This is the only link I have to my grandmother,Sophie Storch, this postcard from Theresienstadt Poland 1944 was a transit camp during Nazi Germany. my grandparents, on my mothers side, lived in what was then Breslau (now Wroclaw)my mother was fortunate to get to England in 1938, leaving her parents and brothers to follow, unfortunately they were taken to Teresienstadt in 1942. My grandfather was immediately then transported to Treblinka, a death camp, and my grandmother transported to Auschwitz in 1944, where she died just before Auschwitz was liberated.the postcard is so very important to me as it is the only link I have to my mothers family.This is such an important and horrific period of modern history, which must never be forgotten.It is one of two postcards from Theresienstadt, where they were made to write in pencil, so that it could be vetted and rubbed out if necessary.
a postcard from Theresienstadt 1944
Contributed by thomas
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1944
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- 14.5cm
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Exact memory against the contempt of human beings
The Jewish author Elie Wiesel, who escaped as young man the tortures of Auschwitz, said: "Only the exact memory stops the insanity".
The memory of the victims has to be exact, when we look at the historic events in Germany that made them victims.
The 30th of January 1933 marks a beginning of an end that has come on the 8th of May 1945.
The human dignity was little by little taken away towards a contempt of human beings.
The memory has to be exact, even more if it is addressed in a critical way against us. Exact memory and analysis of our time from the perspective of the victims of the Nazi dictatorship and the victims of violence today are closely committed to each other.
Our mourning should not be a calming event but includes also an obligation, to prevent now and in the future what has happened.
However, there were also Germans that stood against the Nazi violence and gave their life. Sophie Scholl, a young woman of the White Rose resistance movement that has been murdered by the Nazis said: "Someone must be the first that begins to resist".
This statement also includes an accusation to all Germans that deliberately backed the Nazi dictatorship.
It is not easy for the generation of old Germans to look at their own cowardice. Especially at the beginning of WWII, many Germans backed the war. They went for the false promises of the Nazis that are built on irrational prejudice.
We today are therefore so sorry for all those that lost their lives unnecessarily in the context of WWII or still suffer from painful wounds in their biographies.