Virginie Goldschmidt-Terbeck | University Lecturer, Waldorf Pedagogue for French Language
Dr. Gérard Goldschmidt | General Practitioner, Addictologist and Hypnotherapist
External Digital Contributors
We are the son and granddaughter of a German and Russian Jewish family who fled to France during the war to escape Nazism. A German uncle of our family was deported from France (Lyon) and executed in Auschwitz in 1944. Other members of our family managed to escape the Final Solution but have retained the heavy psychological burden of this dark period until their death.
In addition, our own father and grandfather, Edgar Goldschmidt (son of Samuel Goldschmidt), was born in Berlin/Dahlem and lived on the island of Schwanenwerder before his family was chased away by Goebbels himself (spoliation of my father's/grandfather's house at Inselstrasse 12/14) forcing our family to flee to Switzerland and then to France.
Our motivation to participate in this memorial is all the greater since our father and grandfather always told us that he lived just a stone's throw from the house in Wannsee where the Final Solution was worked out, a peaceful place on the waterfront bordered by the Schöne Grunewald.
The former residence of the Goldschmidt family, Inselstrasse 12-14 in Schwanenwerder
A LIVING MEMORIAL
A living memorial is meant to remind us that the course of history continues in the meanders of its backwaters, in the river of our lives. Life is defined in many philosophical and religious traditions by the conjunction of the four elements water-air-fire-earth. The Star of David has been interpreted as a symbol of this alliance by some authors and thinkers and is found in several religions. The tree is the most universal and most complete representation of this symbiosis.
All genocides and crimes against humanity have achieved a mortifying detour of the elements:
Water, the simulacrum of showers,
Air, the deadly gas,
Fire has become cremation,
The earth became a mass grave... in the concentration camps.
Its elements challenge us violently in the current ecological problems of climate change and natural disasters more and more worrying. We can therefore imagine combining these concepts by exhibiting in the memorial a sculpted tree of life that would symbolize the dead branches of history and its hopes for rebirth. We can also propose to gather photos or documents of our dear deportees related to privileged moments in a still preserved nature and to associate words, poems or thoughts with them (a kind of place of recollection where each one can suspend memories and souvenirs).
The concept can be extended to the elaboration of a garden of the four elements, making sense of their beauty and their deadly detour.
In summary, our contribution is based on a simple idea: the memory of crimes against humanity can take on an ecological, living and current dimension by evoking the misuse of the four elements in their genesis.
Further annotations by Virginie:
"Schwanenwerder", as my grandfather used to say, was their Sommerresidenz from 1925 on. In 1930 they moved there permanently.
Elisabeth Goldschmidt (then Herz) was my grandfather's sister, you'll see her in the pictures. She was a rebel and I'm proud to carry her name! Her husband was Hungarian and a lawyer, they fought to the end to stand up to the Nazis. Georg was shot... he was not Jewish but tried to save our family's property... Elisabeth then took refuge in Switzerland and then France (...)
Elisabeth
Grunewald ... Herbert, the brother of my grandfather, was deported to Auschwitz in 44 ... but from Lyon. He was part of the resistance movement. My grandfather was hidden in Villeurbanne by the Righteous and his sister in Marseille and Nice. My grandfather's family was not deported from Berlin because they took refuge in time in Switzerland, in Geneva. But despite everything this Grunewald cradled the childhood and adolescence of my grandfather and his family. He was born in Berlin Dahlem (...)
For my father, if you ask him what is important to him, it would be to open up to the universal, of course by paying homage to the Jewish community, to the disappeared, to the survivors, but not to forget that other communities or ethnic groups have been the victims of genocide or even racism today.
Virginie’s grandfather/Gérard’s father Edgar (left) together with his brother Herbert
BIOGRAPHIES
Virginie Goldschmidt-Terbeck |University Lecturer, Waldorf Pedagogue for French Language
Virginie is a native of France (Paris). She studied biology, “Langues, littératures et civilisations étrangères", German language and literature at the University of Orléans before completing her Master's degree as an Erasmus student in Germany, specializing in exile literature. She then studied graduate translation for German, French and Spanish in Cologne. Virginie Goldschmidt-Terbeck works as a lecturer in French and intercultural communication at the Language Center of the University of Siegen; she is also a Waldorf teacher (French literature, poetry, culture and philosophy) and a freelance translator and interpreter for the integration of immigrant children.
"Our family history had a strong impact on me, at that time I was eager to learn more about the Nazi period, to read about people's exile, to learn my grandfather's mother tongue, to discover his homeland with its numerous thinkers, artists, poets, and to sympathize with his memories and stories. Thanks to my upbringing, my studies, many travels and my professional activities, I got to know different cultures and met many people. These experiences have been for me a lesson in the study of man: on the understanding of nature, of spirit and human development, of what unites us despite our diversity as human beings and living creatures, and on the responsibility we bear for and with each other."
Dr. Gérard Goldschmidt | General Practitioner, Addictologist and Hypnotherapist
I was born in Paris where I studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the Necker Hospital for Sick Children. I then decided to settle down with my family in the quiet countryside in a small village 100 km from Paris as a general practitioner.
In the 2000's, I turned to addictology and medical hypnosis before joining the hospital of Sens in Burgundy as head of a unit in this specialty. I still work happily a few days a week in this establishment.
My mother is Russian, Jewish and emigrated to France in the 1920s following the persecutions of the Soviet regime. My German father, also Jewish, was born in Berlin and lived his childhood a few dozen meters from this memorial site. It was important for me to participate in this "Living Memorial" project. I think that my family roots and history combined with my life in a rural environment led me to reflect on the links between the misuse of the elements and the disregard for human life.