His hand went up immediately when the class asked who would like to take part in the memorial service for pogrom night. “It’s very important to me,” says Roman, a student at the Albert Einstein Grammar School in Düsseldorf, which is helping to organize the celebration on November 9 at the commemorative sign “Grafenberger Allee 78-80”.
The memorial was inaugurated in spring 2020. At that time, pupils at the Albert Einstein High School had worked out various biographies so that it was reminiscent of the people who lived, celebrated, worked and prayed, went to school and later deported in the Jewish community hall, which was located there before the Nazi era became.
From the 1920s the building housed the lodge of the Jewish organization B’nai B’rith, a kindergarten, a restaurant and, from 1939, the Jewish elementary school and an old people’s home. Church services and barmizvah celebrations were also held there. When Jews were banned from going to cinemas and theaters, the house also served as a venue for cultural events such as film screenings and readings.
GRIEF “However, I am only assigned as a deputy if someone is absent,” says Roman. He hopes that he will be able to read the text in which he introduces the fate of the young man Kurt Lubascher. “Kurt went to school here, he lived with his family in the house because his parents had a restaurant with an attached pension, but the pogrom night and the Nazi rule changed everything,” said the seventh grader.
The seventh graders of the Albert Einstein Grammar School are currently studying religion during the Nazi era.
When Kurt’s family received an order to be deported, his father committed suicide. Kurt had to work as a locksmith, his mother in a kitchen. Eventually they were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto and murdered in Chelmno. “At the beginning of his story he wasn’t much older than I am today,” says Roman.
At home he often talks to his father and mother about the fate of his peers from that time. “It was very bad and bad back then.” He doesn’t want to react so emotionally at the memorial event. But: “There is a lot of grief deep inside me.” Nobody deserves to be treated like that. After ten to 15 minutes, his grief is mostly over, then he likes to distract himself with a good book, that improves his mood and everything is fine again for him.
fate Daniel also dealt intensively with the fate of Kurt Lubascher. Because if he stays healthy, he will read the text. “I can only think of arguments for participating in the memorial service,” says the seventh grader. Therefore, he reported immediately when asked about it. He doesn’t think he’ll get excited speaking in front of so many people.
Daniel explains that he has already had experience speaking in public, as he had already read at the memorial stone at the Old Synagogue in Düsseldorf. He was very interested in history and was currently learning a lot about facts and relationships. What the twelve-year-old finds most cruel is that Hitler came to power and that many Germans would have voted against the Jews.
“I want to be respectful of the history of the memorial sign,” says Liel, also a seventh grader. On that day she will be sad because of the story, but also glad that she can read the text.
Of course she will have some stage fright, because in addition to her classmates, teachers, politicians, the community rabbi Aharon Ran Vernikovsky, cantor Aaron Malinsky and the community chairman Oded Horowitz will also come to the event. “I want to do everything right.” That’s why she goes through the text she wrote earlier every day, maybe she’ll change something. To be on the safe side, she wants to learn it by heart so that she can speak perfectly freely.
“I would like to tell it in such a way that everyone understands it well, maybe a few passers-by will come by and they would then find out that we are mourning that day and why,” says Liel.
religion class During the November pogrom in 1938, the Düsseldorf synagogue was attacked, Jews were deported and killed.
In class, Liel dealt with the fate of the student Hannelore Philipp, who was marginalized during the Nazi regime and finally deported to a ghetto and murdered.
The seventh graders used documents to research the biographies of Jewish families.
“It was sad, and I couldn’t imagine that something like this was even possible: that I was first looked at in a strange way, then attacked and later excluded from everything,” says Liel.
The seventh graders of the Albert Einstein Grammar School are currently studying religion during the Nazi era. “In order to bring this time closer to today’s schoolchildren, we are working with the biographies of Jewish children from our city,” says religion teacher Jonathan Grünfeld, who helped initiate the memorial sign at the time.
biography The seventh graders use documents to research the life stories of these children, learn something about their families and their further fate during the Shoah. For example, they learn that their Jewish peers were banned from attending public schools shortly after the start of Nazi rule. The Düsseldorf Jewish Community therefore had to react quickly and found its own Jewish elementary school: it was soon attended by almost 400 students.
“The Jewish elementary school was located in an outbuilding of the Kasernenstrasse synagogue, but had to move to Grafenberger Allee after the pogrom in 1938,” reports Jonathan Grünfeld.
In the art class of the teacher Julo Levin at the time, the students painted many pictures during the Nazi era that provide information about what occupied and moved them.
Levin taught at the school until 1938. He was later deported from Berlin and murdered. But the pictures were hidden and saved by a friend of Julo Levin’s. “Working with them gives the seventh graders access to the world of Jewish children of that time,” says Jonathan Grünfeld.
– .
