- 3 weeks ago
Who Do You Think You Are?" Jerry Springer (TV Episode 2008 ...
In his 2008 Who Do You Think You Are? appearance, broadcaster Jerry Springer uncovered the tragic fate of his Jewish grandmothers, Marie Calman and Selma Springer, who were murdered in Nazi Holocaust camps. Born in London to parents who fled Germany, Springer traced his family's escape and the destruction of his ancestors in Poland and Germany.
In his 2008 Who Do You Think You Are? appearance, broadcaster Jerry Springer uncovered the tragic fate of his Jewish grandmothers, Marie Calman and Selma Springer, who were murdered in Nazi Holocaust camps. Born in London to parents who fled Germany, Springer traced his family's escape and the destruction of his ancestors in Poland and Germany.
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00:04Jerry Springer has lived in America since 1949 but was born in England the
00:10son of German Jewish refugees the journey of my particular voyage through
00:17this life at least my first memory of it probably took place here I was five
00:22years old and we were coming to America and my parents having survived the
00:27Holocaust and having to start life over and I want to find out how did this
00:34voyage really begin how long has the journey been I know for me it started in
00:39England and I know for my parents it started and almost ended in Germany but
00:45before the concentration camps before Hitler what what was of our family then
00:49who were these people that gave my parents the character they had
01:00so
01:09so
01:27so
01:35Jerry Springer has lived in America for nearly 60 years and is the world's most
01:41controversial talk show host with his eponymous chat shows syndicated to over
01:4740 countries
01:51before that he was a TV news anchor and had a political career as mayor of Cincinnati
01:59but Jerry was born Gerald Norman Springer in London
02:03in 1944 where he lived with his father Richard mother Margot and sister Evelyn in 1949
02:14in 1949 the family emigrated to America and settled in New York
02:23Jerry has come back to his old neighborhood Queens in New York to talk to his sister about their
02:29family
02:31Gerald how do you feel about going on this trip
02:36I'm excited I'm excited I'm excited because I only heard bits and pieces of what their life was
02:42like and who our relatives were you know I heard something you know I heard a little bit obviously about
02:47the Holocaust and that kind of stuff
02:49but the people they would talk about are only people in a picture it's not anyone we ever got to
02:55know
02:55our parents never really spoke much about their past and I think it was pretty typical of Holocaust families not
03:03to it was hurtful it was sad
03:06life was taken away from them that they didn't choose to have taken away
03:11and they were very much involved in starting all over again I mean all their energy went there
03:15you know we all have these faded pictures
03:18but we didn't know these people because they were exterminated before you know
03:23before we were born now in this picture here we have mom and dad this picture is their wedding picture
03:29yeah
03:30March 12 1933 to put this in perspective this is literally six weeks after Hitler came to power he came
03:37to power January 30th of 33
03:39there are a lot of our relatives or their friends there
03:42but the people that we can really point out obviously is mom and dad mom looking beautiful
03:47and next to mom is
03:50dad's mom
03:50selmer selmer selmer and to the right of dad is mom's mom
03:56marie marie i had heard that they they had died in the camps i kept hearing auschwitz yeah we all
04:02assumed
04:02it was auschwitz yeah that was the big camp well we'll find that out and down here is erica is
04:10our
04:10cousin so she's five here when she's five at the wedding yeah
04:13and then i found something else which is amazing this is a certificate of registration
04:18and it's moms look at that wonderful picture and 9th august 9th 1939
04:26this is not just family history this is world history this is really you know it's not i mean
04:32it's you only see it in textbooks and now and what's really poignant
04:37personally and emotionally but also historically is this sentence wow a refugee from nazi oppression
04:46and that really tells the story not only of them but of so many people
05:00after seeing the stamp in the passport which said that they were uh refugees from nazi oppression
05:09um i'd now like to go to england and find out what we can about why they
05:16among all these people that were dying to get out of germany why they were permitted to come in
05:22jerry's parents margo and richard were among the 80 000 jewish refugees who were accepted into
05:28britain in the 1930s including 10 000 unaccompanied children at first about 2 000 jews entered the
05:36country each year but when anti-semitic violence escalated in 1938 their number multiplied to 3 000
05:43a month other countries such as holland and switzerland took fewer refugees as their nazi
05:49neighbor became more powerful the united states had a rigid quota system from 1924 which it failed to
05:56change despite the jewish plight britain was virtually alone in the world in increasing the number of
06:14refugees admitted to understand how his parents managed to get into britain jerry has come to
06:19golders hill park in london to meet tony grenville from the association of jewish refugees
06:28uh parents always told me that you know england saved our lives we would not have been alive but
06:34for england that's true both you and i are actually only here because the british let in
06:40quite a substantial number of refugees jewish refugees from what was in germany included austria
06:46where my parents came from then uh in the last 18 months or so before the war because if they
06:52hadn't
06:52then our parents would never have got out and we would never have been born
06:58because hicka went into poland september 1st that's that's when the gates shut oh my god
07:02because i understood my parents came over like in august or just a few weeks before they came that's right
07:08they did um and here is here are the documents that we've found from the german jewish aid committee
07:16it says um richard springer from berlin birthplace lonsberg who's a shoe merchant
07:28it says here we obtain permit on guarantee of miss goldberg who's miss goldberg i don't think we know
07:37who exactly she is but the that is how your parents lives were saved and how you came to be
07:44born
07:44that someone offered you a financial guarantee it was 50 pounds and that saved your parents lives oh my god
07:57britain's visa system favored people like richard springer
08:01a well-educated well-traveled middle-class jewish man with a guarantor
08:07on escaping to the uk richard moved his family into a small flat in golders green
08:12and scraped a living making uniforms for british troops however for other educated jews not fortunate
08:19enough to find a guarantor the only way they could get into britain was by finding work as a domestic
08:25servant in advance of fleeing germany this is an excerpt from the times of london it's for domestic
08:34servants all of them jews from germany some of them plainly anything but domestic servants by
08:42circumstances desperate to get in here german married couple wife perfect in all household duties
08:49trained tailoress for ladies and children husband gardener handyman seeks post these are probably
08:57university graduates and look what they put here non-aryan yes gentlemen german non-aryan well-bred of
09:04highest culture and education god the desperation these are voices from the very brink of the abyss get
09:12me out my dad when as i was told when thinking you know when they finally made the decision they
09:20wanted to
09:21get out and they had to get out and whether they would try to go to france or try to
09:25go to england
09:27and france obviously was next door so that but he chose england because he
09:39he chose england because he said
09:43it would be tougher to get across the channel you know it would take them longer
09:52i mean just the things well i get emotional about it it's just that the things that we don't even
09:58think about a consideration you know it's such an innocent kind of a thing but good lord what they
10:06must have been worried about that you would really think we better go to england because it'll you know
10:10you always knew that you were going to be chased the thing i need to do now is get on
10:18to mainland
10:18europe and see if the springers have any roots
10:26the place i would really like to see is lansburg because that's where my dad was from
10:34but i know nothing about it
10:38the town of landsburg now called gorsu is situated in western poland 300 miles from warsaw
10:46but in the 1930s when the springer family lived there it was part of germany
10:53jerry's father richard owned a successful shoe shop a family business he took over in 1930
11:00when his father nathan springer died richard ran the shop until 1937 when he moved to berlin
11:12jerry is in poland and en route to landsburg to find out why
11:19they had a wonderful middle-class life they were never wealthy but they weren't
11:23poverty-stricken they were middle-class jews in germany i'd love to find out what prompted my parents
11:31to come up to berlin for the last two years before they headed to uh to england
11:39and i wonder what was the final straw that said we got to get out of here and i have
11:45suspicions of what
11:46happened but uh why would you give up this lucrative business
11:57when jerry's father inherited the shoe shop the town of landsburg was a thriving business center
12:04helped by a bustling river trade
12:07of the 30 000 people living here in 1930 only 600 of them were jewish
12:15although a minority the jews owned many of the big shops
12:19and the springers had a prime location on the main high street
12:23life seemed good for the newlyweds richard and margot
12:30jerry heads to the town archive to meet christoph jezerwovsky who's uncovered a planning application
12:36for the springer shoe shop
12:43oh wow
12:47shoe store springer this is the design of what the shoe store was admitted by them
12:53for the shoe store for the shoe store and when i saw the picture of my dad standing in front
13:00of the
13:02springer shoe store you're right i mean this is what it looked like the windows on both sides
13:0843 rickster or so
13:12so what i've been told over the years is that the springer shoe store was attacked my mom
13:22and some other people in the store hid out in the back so they didn't see her they didn't get
13:26her
13:27and great damage was done to the store great fear that's very likely that's that's that was the
13:34situation for jewish shop owners just to understand a bit of the atmosphere in landsberg we just
13:41wanted to have a look at the local press from the time this is lansberger general anti good april of
13:481933
13:49precisely hitler's been in office for three months and now this is the lansberger paper and look what
13:56they got they already have guys with swastikas running for office yes for start parliament on us but
14:04there i mean they just look like evil don't they
14:11this is really big advert and it's nsdap yes and what they say kauf nicht in jüdischen
14:18don't buy from jews yes gate news to jüdischen rechts and walten don't go to jewish accountants
14:28might at jüdische arts avoid jewish doctors and deutsche bowen german farmers don't buy the products
14:35from jewish middlemen and all jewish shops had to carry a sign that they are jewish
14:44but there must have been incredibly difficult times for people who wanted to make the business
14:57to the best of our knowledge your father's shop used to stand here because it was like
15:02that when it was like jubilee and let's say half of this window wow this was the main street yeah
15:08so
15:09it was the high street of of lansberg and as you can see it's not far away from you know
15:15from the
15:15main square it was a wonderful location i'm reminded of a story and it just suddenly hits me now why
15:23he
15:23would have said that when he came to america he was a he made toys and he he was a
15:30jobber that meant he
15:31bought toys from manufacturers and then would go out and sell them to people he lived out of his car
15:38in terms of his business and i always wondered why and i you know why don't you have a store
15:42with
15:43all your things and he says well when he said when you have a store you always have to wait
15:51for people
15:52to come and and you're not in control of your business but if you can go out and sell you
15:57can do
15:57it and when i think of what happened to him when they put up those signs that said don't shop
16:02here
16:03and every day he would worry about will people come as things got really tough it now all kind of
16:09makes sense that because he was really strong about that he never wanted to have a place where he had
16:15to
16:15wait for business he was going to go out and get it and i guess as the nazis came more
16:21and more into
16:22power that's a daily worry that he had after the mass boycott of jewish businesses in 1933 the nazis
16:31introduced other punitive measures to further sideline the jewish community over the next few
16:37years they were banned from being doctors lawyers and accountants from riding public transport going to
16:44public parks and libraries owning cars bicycles and telephones and even from owning pets
16:54for jerry's parents life in landsberg was becoming intolerable
17:01when the community is this relatively small compared to let's say a berlin
17:08they must have walked down the street every day wondering who's looking at them and who's telling and
17:14who's you know who's going to attack them or you know when's the next bad thing going to happen
17:23that must have been horrific so even though this is an idyllic town to grow up in
17:28imagine how it changed overnight with the arrival of hitler and uh that must have really been a nightmare
17:37i can see why they went up to berlin not just because my mom's family was up there but there
17:43must
17:43almost have been a feeling of some kind of safety in a bigger city than being stuck here in what
17:51became
17:51a horribly prejudicial small town jerry now wants to see if he can trace the springer line back a further
18:01generation his grandfather nathan founded the springer shoe shop in landsberg but came from neustertine
18:09a smaller town 100 miles to the northeast can jerry find out who nathan's parents were
18:23i'm really excited now because this is the chance for the first time
18:28to go and see where my grandfather was born and not only that if i can find out some information
18:38about my great-grandparents that that really would be amazing because now then they they start to be
18:46maybe a a line that makes sense about who we are
18:51one of them that works and they can find out who we can find out which we can find this
18:56out
18:56jerry is meeting historian professor christard hoffman at the neustertine archive
19:03this is married certificate of
19:06Nathan and selma they were married here in eighteen ninety six november now
19:13Now, it gets interesting, you know, he said, son of.
19:17Oh, so this is my great-grandfather.
19:20Exactly.
19:20A name that has never been uttered to me.
19:23I mean, it's not like I forgot the name.
19:25I don't think I've ever been told the name of my great-grandfather.
19:29In other words, my dad's grandfather.
19:31And his name was?
19:34Abraham.
19:35Oh, this is Abraham.
19:37Right.
19:37My great-grandfather was the first man?
19:41This is...
19:44I have good roots.
19:46All right.
19:47So the next photo we have here are the files of the Jewish community.
19:53Okay.
19:55And what you see here is an overview about who was a member in the board of the Jewish community.
20:03Yeah, and what did you read there?
20:05Springer.
20:07Oh, this is Abraham.
20:08He was representative of the community and entered the board of the community in 1880.
20:13These 12 people together would run the whole community.
20:19And he was one of them.
20:22455 Jews around 1880.
20:24In Neustadtien.
20:26Just in Neustadtien.
20:26So he's pretty prominent in the Jewish community.
20:29He is pretty prominent.
20:30And was a significant community.
20:31How many people in the town altogether?
20:338,000.
20:34Oh, so it was 5% of the city.
20:38Exactly.
20:42In 1880, Abraham Springer and the Jews of Neustadtien were a well-integrated part of the community.
20:51Active in the town's many social clubs and guilds.
20:54But in 1881, this peaceful community was shaken by the arrival of anti-Semitism.
21:02And Jerry's great-grandfather had to take a stand.
21:06On the 13th of February, 1881, one of the major agitators from Berlin came here and had a great speech
21:16here, a hate speech we know from the records, you know, against the Jews.
21:22And his name, the agitator's name, was Henrique.
21:27And he was already this kind of guy who used anti-Semitism on a racial basis.
21:32So he argued that the Jews, you know, are no Germans because they are from a different race.
21:38And his rhetoric was really inflammatory.
21:42And then, on the 18th of February, so five days later, the synagogue, which was on this side here, went
21:50up in flames.
21:51The radical anti-Semitic leader Ernst Henrique was a precursor to Adolf Hitler.
21:57Fifty years before Hitler, Henrique argued for the mass deportation of Jews and was successful in rallying crowds with hate
22:05speeches.
22:07In 1881, Henrique convinced the people of Neustadtien that Abraham Springer and the Jewish council had started the synagogue fire
22:15themselves
22:16in order to claim on the insurance for a newer, bigger one.
22:22Several weeks later, Henrique spoke again and rioting broke out.
22:27Nearly all Jewish houses had their windows smashed.
22:30Abraham Springer appealed for outside help.
22:34We have actually found a letter of the time where the Jewish community would send out to people in Germany
22:41and asking them for help in this situation where they really felt that they were under siege in many respects.
22:51Dear Sir, for a year now, our district has been the theater for rampant agitation against us and our religious
22:58brothers.
22:59And on the 18th of February, we suffered the great misfortune of having our synagogue, along with all the Sefer
23:06Torah and other items, destroyed by fire.
23:10The heavy blow has nearly put the existence of our community into question, the consequences are incalculable,
23:17and the material sacrifices that are now required are immense in comparison with our means.
23:23We are addressing you, Honorable Sir, with a respectful plea to support us in our difficult fight against malice and
23:30false accusations.
23:31The chairman of the synagogue community.
23:35And Abraham was on this board.
23:38Abraham was on this board.
23:41And he was certainly part, you know, in the, what can we do, you know, to defend ourselves.
23:46And this was even at the time, you know, before the riots, you know, this was immediately after the synagogue
23:50was burned down.
23:52It's nice to know that he was a fighter.
23:53He was a fighter.
23:54He stood up.
23:55He wanted self-defense against this fight back against anti-Semitism.
24:00He didn't want to give in.
24:02The letter was successful in garnering support from all corners of Germany.
24:06And Abraham Springer and the board rebuilt their synagogue and sued Henrique for defamation of religion.
24:15Henrique was ahead of his time.
24:17And the orderly world of 19th century Germany was not yet ready for him.
24:22So he took his racist views to Africa.
24:27Neustatine was a unique national case and one that Jerry's great-grandfather was at the heart of.
24:34His efforts quelled the flame of anti-Semitism here.
24:38For the time being, at least.
24:41It's nice to know, even though the irony of my family being the victims of the anti-Semitism for the
24:46last 150 years.
24:49That there he was at the center of it, fighting back.
24:52I'm proud.
24:54It's weird to be such a part of history.
24:57Such a bad history.
25:00Jerry's now moving forward one generation to see if he can discover the fate in the Holocaust of both his
25:07widowed grandmothers.
25:09His father's mother, Selma Springer, and his mother's mother, Marie Kalman.
25:17Jerry's beginning his quest in Berlin, where both Selma and Marie were last seen by the family in 1939.
25:28He first hopes to discover what became of his maternal grandmother, Marie Kalman.
25:33One of her other grandchildren is Jerry's cousin, Erika.
25:38Erika lived the first 10 years of her life in Germany, until her family emigrated to America.
25:45And she has kindly agreed to come back to Berlin to help Jerry with his search.
25:52Do you remember your friends here?
25:55I remember some of the friends, yes.
25:57So what was school like?
25:59In school, like first things were okay, and then after Hitler got in, in a couple of years, I was
26:06about eight years old,
26:08kids started to be nasty, called me different names because I was a Jew, and then after a while the
26:15teacher started.
26:17Wait, the teacher said in German, Erika, you're a dirty Jew?
26:22She wouldn't use my name, she just would say,
26:26Du bist ein dreckischer Jude.
26:30So often you hear now, well, that was Hitler and the people themselves, they didn't have anything against the Jews,
26:37they didn't know anything.
26:39But you hear a story like that, that wasn't just Hitler.
26:43No, it wasn't. Absolutely not. It was the people just as much.
26:47How about all the kids? The Hitler you hid. Yeah.
26:52It was everybody, would walk along the street.
26:56Somebody would spit at me.
26:59Because you were Jewish? Yes.
27:02I mean, nothing surprised us anymore.
27:10Jerry wants to see if Erika has any information on their grandmother Marie,
27:14who by 1939 was a widow.
27:17These are our grandparents, Morten and Marie.
27:22This is the engagement picture.
27:24Oh my gosh.
27:27What a smart looking couple.
27:30Look at that dress.
27:32And look at those, that handlebar mustache.
27:36I love it.
27:38What dignity. I mean, my gosh, they're like ambassadors.
27:43She was beautiful.
27:45Yes.
27:46From the moment we got to the United States, my mother tried to get a visa for her to come
27:51to the States.
27:52And by the time she got enough money together, that letter she sent to our grandmother to let her know.
27:59The letter came back to us, unopened, and there was a stamp on it, deported to Poland.
28:05And that was the last we ever heard.
28:08Do you know where she went?
28:11I found out when I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, that she went to Lutz.
28:20To where?
28:21Lutz.
28:21Oh.
28:23And so did her sister and her sister's husband.
28:27Where is Lutz?
28:28It's in Poland.
28:29Yeah.
28:30But I don't know anything further they know.
28:31But you don't, I mean we're in Poland.
28:32No, I don't know.
28:34Our mothers knew that their mother was deported to Poland.
28:39Right.
28:41But they never knew what happened to her.
28:44They knew.
28:45By then they knew what was going on.
28:47They knew.
28:49They saw the writing on the wall.
29:09Well now that Erica's told me where my mom's mom was taken.
29:13And that's news to me.
29:15Somehow I thought it was Auschwitz.
29:17But if it's this other place, then I want to find out what happened.
29:25I want to pursue that.
29:26I want to go there next.
29:30I don't know how I'm going to, I mean, I'm not sure how I'm going to feel when I find
29:37out.
29:38There's almost a protection in really not knowing the details.
29:47Along with thousands of other European Jews, Jerry's grandmother Marie was forcibly expelled
29:53from her home and sent to Lodz, pronounced Wuj in Poland.
29:59In both Wuj and Warsaw, the Nazis divided the cities to create the two biggest and most formidable
30:06ghettos in Poland, cramming 200,000 Jews into the Wuj ghetto and 445,000 into the one in Warsaw.
30:19The function of the ghettos was to separate Jews from non-Jews and to get them to contribute
30:25to the German war effort through forced labor in small factories.
30:30Conditions were squalid and inhumane, with little to eat and random beatings.
30:37Daily survival for Marie Kalman would have been a constant struggle, with tens of thousands dying of disease and starvation.
30:52At the Wuj Central Archive, Jerry is meeting genealogist Petya Schroeder.
31:05This is a picture of my grandmother. I would like to know if you know anything, obviously specifically
31:12about her fate, or generally what happened to the people who were shipped here.
31:18Yes, I have indeed found information. We know that she was deported in 1941 to the Wuj ghetto.
31:29She was in the first Berlin transport. This is a Berlin transport list. This is a handwritten list.
31:39And you find her name here. Oh my gosh. Marie Kalman.
31:51Okay. So this is the registration card for your grandmother.
31:59It's reporting on arrival in the ghetto.
32:03On October 27th, she moved into one room at flat number 9, house number 25.
32:16And she was given the ID card number 368253.
32:22We know that she moved in with six people into one room without any kitchen in this house.
32:30And two of these people were her sister and her brother-in-law.
32:36It was a room without any furniture, without beds. It was in October. Winter was coming. It was cold.
32:44There was no water. There was no toilet. For your grandmother, it must have been a great shock.
32:51She left a wonderful apartment. She must have had a wonderful life. We can see it in her picture.
32:58And she came into hell.
33:06Do you know how long they lived there?
33:10Yes. We know that she lived there about half a year.
33:15And that I have found here her so-called reporting on departure, her upmeldung.
33:23Well, they kept records of everything, didn't they?
33:28They kept records of everything.
33:32On May 6th, 1942, the above-named vacated room 25, reason expelled.
33:44The new address is Auser-Heuptes-Ghetto, which means outside the ghetto. An unknown place.
33:56Where was she sent?
33:58Resettled is a euphemism for being deported to the extermination camp in Helmlo.
34:27We are now walking up to the railway station from where your grandmother was taken to Helm.
34:34The people who were destined for a certain transport were collected at some place in the ghetto and had to
34:42walk over for several miles to this station.
34:50And they were forced into horse wagons. Not normal trains, but for cattle.
35:11And they weren't told where they were going.
35:13They were told that they would leave the ghetto and would go to another place, that they would have work.
35:20They were just going to be resettled, so-called. And they must have thought that...
35:27Whatever it is, it's going to be better.
35:29Yes. Or it cannot be worse.
35:31All right.
35:49And was this the name of it?
35:51It's the name of the district and the name of the train station.
35:54Oh, God.
36:13Here we have pictures of people...
36:16Being marched to the train.
36:19Being marched to the train.
36:23With the few belongings they... they had.
36:30Children.
36:35What are these soldiers thinking?
36:38It's one thing to say, you know, Hitler was the devil and all that, and a few of the people
36:44around him.
36:45But what are just the regular soldiers?
36:48I mean, when they were watching this group of human beings,
36:52who obviously had never done anything to them.
36:54So it isn't like, oh, I hate these people, you know.
36:56This isn't the craziness that sometimes takes place when people shoot each other during wars.
37:02No.
37:03These are clearly innocent civilians.
37:06It's not only forcing people into the train, but it's also beating people off.
37:12It's killing by own hand people, children.
37:17Who were too weak or who fell down to shoot them.
37:23Indeed.
37:40Very good.
37:45Very good.
37:51Thank you very much for being here.
37:51I don't know.
38:39I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
38:50Jerry's grandmother Marie was one of the 65,000 Jews deported from this station
38:56to the Hell No Death Camp during the first half of 1942.
39:07Jerry is retracing his grandmother's final route to discover what remains of the extermination
39:13camp.
39:17Now that we're actually coming to the grounds, which was her last journey, it takes on a
39:29a personal element, and in a sense, a much more human element.
39:38I wish I could tell you it was 800 years ago, and it was a barbaric era, but of course
39:48it
39:48wasn't. It was 60 years ago, 70 years ago, in Western civilized culture, Western civilized
40:00nation. And it still boggles the mind to think that it could have happened.
40:15Hell No was the first camp to be established by the Nazis with the specific function of
40:20mass murder. Marie was therefore one of the first victims of the final solution.
40:27From the train station, your grandmother was brought to this place. And here you see the
40:37fundaments of a manor house. I can show you a picture. It was quite a lovely manor house,
40:50which was taken over by the Germans, in December 1941. The people were welcomed very politely by
41:00the German guards. And some of them were dressed in white coats and had a stethoscope, just to
41:07show that everything would be fine. And they were told that they were going to another place
41:14place where they would work and where they could live a proper life. And before that, they had to
41:24take a bath and their clothes had to be disinfected. And they had to undress. They gave their clothes
41:31clothes and everything they had to the guards, who put numbers on the clothes, who put them
41:38in packages, so everybody would know. I mean, it was all fake, of course. But some people
41:46would think, okay, I will get my things back.
41:50And so they went into the basement of this building? They went in right here?
41:53This building, yes. You can even see the corridor. Then they were led to the end of the corridor,
42:03and they went up on a ramp to the gas van. To the gas van? To the gas van. There
42:16were no gas
42:17chambers. There were gas vans. This is a photo of the gas van. But they couldn't see that it
42:26was a van. And they just thought they were going into another room. This is so awful, this picture.
42:33I'm just checking if everything is working. And when the van was filled up with 40, 50, 60
42:44people, they closed the doors. And the gas van drove from this area to the woods five kilometers further.
43:00And when do they turn the gas on? The exhaust fumes were led into the van. And on the road
43:07to the woods, the gassing procedure started. It was a long death. It took 15 minutes to get unconscious.
43:26And after 20 minutes, Pipa had died.
43:40Gas vans were first used by the Nazis to murder psychiatric patients in 1940. They were then used
43:47at Helno to murder the Jews of Łódź. The gas vans killed hundreds of thousands and served as the blueprint
43:53for the industrialized gas chambers that were to follow in camps like Auschwitz, killing millions.
44:01For Yom HaShoah there is this reading written by Sonia Schreiber Weitz.
44:10We are gathered at this site today to remember six million. Six million little boys and girls,
44:16men and women, grandmothers and grandfathers, who by the whim of tyrants are no more. To remember the
44:23blameless and the pure whose lives went up in smoke, in the chambers of fire, in the factories of death.
44:30We remember that in the heart of civilized Europe, aided by the silent acquiescence
44:35of so many of the nations and the peoples of the world, six million Jewish men and women,
44:45one million children among them, were taken by other human beings to die in gas and fire,
44:51their ashes to fall nameless and graveless over a continent that had itself become a graveyard.
44:58We remember the millions of Poles, Gypsies, Russians and other Europeans caught in the midst of the Holocaust,
45:04whose lives ended as victims of Nazism's diabolically efficient technology of death.
45:32Jerry now turns his attention to his father's side of the family to try and discover what happened to his
45:38paternal grandmother, Selma Springer.
45:42Selma helped set up the Springer shoe store in Landsberg with her husband Nathan.
45:49But following his death in 1930, she went to live with her brother Herman, a famous doctor in Berlin.
45:57The last time Jerry's father saw his mother was in 1939, just before he escaped to Britain.
46:04Jerry knows she died in the Holocaust, but he doesn't know where or when.
46:09To find an answer, he's come back to Germany to the Potsdam Archive, which holds extensive Jewish deportation records.
46:17He's meeting Dr. Monica Nakath and historian Dr. Roland Peach.
46:23We've had a look for your grandmother, Selma Springer.
46:26Yes.
46:27And we found a file on her, which was inside the file for a Hellman Alcalus.
46:32Does that name say anything to you, Hellman Alcalus?
46:34He was the brother of Selma.
46:37Indeed, he was, and they lived together in his flat at the end.
46:40Yes.
46:40So that's where their files are located together.
46:43We're first going to have a look at the smaller file, like Selma's file.
46:47Like everything, these files are done by the Geheime Staatspolizei, by the Gestapo.
46:54And there's basically a form they had to fill in.
47:01These are all her possessions, which you'll find my friends later there as well, which become the property of the
47:08Reich.
47:08Look at this, this is what she had.
47:13Two dresses, two undergarments, one shirt, one corset, three pairs of stockings, one pair of galoshes.
47:29So they put these things down so that they could then be sold?
47:35Exactly.
47:36They were all part of their possessions, from the bank account to the last shirt.
47:41And they thought they'd get some money for this?
47:43Exactly.
47:44It's absurd.
47:44In the case of Hellman, it's even documented here.
47:47We've got this bank account here, with the Deutsche Bank, 335 price mark, obviously that will all be confiscated.
47:59A gas bill here, he's paid up front for gas, so it's a deposit that is due to him, which
48:05the state then takes over.
48:07The electricity, asking for their contributions.
48:11And then here, national insurance subscriptions to be paid.
48:16And that is money out.
48:18And it is a bit, tells us a little bit more if you look at it.
48:26Theresienstadt?
48:27Yeah, that's the first time actually that someone that demands some money doesn't say he's been evacuated,
48:34but that is actually saying he has been brought to Theresienstadt.
48:38Have you ever heard of Theresienstadt?
48:40Theresienstadt is a Jewish ghetto outside Prague, and it's quite famous.
48:48It was meant to be a nice, comfortable ghetto for older Jews, for richer Jews, for artistic Jews.
48:56It was advertised like a giant retirement home.
48:59Right.
48:59We've got a photo here.
49:03So, you might have seen other transport photos.
49:07This is a lot more civil.
49:09It looks more civil.
49:10It looks a lot more civil.
49:11I mean, none of it is civil, but it looks like people just saying goodbye on a train, not packed
49:15in.
49:16Exactly.
49:17It looks a lot more comfortable.
49:18It doesn't look like a usual image you have of a deportation train.
49:23At least from the outside, it looked all like Theresienstadt would be something different.
49:30All right.
49:31Well, what I'd like to do now is to go to Theresienstadt, or whatever is left of it, in Czechoslovakia,
49:40and see what it was like there.
49:47The Nazis established the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1941, in a garrison town 40 miles north of Prague.
49:55The camp was designed for the resettlement of wealthy and eminent German Jews.
50:00Among them, Jerry's grandmother Selma.
50:07And in this Nazi propaganda film, Theresienstadt is shown as a model ghetto, with abundant leisure time, harmonious community living,
50:16and a holiday camp atmosphere.
50:20They made the film to convince the international community, including the Red Cross, that the Jews of Europe were being
50:28happily resettled.
50:30But when Selma Springer arrived in 1942, she would have discovered immediately that the reality of Theresienstadt was very different.
50:43She and thousands of Jews had been utterly deceived, as their promised idyllic community was rife with disease, overcrowding, and
50:55starvation.
50:59With the continual threat of deportation to the death camps.
51:09What the Nazis tried to do here tells the story of how vile these people were.
51:20that they could so play this game of trying to fool the outside world, at least for a time successfully,
51:30that all the people were being treated well, so that they would not see the Helmos in Auschwitz where extermination
51:38was taking place.
51:45So this is part of the fraud. That's, that's what's disgusting about this place.
51:52Not just the starvation, not just the loss of liberty, not just the torture.
52:00The hell of this place is that it perpetuated the lie.
52:06Of the 140,000 Jews sent to Theresienstadt, nearly 130,000 died.
52:19And of the 10,000 children, only 1,600 survived.
52:27The vast majority of people were sent to their death in Auschwitz.
52:32including most of those forced to take part in this propaganda film.
52:38But what exactly happened to Jerry's grandmother, Selma?
52:42He hopes that local guide, Karel Rozetz, can tell him when and where she died.
52:49Here you can see the only document we have found in our archives.
52:55The 17th of May, 1943.
52:58That's a list of all those persons who died.
53:12Here we go. Springer, Selma, Sarah, Gaborgan, Elkelis.
53:20She was 72.
53:24So she died May 17th.
53:27Yes.
53:29And she died in the ghetto hospital.
53:35She was not sent to the, to the east.
53:39Well, there's no good news in any of this, but at least she was spared the horror of gas chambers
53:52or death camp.
53:54Yeah.
53:55I found another record with the name of Springer.
54:06Flora, Flora, that was my grandfather's, that was Nathan's sister.
54:15My dad's, it would have been my dad's aunt.
54:21Flora.
54:25Flora.
54:28Nathan's sister.
54:31Well, if Flora, who married a fellow named Lyser,
54:39in 18th, she's born in 67.
54:43So she was almost 80.
54:45She was almost 80.
54:46So she probably,
54:50good guess, has children and grandchildren.
54:55That may still be alive today.
54:59Wow.
55:04Jerry now knows what happened to both his grandmothers in the Holocaust.
55:10His maternal grandmother, Marie Kalman,
55:14was murdered at Helmno,
55:16alongside her sister Therese,
55:19and brother-in-law Julius.
55:23Jerry's paternal grandmother, Selma Springer,
55:26perished in the Theresienstadt ghetto,
55:29along with her brother Herman,
55:31and sister-in-law Flora.
55:38Jerry, there is somebody here I would like you to meet.
55:42Here.
55:50How do you do?
55:52I have something to tell you.
55:54Yes.
55:55My grand-grandmother is Flora Laser Springer.
55:59She was a sister of your grandfather, Nathan.
56:04And I live in Israel.
56:18Oh, my God.
56:20Yeah.
56:21Actually, you have a big family in Israel.
56:24Oh.
56:26Now, what is your name?
56:27Yaron.
56:28Oh, that...
56:28It's meaning joy.
56:30Oh.
56:31My grandfather.
56:32So, you are actually the second cousin of my father,
56:36my late father Jacob.
56:37I'll show you his picture.
56:42This is he?
56:43This is your dad?
56:44Yeah.
56:44What a cool-looking guy.
56:46My father got out on July 39 in Kindertransport.
56:51And I think it was one of the last transport.
56:55My dad got out July 31st, August 1st.
56:59Wow.
57:00And he got out by train and then got over to England.
57:06So, literally, they got out within days of each other.
57:13It's a pleasure.
57:24Up until a few moments ago,
57:27what I was getting out of this week was closure,
57:31that I found out what happened to my grandparents.
57:34And I was concluding what I guess I had thought for a long time,
57:39is that there are no happy endings.
57:44But then, I met Yaron,
57:46and it just snapped me out of it.
57:49Because if you have family,
57:51it always goes on.
57:55So, that's the lesson of all of this,
57:58is hold on to your family.
58:05Because that's all you really have.
58:07That's what you got.
58:08That's what keeps you going.
58:11Because there will always be somebody that continues.
58:14Somebody to pass it on.
58:15Someone to hold on to.
58:19And...
58:22So, who do I think I am?
58:27I'm a link in the chain of a wonderful family.
58:31I'm blessed.
58:41If you missed Boris Johnson discovering his past last week,
58:44you can catch up online via the BBC iPlayer.
58:47And later here on BBC One,
58:49Bob Hoskins lies in wait in the last word monologues at 10.45.
58:54adventure,
58:55analyse
58:55?
59:04Well,
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