Sunday, January 26, 2003

Distant mission is honored
German recognized for preservatin of Jewish history

By John Railey

Mary Lou Broderick was fresh out of her American college when she finally saw the town in Germany where her family lived for generations before fleeing the Holocaust.

An aunt showed her around Bad Sobernheim, pointing out house after house where Jews had once lived and offering what little she knew of where they had gone during World War II: "They went to South America. They went to Canada. We don't know what happened to them."

Broderick's mother made it to the United States with her family, and Broderick has lived in Winston-Salem for the past five years. This weekend she is visiting Germany again to honor a German who is not Jewish, a man who has saved a big chunk of her Jewish family's history in their hometown.

Hans-Eberhard Berkemann, an elementary- school teacher born near the end of the Holocaust, saved two synagogues from destruction, including one that Broderick's family worshiped in. He also documented gravestones in nine cemeteries. Berkemann said last week that he's ashamed of the Holocaust, and that Germans should help preserve Jewish history.

Broderick and her family nominated him for an award from the Obermayer Foundation in Massachusetts, which recognizes the work of Germans who are not Jewish to preserve Jewish history. Typically, the awards go to people who have labored long in relative anonymity. Berkemann, one of seven who will be honored in Berlin, said he appreciates the recognition.

Monday is Holocaust Memorial Day in Germany. After the ceremony, Berkemann will show Broderick around Bad Sobernheim.

For Broderick, it's a trip that promises to be laced with laughter and tears as family stories come rushing back. She never hated all Germans, Broderick said, but "I was just very much aware of history."

In her house here, Broderick has photos of her husband and two grown daughters, evidence of a life built far from Hitler's Germany.

But there are other things in her house as well. On a shelf is a pewter lamp damaged by the soldier who stormed her mother's home, as well as a portrait of a sailboat with a hole in the sail made by a gun butt.

Nazis and nightmares

Broderick, 54, grew up in Andover, Mass., haunted by the stories of what happened to her family.

"For a long time as a child, I had recurring dreams about Nazis trying to catch me, that sort of thing," she said.

She remembers a classmate flying a Nazi flag on his bike. She said that her mother called the boy's mother to tell her she had no idea of the horror and the terror that the flag evoked.

"You never really know what your parents go through," Broderick said. "You only hear it secondhand."

But family stories, oft repeated, brought the Holocaust too close, she said. She tells the stories now herself of a proud family dragged down by hate. Her family, the Marums, had for generations run a hosiery mill in Bad Sobernheim that bore their name.

Then came November 1938 and Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.

Soldiers stormed the Marums' house, pushing her grandmother around and breaking most of the glass, Broderick said.

"My mother said the worst thing was they made my grandfather sweep up the glass. This is a man who would give you the shirt off his back," she said.

Broderick's mother, Hildegard Lebow, of Andover, said that they knew some of the soldiers who stormed their house. "Some were our teachers," said Lebow, 85. "People at that time were forced to do things with the Nazis."

The family sold their factory and fled to the United States, but one of her relatives wasn't so lucky, Broderick said. A great-great- uncle who was in his 90s was taken by the Germans and probably died in a concentration camp, one of more than six million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

His housekeeper, who was not Jewish, argued against his deportation until she was told to shut up or she'd be deported as well. After the war, Broderick said, her family got their factory back. They renewed their ties with the housekeeper and supported her financially for the rest of her life.

Friends and strangers

Broderick's family joined relatives who had started a hosiery mill in Massachusetts under the Marum name.

She was educated at Boston University, and met her husband, Jim, on a blind date during her tour of Germany after college. He was serving with the U.S. Army there. Broderick is now the co-owner of an image-consulting agency here.

She didn't return to Germany again until now, and has never met Berkemann, who is 59.

However, he knew her grandfather, and as he was saving their synagogue and cemetery, he corresponded with her cousins and one of her aunts, sharing information he had found in his research.

The synagogue, which had been used as a warehouse, was scheduled for destruction until Berkemann stepped in with what friends describe as his trademark methods: Butting heads with community leaders, recruiting allies and pestering officials into action.

Berkemann is raising money to restore the synagogue and turn it into a community center that Jews and non-Jews can use, one that would have concerts, lectures and a library to document Bad Sobernheim's Jewish culture.

Any synagogue is a house of God and should be preserved, said Berkemann, who is Christian. He spoke from his home in Bad Sobernheim through a translator.

His grandfather was beaten for opposing the Nazis and his father, a minister, preached against them and narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo, according to the Obermayer Foundation.

Berkemann said that Germans who don't help Jews in whatever way they can are indirectly continuing what Hitler started.

When she last visited Germany, Broderick said, "I would look at people and wonder if they were a Nazi."

Holocaust stories still haunt her. "I had the hardest time going to see Schindler's List because it was just too close for comfort," she said. "Finally, I watched it on HBO."

The movie tells the true story of Oscar Schindler, a German factory owner, not a Jew, who spent his fortune and risked his life to save the lives of many of his Jewish workers. It also grimly depicts German soldiers killing the workers Schindler couldn't save.

Broderick said she never blamed all Germans for what happened to her family.

And this weekend, she's meeting a German stranger who may well become her friend.

John Railey can be reached at 727-7288 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com

Illustrations/Photos: JOURNAL PHOTOS BY DAVID SANDLER;
Mary Lou Broderick shows the painting scarred by a Germanrifle butt (the white mark on the boat's sail).B2: Mary Lou Broderick keeps momentos of her family's past, amongthem a photo of her grandparents and articles about her mother'slife in Nazi Germany.
Type: Color and B2 Published in Black and White