German postman honoured for Jewish genealogy work
25 January 2007
BERLIN, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A German postman with Jewish ancestry and a Nazi grandfather was honoured by a Jewish society on Thursday for compiling an 800-page compendium of Jewish family names in Germany.
Lars Menk, who delivers post by bicycle in the town of Spandau near Berlin, was recognised by American Jewish businessman Arthur Obermayer for his work in preserving German Jewish history by listing the 13,000 names.
In the late 1980s Menk discovered that his grandfather, a police officer during the Nazi era, had Jewish ancestors, meaning that he, too, had Jewish heritage.
An estimated 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust.
"It was a real surprise to find out that J had Jewish ancestry," Menk, 45, told Reuters. "I had always had a feeling that this was the case."
He began compiling a registry of the various different permutations of Jewish surnames in Germany -- the only work of its kind -- while working as a security guard in Berlin, The task took him a decade to complete.
Now he helps American Jewish families trace their German relatives.
The Obermayer Foundation, which has paid tribute to Germans for their work in preserving Jewish culture since 2000, made four other awards on Thursday.
One went to a German pensioner who has spent 20 years restoring broken gravestones in a Jewish cemetery and another to a Berlin woman whose parents were Nazis and who researched the history of a Jewish orphanage.
"These awards are made to people who recognise the past and do what they can to make up lor it," Obermayer said.