This ubiquitous phrase heard on the London tube and Berlin U-Bahn has meaning beyond watching your step as you enter and exit the train. Some gaps are harder to mind than others, such as the gap in your life when all your children have left home. "Time to do things for yourself," is the wisdom…
Immigration Equity Then and Now
Closure doesn't come easily for relatives of a Holocaust victim. More than ten years ago I discovered my great aunt Meta, a member of my father's family who was left in Frankfurt when the family escaped to America. I did a lot of research and writing about Meta back then, and helped to organize a…
Building Bridges through the Obermayer Awards
The quest to learn your family history in the aftermath of a genocidal era such as the Holocaust requires help from others. Survivors and their descendants seek answers from many sources, ranging from government officials to village historians. My own family research brought me into contact with many dedicated people in Hesse to whom I will…
All Cracked Up
Some people are not disturbed by the cracks in the concrete blocks of Berlin's Holocaust Memorial. They see the decay as part of a natural process that does not detract from the memorial's powerful impact on millions of visitors. But how does the structural damage affect the visitor's effort to find meaning in the 2,710…
Raindrops and Tears
Perhaps if it hadn't rained so much I wouldn't have cried so much. But the rain gave such a sombre tone to the day of my great-aunt Meta's memorial. A Stone for Meta has now become a reality. Meta's stolperstein was placed in front of her former home in Altwiedermus on July 2nd. On this…
Gleis 17, Grunewald, Berlin
Surrounded by the forest, we stood on the deserted train platform on a warm and quiet Friday afternoon. A few yards away people were enjoying their afternoon coffees and beers. We were at the gateway to one of Berlin's most vast and inviting recreational areas, an idyllic spot that is also the former gateway to…
A Category in Search of Words
After two years of blogging, it's time to get a little more organized. Pending creation of a web site (anyone want to help me with that?), I've created some categories to make it easier for readers to search my blog. The categories reflect the most common topics I've written about. One category with a lot…
A Stone for Meta
We know almost nothing about her and that will never change. But she will be remembered. We must rely on our imaginations to fill in the enormous gaps about her life in Germany before the "final solution" became her fate. And we can imagine her new life in America, if only the U.S. government had approved her application to emigrate with…
Stolpersteine…….Stones to Remember
The rich cultural attractions of Jewish life in Berlin are so plentiful that it is easy to initially overlook one small but remarkable feature of the urban landscape: stolpersteine. Berlin is one of hundreds of European communities where pedestrians can tread across stolpersteine, brass stumbling stones that are designed to remember individual victims of the Holocaust. …
Donna Swarthout 