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Nazi Descendant Tracks Down Jewish Family To Give Them Astonishing Message

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It’s the time of year when we talk a lot about the power of forgiveness — about asking for it and granting it. It’s letting bygones be bygones in the spirit of Christmas or Hanukkah.

For many of us, though, forgiveness is that scene at the end of “Home Alone,” where — at the advice of Macaulay Culkin’s character, the stern old man in his neighborhood reunites with son, whom he’s been estranged from for decades over a vicious fight.

This will elicit tears at every holiday showing of the movie, but the profound forgiveness we’re instructed to pursue and to grant in the Old and New Testaments is a bit more messy and profound than that.

The case of Germany’s Thomas Edelmann might be on the extreme end of things, granted. It’s also a sign of what real forgiveness looks like — on both ends.

Edelmann, 49, had heard rumblings about his grandfather’s hardware store in Bad Mergentheim, a town in southern Germany. The father of two had been pursuing genealogy over the past few years when his worst fears were confirmed.

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He came across Nazi-era tax records that proved his grandfather, Wilhelm Edelmann, had bought the shop from a man named Benjamin Heidelberger in 1938 after the Nuremberg Laws made it illegal for Jewish people to own businesses in Germany.

“In July 1938, we sold our shop and warehouse for the bargain price of 28,500 Reichsmark, the same sum for which I had bought it 30 years earlier,” Heidelberger, who kept a diary, wrote about the sale, according to CNN.

“Under different circumstances, I could have sold it for 40,000. But back then many Jewish businesses in Bad Mergentheim were sold under value.

While he lost touch with his father and his side of the family after his parents divorced in the early 1970s — and therefore hasn’t prospered from the chain of hardware stores the first shop facilitated — he still felt the need to find out what happened with the family that had to sell the business, CNN reported.

Would you have forgiven Thomas Edelmann?

When a salesman called from the genealogical service MyHeritage about his subscription in 2019, Edelmann mentioned the tax records he’d found and Benjamin Heidelberger’s name. It was an unusual case, atypical enough that the salesman forwarded it to his research team.

In two weeks, MyHeritage had two pieces of important information for him.

The first was that the organization had found Benjamin Heidelberger’s 1942 British Mandatory Palestine naturalization record. In six years, portions of British Mandatory Palestine would become the state of Israel. They were able to track down Heidelberger’s grave, where he was buried next to his wife, Emma.

The second was that Heidelberger had a living granddaughter — Hanna Ehrenreich, an 83-year-old retired teacher.

With that knowledge, Edelmann sent Ehrenreich a letter of apology in English through MyHeritage.

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“I believe that if my family supported the injustice your grandparents experienced, it is our duty to take this into account and take over responsibility at least in getting in touch with you to listen and learn,” he wrote, according to CNN.

“As I am part of the Edelmann family I want to take the first step and listen to you.

“I do understand that you might not see any benefit for yourself personally in talking to me. But with me understanding and being able to teach my children and possibly other family members about the impact of particular historical decisions, this might help them to make better decisions in their lives,” Edelmann continued.

“Currently, the political climate in our country is poisoned. There is a new antisemitism upcoming. I want to make sure that at least my family will never again be responsible for injustice experienced by others, but stand up to take part for the weak,” he added.

Ehrenreich agreed to talk, and the two spoke for 90 minutes a few weeks later — in German, a language both knew.

“It was a very good conversation,” Ehrenreich told CNN. “Thomas wanted to hear how we had been. I said we were happy and we have had a good life.”

Ehrenreich was familiar with the shop, too. In fact, she has a picture of it hanging on her wall.

She also shared some entries from her grandfather’s diary about Wilhelm Edelmann. Apparently, while he bought the shop from Heidelberger at a discount due to the Nuremberg laws (in addition to his house, also sold at a discount), he didn’t think Edelmann was monstrous.

“My business successor, Wilhelm Edelmann, came every first of the month to pay the rent, and even though he was a member of the Nazi party, he was a decent man and not an anti-Semite,” Heidelberger wrote, according to CNN.

Edelmann also warned Heidelberger he should get out of the country.

“One day, Edelmann came to me and said I should leave Germany as quickly as possible,” he wrote. “There were plans in place to act against Jews and he felt obliged to warn me, his good acquaintance.”

Heidelberg left just before the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms against Jewish people, although it’s unclear whether it was based off this warning.

Ehrenreich even visited the shop in the 1980s: “I knew Edelmann was indeed the person who bought the shop,” she told CNN. “I understood that he was a good man, although he was a member of the Nazi party.”

The call went well, and the two have stayed in touch. Edelmann said he hopes to visit Israel when he can.

“He was very moved and said he was so happy to hear the story from my side — he was almost crying,” Ehrenreich said.

“It was such an emotional moment when I heard Hanna on the phone and when she told me about her grandfather,” Edelmann told CNN. “Although her family was treated so badly, she was very friendly and didn’t hold me responsible for anything.”

Edelmann still holds his grandfather responsible.

“I know my grandfather was a very good businessman. When he was a student during the 1920s, he was already a member of the Nazi party, which was before Hitler came to power,” he said. “So I don’t believe he was such a good man; I’m not 100 percent convinced. I doubt he didn’t take advantage of the situation.”

However, this is what real forgiveness looks like. Edelmann knew the gravity of the situation and could have shied away. He could have put those doubts about the business in the back of his mind. Having found the Nazi-era tax documents, he could have just used it as a teachable moment for his kids and gone no further.

He didn’t.

Ehrenreich had every reason to feel pain over what the Edelmann family had done. She could have ignored the letter or used him as an avatar of the the anti-Semitism she’s experienced throughout her life or on the impact the Nazis had on her. (Her maternal grandparents stayed in Germany and died under the Nazis.)

She didn’t.

Forgiveness is messy and difficult. It’s not “Home Alone.” It’s often bittersweet — but it’s a bittersweet sensation that moves us forward as people and as a society.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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