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In the summer of 2006, I worked with Holocaust survivors at a New York agency for Nazi Victim Services. Since my arrival in New York in 1996, I had been struggling with many questions and issues about my German identity and the Holocaust. Listening to stories of survivors brought me face-to-face with experiences and memories that were almost incomprehensible to me. I had learned about the Holocaust through films and books, but I was suddenly faced with my own sense of guilt, my own past, and the concept of mourning and memory.
I cried after reading “The Apron” by Clem Loew,1 which filled me with feelings of guilt and sadness. My initial reaction after reading his story was to ask, “How could you bear it? How could your mother endure the separation? How did you survive this grief?” On the surface, one can trace the crimes of the Holocaust by the numbers—the millions that were slain, robbed of their dignity—but it is the small, personally human stories that make the horrors all the more real. Reading Clem Loew's story reminded me of a time in the late 1980s, when young East German punks had shoved my elderly grandmother and her friend on the street. “Move out of the way, pigs,” they said. I hadn't been there, but when she told me about it, I wanted to go out and avenge my gentle grandmother.