Freedom and a Tribute
Posted on July 4, 2009
Today I want you to read something that will tug at your heart strings from my cousin Jonathan’s tribute to the memory of his grandmother.
Oma left this world at 7:40 am on a cold and snowy morning in March.
But that’s where the story ends.
Even though it begins earlier than 1938, her story really starts, for me, on the cold and rainy day Oma left Germany from the harbor in Hamburg, Germany.
Oma likely stood in the same spot before leaving Germany in 1938, as I stood at 63 years later (in 2001) when I lived in Germany as an exchange student.
She landed in New York on April 1, 1938.
Oma said that some of her earliest memories in Germany including playing with her cousins, Charlie and Lillian, picking fruit in her grandmother’s garden in Twistringen, Running around with her brothers Walter and Hans and visiting the Westfalia Kaufhaus, a department store which her Dad and Uncle owned, and were forced to sell at a loss to a member of the Nazi party.
I’m of the impression that her father and uncle were very hard-working, fleissig (industrious) individuals throughout their lives, regardless of the circumstances that they found themselves in.
Oma said she also remembered a torch lit Nazi parade marching by their home and that even as a very young little girl, it made quite an impression on her.
I also enjoyed his poem, very appropriate for today, on freedom.
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