%26hersister.jpg)
I've added a link to a Flickr page I'm putting together of pre-war family photos and commentary.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Jewish Life in Weseke, Germany before WWII
I've added a link to a Flickr page I'm putting together of pre-war family photos and commentary.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Hannelore Frank Nelson, Survivor of the Riga Ghetto, 1927-2009
Hannelore Frank was born in 1927 near the Dutch border in Weseke, Germany. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl brought up in a non-observant Jewish family. Her father Karl fought in the German army during WWI and supported his four older sisters (Sophie, Berta, Rosa, and Rica,) wife Irma Tobias Frank, and two younger children (Manfred and Marga). Karl was forced to give up his business around 1935 and began helping Jews escape to Holland. Hannelore wasn't supposed to know about the activities, but sometimes strangers spent the night, so it wasn't hard to figure out what was happening. Karl had the chance to leave Germany but did not want to abandon his sisters, who were not well enough for the strenuous route of escape.
Hannelore had attended school with all the towns' children until the Nuremburg Racial Purity laws made it illegal for Jews to attend state schools. She traveled alone by train to a private Catholic school forty miles away, until just before Kristallnacht (the night of Broken Glass) on November 9, 1938, when thousands of German Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed. There were a few Jewish families in her village (Hannah's home was broken into and partially destroyed by thugs, who entered at night while the family was asleep). It was now illegal for Jews to associate with Aryan Germans. The nuns cried as they expelled her and sent her home. About this time, Hannelore's father karl went to prison for his smuggling activities.
Hitler needed Lebensraum, or "living space - room to expand," and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the beginning of WWII. In 1940, one person from each Jewish family was allowed to leave Germany. Hannelore could have left, but the times were so uncertain she was afraid to leave her family. Two of her cousins got out and resettled in Canada and Israel. In December 1941, when she was fourteen, the family was given notice to pack one suitcase each before being deported to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia. Riga was bitterly cold and several families were forced to share small apartments. Hannelore's family of nine lived in a small kitchen. When they arrived in Riga they saw blood frozen in the snow. Warm food was abandoned on the table, making clear the fate of the Latvian Jews. Hannelore was a slave laborer, working in an unheated warehouse where she cleaned the uniforms of dead soldiers. Sometimes there were body parts glued by blood to the fabric. In May of 1942 Hannelore overheard people talking about Jews shot at a certain work detail where her father was working and she kept the news from her mother, who was ill after being forced to have a hasty and painful abortion when seven months pregnant (Jews were not allowed to have children in the Ghetto). On November 2, 1943 Hannelore was at the warehouse when the Ghetto was emptied and anyone who couldn't work was taken away. November 2 marked when her four aunts, sister, brother, and mother were murdered and buried in mass graves.
In 1944, Riga was fully evacuated as the Allies approached. Hannelore was sent to a work camp in Libau, Lithuania. When the Russians got close, the Germans evacuated this camp by moving the prisoners by a small boat across the Baltic Sea to Hamburg. The sea crossing took a week and was delayed by the need to evade U-boats and mines. Hannelore worked in a women's prison in Hamburg. After Hamburg, the Germans marched her to a work education camp in Kiel. The work camps were created to "show the Jews how to work." Some of the tasks include moving rocks from one pile to another and then moving the rocks back to their original position.
In May 3, 1945, the Camp Commandant knew the war was going badly for the Germans and worked to save himself by arranging for a prisoner exchange. The Jews were loaded into vans they thought were driving them to their deaths. When they reached the agreed upon point in Swededn, the vans stopped, and the doors swung open. Everyone thought they were about to be shot until a man announced, "If you have to relieve yourselves, go ahead. You are free now."
Hannelore spent the next two years in Sweden working to earn passage to America. She came to New York in June of 1947, with few marketable skills, little money, and a rudimentary knowledge of English. She worked in a women's dress salon and learned tailoring skills and also worked at an orphanage, caring for other orphans not much younger than herself. She married a Russian Jewish immigrant, Vladimir Ilyitch Nilvin, who felt changed his name to "Bill Nelson" in 1951. Bill served in the U.S. Marines during the Korean Conflict and was a bread delivery man who managed to find work as a foreman at Autonetics (North American Rockwell) in Anaheim, California. The couple raised three daughters. In the 1970s, Hannah opened a knit shop in Fullerton and became a mentor to many of her students. She was an expert seamstress, gardener, and baker. Her husband preceded her in death in 1980. Though she had never learned to type, Hannah learned to use a computer in her seventies.
Hannah was denied the opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a physician but was thrilled when her granddaughter was admitted to medical school in 2008. Hannah learned a bit about hip-hop music from her grandson, an accomplished musician. Hannah's story was profiled by The Shoah Foundation, developed by Steven Spielberg, and her family's photos and story are a permanent part of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
Others would have carried bitterness throughout their lives, but Hannah felt fortunate for the good things she had, and for the opportunity to live in America. She tried to remember the good things about her heritage and baked traditional German cookies like printen and lebkuchen for Christmas. She was a pensioner who still found ways to donate food and necessities to women's shelters, senior centers, and needy children. Hannah's experiences and lessons taught the family the importance of staying close, and the day Hannah's lung cancer was diagnosed, in August, 2008, her daughters arranged their lives to allow them to care for their mother in her home for the final seven months of her life. She is survived by three daughters (Carolyn, Leslie and Stephanie), two grandchildren (Jacob and Marga), and cousins in Canada and Israel and Seattle.
-
with apologies for all errors of commission or omission as I post this so soon after the death of my mother. An account of the Frank family can be viewed here:http://suomenhirvi.piranho.de/gegenvergessen/gemenfrank.htm
I don't know if it's utterly accurate, as some of the reporters did benefit monetarily from the family's disappearance and may have had reasons to remember or report things in different ways than my mother remembered them.
Hannelore had attended school with all the towns' children until the Nuremburg Racial Purity laws made it illegal for Jews to attend state schools. She traveled alone by train to a private Catholic school forty miles away, until just before Kristallnacht (the night of Broken Glass) on November 9, 1938, when thousands of German Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed. There were a few Jewish families in her village (Hannah's home was broken into and partially destroyed by thugs, who entered at night while the family was asleep). It was now illegal for Jews to associate with Aryan Germans. The nuns cried as they expelled her and sent her home. About this time, Hannelore's father karl went to prison for his smuggling activities.
Hitler needed Lebensraum, or "living space - room to expand," and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, the beginning of WWII. In 1940, one person from each Jewish family was allowed to leave Germany. Hannelore could have left, but the times were so uncertain she was afraid to leave her family. Two of her cousins got out and resettled in Canada and Israel. In December 1941, when she was fourteen, the family was given notice to pack one suitcase each before being deported to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia. Riga was bitterly cold and several families were forced to share small apartments. Hannelore's family of nine lived in a small kitchen. When they arrived in Riga they saw blood frozen in the snow. Warm food was abandoned on the table, making clear the fate of the Latvian Jews. Hannelore was a slave laborer, working in an unheated warehouse where she cleaned the uniforms of dead soldiers. Sometimes there were body parts glued by blood to the fabric. In May of 1942 Hannelore overheard people talking about Jews shot at a certain work detail where her father was working and she kept the news from her mother, who was ill after being forced to have a hasty and painful abortion when seven months pregnant (Jews were not allowed to have children in the Ghetto). On November 2, 1943 Hannelore was at the warehouse when the Ghetto was emptied and anyone who couldn't work was taken away. November 2 marked when her four aunts, sister, brother, and mother were murdered and buried in mass graves.
In 1944, Riga was fully evacuated as the Allies approached. Hannelore was sent to a work camp in Libau, Lithuania. When the Russians got close, the Germans evacuated this camp by moving the prisoners by a small boat across the Baltic Sea to Hamburg. The sea crossing took a week and was delayed by the need to evade U-boats and mines. Hannelore worked in a women's prison in Hamburg. After Hamburg, the Germans marched her to a work education camp in Kiel. The work camps were created to "show the Jews how to work." Some of the tasks include moving rocks from one pile to another and then moving the rocks back to their original position.
In May 3, 1945, the Camp Commandant knew the war was going badly for the Germans and worked to save himself by arranging for a prisoner exchange. The Jews were loaded into vans they thought were driving them to their deaths. When they reached the agreed upon point in Swededn, the vans stopped, and the doors swung open. Everyone thought they were about to be shot until a man announced, "If you have to relieve yourselves, go ahead. You are free now."
Hannelore spent the next two years in Sweden working to earn passage to America. She came to New York in June of 1947, with few marketable skills, little money, and a rudimentary knowledge of English. She worked in a women's dress salon and learned tailoring skills and also worked at an orphanage, caring for other orphans not much younger than herself. She married a Russian Jewish immigrant, Vladimir Ilyitch Nilvin, who felt changed his name to "Bill Nelson" in 1951. Bill served in the U.S. Marines during the Korean Conflict and was a bread delivery man who managed to find work as a foreman at Autonetics (North American Rockwell) in Anaheim, California. The couple raised three daughters. In the 1970s, Hannah opened a knit shop in Fullerton and became a mentor to many of her students. She was an expert seamstress, gardener, and baker. Her husband preceded her in death in 1980. Though she had never learned to type, Hannah learned to use a computer in her seventies.
Hannah was denied the opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a physician but was thrilled when her granddaughter was admitted to medical school in 2008. Hannah learned a bit about hip-hop music from her grandson, an accomplished musician. Hannah's story was profiled by The Shoah Foundation, developed by Steven Spielberg, and her family's photos and story are a permanent part of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
Others would have carried bitterness throughout their lives, but Hannah felt fortunate for the good things she had, and for the opportunity to live in America. She tried to remember the good things about her heritage and baked traditional German cookies like printen and lebkuchen for Christmas. She was a pensioner who still found ways to donate food and necessities to women's shelters, senior centers, and needy children. Hannah's experiences and lessons taught the family the importance of staying close, and the day Hannah's lung cancer was diagnosed, in August, 2008, her daughters arranged their lives to allow them to care for their mother in her home for the final seven months of her life. She is survived by three daughters (Carolyn, Leslie and Stephanie), two grandchildren (Jacob and Marga), and cousins in Canada and Israel and Seattle.
-
with apologies for all errors of commission or omission as I post this so soon after the death of my mother. An account of the Frank family can be viewed here:http://suomenhirvi.piranho.de/gegenvergessen/gemenfrank.htm
I don't know if it's utterly accurate, as some of the reporters did benefit monetarily from the family's disappearance and may have had reasons to remember or report things in different ways than my mother remembered them.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
An obituary
Lillian Agatha Glasser died on February 14, ten days before her 90th birthday, under the care of hospice and surrounded by family. She had been living with her daughter until New Year's Eve, when she was hospitalized, perhaps because of a stroke. It was Lillian's wish never to go into a nursing home, and through sacrifice and diligent care, that wish was honored by her family.
Lillian was born in North Dakota on a farm lost to The Depression. One of her saddest memories was losing her pony, sold for five dollars at auction. Her mother died when Lillian was twelve and her father grew so distraught from his losses he could no longer care for his daughter. Lillian went to work cleaning houses and moving from relative to relative's home until she had saved enough money to put herself through nursing school. After graduation, she enrolled in a post-graduate pediatric residency at Marquette University. Then, she and a friend she'd met in nursing school decided they did not want to return to North Dakota, where they saw a future as farm wives, and they journeyed west, to Portola, California, to begin new lives as nurses working in a railroad hospital. It was the first time Lillian had seen mountains.
When the war broke out, Lillian enlisted and was sent to The Philippines and New Guinea, where she would meet her future husband Daniel, who left the world ten years ago. Both described their meeting as love at first sight, a "Some Enchanted Evening" moment. For a North Dakota farm girl, living in a war zone was exciting and frightening and horrifying. She cared for the wounded and sick and managed to maintain her moral center in an area of fierce fighting, where the desire for retribution for atrocities brought her face-to-face with a captured Japanese soldier placed on display in a bamboo cage and taunted with sticks until Lillian and others insisted he receive honorable treatment. Her romance with Army Air Corps Captain Daniel bloomed, and when he could finagle it, he borrowed warplanes to whisk her away on dates. To change her name for their marriage during the war required an act of Congress. Though Lil was not Jewish at the time, an Orthodox rabbi blessed their union.
As the war zone grew more dangerous, both officers were issued handguns for protection. Lillian proved to be a better shot. She made lieutenant before he Daniel, but her modesty kept her from wearing her colors until his had been awarded. When the war ended and the couple was sent home they celebrated prematurely by tossing much of their gear overboard, only to find their ship was delayed by two weeks.
Danny and Lil settled in California and raised four children. They forgave the past and invited Lil's father to live in their small home, where he shared a room with my husband. She volunteered in the schools and returned to nursing after a twenty-year absence. Her lifelong habit was reading and she had a love of poetry. She recited Tennyson and Longfellow and Whitman and took great consolation in reading after the death of her husband in 1998. When macular degeneration took away her eyesight, making it impossible to read, she discovered books on tape and did her best to adjust to the change, but it was never the same and she missed the feeling of holding a book in her hands. She remained interested in politics and literature and people until a few days before her death, and voted for Obama in her last Presidential Election on February 5, 2008.
Lillian lived with us for eight months as I was finishing grad school. My friend Kate Wilhelm gave us copies of her audio books, which Lillian listened to with great interest and critical ability. She loved the Barbara Holloway books best of all. She had the opportunity to meet Kate at some of our weekly coffee outings, where Lillian contributed to the lively discussions and shared her insights about ways to save the world. We read aloud books and stories and she delighted in hearing them, even mine, and while she had never been online and didn't quite understand the concept of the Internet, she realized its significance and told me that she wished there had been such a thing in North Dakota in the twenties. Her mother had been a poet, but all of her poems were lost, Lillian could not now remember so much as a line or title. Yet she could imagine some or all of the poems would have been saved if the Internet were in existence, for it was clear that North Dakota farmwives would have blogged through the snowy and isolated winters.
Her life was that mix of sadness and joy that make for epic stories, but she saw herself as ordinary. She was a happy woman with a great sense of humor. She was still laughing and joking when we visited her the Friday before her death. By Saturday she was not responsive, except to pain. Family stayed with her overnight the last three days of her life. During her last night in the hospital, when she groaned and moved in pain, but it was too soon for another shot of morphine, I found I could calm her with stories. I spent a night as a therapeutic storyteller, sitting by her bedside, letting her grip my hand because it hurt for me to grip hers, telling stories, some plotted, some just calming images, until she settled at around 4:00 AM and we both got a few hours of sleep.
The family soon realized that transferring her to the care of hospice was the best choice we could make for her and this was accomplished a few days into her hospitalization. Once in hospice and in the compassionate care of the nurses atnursing home staff at Paradise Valley Estates, she was prescribed adequate pain medication and made comfortable, as were we. The staff were amazing, kind, and skilled, and even saw to it that we had sandwiches when we were afraid to leave to get some lunch. After a stressful hospital experience we were grateful for the hospice team, including a social worker and storytelling rabbi, came to help us sort thought the experience.
We grieve and miss Lillian and regret knowing our history with this amazing woman has now ended, but we take comfort in our knowledge that her passing was peaceful. She looked so comfortable at the end, and we had seen she could be soothed by stories and by the presence of the people she loved. There was always someone by her during her last days and we let her know that she would not die alone. And when her breathing changed and it was clear that death was imminent, her children formed a circle around her bed and wished her peace as she took her last breath and her next step on the journey.
Lillian was born in North Dakota on a farm lost to The Depression. One of her saddest memories was losing her pony, sold for five dollars at auction. Her mother died when Lillian was twelve and her father grew so distraught from his losses he could no longer care for his daughter. Lillian went to work cleaning houses and moving from relative to relative's home until she had saved enough money to put herself through nursing school. After graduation, she enrolled in a post-graduate pediatric residency at Marquette University. Then, she and a friend she'd met in nursing school decided they did not want to return to North Dakota, where they saw a future as farm wives, and they journeyed west, to Portola, California, to begin new lives as nurses working in a railroad hospital. It was the first time Lillian had seen mountains.
When the war broke out, Lillian enlisted and was sent to The Philippines and New Guinea, where she would meet her future husband Daniel, who left the world ten years ago. Both described their meeting as love at first sight, a "Some Enchanted Evening" moment. For a North Dakota farm girl, living in a war zone was exciting and frightening and horrifying. She cared for the wounded and sick and managed to maintain her moral center in an area of fierce fighting, where the desire for retribution for atrocities brought her face-to-face with a captured Japanese soldier placed on display in a bamboo cage and taunted with sticks until Lillian and others insisted he receive honorable treatment. Her romance with Army Air Corps Captain Daniel bloomed, and when he could finagle it, he borrowed warplanes to whisk her away on dates. To change her name for their marriage during the war required an act of Congress. Though Lil was not Jewish at the time, an Orthodox rabbi blessed their union.
As the war zone grew more dangerous, both officers were issued handguns for protection. Lillian proved to be a better shot. She made lieutenant before he Daniel, but her modesty kept her from wearing her colors until his had been awarded. When the war ended and the couple was sent home they celebrated prematurely by tossing much of their gear overboard, only to find their ship was delayed by two weeks.
Danny and Lil settled in California and raised four children. They forgave the past and invited Lil's father to live in their small home, where he shared a room with my husband. She volunteered in the schools and returned to nursing after a twenty-year absence. Her lifelong habit was reading and she had a love of poetry. She recited Tennyson and Longfellow and Whitman and took great consolation in reading after the death of her husband in 1998. When macular degeneration took away her eyesight, making it impossible to read, she discovered books on tape and did her best to adjust to the change, but it was never the same and she missed the feeling of holding a book in her hands. She remained interested in politics and literature and people until a few days before her death, and voted for Obama in her last Presidential Election on February 5, 2008.
Lillian lived with us for eight months as I was finishing grad school. My friend Kate Wilhelm gave us copies of her audio books, which Lillian listened to with great interest and critical ability. She loved the Barbara Holloway books best of all. She had the opportunity to meet Kate at some of our weekly coffee outings, where Lillian contributed to the lively discussions and shared her insights about ways to save the world. We read aloud books and stories and she delighted in hearing them, even mine, and while she had never been online and didn't quite understand the concept of the Internet, she realized its significance and told me that she wished there had been such a thing in North Dakota in the twenties. Her mother had been a poet, but all of her poems were lost, Lillian could not now remember so much as a line or title. Yet she could imagine some or all of the poems would have been saved if the Internet were in existence, for it was clear that North Dakota farmwives would have blogged through the snowy and isolated winters.
Her life was that mix of sadness and joy that make for epic stories, but she saw herself as ordinary. She was a happy woman with a great sense of humor. She was still laughing and joking when we visited her the Friday before her death. By Saturday she was not responsive, except to pain. Family stayed with her overnight the last three days of her life. During her last night in the hospital, when she groaned and moved in pain, but it was too soon for another shot of morphine, I found I could calm her with stories. I spent a night as a therapeutic storyteller, sitting by her bedside, letting her grip my hand because it hurt for me to grip hers, telling stories, some plotted, some just calming images, until she settled at around 4:00 AM and we both got a few hours of sleep.
The family soon realized that transferring her to the care of hospice was the best choice we could make for her and this was accomplished a few days into her hospitalization. Once in hospice and in the compassionate care of the nurses atnursing home staff at Paradise Valley Estates, she was prescribed adequate pain medication and made comfortable, as were we. The staff were amazing, kind, and skilled, and even saw to it that we had sandwiches when we were afraid to leave to get some lunch. After a stressful hospital experience we were grateful for the hospice team, including a social worker and storytelling rabbi, came to help us sort thought the experience.
We grieve and miss Lillian and regret knowing our history with this amazing woman has now ended, but we take comfort in our knowledge that her passing was peaceful. She looked so comfortable at the end, and we had seen she could be soothed by stories and by the presence of the people she loved. There was always someone by her during her last days and we let her know that she would not die alone. And when her breathing changed and it was clear that death was imminent, her children formed a circle around her bed and wished her peace as she took her last breath and her next step on the journey.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)