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History Newsletter: The Mystery of the Map of Cuba

2022-06-30T15:16:04.349Z


A Berliner discovered a postcard from 1938 and persisted until he made contact with the family of a Holocaust survivor. How the power of chance tied two lives together - that and more in the newsletter.


Dear reader,

sometimes it is small coincidences that surprisingly open a door to great historical events.

After a woman from Berlin found a book in a garbage can in 1987, her son Will-Fred Bolle discovered a postcard from Havana in it.

A young man sent it to his Jewish parents in 1938 with good wishes for Hanukkah.

Bolle got it into his head to return the card.

He searched for the Laskau family - and only after more than a decade found a trace of the sender Henry Laskau, who later lived in the USA and was an outstanding walker.

His brother Benno Laskau, on the other hand, was unable to escape Nazi Germany by ship: the passengers on the »St.

Louis« were not allowed to go ashore in Cuba or the USA shortly before the start of the war and had to return to Europe after a long odyssey, where many of the 937 Jewish refugees died in the Holocaust.

The two brothers never saw each other again.

Will-Fred Bolle turned to DER SPIEGEL and told how his life became intertwined with that of Henry Laskau.

"It's extraordinary that he didn't give up for so long," says editor Hannes Schrader, who also spoke to Laskau's son in the United States.

Hannes asked the person who found the postcard whether he thought his search for his family, which was successful in the end, was significant.

»Nope.

Not for world history," Bolle answered carefully.

"For human togetherness: yes." You have a responsibility for each other.

He was able to lift "a speck of dust from history," "it's nothing more."

Read the whole article here.

Our colleague Hauke ​​Goos is also dealing with family stories from times of war – he talks to war children and grandchildren about everyday objects that have survived for many decades.

In the first episode of his new series, it is a teddy bear: its owner, Renate Bienzeisler, was given it as a child in 1945 fleeing from Silesia;

later the two were separated but reunited.

The next episode next weekend will be about sports pants and a whistle: the only thing a man from the southern Harz Mountains had left from his father, whom he never got to know.

If you would also like to tell us your story about a family play, please send an email to erinnerungsstuecke@spiegel.de.

In the current issue of SPIEGEL HISTORY, we deal with how trauma from the Second World War still reverberate in families today.

What is not very well known: arrested German Wehrmacht soldiers were not infrequently overheard.

Editor Jan Friedmann describes how they reported to each other in the Fort Hunt secret camp in 1945 what they had experienced at the front - and how much they knew about the mass murder of European Jews.

The US intelligence service was secretly listening in.

The next history newsletter will be flying to you in two weeks;

you can order it here.

Suggestions for topics, praise or criticism are always welcome - just send an email to spiegelgeschichte@spiegel.de.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-06-30

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