing! Resistance against the government was ruthlessly suppressed!” I can understand that. I don’t know if I myself would have had the courage to resist. I have often asked myself, however: Is it possible for a government to carry out a policy for many years if the overwhelming majority of the people are opposed to it? Then I ask myself further. Were the German people really opposed to the Nazi policies? They decorated millions of windows with swastika flags on national holidays; they sent half a million people to Nurnberg every year to idolize the Fuhrer on the Nazi Party Day; they participated willingly in a hundred Nazi organizations; and they cheered enthusiastically every time another country was attacked and conquered by the German army. Was that all forced on them?
It would be unfair, however, if I failed to mention the good Germans. Yes there were individuals, especially in Konstanz, who had the courage and the moral integrity to help us with words and deeds, with empathy and encouragement. In my own personal experience, I found that my fellow students and teachers showed no hostility towards me despite the hateful propaganda they were subjected to. I mentioned the good people in my book and always mention them when I speak in Pittsburgh about my life. These people were extremely important to us. It is unfortunate that their number was not greater, their voice not louder.
Ladies and gentleman, I concluded you could surmise that I have many conflicting memories and feelings about those times, about that Germany. Now you can understand why the title of my book is “How Could It Have Happened?” (I was referring to the German language version of my book) That was the sad history, which we remember this evening. But today is a new day, and I hear a new voice. I can’t tell you how happy the Ottenheimer family is that you have saved us - and symbolically, the former Jews of Konstanz- from being forgotten. The Initative Stolpersteine is really your own initiative. Nobody has forced you to do this. You are too young to have been driven by a bad conscience. No, you are doing this because you want to do it, because you think it is the right thing to do. We appreciate that! Your attitude gives us confidence in a good future. I doubt that an 83-year old man will enjoy a large part of that future. I am happy, however, in the knowledge that the world of my grandchildren contains a large number of very good people.
(I concluded with a sentence in English)
Ladies and Gentlemen, we thank you very much.
