Coming Home to the Holocaust

My Mother Barely Escaped Nazi Germany. I Returned to Remember Those Who Didn’t and to Reclaim Them as My Own

In the town hall of Fischach, a village in southern Germany with a population of 2,500, I am staring at a glass display case holding the detritus of the Jews who once lived here. It is July 2019, eight decades after my mother fled this place as a child. And right in front of me, neatly labeled, are the remains of my family: one of my Great Aunt Mina’s books on home economics and a section of curtain from the house on the village square.

The house from the old photograph. …