Chapter 7. The Story we never got to talk about

Michael travels to Germany on business in the mid-1990s. Before leaving, he asks his father about the side of their family that remained in Hamburg. On his trip he takes with him a few photos that Fritz had taken when he was in Berlin.

May 10, 1994

Dear Michael,

Here is the information that you requested: My sister’s two daughters live in or near Hamburg. [...] I believe that you will find Hamburg to be a very cosmopolitan city. It is large (about 2 million people), but unlike many other German cities it doesn’t have too many old buildings, because a fire in the 19^th century completely gutted the inner city. The many air raids during the Second World War did tremendous damage, but the city is rebuilt, and I believe you will find it to be very attractive. [...] I envy you this trip. I hope to visit Hamburg one more time. I haven’t been in Berlin since I was stationed there in 1945. It should also be an interesting visit. I hope you will have a chance to do some sightseeing. I wouldn’t be surprised that after you see a little of Germany you would want to see more. [...] With love to you, […] 

Yours Dad

Fritz’s children – Michael, Mark and Kathy – associate their father’s service in World War II with an old uniform and a box of letters and souvenirs in the closet. The war and their father’s childhood in Hamburg were rarely spoken about. In an interview conducted in Wannsee in December 2024, the siblings speak about their memories.

Mark: „[…] we were at most aware that he had been in the war with no detail attached to it whatsoever. Though, again I don’t know at what age, but Michael and I shared a bedroom and from the closet there was a makeshift door that led to an attic space where things were stored, and we would sneak back in there and that was— I was aware that these letters existed from a relatively -young age, and along with the letters, all of those souvenirs from the war. So, I knew that that existed but never from my father.

Interviewer: How old were you when you saw his letters?”

Mark: Oh, at a I guess–

[Kathy: Little.]

Mark: –eight years old.

Michael: It was a kind of mystery place, because we had this bedroom with the door to a closet and then in the closet there was a little door that went to this crawlspace essentially. [stutter] I don’t believe you could stand up?

Kathy: Yeah, you could stand up.

Mark: Kind of like the basement we went into at the Wannsee House.

Michael: You couldn’t stand up in it. So, we never spent very much time in there because there wasn’t an easy place to negotiate. Uh, but again given our age [stutter] I don’t think we could process what these materials were.”

Kathy: „Nobody ever mentioned the war, certainly not in front of me. Nobody ever talked about being Jewish, although theyre were, and practicing, but we were just oblivious their alibi.”

Mark: “And it’s probably worth making a point for the purpose of your recording that we  were -all three- that we were raised as Catholics. And maybe in very digressive, very vague ways, we were largely unaware that we had a Jewish background. My father was totally unreligious.”

Michael: “Yeah.”

Mark: “So, the question never came up in the family.”

Michael: “We didn’t attend any ceremonies. Our grandparents weren’t practicing. Uhm, we went to visit Italian relatives for typical kind of Catholic holidays like Easter and Christmas and so on. Uhm, we had dinner with our German grandparents -our grandfather- every week, but it wasn’t associated with any kind of religious event, and our father never attended any religious ceremonies.”

Only after their parents died did the children begin to think more deeply about their father’s history and experiences.

Mark: “I used to go in and look at them and puzzle over them [GAP]. Of course, I had no German at all until much later. But I used to puzzle over them, and try and figure out-again, I couldn’t associate at what ages this was true. Uh, but then, once I, you know gone off to college and left, I never thought about them really again until after both of our parents had died. My mother had preserved them, and we knew they were there, and it was actually relatively recently that we decided that we should do something more systematic with them and begin to organise what we have. And I think at that point, we realized that it was actually a very interesting resource with an important story behind it, which we really had very little appreciation for -because in the course of putting that together, we’ve learned about all kinds of other things, like his service in the secret listener program in England. Which we certainly never knew anything about. And, you know, other episodes that we’ve now been able to piece together - but only after the fact, none of it came directly from our father.”

At many moments in the conversation, it becomes clear that although the children have never questioned the family’s ties to Germany, the connection increasingly preoccupies them. Even after their father’s death, the siblings have many questions. Not all of them will be answered. 

Michael: “[...] We only met their sister a couple of times, uh, when she came to the United States. My father didn’t go back to Germany until 1972. I think this was part of the residual trauma of his wartime experiences, you know, writing to his sister in English and not going back to Germany and so on. Uhm, but I think that Hede had been once or twice by that time to the US. When I went to Germany, when I began traveling in my work and I went to Germany, I met with my cousins, uh, Lisa and Hannelore, in Hamburg. But that was very brief, just a day or two each time. So, we lost contact with that part of the family.”

Mark: “[…] Clearly one of the dominant things is that seeing a certain [GAP], we have a sense of our father as a special person -most people probably do- but this is someone else sharing in that sense, that there is something about him, and his experiences, that set him apart, so that’s certainly gratifying.

Uh, I have to also say, I tried to, uh, learn about the period and the social context by reading. I’m a historian, but my speciality is a different century and a different country, so for me much of this is new. And I’m trying to master that, but I [stutter] often have, as a result of all this, have a sense of regret, because of course these are conversations which, you know, I would loved to have had with my father.”

Michael: “Everything is second-hand or third-hand. We have no direct experience by conversation.”

Mark: “And I’m constantly learning things and wanting to know what he thought about it, how he would react to this, well you know, things we might have shared. But that’s not possible.”

Michael: “The word that would come to mind, expressing my net assessment or feeling, is regret. The fact that there is this story that we never understood and that we never got to talk about.

Uh, [stutter] sometimes I think, you know, as a kind of lifecycle effect, people get to retirement and they turn to other interests or may have other kinds of conversations in their families but I don’t think of Dad as really retiring. And we never had extended conversations with him about growing up and, you know, the early parts of his life, or about the war experiences.

So, [stutter, inaudible]in hinside I’m really sorry about that, although there is nothing that Iobviously could be done about it.”

Kathy: “I think other persons filled in bits and pieces. You know, like Herbert told me about Daddy being— no, I’m saying that aneverything I learned was from other people.”

Michael: “Yeah.”