Funnel 40/2, Inhalt - Fulbright-Kommission

FROM OUR FULBRIGHTERS 35
A Gravestone
for My Great Grandfather
My great-grandfather was buried in 1941
at the Jewish Weissensee cemetery in Berlin.
For 62 years he lay there below a few overgrown
weeds in an unmarked grave at the edge
of the cemetery.
The story that has been passed down goes
like this: The Nazis came for my great-grandfather,
Selmar Mansbacher, on October 16,
1941, at the beginning of the first round up of
Berlin Jews. My great-grandfather, who was a
doctor, gave himself a lethal dose of poison to
save himself from a more gruesome death in a
concentration camp. A few years later my
grandfather (who had been sent by Selmar to
safety in Israel during the war), received word
from the Red Cross about the circumstances
of his father’s death. Despite his tragic end,
remarkably, Selmar’s body was taken and
buried in a Jewish cemetery. He received no
funeral, nor any gravestone, but he was buried
and there was a record of it.
In 2002 I returned to my great grandfather’s
and grandparents’ country of origin on a Fulbright
Teaching Assistantship and later to
intern at German radio broadcaster, Deutsche
Welle. While at the Fulbright Berlin Seminar
in March 2003, I had the chance to visit the
cemetery where my great-grandfather is buried.
I walked the length of the city and found myself
at the gates of Weissensee. In the main office,
I gave my great-grandfather’s name and after
some searching, was given a photocopy of his
certificate of burial as well as a map, with his
grave number highlighted in green marker to
help me find ungefähr the site where his body
lay. When I found it, with my head bent in the
Selmar with wife Ellen and granddaughter Lianna
in a happier, pre-war moment.
One family’s struggle for reconciliation
by Devora Rogers
THE FUNNEL • VOLUME 40 • NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 2004