13 Driver's Licenses
Transcript
13 Driver’s Licenses
Transcript
July 13, 2026
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Thirteen driver's licenses
discovered in a basement in Germany,
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unseen for nearly 80 years.
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Ordinary licenses—
except for the secrets they held.
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Lichtenfels,
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a small town in Germany,
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full of old world charm,
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dating back some 800 years.
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By the early 20th century,
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it was known as the center of
the German basket industry.
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Like many German towns,
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it had a small, but
thriving community of Jewish residents,
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mostly merchants.
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After centuries of persecution,
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they had finally become
accepted and respected,
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woven into the fabric of the town.
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This golden age was short lived.
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The rise of Nazis in Germany signaled
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the return of bitter antisemitism.
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Then Kristallnacht,
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the November Pogrom of 1938,
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made it clear that
there was no place for Jews in Germany.
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They lost everything.
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Their cars, houses, and businesses.
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Those who could, escaped.
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Most of those who remained,
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perished in the Holocaust.
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By the end of the war,
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no Jews remained in Lichtenfels.
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And in the years that followed,
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the public memory of Jewish life faded.
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Then, in 2017,
13 driver's licenses were discovered
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in the basement of the county office.
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It soon became clear that
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they had been confiscated
from Jewish citizens in 1938.
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I certainly knew that they
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had to go to the state archives
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in Bamberg.
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That is the law,
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and it basically makes sense.
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But I was sitting there
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looking at the driver’s licenses,
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and I was looking at the pictures,
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and I really asked myself,
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who were those people
and what became of them?
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Instead of archiving the driver's licenses,
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the county executive enlisted
a high school history teacher
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to recover their forgotten stories
and the lost memories of the town.
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To give the project to students
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was the intent of
the Landrat (county executive)
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It was not our intent.
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We didn't know about
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these 13 driver's licenses.
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He came up, and said:
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“I don't want to give this to historians,
but I want students to do that.”
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And that was a great idea.
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In school, we had several options
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for a project to choose between,
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but I chose the 13 driver's licenses
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because it was by far the most
interesting and meaningful project.
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And I was also very interested in
finding out more about my town's history.
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When I heard about the research project,
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I honestly didn't know
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what to expect.
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It was just
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the 13 driver's licenses
on the table and nothing more.
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So, I thought it will be
like any other school project
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with posters
and pictures from the internet,
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and handwritten notes,
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and our presentation
will be forgotten the next week.
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If I have to tell about reactions
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to the research project,
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it was very sobering
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because we just didn't know
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where to start.
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The only thing we had
in the very beginning were names,
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dates of birth, some pale pictures,
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and signatures of the owners
of the driver's licenses.
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For nine months,
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the students researched
in local archives,
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pored over immigration records,
and scoured the internet
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to learn the fate of
those who had owned the licenses.
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When we first found out
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that Stefan and Berta Zinn
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lived in the house
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in the Bahnhofstraße,
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I was really surprised
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because I had known that house
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my whole life.
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Today, there's a café in there
where I often go,
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but I would never have expected
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that house to have
such an important history.
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It was one of the very first things
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that we discovered that
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the gravestones of
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Manfred and his wife
were located in the United States.
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And therefore, we knew that
they emigrated to the United States.
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And further in our research,
we discovered that
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their children also emigrated to the U.S.
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So, we had the expectation
that there must be descendants.
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Leo Wolf was a very nice person.
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He was known to be quite generous,
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and to be quite loving,
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especially to his daughter.
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When we had the chance to
talk to Margarete Milz,
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a childhood friend of Margot Wolf,
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Leo Wolf's daughter,
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she remembered a very interesting story
that says a lot about Leo’s character.
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When she was playing
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with Margot one day,
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she was invited to look
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at her new roller skates,
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and the girls were taking turns
playing with them
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because they only had one pair.
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And Margarete was
a little bit sad about that.
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And the Wolfs took notice of that,
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and on the next day,
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they brought her
her own pair of roller skates,
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so the girls could play with them.
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The moments my students,
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some of my students recognized that
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their driver's license holders
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had been killed,
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I wasn't there.
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They found that out at homework.
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So, I couldn't help immediately.
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They were scared, of course.
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They were sad,
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and they became even sadder,
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the more they dove into the lives of them.
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Mourning increased,
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the more they knew about the persons.
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This was something we did together …
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… to find these things.
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During the November Pogrom,
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I know that the husband of Berta Zinn,
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Stefan was transported
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into a concentration camp,
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but they could send the money,
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so he could be free again.
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After that, they escaped from Germany,
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and went to America.
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But one, the brother of Stefan,
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he drank poison,
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and died then in the hospital
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because he could not handle everything
that happened this night.
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At the end of the 1930s,
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every Jew in Burgkunstadt
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was taken into custody in Hof.
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Among them, also Leo Banemann.
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And afterwards,
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they wanted to take him
to the concentration camp in Dachau.
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But at that time, it was overcrowded.
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And it was a very important point
in his life, I think,
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because that was why
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he was able to flee with his family.
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Knowing that
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Alfred Oppenheimer didn't survive
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made our research very difficult.
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It was actually one of the first things
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we found out
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because we looked his name up
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on the Internet,
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and we found an article that stated,
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Alfred Oppenheimer was murdered.
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But it somehow motivated us even more.
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We knew that he had to experience
all these terrible things in Germany,
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and because of that,
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we wanted to give him back
a part of his life,
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and a part of his dignity,
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and to tell his story.
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We found out
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nobody from the Wolf family survived
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because we found their names
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on a deportation list.
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That means that
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they went to
a concentration camp in Eastern Europe,
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and basically, no one
comes back from a concentration camp.
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It was devastating to know that
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not even
their 14-year-old daughter survived.
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It was just a very grave feeling,
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like a stone sitting in my stomach.
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Like, having gotten to know
this person for a little bit at least,
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and finding out that
he was a very nice person,
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that the whole family was
just very well known for their kindness,
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and they all just got killed
in a concentration camp like that.
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My goals
at the beginning of this project were
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to find some information
about these biographies,
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to paint some pictures about them,
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add some photographs,
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and show them in school.
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That was it. That was it.
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And then,
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I never forget the first contact
with a descendant we found.
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That was Carol,
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Carol Kashan.
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and she cried on the phone.
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And this was incredible for us.
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I remember
we were sitting in my office up there,
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the whole bunch of students and me,
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sitting at the telephone with Carol.
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And, she cried on the telephone.
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She was so kind.
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She was so wonderful.
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This was the moment we set fire.
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This was the moment we noticed that
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there was blood.
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There was much more than files,
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and much more than pictures behind that.
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And this increased more and more,
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the more we found contact
with descendants.
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This is the character of the project.
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When my classmates and I
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contacted the descendants,
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we had mixed feelings.
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We were both excited,
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but also kind of fearful.
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We were extremely excited to see that
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the people we did research on
had living relatives
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and also a ton of memories
and photos to share.
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There was also a bit of fear
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because we are Germans,
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and because of our heritage,
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we felt being resented, or ...
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being ignored was also okay.
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It meant that
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we are Germans,
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which is part of our history, and …
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it’s okay that
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they don't want to have
to do anything with Germans.
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When we decided to
contact the descendants,
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we thought about
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getting a rejection because …
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they maybe were done with Germany.
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I contacted Bettina Kraus.
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We got to know her through a headhunter,
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and we wrote an email,
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and when she texted us back, she wrote
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that she cried during reading our email,
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and she felt really glad
finally to have someone
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who cared about her history of her family.
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The first time
we contacted Sigmund’s descendants,
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is a bit of a funny story.
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I first got in contact with Debbie—
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she's one of the November sisters.
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Her sisters are Lisa and Linda.
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They are Sigmund’s granddaughters.
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I texted her over Facebook.
I sent her a message,
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and she was at her son's wedding
with the whole family assembled.
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And Linda said that
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she should not respond.
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It’s probably a scammer.
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Don't give her any details.
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And I completely understand that.
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It's a bit creepy to be contacted
about your family out of the blue.
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But in the end,
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I’m so grateful that
Debbie did indeed contact me back.
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When we first reached out
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to the descendants of the Zinn family,
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we were nervous, but also hopeful.
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I think, we were hopeful
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because others, our friends
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already had some positive reactions
from their descendants,
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so, we expected
the same would happen to us.
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But unfortunately,
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the descendants of the Zinn family,
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they weren't really happy
to hear from us
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because they still had
a negative image of us Germans.
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In 2018, the County of Lichtenfels invited
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the living descendants
to visit their ancestors’ hometown.
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Ten came
from Argentina and the United States.
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At an event that coincided with
the 80th anniversary
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of the November Pogrom,
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family members were presented
with the licenses that
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had once belonged to their ancestors.
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[speaking German]
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[names of
former Jewish residents of the house]
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One of the descendants is Lisa Salko,
a granddaughter of Sigmund Marx.
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Back in the United States,
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Lisa decided to give presentations
on her experience.
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It's a story about discovery,
reflection, and reconciliation.
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And it's a story about hope.
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This picture is the Oppenheimer siblings.
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This is Ernst, Max, Frieda,
my grandmother,
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and Alfred, my great uncle.
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It's Alfred
who was not able to flee Germany,
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and he was imprisoned
along with his wife, Anni,
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and my great grandmother, Betty.
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And they were eventually
deported on a train
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to Sobibór concentration camp
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and exterminated in June of 1942.
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This is Sigmund Marx, my grandfather.
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and that's how I remember him looking.
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This is my grandmother, Frieda,
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holding my mom as an infant—
my mother, Marion.
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I grew up knowing virtually nothing
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about my family history.
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And maybe on a subconscious level,
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I really needed that information.
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From what the Germans did—
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and gave back to me and my sisters—
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it was just an extraordinary gift
of knowledge about my family.
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I can't speak for anyone else
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because everyone's perspective is
different about the Holocaust
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and what it means to their family.
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But, for me, they gave me back my family.
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And the history is difficult,
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the facts are hard and not easy to hear,
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but it's who I am.
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It's a part of me,
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and I needed to know it,
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and, now I do.
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I think my view of Lichtenfels
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changed quite a bit through the project
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because before then
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maybe it was a bit naïve
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to never really make the connection
between the gruesome history of Germany
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and this peaceful town in Bavaria,
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because, of course,
the Nazis were everywhere.
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But I never really made
the connection in my mind.
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I do think that reconciliation
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between Germans and Jewish descendants
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can be possible
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because we've seen it ourselves.
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We've met so many wonderful people,
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and we became friends with them.
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But I also understand
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if Jewish descendants don't want
anything to do with Germany
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just because it's too hard.
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I think all we can do is
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give our best
and try to educate ourselves,
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and try to make amends
as good as possible.
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The most important thing
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I could experience was that
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in a mass of people,
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there are a million different destinies.
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A million people,
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who are someone's lover,
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someone's child,
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have children of their own,
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have their own personality,
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and their own histories.
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That's the most important thing for me.