contemporary history - DE 1933-1945

My meeting with Sophie NördlingerG. BayerIn the following few words, I would like to relay my meeting with the last, Jewish owner of the inn Die Ochsen (The Oxen) in 1989 in New York. Sophie Nördlinger knew Carl Laemmle personally from Laupheim and thus piqued our interest for our research on Carl Laemmle..Sophie Nödlinger, née Sänger, was born on April 4th, 1989 as the only child of Albert (+ 1929) and Klara Sänger (née Einstein, 1865-1942). Sophie Nördlinger's grandfather, Benjamin Sänger, bought the Ochsen , known today as Zum Rothen Ochsen (To the Red Ox), in 1860. The building was built around the beginning of the 19th century.In an age without television, radio and internet, the Jewish inn was a pivotal location for the small city of Laupheim's cultural and communal life into the 1930. It was a first-class house, as one can see in a comical advertisement by the choir group Frohsinn published in 1914. The popular inn had more to offer than just a kitchen and its specialty sour tripe. For wedding and Purim parties, however, the larger Jewish inn Zum Kronprinzen (To the Crown Prince) was more popular. The reader familiar with the inn today, Zum Rothen Ochsen , may find the list of the many rooms amusing, even if the authors of the article meant to highlight this ironically.The painful fate of the emigrantsBetween 1987 and 2003, and together with my husband, Udo Bay-er, who passed away in 2015, I met a number of Jewish Americans of German descent, both in the US as well as here in Laupheim, all of whom were connected by their shared fate: due to the barbaric Nazi terror of the Hitler era, they were forced to find a new home-land. In the Hitler era, Jewish lives mattered little. Thus, as these emigrants saw it, they had survived by chance.Yet, when we met them, we sensed how much these events still pained them inside like a thorn. Many had long repressed their painful experiences. For some, it was the first time that they had opened themselves up to Germans of today's generation. Faltering, they relayed what they experienced and their flight in these terri-ble times. They were very thankful that we listened. Burned into the memory of the survivors were both the incredibly emotional events and, just as much so, their happy childhood memories from their city of birth. ...