Anna-Suzette's eyes are red throughout our conversation, but only once do unruly tears find their way out.
It happens when she describes how people with disabilities and people on the autism spectrum were murdered by the Nazis using a gas bus, just half an hour away from her home in Tübingen in southern Germany, at the beginning of World War II.
"For the Nazis, these people were unworthy of living," she says in tears.
"And it only happened half an hour from my house. The Nazis were so pleased with the ease with which it worked, and how easy it was to kill people, that they decided to move the enterprise to the extermination camps."
But she is shocked not only by the atrocities perpetrated by her people on the Jews.
She is also shocked by her family history: her four great-grandparents, her great-grandparents, were distinct Nazis, and two of them even participated in the extermination of the Jews: one was an engineer who built the gas chambers and electric fences of the Auschwitz extermination camp, and the other an SS sniper. Co-murderer of Jews in the Netherlands.
"They were part of this machine, part of this horrible murder," she admits with a full mouth.
"These are my people, my people. And that is what brought me here."
Anna-Suzette Piper ("My parents considered calling me Michelle, like the actress, but in the end decided it was excessive"), and in short Anna, only 19 years old, I meet in a beautiful garden in the center of the treatment village "Adi Negev-Nahalat Eran" near Ofakim.
Occasionally some of the patients, young and old in wheelchairs, come to the kindergarten as part of the daily outing with their caregivers.
Watch from a distance the visitor who came to talk to the nice young German, who says goodbye sweetly to every passerby.
She has been in Israel for almost a year, volunteering in a village in a kindergarten for children with physical disabilities or on the autistic continuum.
She first came to the village for a year of volunteering in October 2020, as part of the "March of Life" project.
Last summer she returned home for three months, and in October she returned to the village for another ten months.
"I do not constantly think about the need to correct what my family members did in the Holocaust," she wants to clarify and makes sure to say the word "Holocaust" in Hebrew.
"True, it's a significant part of my life, but I'm also an ordinary young woman who comes to volunteer. I enjoy helping children."
She was born in 2002 to a warm and embracing family.
Four years later her sister, Jordana, was born, 15. Her father, Frank (51), has lived in Tübingen for many years.
Her mother's family, Barbel (50), came from France and other parts of Germany.
She knew her grandparents, the sons of the senior Nazis, well, but these stubbornly refused to talk about the parts of family history they knew about.
Anna's parents also did not know, they say, about the atrocities committed by their grandfathers.
In 2007, two Tibingen residents, Jobest and Charlotte Bitner, began exploring the city's past with some of their church friends, as part of a process that took place in many places in Europe to recognize the Holocaust.
Their research has revealed the dark secret, which is hidden from the eyes of most residents: many of whom are descendants of Nazi criminals.
The couple, who have been running a church organization called TOS Ministries since the 1980s, which set up drug rehab centers and houses for street children, decided, with several hundred of their friends, to hold their own "life march."
Among the members of this group were also Anna's parents.
"Most Germans do not tell what they did in the war because of the shame, and because they did not want to face the consequences of the confession," says Anna.
"There is a saying in Germany that the only culprit at the end of World War II was Hitler, because everyone pointed to the other. My parents started researching their past and discovered a horrific history. All their grandparents were Nazis, some with an orderly and murderous ideological subtext."
A huge menorah projected on the houses of the city of Tübingen in Germany by the local "March of Life", Photo: March of Life
• • •
Tibingen is about a two and a half hour drive from Munich, Zurich and Strasbourg.
The picturesque city, with its colorful houses, the old university that was founded in the 15th century and the beautiful churches, was established as early as the sixth century AD, and today has about 90,000 inhabitants.
But behind all this beauty lies a long antisemitic history.
"The founders of the city were anti-Semites, and so were the residents who came after them," Anna explains.
"They were very proud to have established a university without Jews. Hundreds of years later, on Kristallnacht, residents burned the synagogue in the city, and from the remaining whites they built a pigsty. During the Holocaust, members of the Nazi party trained officers sent to all Europe and advanced to very high ranks. I still "I'm learning about my history, even today, and the more I hear, the worse it is."
One of the earliest atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis took place at Grafenek Castle, a half-hour drive from the city.
In the impressive castle, reminiscent of a cartoon from a Disney movie, a "euthanasia" center was established in the early 1940s, where the Nazis systematically murdered people with physical and mental disabilities, including autistics and schizophrenics, brought from all over the region.
"At first they used an opaque gray bus, to which the victims were taken and where they were murdered using the gas from the exhaust. Realizing it was too slow, they set up the first gas chamber in the castle, and tested it on the children brought there," Anna protests the tears.
"The Nazis were so amazed at the ease with which it works, that they later decided to do it in the extermination camps as well, institutionally."
Anna herself was exposed to family history from an early age.
"I was always interested in history, and already as a child I knew something terrible had happened in the war, but I did not know what. Around the age of 12, my mother brought me a book about the Holocaust, about a Jewish girl who faced anti-Semitism. Then Dad and Mom started telling me, step by step, What happened to my family.
"I visited Auschwitz for the first time at the age of 14. I was there for a week with my mother. I really wanted to know who I was, what my grandfathers' connection was to me, they were dead, they were in the past. Mother went hand in hand with me and told me that my great grandfather helped build the gas chambers I felt very guilty. Why did he do it? Why did he not stop?
"I was angry, I was furious that I was German, I wondered why it had to be me. It was the first time I understood what happened there, I realized that 6 million Jews were murdered, of which 1.3 million in Auschwitz, through my great-grandfather. It broke my heart, to understand How inhuman the Jews were in the eyes of the German people. "
• • •
Hermann Bernhart, Anna's great-grandmother on her mother's side, worked as an engineer in a German factory called "Bone Verka", which was engaged in the production of synthetic rubber.
With the establishment of Auschwitz, he moved to work in a factory on the camp grounds, where many Jews were enslaved - including, among others, the writer Primo Levy and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eli Wiesel.
In October 1941, Bernhart and the workers in the factory began to establish the Birkenau camp (Auschwitz 2), where most of the extermination of the Jews took place.
"My great-grandfather helped set up the electric fences and gas chambers, the platform for so many victims," says Anna.
"During the war my great-grandfather came home and told his family about his actions, but told them never to talk about it, afraid he would be killed or sent to the camps himself. Then, still during the war, he divorced, changed his last name and disappeared. This was the time The last time my grandfather, Rudolph, who was 8 at the time, saw him. "
Electric fences in the Birkenau extermination camp (Auschwitz 2).
"Bernhart told his family about his actions, but told them not to talk about it, for fear of being killed," Photo: GettyImages
Rudolf Bernhart was only exposed to the shocking story of his father in his 80s.
"In 2012, he traveled to Israel and met Holocaust survivors, heard from them what his father had done, and apologized to them. Ten days later, he passed away. My grandmother donated to Holocaust survivors everything he left behind."
Two other grandparents of Anna's father and mother were also part of the Nazi war machine.
"My mother's grandfather, Jacob Wilhelm Fox, was in charge of a tank factory, which apparently forcibly employed Jews," she says, showing me a picture of Fox wearing an SS uniform.
It is not clear why he wore the uniform, because he did not serve in the SS, but from the picture it is clear that he is proud of them.
"He was a very aggressive man, according to what I was told. One day he brought home jewelry, earrings and a necklace, and gave them as a gift to his daughter, my grandmother, who was 8. But she felt something in the jewelry was not good and threw them away. She did not want to wear anything not. Was hers. "
The other great-grandfather was Wilhelm Piper, the grandfather of Anna's father, who served as an officer in the Wehrmacht.
"He served in France, Ukraine, Russia and other countries. His job was to prepare the occupied territories for the visit of senior officers and public figures. He may also have been involved in the shooting of innocent people, but he never talked about it. He left a diary, in which he recounted how much. "The countries he visited are beautiful, but of course he did not say what they did."
Another grandfather of Anna's father, Ernest Haman, also served in the SS.
"He was born in Romania, in a German community that immigrated there. Even before the war he was in prison, it is not clear why, but it was probably something terrible. When the war broke out he refused to enlist in the Romanian army and went to Germany, to volunteer for the SS.
"He was a devout believer in the ideology of the Aryan race and believed that Jews, people with disabilities and communists were inferior and had no right to live. My father, who knew him, said that as a child he was very afraid of him. There was something very cruel about him. At family meals he talked about people with disabilities. And Jews in abysmal hatred.
During the war, he served, among other things, as a sniper in the SS unit in the Netherlands, and was involved in the murder of partisans and Jews. "From their homes in Poland to concentration camps, and the settlement of Germans in abandoned homes. Haman survived the war and became a maintenance man. He died when I was a baby. I even have a picture of me sitting on his lap."
For Anna, "Haman is the one who caused the more severe atrocities. He is the one who evokes more hard feelings in me. I have a feeling that Herman Bernhart was somewhat forced to do what he did, and had a hard time living with it. Ernest Haman, on the other hand, did everything to murder People. It was his deepest desire. He came from Romania to Germany on his own, even though he was not rich and even though it was not an easy trip. He was willing to pay a price, to sacrifice himself, to murder Jews. And until the day he died he did not regret what He did. "
Ernest Hamann.
"He is the one who evokes more difficult feelings in me,"
It's very hard to find out all this history about your family.
“In twelfth grade I did a project at school about Herman Bernhart.
I sat in front of the computer and cried.
I did not understand how my great-grandparents lived a double life.
They murdered and shot, treating people like animals, while at home their families were waiting for them.
How can you hate people so much?
It shocks me over and over again.
You know a person's life is over because your great-grandfather shot him.
I can really imagine Haman raping someone, so much so.
"A German journalist once asked me why I use such harsh words. She said it was like I was naked, that I was undressing and allowing anyone to hurt me. That I too am a descendant of these people, and that the truth hurts the German people.
"I explained to her that the German people hide the truth to this day with nice words, and it does not help anyone. When Holocaust survivors hear that my great-grandfather built the gas chambers, and another great-grandfather was a sniper who murdered people, they are shocked. But when they see a young German telling it "Without hiding anything and accepting responsibility - then you can start the recovery process."
Herman Bernhart.
"Gone in the War",
• • •
When Anna enters the kindergarten where she volunteers and says "Good morning" in Hebrew, it is quite clear that she feels at home.
And the children surrender to her without hesitation.
At one of the tables looks his son Lavie, a little over two years old, who is having communication difficulties.
On the other side sits a one-year-old Mia in a wheelchair, who faces walking and visual impairments.
On her chair there is a game with chains, which she can feel.
When she suddenly starts crying, Anna rushes to her.
"I feel like I'm making a difference here in so many ways," she says excitedly.
"When I came here, it was the first time I met children and people with disabilities. At first I had a hard time. I had needs, vomit, everything possible. But I got used to it. Working here made me open up, and also taught me to be more relaxed."
"Adi Negev-Nahalat Eran" is a rehabilitation village, one of several centers for children and adults who face severe mental-developmental disabilities and complex medical problems, such as malformations and genetic diseases.
The project was established in 2003 by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Doron Almog, and the village in the Negev is named after his son Eran, who suffered from autism and developmental delay and died at the age of 23. Almog heads the rehabilitation village, and in 2016 won the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
Adi Negev operates a nursing hospital, a paramedical center, a hydrotherapy pool and an agricultural center, along with a rehabilitation kindergarten, where Anna volunteers, and a special education school.
There is also a community kindergarten, which combines children with disabilities with special education children.
Anna lives with other volunteers in the residential neighborhood located in the treatment village.
She plans to continue volunteering in the village for the next eight months, and then return to Germany for undergraduate studies in sociology.
She first came to Israel as a child, following her parents' activities in the "March of Life" organization in Tübingen.
She then visited the country several more times.
Did you talk about the Holocaust at school?
"Yes, but in the form of chronology and facts. No one knows who has a Nazi history in the family, and no one talks about it. Instead they hide behind facts and figures. That's why it was so important that my mother took me to Auschwitz as a child, so I could almost feel and understand First of all what happened there.
"The Germans don't talk enough about the Holocaust. True, there is a ceremony every year, and lighting candles and flowers, and they talk about it on the news, but it's not personal. Nazis but on the part of the general population.
"Antisemitic attacks are happening all the time. Security guards and policemen with guns are stationed in every synagogue. A boy from my class sent a picture of an ash cloud in a WhatsApp group, above which was written: 'Jewish family.' It was funny to him. It's crazy. A Jewish pig and wished him back to Auschwitz. In my city someone put up a sign with a Star of David calling for an end to anti-Semitism, and the next day the sign was torn and spray-painted with graffiti.
"Germany is constantly blaming Israel, demonizing it, as if it were a bad country that always attacks the poor Palestinians. Two weeks ago, Elijah Kay was killed in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, but the news in Germany did not state in the headline that it was an attack.
"As far as the Germans are concerned, in the subtext Israel is always to blame. We see quite a few demonstrations, on all sorts of issues, and they are always present with a group holding Palestinian flags and calling for the killing of Jews. What the hell? Are you demonstrating for the environment or against vaccines? To murder Jews? It's delusional.
"You say 'never again', but in practice it happens again. Maybe in a different way, maybe not of the same order of magnitude, but it really is not 'never again'. Jews today can not be safe in Germany.
"We must learn from the past and take the morals of the future, because only then will we be able to begin to recover as a society. For this reason I do not hide anything, and reveal even the smallest detail about my family."
• • •
In September 2020, at the height of the second wave of the Corona, Anna decided to come to Israel for a period of ten months of volunteering, on behalf of the "March of Life".
"Anti-Semitism in Germany only expanded during the Corona," she recalls.
"There were so many rumors and conspiracies around the Jews and the Corona, and the height of the audacity was that many Germans compared themselves to Holocaust survivors, wore yellow badges against vaccines and claimed to be like Anne Frank and the rest of the victims. It was absolutely insane. ?
"Then I received the offer from the March of Life to volunteer at Adi Negev, and I saw it as a sign. I knew that people with disabilities are the most sensitive and weak, and I thought it could do good - that a German person would come to Israel and help children with disabilities, in the middle of an epidemic." .
What would your great-grandparents say if they knew you were volunteering with Jews with disabilities?
"I believe they were in shock, and if they had a rifle in hand, they would have shot me instead. They would have seen in me the shame of the family, the black sheep. For me it is amazing that my life can be the complete opposite of the terrible past.
"But it's important for me to say that I'm not just here because of the past. I'm busy with the present and doing good things. I'm proud of it. Eli Wiesel said the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy. In my family there was both hatred and apathy. "Or people with disabilities, I choose to work with them. I can not change the past, but I can take steps to repair what is broken and trampled."
If you could, what would you say to your grandparents?
"I would confront them and say to them, 'You think you were superior, and that the lives of the Jews you murdered were meaningless, but you are the ones who were meaningless. You destroyed your family, your people, because hatred never wins, only love.'"
What did your parents say about the decision to volunteer here?
"My dad is the one who pushed me for a second year of volunteering. He saw how good volunteering is for me, and how the story of my life converges on it.
"My high school friends did not understand why I decided at the end of my studies to leave everything and come to volunteer at a special education kindergarten. They asked me if I wanted to die in Israel, because there was terrorism there and the corona was raging at the time.
"Most young people my age graduate from high school, then travel to Australia to surf or work at a bar, and then go to university. I wanted to do something meaningful.
"I thought I would be the heroine who came to support the children, and I discovered that they are the ones who teach me. They come from such a difficult starting point in life, and yet they are happy and full of optimism. They fight for their lives every day, and it is inspiring. They are the ones who changed my life."
hanangreenwood@gmail.com
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