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Christoph takes Holocaust remembrance to the next generation of Germans

Last Shabbat, as members entered Temple Sinai’s Torah study class, they noticed a tall, attractive man wearing a kippah. As he reintroduced himself, surprised and welcoming eyes embraced him.

Christoph Kleineberg, now 27, was only 12 when he first came to Temple Sinai in 2001 with Netzwerk, a pioneering after-school German club studying the Holocaust. But Christoph, who is pursuing a second master’s degree at Columbia University, has never forgotten us, Netzwerk or the Holocaust.

A little background: English teacher Christina Whitelaw founded Netzwerk in Bünde, Germany, in the mid-1990s. Her students, including Christoph, researched the fate of Bünde Jews in the Holocaust. They found the names of 54 Bünde Jews who perished, and tracked down survivors; installed plaques in front of the deceased’s last home; held annual Kristallnacht services; and memorialized the victims on Sinai’s bimah in 2001.

Christoph was in Denver last week to spend quality time with Elaine Spanier, wife of the late Red Spanier. Red was born in Bünde and escaped to England as a child with his parents.

In 1999, the Spaniers’ grandson asked his grandparents to join him in Bünde. When the Spaniers arrived, the Netzwerk students were waiting. To them, the Holocaust finally had a face.

Rabbi Raymond Zwerin, leader of the Torah study class with Rabbi Steven Kaye, spoke of his first encounter with Netzwerk. He had vowed never to visit Germany, but Elaine and others urged him to traverse the hateful waters. Despite his unbelief, Zwerin accepted.

He traced his revelatory turning point to the day he accompanied the class to Sachsenhausen. “A German parent was crying,” Zwerin said. “She told me she had seen camps with descendants of the perpetrators, but never the victims.” He realized Netzwerk’s validity. These kids have internalized their country’s atrocities in the Holocaust. They carry the burden — and others follow.

Now writing a book on Netzwerk and Bünde’s Jews, Christoph travels to four US cities to update survivors’ information — but his heart takes precedence over data. He sits with survivors, listens to them, learns from them. What some Germans still minimize, he supplants with truth — our truth.

Remembering the Holocaust is Christoph’s mission. We know he will go the distance.

Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News




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