Alfred Oppenheimer

My mother adamantly defended my brother, but both my mother and brother knew that this would not end well for him. We quickly decided that Max should leave Lichtenfels as soon as possible, and he emigrated to America.

A few years later, in 1935 at the same time the Nuremberg Race Laws were enacted, I met the most beautiful young woman, Anni Krämer. We fell deeply in love. Despite the rapid rise of persecution against Jews in Lichtenfels and throughout Germany, we married on October 28, 1935. The first years of our marriage were wonderful, and we were so happy to begin building our life together. Sadly, our happiness was short lived, as the Nazi party was coming into power which meant that life for us, for all Jews, became increasingly restrictive, isolating, and dangerous.

By 1938, the Nazi party, now in power, had systematically stripped Jews of all our rights. Our future in our town and country was no longer secure. We filed the necessary paperwork to obtain our departure numbers and get a letter of assurance for our emigration. I made the very difficult decision to sell our business (before the Nazis took it) so we would have enough money to take with us to America and start a new and hopefully comfortable life.

On November 9 – 10, 1938, local Nazis stormed our idyllic town of Lichtenfels. As they rioted and desecrated our synagogue, our businesses and our homes, we were extremely frightened. They destroyed the Jewish businesses in town and smashed storefront windows. Shards of glass covered the street; the pogrom became known as Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”). People and neighbors who we called friends – but who were not Jewish – turned on us. It was abundantly clear that we would need to leave Lichtenfels as soon as possible. We were no longer safe in Lichtenfels and Germany.

A few days after Kristallnacht, I was arrested, taken into custody and locked up in our local prison. My driver’s license was confiscated. My mother was desperate to secure my release and wrote a letter to the “Political Police of the District Authority of Lichtenfels” pleading for my release.

As we were packing, the local Nazis, under the direction of the ruthless and violent leader of the local gestapo, Fränkel “Franz” Fischer, stormed our home. Somehow, they found out that we were planning to smuggle out "contraband." They began slashing our furniture open, breaking open boxes, searching for the hidden valuables. My dear mother, darling Anni, and I were arrested and received a prison sentence of 1–2 years to be served in the local district jail in Coburg, about 15 miles away from Lichtenfels.

My two brothers Ernst and Max had already made their way to America. I wrote to them begging for any assistance in securing our release. I was especially concerned about my mother who was elderly and already in frail health. Since the rest of our family had been able to flee Lichtenfels and Germany, we were hoping they could help get us released. My brothers from America and my sister Frieda and her husband Sigmund from England all wrote letters on our behalf. I responded to a letter written by my brother Ernst while imprisoned in the Coburg prison.

Over the next several years we remained in prison and tried to stay hopeful. By now, I realized we were in a futile race against time. I exchanged many letters with my brothers and brother-in-law Sigmund who were working so hard for our release. Ernst tried to find a way for us to emigrate to Shanghai, one of the last possible places for Jews to go if they were willing to pay $750.00 per person. Even the Governor of New York State, Herbert Lehman, and one of his relatives wanted to vouch for us. Ernst explained that there were several lawyers engaged who were also helping our cause, but it was all in vain. With the outbreak of war, all negotiations halted.

We were eventually released from prison and sent back to Lichtenfels where the Nazis forced us to live with other remaining Lichtenfels Jews in Judengasse 14 – the Jew House –  located next door to our desecrated synagogue. They held us under house arrest. By 1942, we had exhausted nearly every possible way to escape Lichtenfels and Germany. I tried to remain hopeful, not only for my family who already fled Lichtenfels, but most importantly for my mother and Anni. Truth be told, I was losing hope. We were hearing horrible stories of Nazis putting Jews on transports and herding them to concentration or extermination camps, never to be heard from again. I felt as if we were already on a train bearing down on the dark abyss.

In April 1942, the Nazis rounded us up from the Judengasse and forced us to board a train to Bamberg, a stop on the DA 49 Transport. I remember talking to some of my friends and  neighbors – Max Hellman, Josef Kraus, Theodor Nordhäuser, and Leo Wolf – about our fate. We all came to the same conclusion: our futures looked bleak.

At Bamberg station, it was chaotic. There was a large group of Jews from all over Franconia. I’d heard there were almost 1000 of us there. The Nazis forced us to board the deportation train DA 49  heading east to Poland. As the cramped train headed east, we once more traveled through our lovely Lichtenfels. I had a sinking feeling that I would never see my hometown again. My heart broke for my mother and for Anni, but I tried to put on a brave face for them.

We traveled about 700 miles, close to half a day on the train, to a Polish town called Krasnystaw. At the train station, there were Nazis on the platform shouting at us to hurry off the train. They lined us up on the train platform and instructed us to march. We weren’t sure where we were heading. We marched almost 10 miles to a ghetto in Krasniczyn. It was a hard march, but my mother somehow summoned the strength to keep up. Once we arrived in the ghetto, the Nazis assigned our housing. We could see immediately that the living conditions were deplorable: dirty, cold, and cramped. There was little food to eat.

The Nazis put us to work at grueling, back-breaking labor. I did what I was told. I worried constantly about Anni and my mother, whose already frail health was worsening before my eyes. Any food I was given I gave to my wife and mother so they could keep up their strength. I prayed for a miracle, something that would save us from a very bleak future. Some in the ghetto said that we were not far from an extermination camp called Sobibór located in a village by the same name. Is that where we were heading?

About six weeks later, in June of 1942, the Nazis put all of us on a train. Our worst fears were confirmed when we learned that we were heading to Sobibór. As the train pulled into the station, the guards hustled us off the train. We had to jump a short distance from the train to the platform. As I waited in line with my mother and Anni to leave the train, we could see others who stumbled as they jumped. To our utter horror, the guards shot and killed them on the spot. We were sickened and frightened by what we saw. I turned to my mother and Anni and said, “No matter what, we stick together, once we get to the platform." I was especially concerned for my mother, whose frailty had increased over the last six weeks in the ghetto. As we walked slowly towards the exit, I turned to my wife and mother and said, “Be strong.” One by one, we jumped….

Postscript

This is where the story of Alfred Oppenheimer ends. Did Alfred, Betti, and Anni survive that fateful leap? We will never know, but given the condition of Betti’s frail health, one can assume that she did not survive. As for Alfred and Anni, who most likely had to endure witnessing their beloved mother murdered, if they survived that leap off the train, they along with the other Jews from the ghetto, including their neighbors from Lichtenfels (Max Hellman, Josef Kraus, Theodor Nordhäuser, and Leo Wolf) had to march through the gates of Sobibór where it is believed the Nazis immediately sent them to the gas chambers and murdered them. Between 1942 and 1943, the Nazis exterminated approximately 180,000 people at Sobibór.

In November 2018, to coincide with the 80^th commemoration of the November pogrom, Alfred’s grandnieces traveled to Lichtenfels to reclaim their great uncle’s driver’s license which the Nazis had confiscated shortly after Kristallnacht. Alfred Oppenheimer’s license was one of the thirteen licenses discovered in 2017 while the town was digitizing town records and became a part of the “13 Jewish Driver’s Licenses” research project by the students at Meranier Gymnasium. Alfred’s grandnieces met the District Administrator of Lichtenfels, Christian Meissner, Mayor Andreas Hügerich, Town Archivist Christin Wittenbauer, Upper Franconia Curator Prof. Dr. Gunter Dippold, and the students and their history teacher, Manfred Brösamle-Lambrecht, who led this extraordinary and important remembrance research project.

Alfred’s great nieces also visited the Lichtenfels Jewish Cemetery, which is kept locked, as all Jewish cemeteries are in Germany, because they are historical sites. There are only three out of the original 150 headstones left, because the cemetery was desecrated after Kristallnacht. The Nazis ground the destroyed headstones into gravel and used them to pave the town roads. Today, there is a large headstone which memorializes the residents who perished at Sobibór. The women saw three names belonging to their family: Betti, Alfred and Anni Oppenheimer. While the nieces were there, as is customary in the Jewish religion, they placed three stones on top of the headstones. These stones remain there to honor the memory of the Oppenheimers and remind those who visit about the darkest chapter in human history.        

During their visit, they also witnessed the installation of Stolpersteine in front of the former Oppenheimer residence, their last known freely chosen residence. Each stone starts with these words: “Here Lived.” Stones honor the memory of Betty, Alfred, and Anni Oppenheimer. Here lived the Oppenheimer family. Placing the Stolpersteine brings their names back into the light from a dark, horrific past.