A Stanmore resident has told the story of how a chanukiah salvaged from a synagogue in Nazi Germany was eventually reunited with her mother in the UK after 70 years.
Helen Stone, one of the founders of the Holocaust testimony charity Generation 2 Generation, told STANMOREnews about her mother, Emmy Kaufmann, who entered the UK from Germany in May 1939.
Emmy’s home, a small village near Cologne named Kommern, was home to only 12 Jewish families. During Kristallnacht in 1938 – a series of pogroms against the Jewish population in Germany – their synagogue was destroyed by the Nazis, and much of its effects and ceremonial objects assumed destroyed.
However, a non-Jewish 11-year-old girl named Maria Klee, who lived opposite the synagogue, spotted something shimmering in the ruins of the still smouldering building.
She found a brass chanukiah, which she hid under her dress and took home with her. The chanukiah remained hidden throughout the war, and Maria continued to hope that one day she could return it to a member of the Kommern Jewish community.
More than 70 years later, thanks to the work of a German teacher researching Emmy’s family tree, Maria was able to visit Emmy and hand over the chanukiah in person.
Now a valued and much-loved family heirloom, the chanukiah that was rescued from the ruins of a Kommern synagogue is used every year for Chanukah thanks to Maria’s efforts.
0 Comments