In September I took a flight to Israel to meet Menachem Mayer in the two-room apartment of a wonderful retirement home where he lives near mount Herzl and near to Yad Vashem, the largest of the holocaust memorials. He received me very kindly, and over three days, each day during four hours, he related his history, which was not easy for him to do. He had blocked out many incidents as a means of self-protection, for after the war he had to put a new life together all alone, without family.
His brother Fred, who was three years his senior and had passed away at the time we met, had told him about a number of things. Late in October I visited Menachem again, this time in order to show him the transcription of what he had related to me.
This transcription is what you find in the following. My ancestors had lived in Baden for centuries. My maternal grandfather, his name was Meir Wertheimer, lived in a village named Neidenstein not far from Hoffenheim. He dealt in footwear and owned a shoe store. My biological grandmother was called Hannah. My mother Mathilde, commonly called Hilde, was her only child.
She was born in Neidenstein in Grandmother died in when my mother was only four years old. She was a very good grandmother indeed! Her son Emanuel, the stepbrother of my mother, was born in My mother and Emanuel will surely have grown up like siblings. The grandfather, I believe, died in Uncle Emanuel was unmarried, a higher ranked official in a furnace factory, and better off than we were.
Sometimes he bought new clothing for me and my brother. And in addition he owned a car. Each year before the high holidays we visited the graves of our relatives in nearby Waibstadt, as it is customary for Jews. Children are not allowed to enter the cemetery while their parents are still alive, and thus Manfred and I waited in the car, and we both were a little bit afraid of the dark and mysterious woods.
