Jewish treasures recovered

"I wish you all the luck in the world." That's how Fritz Wachsner concluded the first and last letter he ever sent to his granddaughter Marianne in the United States in 1942. Shortly afterwards the Jewish teacher was deported to Riga by the Nazis, together with his wife Paula, where they were murdered. Marianne, however, wouldn't receive her grandfather's letter until she was an adult. Her mother Charlotte - the family's sole survivor - never wanted to speak about the tragic Berlin years under the Nazi regime.

Nevertheless, a large box containing photo albums, letters, books, identification documents and religious paraphernalia remained from that time. Three of Charlotte's friends sent it to her in the US once the war was over. For a long time, these documents, detailing Jewish family life, remained in that box.

Starting this week, the first of over a thousand documents and objects is on show at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

"We have never before received such a large estate of a deported and murdered Jewish teacher before," the head of the archive, Aubrey Pomerance, told DW. "This is a very special donation, especially since the story of how the collection was saved is an extraordinary one."

Friends rescue the estate

It is a story that has a great deal to do with friendship and courage. Three friends of the daughter Charlotte, who escaped in 1937, regularly visited her father Fritz Wachsner, his wife Paula, and their son Ernst until their eventual deportation in 1942. The friends provided the family with food and even hid Ernst for a time. While they couldn't prevent the Wachsners from being murdered, they did manage to save their estate of family photos and memorabilia.

A regular exchange of letters developed between Charlotte and her three girlfriends after the war. When her daughter Marianne was just over the age of 20, she too wanted to get to know the girlfriends and more about her family. She traveled to Berlin and befriended the three now elderly ladies and in 2007 published a book about her family, entitled "Four Girls from Berlin," in the US and Canada.

There are now plans to translate the work into German, and a film about the Wachsner family's story is also in the works.

Students research family history

The impetus for the publication of the family history in Germany was a history project of the Wilhelm-von-Humboldt School in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. "We wanted to learn about the eventful 100-year history of the school building in which our school is located," said spokesperson Carola Ehrlich-Cypra. "That's when the students discovered Fritz Wachsner, whose fate moved them a great deal."

The school got in touch with the granddaughter Marianne Meyerhoff in Los Angeles. She not only helped with the research, but also took part in the renaming of the old assembly room into the Fritz Wachsner Hall and donated the family estate to the Jewish Museum. Amongst the collection is a book that Wachsner wrote in the 1920s on hiking.

Popular Jewish education reformer

"He was a very progressive teacher that made use of many educational reform ideas," said Carola Ehrlich-Cypra. Amongst them was offering students more movement in the free nature, instead of disciplining them with the cane. He is understood to have been very popular within the school.

Fritz Wachsner however wasn't employed at the Schinkel Senior School (as it was formerly known) for long. He arrived in 1920 as a physics, chemistry and biology teacher, but lost his job in 1933 just weeks after the Nazis seized power. In 1935 he became the director of the Joseph-Lehmann School for the Jewish community, and taught at a private Jewish chemistry school from 1939 to 1941.

Mistaken survival strategy

In her book, "Four Girls from Berlin," Marianne Meyerhoff tells the story of how her grandfather was encouraged to leave Germany by his son Ernst, but Fritz Wachsner refused. Having served as a soldier under the German Kaiser, Wachsner saw himself as completely German. His survival strategy was "keep your head down and don't pay too much attention to yourself." This strategy would sadly cost him, his wife and the then 19-year-old Ernst their lives.

Fritz Wachsner sent only his 24-year-old daughter into exile. Charlotte left Germany in May 1939 with over 900 other Jews on the ship "St Louis" bound for Cuba. But the passengers weren't allowed to disembark and were forced to return to Europe. Charlotte was sent to a prisoner camp in the Netherlands, but managed to escape and later emigrated to the US.

Charlotte passed away in the 1980s in California and left her only daughter, Marianne, the most valuable thing she had - the large box with the family documents. Now they have finally returned to their original home in Berlin.