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GERMAN REUNIFICATION

The sudden fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the reunification of East Germany with West Germany in 1990, allows an American woman to pursue recovery of an historic shoe factory once owned by her family.  With the help of her Berlin attorney Wolfgang Schmidt, Lily Weitrek of San Diego travels to a small soot-filled East German town to learn the history of the shoe factory’s seizure, first by the Nazis and then by the communists.

Battling the newly reunified German government agencies that are intent on closing the legendry, if now derelict shoe factory, Lily and Wolfgang uncover the murder of her relatives, those that were instrumental in their deaths, the bitter post-reunification struggles between East and West Germans and witness the re-emergence of neo-Nazis. Ultimately reunified Germany allows Lily to learn about her family’s secret past and also enables Wolfgang to come to terms with the death of his brother who died on the Russian front during World War II.

HOLOCAUST

Holocaust ghosts emerge with their unknown stories as an unexpected byproduct of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the former East Germany with the West in 1990, adding new dimensions to post-Holocaust literature.

Once travel to what was East Germany, formerly a communist country, became possible again and archives sealed since World War II became available, the survivors and heirs of families whose lives and treasures were taken by the Nazis could begin their own personal searches for those lost long ago. Such a person is Lily Weitrek who travels from California in early 1991 to keep a promise to her deceased mother Theresa Weitrek.  The promise made was to go and put flowers on Theresa’s mother’s grave in a place outside Berlin called Weissenssee. To Lily’s surprise the small map she follows leads to a Jewish cemetery.  Lily learns clue by clue that her mother had built a false personal history for herself and the two infant daughters she had smuggled out of Nazi Germany in 1940.  Her mother’s second bequest is a property claim for a legendry German shoe factory owned previously by Theresa Weitrek’s family that was seized and aryanized by the Nazis in 1933, its owners, Theresa’s aunt, uncles and cousins, forced to flee, murdered or dead by suicide.

With the help of a Berlin attorney, Wolfgang Schmidt, Lily begins the painstaking search for the history of the aryanization of the factory and for her unknown relatives, victims of Hitler’s policies.  The newly created German government challenges Lily with old and newly written laws regarding property claims that reach back to the Holocaust.

PROPERTY CLAIMS

The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States was created on July 1, 1954.  Since then, the Commission has adjudicated 660,000 property claims on behalf of American nationals against 44 countries and has seen three billion dollars promised to victims of property losses.

The primary mission of this Commission, a separate agency under the U.S. Department of Justice, is to act on behalf of Americans seeking return of a property or compensation for it – property taken, seized, aryanized, nationalized or destroyed during wartime aggression. Many claims stem back to World War II.

Americans have filed claims against China, Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Poland, the Soviet Union and the former East Germany.

Only 3200 claims were filed by Americans through the Commission against East Germany between 1978-80.  But when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germans voted for reunification in 1990 the new German government reported two million claims for property in Eastern Germany.  In Berlin alone more than 300,000 claims have been filed, many tracing back to the Holocaust.

While the U.S. Foreign Claims Commission theoretically can ascertain the amount of a monetary award, such as the awards projected for claimants of East German property in the early 1980s, these amounts can be compromised during final negotiations between the countries involved. The interests of governments supercede individual interests.

The Last Cemetery in Berlin is a novel about Lily Weitrek, an American woman, who learns after her mother’s death that she has become heir to her mother’s property claim for a legendary shoe factory in East Germany. The claim, made through the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission and accepted by it, is challenged in 1991 by the newly reunified German government.  Lily Weitrek enlists the help of a Berlin attorney, Wolfgang Schmidt and together they try to salvage the derelict factory destined for closing by the government and all its employees thrown out of work, adding to East Germany’s skyrocketing unemployment rate.

Trying to meet the government’s requirement that Lily prove her mother’s right to the factory, they discover the history of the Nazi-endorsed aryanization of the factory in 1933, followed by its nationalization by the communists in 1951.

Ultimately their search leads to the unexpected discovery of the fate of Lily’s relatives, long dead but finally honored and laid to rest in a long-forgotten Berlin cemetery.

BERLIN WALL

In 1991 Lily Weitrek of San Diego travels to Germany to pursue a property claim for a factory that had been behind the Iron Curtain.  From the office of the Treuhandanstalt in East Berlin waiting for the meeting about her claim she could see out the window the crumbling sections of the old Berlin Wall, decorated with graffiti – some of it extolling peace, some new swastikas. She could see the remnants of Checkpoint Charlie, more and more now a tourist attraction than the frightening crossing it once had been. The checkpoint was near the Friedrichstrasse train station itself adjacent to the “Palace of Tears,” where families were forced to separate, some returning to the west, others left behind in the East Zone of Berlin.

The Wall had held behind it the shoe factory and land that Lily’s mother’s family had lost to the Nazis, and even though the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission approved her mother’s claims in 1980, the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, would not act on the claim.

But the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys in 1990 opened an era torn between the promise of belated justice for the past and the greed of the present. Also opened was a past for Lily to discover, one less of factories and properties than of a family she had never known.

CRITICAL REVIEWS

Last Cemetery is among 11 finalists in the Autobiography/Memoirs section of the Foreword Magazine's Best Books of 2003.  Winners will be announced at the North American Book Fair in Chicago June 4.

The Last Cemetery in Berlin by Tania Wisbar and John Mahoney- Families ruined by the Holocaust are not new but family rediscovered by one woman's determination to fulfill her mother's dying wish is made novel in this intriguing historical fiction set in Berlin in the 1930's and early 1990's. For those of us too young or too oblivious to have experienced either, this is a must read about a wealthy Jewish family torn asunder by the war and the surviving heiress to a great fortune whose mixed heritage affords her a rare understanding of what it means to be German and Jewish.

San Luis Obispo CA

 The Last Cemetery in Berlin by Tania Wisbar and John Mahoney- In the early 90’s, when the Berlin wall was crumbling, I was shopping for wedding gowns. That’s why I was so delighted to come across this novel. Knowing the importance of genealogy and family ties, I found the heroine’s quest for knowledge about her family, in the context of a great fortune, very intriguing. Some important insights into the sociological difficulties of German reunification with additional fodder on German atrocities during World War II makes this a riveting historical read, giving just enough information to make you sound intelligent about German history. I’ll have to conjure up my new found repertoire at the next soiree

Cayucos, CA

A fascinating story, and very well written - A splendid book, well-written and a remarkable story. It made me cry for the lost loves of some of the characters, and it is an amazing insight into the Nazi and post-Berlin Wall eras. The great visual descriptions leap off the pages. A great night of reading; I really recommend this book.

Imperial Beach, CA

A moving and eloquently told tale that moves your soul and pierces your heart.  It is a haunting reminder of the horrors of Nazism framed by flashbacks to the 1930s of Hitler’s Germany and then forward to the present.

This book puts you there, experiencing it all, the heartbreaking anguish, life, death, and always the love which surpasses all.

A wonderfully amazing read.

JB, El Segundo, CA

Post-Holocaust Novel – A New Genre?

I just finished reading Last Cemetery in Berlin, after contemplating what a post-Holocaust love story might be.  Indeed, the novel is in part a love story, but so much more.  As for the Holocaust, it covers the first anti-Jewish actions of the Nazis in early 1933, through the horrors of Kristallnacht and the Camps, to the effects of those genocidal crimes in the present day.  In reading the book, I was conscious of the ongoing efforts for justice even today, the pursuit of the few remaining war criminals, the efforts to teach our young people the lessons learned, the attempts to recover art pieces, insurance proceeds and other properties stolen by the Nazis.

Last Cemetery touches all of these aspects of Holocaust history, but all within the compelling personal story of one woman’s (Lily Weitrek) struggle to learn what happened to her German Jewish family during the Nazi years.  Lily’s quest could only begin in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gradual emergence of records and documents that had been hidden or suppressed by the East German Communist regime. 

And what a quest it is.  With the help of a German lawyer,  Lily uncovers both wonderful and tragic tales about her colorful and disappeared family, a mysterious sale of a shoe factory,  interactions with Josef Goebbels, harrowing escapes,  and more.  Much of the personal history is presented in poignant and gripping flashbacks, which are interlaced with Lily’s determined search for the truth, no matter how painful that truth proves to be.   Lily also  launches a  fight to recover a legendary shoe factory,  “aryanized” by the Nazis in the early 1930’s.   The details of that  fight reveal that all the lessons of the Holocaust have not yet borne fruit, as indifference and bureaucratic stonewalling still persist.

To sum it all up, I loved the book.  It gave me new insights into the continuing consequences of the Holocaust, all while enjoying the drama of a fast-moving and entertaining novel.

RLH

Los Angeles

(Contents © 2003, Tania Wisbar and John Mahoney)