Eugene weekly., September 21, 2023, Page 8, Image 8

LAYING THE
‘STUMBLING
STONES’
IN HEILBRONN
Eugene resident and longtime art jeweler
Hannah Goldrich examines her
Jewish heritage through Stolpersteine
BY DAN BUCKWALTER
I
t is a home set off from street traffic by a large yard.
You might miss it as you drive by. That yard fronts
a rustic looking house with a spacious and inviting
porch in a leafy southeast Eugene neighborhood
that even has a bamboo forest on the street corner.
Hannah Goldrich and her husband, Daniel, have
called it home for more than 50 years and have had four
children, eight grandchildren and three great grandchil-
dren grace its rooms and hallways. The interior has a
comfortable, lived-in air to it with art from the couple’s
many travels, especially to Mexico, and the backyard is
dotted with flowers that she tends to.
“It’s kind of a funky house,” Hannah Goldrich says.
Goldrich long ago made a name for herself as a jeweler
with exhibits throughout the Pacific Northwest. She often
sees the jewelry she made adorning the ears of strangers,
and she has taught extensively at Maude Kerns Art Center.
It’s been a gratifying life, and the days now usually end for
Goldrich with The New York Times and a game of Wordle.
Her life almost never happened.
How Hannah Goldrich and her Jewish family made
it from Heilbronn, Germany, to the United States is a
remarkable four-year story that starts in 1937 and includes
fortuitous timing at almost every step of the way.
The Victor family — father Max, mother Trude, older
sister Ursula and Hannah — fled persecution in Germany,
where strict anti-Semitism legislation such as the “Nurem-
berg Laws” were becoming entrenched and just ahead
of Kristallnacht (the “Night of Broken Glass”) in 1938 as
well as the opening of concentration camps. They made
stops in Switzerland, Holland and England. From England
the family journeyed to Cuba in 1940, just a year after the
“Voyage of the Damned,” a ship full of Jews seeking to
escape Germany, was turned away in Havana, and after
two weeks’ detention in a camp on that island nation, the
Victor family moved to the Dominican Republic for nine
months before, finally, landing in New York City in 1941.
Hannah Victor was only two years old when the family
fled Heilbronn and began this odyssey. She first returned
to her birthplace with her family as Hannah Goldrich in
1985 for Begegnungswoche, a week of intensive dialogue
and tours of their former community, at the invitation
of the people of Heilbronn. She returned again June 29
for a Stolpersteine ceremony, the laying of brass plaques
honoring victims of Nazi persecution in front of the house
where she was born and in a community where Goldrich
can trace family lineage to the 1800s.
“I felt really good about it,” she says from the dining
room of her Eugene home. “I have felt different about
Germany. A lot of places in Germany make sure you don’t
forget. That’s gratifying to me.”
caust. The project began in Germany in 1992, and now
exists in 20 languages and 24 countries.
The grassroots project, started by German artist
Gunter Demnig, honors the victims of the Nazis by plac-
ing a small brass stone, inscribed with the name and
life details of a victim, in front of the victim's last known
residence. The stones measure 10 by 10 centimeters.
The name Stolpersteine translates to “stumbling
stones” — and they are intended to be stumbled upon,
serving as a reminder of the suffering and loss.
Europeana, a web portal created by the European Union
that is dedicated to digitizing and promoting European
history, notes that the Stolpersteine project also serves
as a way to educate the public about the horrors of the
Holocaust. Many of the victims eternalized by the stones
were ordinary people, the website explains, and while the
majority of Stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims
of the Holocaust, others have been placed on behalf of
victims that include the Romani, the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity, people with disabilities, Blacks and people who were
persecuted for their religious, political and social beliefs.
It is the commerating of ordinary people — victims
of atrocities — that is vital, says Rabbi Ruhi Sophia of
Eugene’s Temple Beth Israel.
“It’s really important to memorialize the fact that they
were a part of society,” she says.
Demnig placed the first Stolperstein on Dec. 16, 1992,
in front of the Cologne City Hall, 50 years to the day
after an order was signed to begin the mass deporta-
tion of Jews and Roma from Germany. In recent years,
the Stolpersteine project has expanded to honor men,
women and children who were forced into exile before
and during World War II. The Colegio Pestalozzi school
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, founded in 1934, became the
first site outside Europe to host one in 2017, honoring in
this case the hundreds of German Jewish children who
found refuge there in exile.
And it was the inclusion of exiles that prompted Lewis
Santer, a nephew of Goldrich, into action, and to work
with Goldrich to have the Victor family remembered
with a Stolperstein on the sidewalk in front of the family
home in Heilbronn. Often, it is local groups, residents of
a particular street or school children who come together
to research the biographies of local victims and raise the
roughly $130 it costs to install each stone.
On June 29, Hannah Goldrich proudly stood by the
four stones honoring her family and delivered prepared
remarks, in front of the house in Heilbronn that somehow
survived ferocious Allied bombing in 1944, bombing that
destroyed much of the rest of the city.
THE JOURNEY
“I was born in the house we are standing before, Wart-
burgstrasse 50, on March 31, 1935. It was an easy birth
at home since my Jewish family was no longer allowed
in the hospitals.”
THE STOLPERSTEINE PROJECT
Without memory, there is no culture, and Stolperste-
ine is just one of many memorials to victims of the Holo-
HANNAH GOLDRICH IN THE FLOWER GARDEN SHE TENDS Photo by Todd Cooper
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