Im Frühjahr 2019 gab Liese Peritz‘ Sohn, Rolf Lang, im Rahmen eines Interviews mit Annsophie Einblicke in die Familiengeschichte seiner Mutter. Liese war, wie ihre Schwester Margarete, Hildaschülerin Ende der 1920er Jahre. Liese konnte 1939 mit Schwester Eleonore nach Großbritannien fliehen. Margarete und die Eltern Recha und David überlebten die Deportation nach Auschwitz nicht.

Annsophie: Dear Mr Lang, have you ever visited Pforzheim?

Rolf Lang: I visited Pforzheim in 1985 when I accompanied my mother to a reunion of former Jewish citizens organised by Stadt Pforzheim.

Annsophie: How did you experience it?

Rolf Lang: It was an enjoyable week, opening with a civic reception and daily trips to places of interest around Pforzheim. We were shown amazing hospitality and I got to meet friends of my mother she hadn’t seen for 45 years, which was very emotional.

At the Stadt Pforzheim civic reception someone called out “Liese”, it was my mother’s old neighbour Margarete Müller, my mother just broke down with emotion.

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

Rolf Lang: My mother and aunt often spoke of their childhood growing up in the Black Forest. How cold the winters were that even ice formed in their nostrils on the way to school. How much snow there used to be so they could even ski from where they lived. They were both keen skiers and members of the skiing club enjoying trips to Wildbad as well as members of Nature clubs, hiking in the Wurmtal. Of Working at Gebrüder Hollander in the offices, how kind they were to her as well as the colleagues with whom she remained in touch with throughout the rest of her life. They sent my mother a gift for me when I was born. Then there were special treats at Cafe Wagner!

My mother’s boss took risks in driving her back home on Kristallnacht, but some people she knew would cross the street and she remembered a sign coming up at the cinema that all Jews must leave.

When my mother visited Pforzheim with my father by car for the first time again in 1949, she couldn’t find her way due to the destruction of the town, so she stopped someone to ask the way. Without saying anything the person said to my mother: ‚You`re Liese Peritz‘. It was one of her old school teachers!

At Christmas time a colleague my mother had worked with at Gebruder Hollander, Karl Wensch, who she is photographed with working in the office used to send my mother a parcel of Black forest specialities of breads and biscuits, which my mother really enjoyed. In an incredible coincidence on a family holiday in Austria we just stopped at a restaurant, where my mother noticed a German car parked outside with the license plate `PF´. To her enormous surprise sitting there was her old colleague Karl Wensch with his family, who we then spent several days with.

Annsophie: Can you tell in which way your mother dealt with her experiences?

Rolf Lang: My mother used to get very upset during the Jewish High Holidays, Rosh Hashnah and Yom Kippur, remembering the time with her parents going to the synagogue.

She used to have dreams of standing outside her house and seeing someone behind the curtain but not being able to see their face.

I remember as a young boy visiting the register office in Stuttgart with my parents where my mother needed copy birth and marriage certificates of her parents and sister. I can still see my mother breaking down in tears, seeing the documents crossed through with the word “Jude” written across them.

My mother kept all the letters she had received from her parents from Gurs, which were written on very thin tissue paper. I kept them all safe after my mother died. I tried to start reading them, but found it too emotional to continue. It was then I decided to send them to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where all Holocaust victims are remembered in the Hall of names and where they store all written evidence in their archives. It was only after reading my mother’s profile in the first edition of Spurensuche that I read from a letter sent to Gurs that was returned “gone away” with my mother’s words to her parents, which I found so moving.

Annsophie: Did the connection your family had to Germany influence the way you think of the country?

Rolf Lang: My mother felt no animosity to the German people and, in fact after being in service for some years to an English family, my parents (my father was born in Austria) opened a shop and wholesale gift business stocking German goods including cuckoo clocks and jewellery, which I still run today.

Annsophie: Do you feel your German roots in any way? Are or were there maybe any German traditions you used to follow?

Rolf Lang: I feel myself to be British, but I do like German food which my mother used to cook and I was brought up bilingually speaking, both English and German. I do find it extremely difficult to understand how my aunt Grete and my grandparents were treated and how they were brutally murdered. I would have loved to have met them myself.

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

Rolf Lang: On our visit to Pforzheim in 1985 I met non Jewish neighbours and school friends of my mother‘s who had lived through the war and told us about their difficulties losing their homes, especially after the terrible bombings of 23.2.1945, the great loss of life and shortages following it. One close neighbour told my mother, that as my grandparents were being rounded up for transport to Gurs, one of their neighbours pressed money into my grandmother‘s hand.

I am indebted to Annsophie Schmidt and Martin Rühl for producing the Spurensuche book, such an amazing testimonial to the lives and fate of the Jewish students of the Hildaschule and also of the Jewish Citizens of Pforzheim, so they can never be forgotten. I’m especially grateful for the laying of the Stolpersteine outside my grandparent’s house in everlasting memory of the Peritz family.

Im Zuge der Interviewreihe der neuen Projektgruppe ergänzte Rolf Lang das Interview, indem er weitere Fragen der Projektgruppe beantwortete:

What influence does your parents‘ story have on you?

Rolf Lang: The influence my mother’s story had on me was for me to make the journey to Gurs to learn more about the camp and the conditions people had to endure. Also to visit my great grandparents graves in Darmstadt and become a keen family genealogist. 

For the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2025 I made a speech in front of 400 people on how my parents came to England and how their families perished in the Holocaust.

How do you assess the topic of anti-Semitism today?

Rolf Lang: I’m very concerned about the rise of antisemitism in the U.K. and also in the rise of parties such as AFD in Germany, where not only Jewish law abiding people but also people of other minorities have come to feel unsafe.

Do you have a message for the younger generation?

Rolf Lang: My message for younger people is that you are not responsible for the past, but you need to actively guard human dignity and democratic values in daily life.