The Kahns lived here

   
My Grandpa Erickson served in Europe during the Second World War. He never talked about it with anyone, apparently, but it was obvious that the experience meant a lot to him. Uniform hanging neatly in the basement. Carefully created scrapbooks. And this beautiful desk, this glass-topped display desktop. Foreign coins, pins, and an oversized photo of Grandpa's group - battallion vs. regiment vs. corps vs. platoon always escaped me.

The story in the family was that Grandpa had been a jeep driver for a general, and that he had spent an entire winter without once sleeping in a heated building. As far as World War II hardships go it wasn't an especially dramatic one, but it was more hardship than any of us had faced so there it was.

For years now, I have wanted to make a copy of the photograph in the desk. Look at that. Deadly enemies and two generations later husband and wife. Their kids are buddies with the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Everything changes. Don't forget that.

I've heard there are many beautiful Holocaust memorials here in Germany. I've seen a couple here in Frankfurt, though the language barrier sometimes keeps me from getting to the details. I imagine that living here for a long time, and seeing memorial after memorial softens the impact, but things are all so new for me. You know what I think is just beautiful? These:

I'll be walking down an ordinary street and suddenly there are these stones at my feet. The closer I look the more the story reveals itself. Leopold and Johanna Kahn lived here. They were deported in 1942... about 50 years old, each of them. They spent some time in Theresienstadt, then died in Auschwitz in 1944.

They lived right here, right near Holzhausen Park! And as they approached their golden years they were taken away. They spent the last two years of their lives in concentration camps. How long were they able to keep up with the younger and the stronger? How frightened were they?

It's nothing new, I know. How many films have I seen about all this? How many books have I read? For some reason, this little reminder really reaches down into me.