107984 - just a number you say. Perhaps a random selection as the whirring digital display on your electric meter’s dial suddenly froze while clicking off kilowatts being consumed.
107984 - a meaningless number in the big scope of all things important and one easily forgotten. But for Norbert Wollheim, the numbers could never be forgotten — they were tattooed on his forearm.
Who was Mr. Wollheim and why were the 107984 digits, now carved in stone and placed atop the face of an unassuming cement block building, being formally unveiled to the public? And why was I witness to the ceremony? The answer begins when a letter addressed to my father arrived one day originating from the Federal Republic of Germany.
“What do they want from me, what now?” An invisible vice gripped his chest and his gut soured as he steeled himself before unsealing the envelope. My father had long since tried to expunge memories of the pains seared into his body and soul at the hands of Germans. He worried he would soon need a nitro to ease the building pressure. But the letter’s message did not require medicinal intervention, it elicited excitement, albeit a nervous one. The text detailed an invitation, an invitation to come to Frankfurt and be present when Norbert Wollheim would be posthumously honored on the tenth anniversary of his passing, date TBD. Acceptance meant my father would receive VIP treatment with the entire trip on the German Republic’s Deutschmark. To my shock, paying no heed to his inner demons or frailties of his eighth decade, my dad in no uncertain terms said, “I want to go”.
Why, I thought, considering all the hurdles to overcome and despite Germany being the country he vowed never to set foot in, did he suddenly need to go? I did know one thing; if he was set on making the journey, I was going with him.
But the question still hovered, Who was Mr. Wollheim?
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| Norbert Wollheim (1913 - 1998) |
Here’s where the story begins …. Norbert Wollheim grew up in an assimilated Berlin Jewish family. By his teen years he was already committed to the social justice work of Germany’s Jewish youth movement. After high school that passion was channeled into law studies which would enable his continued advocacy. But those career dreams ended in 1935 as the National Socialists (Nazis) then in power imposed laws prohibiting Jews from owning businesses and attending schools. With the noose further tightening around civil liberties and freedoms remaining for the Jewish community, Wollheim devoted himself tirelessly to organizing the Kindertransporte, a system of rail transport ferrying Jewish children at risk to safe havens in England and Sweden. The Gestapo caught up and arrested him and his young family in 1943 - they were sent to Auschwitz. Wollheim’s wife Rosa and their 3 year old son were immediately gassed. Wollheim was funneled to the Buna/Monowitz section of the camp to provide slave labor for IG Farben, a chemical cartel collaborating with the Nazis to produce synthetic fuel and rubber for German forces.
In Buna, Norbert Wollheim, activist and aspiring attorney, was inked with a new identity, 107984.
A few months later after the war enveloped my father’s town, he was shipped to Buna, branded with a number, and along with Wollheim and thousands of other prisoners, thrown into the slave labor force for IG.
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| 9.43 KZ Buna Monowitz/Auschwitz |
At war’s end both men were liberated. They and the other Buna/Monowitz survivors would start new lives and new families in different corners of the world. Norbert Wollheim chose to remain in Germany where he immediately resumed his advocacy, this time for needs of the hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons (DPs). He continued his involvement in rebuilding community and also testified in several post-war trials. By 1951with virtually all the DPs repatriated, Wollheim considered his work done. Reluctant to see his children grow up in Germany, he emigrated with his second family to the US. But before leaving he filed an unprecedented action against IG Farben. He sued the company seeking compensation for his years of forced labor. When the judgement was rendered three years later; the court ruled in his favor. During the appeal process an out-of-court global settlement was reached forcing IG to pay millions of Deutschmark to the several thousand former Buna laborers.
So it was that Norbert Wollheim was to be honored with a memorial in his name on the University of Frankfurt campus, near a complex that had been IG Farben’s HQ during the war. My father was among the survivors located who received an invitation to be present. Sadly he did not live to make the journey by the time plans for the memorial dedication were finally completed. The invitation however was passed on to me to go in his place. I know my father would have wanted it.
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| Former IG HQ on the Goethe Universitat campus in Frankfurt |
Epilogue:
107984 - the 6,000,000 - just numbers you might say … hardly. Each one stands for a man, woman, or child. Each of their lives represented a world of possibilities. On this Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019, we should make time to reflect on that tenet; respecting and placing value on every life. Our world might then become a better place.
Visit my web site anytime to view other Galleries, Photo-essays including the full account of my experience in Frankfurt (Liberated ... but Not Yet Free), and read previous blog-posts, then kindly share on social media. Thank you.
images © David Greenfield
