Sigrid Strauss sits in front of her daughter’s computer in the USA and looks into the questioning faces of an ethics class from Feuchtwangen. The 95-year-old has short, gray hair, a light sweater and a necklace with large links that reaches to her chest. Strauss is saddened.
Because on this day in February 2023, she tells the students about the horror that the Nazis inflicted on her and her family: “The doors were locked. We couldn’t get in or out. We looked up and prayed to God for water would come,” Strauss reported from the shower rooms of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. In English, because she hasn’t spoken German for a long time.
Strauss actually didn’t want to talk to the students. Once, many years ago, she stood in front of a German class to talk about her experiences. At that time, a Holocaust denier was sitting across from her in the audience. Since then, the contemporary witness has not returned to Germany and has not maintained any contacts in the country of her birth.
But the ethics class was able to convince the Shoah survivor to talk to her. The interview took place as part of an extensive research project at the Feuchtwangen high school. The teacher responsible, Barbara Haas, was awarded the German Teachers’ Prize a few weeks ago.
The ethics course began to deal with anti-Semitism three years ago. Right at the beginning of the project, Haas drew the attention of this year’s high school graduates to the nearby Jewish cemetery in Schopfloch. “Jews from the entire region were buried here for centuries before the war,” says Schopfloch mayor Oswald Czech, who has long been committed to Jewish remembrance in his community. After visiting the cemetery, the class asked itself what happened to all the people during the war, said student Joana Lehr.
The young people began to trace the stories of the displaced families. They searched numerous archives and the Jewish cemetery for traces of 60 Jews who were born in Schopfloch or who lived there at the time. Some of them did this during ethics lessons, but a lot of them also did it in their free time or on vacation. They were able to find out the dates of death and last known whereabouts of most of the displaced people. But one name made them suspicious: the students knew that Sigrid Strauss (née Ansbacher) had emigrated to the USA, but the class could not find a date of death. “She must have died in the USA or still be living there. So we started looking for her there,” says student Julia Schrenk.
“Are you Sigrid Strauss from Dinkelsbühl?”
They finally found what they were looking for in an American telephone book that referred to a Sigrid Strauss in a retirement home. “There are a lot of people with that name. That’s why we didn’t actually assume that we would actually find them,” remembers student Lehr. A classmate explained to the woman on the phone in English who the class was and why they were calling. To the crucial question “Are you Sigrid Strauss from Dinkelsbühl in Germany?” the lady then replied in German: “Yes, that’s me.”
At first, Strauss didn’t want to speak to the class. Because of the incident in the German school class years before. But she didn’t really want to have anything to do with Germany anymore; she never taught her children their native language. “When she talks about her fate, you understand why. She wants to leave this chapter behind her,” said student Moritz Brunner. However, the Holocaust survivor was convinced. The video conversation took place in which she answered all of the committed young people’s questions and told her story of suffering.
How she and her family were harassed, how the Nazis deported her and her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto, while one of her brothers had already died in the Majdanek concentration camp; and how she was separated from her parents in October 1944 and sent to Auschwitz alone. By the end of the war, Strauss survived four more concentration camps and a death march. When she was liberated in Bergen-Belsen, the then 17-year-old weighed 32 kilograms and was suffering from typhus. Since she wanted to get out of Germany, she was taken to Sweden on a hospital ship. There, an uncle from Boston contacted her to tell her that her parents had made it through the war and had now made it to the United States. She followed after them.
Book and Instagram channel about Jewish fates during the Holocaust
The class has, among other things, one for their research Instagram channel and wrote a book about the fate of the Schopfloch Jews. They also wrote down the interview with Strauss there. If you talk to the students more than a year after the interview, it is noticeable that this very contact with Strauss has left an impression: “It became clear that you have to actively remember and take a stand against people who either deny something like this or are wrong reproduce,” said student Schrenk.
Since this conversation with the class last year, Sigrid Strauss no longer wants any further contact with Germany. She also doesn’t want to know anything more about articles or the students’ further work. She told teacher Haas that she was very exhausted by the conversation with the students that lasted over two hours. At the age of 95, she is also in poor health. At the end of the exchange, she gave the students a message: “If you are old enough to vote, vote for the right people and make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again in your country. Thank you and have a wonderful life.”