Annsophie: Have you ever visited Pforzheim?

Margarita Pels: No, I have never been to Pforzheim.

Annsophie: Did your relatives tell you about their experiences in Pforzheim? Are there maybe stories you still have in mind?

Margarita Pels: My mother and her sister Lise, learned some French (I do not know if it was at your school) and they had to memorize La Cigale et la Fourmi by Lafontaine. As young teenagers, when walking in the street they wanted to be taken as French girls, and they recited one line each, as if they were chatting in that language.

Annsophie: Did the historical experience of your family in Pforzheim have any impact on your life?

Margarita Pels: Absolutely YES, not Pforzheim in itself because I have no recollections and have not lived there but being „Flüchtlinge“ und „rassenverfolgt“ absolutely YES.

Annsophie: Can you tell in which way your mother dealt with her experiences? Would you say it was hard for her to leave them behind?

Margarita Pels: Being asked by the Gestapo to come next day with your families documents and decide that very same night to run for your life and cross the border to Basel, cannot not have been hard it must have been dreadful.

Annsophie: Did the connection your family had to Germany influence the way you think of Germany? Do you think of it as a “bad country“?

Margarita Pels: I grew up on this side of the ocean with „Der Krieg“ always present every day in my home. I was a young child, did not know what it meant, but I was aware that it was terrible and the Nazis the worst of all. Bad Country? The worst of the worst. There was no other way to think about. Fortunately Ruth and Lise managed at the last moment to bring out their sister Ellen, their parents Lina and Leopold Blum and my grandmother Emilie Haarburger. Emilie Haarburgers whole family perished in the Holocaust.

Annsophie: Do you feel your German roots in any way? Are or were there maybe any German traditions you used to follow or did you get in touch with the language?

Margarita Pels: My German roots you ask, let me say my Jewish German roots are at the Essence of my being. Zuhause hat man nur deutsch gesprochen…deutsch gekocht, deutsch gedacht … was sonst? First generation immigrants, die sich durchschlagen mussten wie sie konnten and had been Germans for generations…

As I grew up, I had to “mich abzufinden “ that I belonged to the most hated country in the world. Forget the Holocaust, but the country that plunged the whole world into a War that had 50.000.000 victims.

As a child how do you make die Nachbar Kinder understand that you speak German but are no Nazi, you are German but different. No, I did not go to Pforzheim or Germany at all! Why should I want to.

Annsophie: Do you know any people who also lived in Pforzheim during the NS-regime? Did they tell you about this time?

Margarita Pels: No.

You ask for stories, there are none or very few, it was all too painful and people tried to look forward and not back. After „Der Krieg” and the whole truth came out and all those left behind had been murdered, what was there to say, what was there to remember, what was there to smile at…

Now let me add a few words to assuage the wounds I have opened. What I have said is the cold irrefutable truth of those years, and if you grew up in them it necessarily had a strong influence on you.

In the meantime „habe ich mich mit Deutschland versöhnt“. For many reasons, but one of them is the work you and your teacher are doing, you and so many others, since such a long time. Germany is the only country that has made a real “mea culpa “, a real Wiedergutmachung. My grandparents got a modest pension that partially relieved their desperate economic situation, but I do not refer to the money that they received, I do not mean that kind of Wiedergutmachung, but the effort Germany has and is making to erase the shame in their national history. No other European country did or does the same and all of them are accountable for the atrocities that happened to the Jews on their soil and none turned back when the moment came to push people into the trains. That Germany is in a way ashamed of their past and tries to make amendments makes them different, and for that I am grateful and let us say proud.

Yes, I speak german fluently, I enjoy german food, my grandchildren call us Oma and Opa but we also love to eat “asado”, and enjoy Italian and Spanish food which is where most of my countries population comes from. As you see, Annsophie, I am the last generation that, even if only from afar, can “bear witness” because it marked my whole life and made who I am.

Continue with your good work, which I believe is very necessary now and ever and ever and ever…