Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Daughter Visits Germany
Mm-hm.
And...
He had started a new life.
...and, and when my daughter um, in, in '89, I think, said that she wanted to go back to Breslau and she wanted to go and see where we had been born and lived. And his parents had had some estate outside Breslau and she wanted to know from him-she got these maps in Polish and in German-she wanted to know how she could get back to this estate. And he kept saying to me, "Why on earth would she want to go there?" I-he, he couldn't understand it and she did. She and her husband, who has no connections with anything, German Jewish or anything else, went with her and they did find where he lived and they did speak to a woman who remembered the family and-but uh, he had to help me make a map and I'm not an artist. I had to draw the house where he had lived and uh, he got quite impatient with me and I said, "Well, how did the front door look?" and "Where were the windows and things?" And I said, "Well, then was this where the stables were?" and he, he'd say, "Well of course not, the stables were in the back." How am I supposed to know? Anyway, she discovered this place and she did communicate with this woman who remembered it. And um, she came back, and she had been to the Jewish cemetery, the one that still exists...
Mm-hm.
...and brought back some chestnuts. She found her grandfather's grave...
Yeah.
There is a grave with my husband's father's name on it and um, she brought back these chestnuts, thinking it would be very meaningful, and she brought back lots of photographs. And he looked at the chestnuts and the photographs and after she was out of the room he said, "What am I, what am I supposed to do with these?" And, I said, "John, she thought this would mean a lot to you." He said, "I..." He just...
He never wanted to...
He never wanted to go back there.
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