Beth El event tells story of one German man’s journey to Judaism

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Drs. Bernd Wollschlaeger and Edward Mishner
Drs. Bernd Wollschlaeger and Edward Mishner speak at the Beth El event. (Screenshot by Susan C. Ingram)

During this era of virulent social and political polarization, it’s easy to believe that the hate and vitriol we witness everyday will continue to foment, passing down through generations.

Is real change possible? Can the hateful acts of one generation evolve into love in the next?

Beth El Congregation’s Rabbi Mark G. Loeb Center for Lifelong Learning addressed this at its virtual event, A German Life: Against All Odds, Change is Possible, with author Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger. About 150 people attended.

A German Life: Against All Odds, Change is Possible
Book cover of “A German Life: Against All Odds, Change is Possible” by Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger (Published by Emor Publishing)

Eyal Bor, director of the Loeb Center and Beth El Schools, and Dr. Edward Mishner, a past president of Beth El, hosted Wollschlaeger, whose 2007 book chronicles his journey as son of a Nazi commander, through his conversion to Judaism and immigration to Israel.

“He’s a man who’s trying to change the world, trying to change hatred to love,” Bor said.
Wollschlaeger’s story caught Mishner’s attention at a Florida Chabad event.

“He made me so proud to be a Jew,” Mishner said. “I thought his story was so good that our community would love to hear it, and should hear it.”

And hear it they did. Wollschlaeger recounted his life story, starting with his idyllic childhood in late-1950s Germany. Growing up in Bamberg, he learned its history — the art, culture, architecture and deep roots in Catholicism. But no one ever spoke about the war.

“I was literally lost in a vacuum,” he said.

Eventually, he learned his father was the youngest tank commander in the German army, serving under Gen. Heinz Guderian, “father” of the blitzkrieg and developer of Germany’s panzer divisions. Arthur Wollschlaeger led tank assaults into Poland, France, Belgium, Holland and eventually strategic towns in the former Soviet Union, as Nazi forces pushed toward Moscow.

“For that accomplishment he was awarded the Knights Cross by a man who he still adoringly referred to as his hero. Adolf Hitler,” he said.

In 1972, after the terrorist attack on Israelis at the Munich Olympics, Wollschlaeger’s teachers were finally candid about World War II. He asked his father about the Holocaust.

“In this house, we don’t talk about that,” his father said. “It’s Jewish propaganda. It’s a lie.”

Wollschlaeger set out to learn about Jews, understand his responsibility and try to make amends. He joined a group of young Jewish and Arab Israelis who were visiting Germany. One young woman invited him to visit Israel. He went, staying with her parents, survivors of Auschwitz. Her father took him to Yad Vashem, Israel’s largest Holocaust museum, in Jerusalem.

“How can these people treat me as a guest — more than a guest?” he wondered. “Like a mensch, when they had every reason to hate me?”

So it went. At every turn, at every intersection on his journey, Wollschlaeger, son of a Nazi, was met with acceptance and open arms by Jews.

The Israel Cultural Community in Bamberg gave him books on Judaism, and he became their Shabbos goy for years while attending medical school.

“The closer I came to this family of choice, the more I distanced myself from my family of origin,” he said.

The final break came when Christmas fell on a Friday. Wollschlaeger chose to go to shul.

When he returned, his father was livid. He confronted him.

“I won’t sit any more at the same table with a murderer who has blood on his hands, and that steel cross around your neck, which is a symbol of terror. Aren’t you ashamed?” he asked his father.

“Raus!” his father shouted. “Get out!”

In December 1986, Wollschlaeger underwent a halachic conversion. Now a Jew, he qualified for the Law of Return. He left Bamberg for Israel in January 1987, worked on a kibbutz for six months, graduated from medical school and volunteered for the Israeli Defense Forces in 1987.

Living in Israel and serving in the Israeli army, he tried to keep the sins of his father a secret, later raising his son Jewish and moving back to the U.S.

“I was petrified and tried to throw my life in a virtual closet,” Wollschlaeger said. “That didn’t work.”

He kept his secret until his son, Tal, then 15, asked a simple question. “Dad, who was my grandfather?”

He decided to tell him.

His son thought it a great story and wanted to tell his friends, which happened three weeks later during “family history day,” where Wollschlaeger told his story for the first time to an audience he didn’t know.

A weight was lifted from his shoulders. Wollschlaeger has continued sharing his story, speaking around the world. He urges people not to leave words and deeds of hatred unchallenged, to preserve Jewish culture and “to be proud to be Jews.”

He is motivated to keep “doing what I’m doing for as long as I can, because against all odds, change is possible.”

Susan C. Ingram is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.

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