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The fifth episode in our blog series “Memories from the Life of Walter Frankenstein”

Leonie Frankenstein with her sons Peter-Uri and Michael, Hadera, 1947; Jewish Museum Berlin, gift of Leonie and Walter Frankenstein

Finally reunited after 19 months! —A summer 1947 photo of Leonie, Uri, and Michael Frankenstein makes clear how overjoyed the three were about Walter’s release. All three gaze relieved into the camera. At first, Walter moved into the one-room apartment in a public housing building in Hadera that had been allocated to Leonie and the children following their emigration to Palestine. In the mean time, Leonie had learned Hebrew and found employment at a chocolate shop. Her work had allowed her to support herself and her sons in her husband’s absence. → continue reading

14 May 1924–28 January 2018

Coco Schumann at the multimedia Rafael Roth Learning Center in 2002; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jo Diener

The Jewish Museum Berlin grieves the loss of Coco Schumann. The guitarist and jazz musician passed away last Sunday at the age of ninety-three years old. Coco Schumann frequently performed as part of the Cultural Summer program, and his relationship with the Jewish Museum Berlin reaches back to its founding. For a long time, Coco Schumann’s life story could be retraced in the Rafael Roth Learning Center. It exposed museum visitors to a childhood cut short by National Socialist oppression—and a musical talent that granted young Schumann moments of self-assertion in the Berlin jazz clubs ostracized by the Nazis. This talent would also save his life in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

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On the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we recommend listening to Ruth Klüger’s speech – for the first time or once again. On 27 January 2016, the author talked in the German Bundestag about her experiences as a 13 year-old forced laborer in the women’s camp Christianstadt (Krzystkowice).

Introduction of Bundestag President Norbert Lammert and speech by Ruth Klüger (from 20:10) on 27 January 2016.

This year’s Ceremony of Remembrance in the German Bundestag will take place on Wednesday, 31 January 2018 at 1 pm. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch will give the commemorative speech. The ceremony will be broadcast live from 1 pm on the website of the Bundestag. You will find the English version at (www.bundestag.de/en).