Personal Stories

My beautiful mother, Lily Ruttner, was born on 29 November 1925 to Berta and Avraham Ruttner. She had three older brothers, Julius, Josef and Markus, and one younger sister, Elza. The family…

I have been researching my family history for years and in this context I have spent many hours in various archives and immersed myself in all kinds of documents and…

I could write a lot. I could recount the grey stories of the concentration camps and the post-war period, which are still incredibly distressing and painful today. I could mention…

My name is Margit Grome, and I am the daughter of Erik Holger Grome. He was a member of the resistance movement in Denmark and a prisoner in the Neuengamme…

I found Monika in autumn 2020. She has lived in the UK for many years and was born in Poland. She is a qualified English teacher and works now in…

We spoke to some of the descendants that are active members of the national organizations of the AIN to find out more about their family history, how it has shaped them and their commitment to a lasting culture of remembrance.

Thorsten Fehlberg met with Edith Grube for a conversation about her family history to find out what influence it has had on her political commitment. Edith Grube was born in…

Five years on since I was invited to participate in the NS Beratung conference on historico-political education and the role of descendants of Holocaust refugees and survivors, my connection with…

May 3, 2023 marks the 78th anniversary of the bombing of the prisoner ships in the Bay of Lübeck. For this occasion, we interviewed Bernard Jeune. His father was among…

In 1985, the last two letters from the imprisonment of Elisabeth Sztwiertnia, my great-aunt, from 1944, fell into my hands for the first time. She was the big sister of my grandmother Maria Zabrzynski. Before that it was always said that she had died in Berlin in a bombing raid.