The ‘menorah’ belongs to a household who fled Germany 90 years in the past After a troublesome choice, their grandchildren have determined to go to the nation with the chandelier. It shall be lit in Berlin on Monday in an act with the German president
It is a December afternoon in 1931 in Kiel, a metropolis in northern Germany. Rosi Posner appears to be like out the window of her home at 60 Sophienblatt and sees a logo: within the foreground, on the windowsill, her menorah, the eight-branched Jewish candelabrum. In the background, a big Nazi flag unfurled on the other constructing, a former live performance corridor transformed right into a Nazi barracks.
Rosi Posner would not hesitate: she picks up her digicam and takes the picture. And to make her intentions clear, she writes on the again of it a 12 months later: “Just because the flag says that Judaism will die, so the sunshine (of the menorah) says that it’s going to reside without end.”
“Most of the Jews, after the rise of the Nazis, drew the curtains in order that the menorah was not seen from the road. But Rosi Posner was decided to point out that she and her husband weren’t afraid,” her granddaughter, Nava Gilo, instructed The Guardian.
Reverse of the {photograph} with the inscription of Rosi PosnerYad Vashem
Arthur, Rosi’s husband, was the native rabbi and had denounced anti-Jewish harassment since 1931. The threats weren’t lengthy in coming: “Will the rabbi who lives throughout the road nonetheless be capable to sleep at night time?” the native Nazi weekly puzzled.
The Posners held out for 2 extra years, till Hitler’s social gathering got here to energy in 1933. They fled first to Antwerp after which to Palestine. In his baggage, the menorah and the household picture album.
Their youngsters and grandchildren have lived in Palestine throughout these 90 years, many with out wanting to listen to about Europe. In his indelible reminiscence are the relations who had much less luck and died within the fields.
But Arthur Posner was of one other opinion. “There isn’t any future for Jews in Germany, however wherever you go, do not forget that you’re from Kiel,” he mentioned earlier than catching a one-way practice in Antwerp.
Arthur and Rosi Posner and their three youngsters in Antwerp, earlier than fleeing Europe Yad Vashem
For a few years he devoted himself to documenting the Nazi persecution in his metropolis. And he didn’t hesitate to ship pictures of him when in 1974 the Kiel museum requested for collaboration for an exhibition on native Jewish historical past. One picture drew consideration to the others: the defiant menorah in entrance of the Nazi flag.
Like Arthur, his grandchildren additionally didn’t neglect Kiel. And just lately they made a troublesome choice: take the menorah again to her grandparents’ city. The purpose was an exhibition about her household within the metropolis museum.
Last Sunday they collected the chandelier from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, the place it has been on show all these years. And, as hand baggage, the well-known menorah landed in Germany 90 years later.
Arthur PosnerYad Vashem
“I’m not right here to get pleasure from myself, however to work. I wish to speak to many individuals, inform them the story of my household,” Yehuda Mansbach, the Posners’ grandson, instructed native press. “We wish to know if Germany is a buddy of Israel at present ; We do not know proper now,” mentioned Nava Gilo, his sister.
For now, on Monday the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will obtain them at an occasion in Berlin, coinciding with Hanukkah, the nice Jewish vacation.
Then the well-known chandelier shall be lit once more. It is all that is still of the {photograph}. There isn’t any hint of the previous Nazi headquarters or the Posner home. They had been leveled by an Allied bombing raid in 1944.