Meeting Good People in Worfelden and Gross Gerau

Trips to my Dad, Karl’s, hometowns have always been very warm. The people we have met welcome us back as townspeople returning home, like an old home day in New England. This trip was similar. Worfleden, his birth place in 1915, is 5 kilometers from Gross Gerau, where the Kahn Department Store existed before November 1938 and where the family lived until they were forced to relocate to Frankfurt. Today, Worfelden has a few thousand residents and Gross Gerau has 25,000 residents.

Paul and I arrived at the Worfelden Evangelical Church where we were guests for five hours. The people at the church were not very bilingual, not like the big cities. The day began with a Sunday religious service in German, Hebrew and English. The Pfarrer, Richard Liu, welcomed my brother Gary and me. In fact, they prepared a program for the service that featured photographs of our family that Gary had provided. Another part of the service was a baptism for a congregant’s new born, that had a nice tradition of an apple tree about to be planted on the church grounds in honor of the event. Members of the congregation and the child’s family placed index cards with their thoughts to the child on the tree like additional leaves. About 80 people gathered and when services ended then they existed to a World War I monument on the grounds that includes Albert Kahn. Now, many more people arrived including photographers and the Buergermeister of the town, Tomas, who spoke for a few minutes, though I understood little. I placed a stone at the monument.

From here we went to my Dad’s birthplace at 2 Darmstrater Strasse. It is currently owned by a congregation member who was very comfortable taking us through the grounds and home. He has a backyard aviary, a small pond and turtles in a rock garden. The house has 3 rooms on the first floor and an upstairs which we didn’t see. Most interesting was the cellar that has a semicircular basement ceiling made of brick that had been many times painted and ran from floor to floor. This was used because of the high water table. Shelves were on either end. The basement served as a bomb shelter for the neighbors during WW2. The neighbo’s house, known as Engel’s house, looks more like from an older period. My dad’s birthplace had a deep wood frame and stucco finish when he lived there. Roland and his wife have 2 boys in their teens.

We then returned to the church’s community hall for a discussion, led by a local professor and attended by the people we saw at the service plus a much larger number of school aged kids. The kids had been asked to prepare questions which they asked Gary and me. Gary spoke in German mostly, I spoke in English mostly, and was assisted by the English teacher from the Gymnasium who translated to German.
The last point I made was how important it was to connect to the generation of the children asking the questions to ensure that we all commit to making sure the Holocaust Never Happens Again. My parents generation that lived through the war suffered losses to great –family, businesses, a way of life--so they buried their past in the back of their minds. My generation wants to reconnect family ties with the culture, people and places from which their families came. This is why the event in Worfelden was so important to both Gary and me but also to the congregation members. The next step is to have intergenerational connections with the children who have the greatest opportunity to ensure that newer again will a minority experience the prejudice, hate and killing that occurred under German Nazi leadership.

At the end of the discussion, townspeople presented some family artifacts found in cellars. From Roland’s house came a Kaufhaus Kahn hanger and from another came a shoehorn manufactured by Max Kahn, one of my grandfather’s great uncles, he had stamped his name and profession upon this metal shoehorn.

Another gift was a guide the Evangelical Church of Gross Gerau had produced documenting the Jewish community of Gross Gerau prior to 1939. It shows the homes and stores and the names of their Jewish occupants from that period. Two people active in producing the Guide are a church leader and a property owner of where the Kaufhaus Kahn once stood. Gary and I had a private conversation with them.

They would like to have the City of Gross Gerau authorize the placement of Stumplesteins, sidewalk markers, designating who lived at these places at the beginning of the 20th centrury. They prefer the sidewalk markers to building plaques because the sidewalk markers only need City authorization, and not having to approach each property owner. Many people, Jews and non-Jews oppose Stumpelsteins because of the difficulty maintaining them and the symbolism of people always walking across your name or doing something to desecrate your name. Gary and I discussed this later and agreed, these are the strongest advocates for preserving the presence of our family in Gross Gerau. If this is where they feel is the next step to support their efforts, we need to support them. They have requested a letter from each of us that they can add to strengthen their request to the City.

The Congregation’s Sunday lunch was superb. They served sausages (knockwurst) and salami sandwiches and from a room off the social hall there was a keg from which steins of beer were served. Most participants stayed to eat and consume a couple beers, so the conversation became very animated. I talked with a couple hosts who were retired at 60 years old, the retirement age in Germany, who had retired to Worfelden. What a loss of experienced talent!

I need to add that this Worfelden Evangelical Church community had so many nice people who greeted us and stayed to talk us until we left. Vielen Dank zu unser neue freuden.

Attending the whole event was our friend from Gross Gerau, Peter Schneider. Peter led us to dinner on the shore of the Rhine River, some 8 kilometers from Gross Gerau. The site is where US troops crossed the Rhine in April 1945 and where Gen. Patton said, “I always wanted to piss in the Rhine,” which he did from a pontoon bridge. We drank only bottled water and wine.

Gary and I also wandered the streets of Gross Gerau on Sunday afternoon, while Paul and Nancy rested. Shops closed at 3 pm and the only place we found open was a bar owned by a German immigrant from Montenegro. So there is little I can relate to you from street life, though Gary said on Saturday there was a street festival including music.