‘Some of the heaviness gone from his heart’

On Sept. 13, my husband, Ernest Haas, and I boarded a plane for a trip he had vowed never to take. We were returning to his birthplace, Neumarkt in the state of Bavaria, Germany. While he had some fond memories of an all-too-brief childhood, for the most part the memories were dark and bitter. He was born there in 1925. In 1933, the Nazis came to power. There began oppression, taunts, and beatings by fellow students, encouraged by teachers. By 1938, he could no longer attend school there and his parents moved to a larger town, Fuerth, where their children, Ilse, Ernest, and Walter, could attend a Jewish school (the only type of school allowed to them). But the situation became more and more oppressive. They tried futilely to emigrate, but the doors to other countries were closed. Only the youngest, Walter, was able to go to America on a Kindertransport, in August 1941. Children over the age of 16 were not allowed out of Germany, since it was felt that they would fight against Germany.

Finally, the ultimate devastation. On Nov. 27, 1941, Ernest, his parents, and sister were deported to concentration camps. What ensued was four years of hell. Ernest knew that his parents were murdered, but he did not know Ilse’s fate. When he was liberated by the Russians in March of 1945, he was at death’s door with typhus and the aftermath of bouts of pneumonia. At the age of 20, he weighed 80 pounds ...

And then a surprise! Two years ago, a letter arrived from three high school girls. They said that their religion teacher, Helmut Enzenberger, had found that Ilse had gone to a predecessor of their school and he wanted to know all about her. The girls, Sabine, Carolin, and Verena, volunteered for this project and set about finding Ernest. Even though the town records listed him as "Verschollen" (missing), they persisted until they came across a woman in Fuerth who had met him in America. While not everyone was willing to recall the past, they were able to write their report with the help of e-mails and other correspondence from Ernest.

Their teacher was so impressed and moved by their report that he felt that the story of Ilse and the Jews of Neumarkt should be memorialized. Since their school, the Ostendorfer Gymnasium, has a performing arts component and they put on an original play every two years, he felt that the story of Ilse should be the next play. And so "Der Letzte Brief"("The Last Letter") was born. The title is based on an actual postcard that Ernest’s parents, Frieda and Semi Haas, along with Ernest and Ilse, wrote to Walter in America on the eve of their deportation ...

http://www.jstandard.com/articles/2194/1/%91Some-of-the-heaviness-gone-from-his-heart%92