Two gravestones Jüdischer Friedhof Heddesheim-Waldhilbersheim (Jewish cemetery for the former citizens of Guldental)
August Schneider and Leopold Grünewald, who are you, how are you connected?
You both lived in Heddesheim now Guldental, a small wine village in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Your gravestones are in the Jewish cemetery in the nearby forest in Waldhilbershein.
Copy of a document signed at the inauguration of the synagogue in 1910
You both signed the document inaugurating the local synagogue, Leopold Grünewald your name is at the top of the list on the left and August Schneider you are on the right.
You were both founders of the synagogue.
It was a small community, you must have known each other well, one a business man the other a wine commissioner.
August Schneider was my grandfather, my mother’s father. I think I remember visiting our family home with my mother and father and 3 aunts in 1935 at the time of his funeral, I must have been 3 years old.
But what about now, are there any fragile threads linking descendants of the Schneiders and the Grünewald?
Being Jewish and living with the losses of the Shoah, the recovery of the tiniest detail from the lives of our ancestors is like panning for gold.
When I left Germany in July 1939, I carried no family documents or photographs and no one to tell me stories about the Schneiders from Guldental.
In August 2001 George and I visited Guldental for the first time, looking for family clues and we “happened” to meet Gunther Lukas, a retired banker and the keeper of Jewish history for this idyllic wine village in the Nahe valley.
With Gunther Lucas at his home and visiting the Jewish cemetery in the forest
Gunther took us to the Jewish sites, welcomed us into his home and shared the documents he had collected. We were both awed by the encounter.
Twenty-one years later George and I were back in Guldenthal. This time we were with a small team to film iwas8814.
We met Patricia Erb, who is leading a local group focused on restoring the old synagogue and the memory of former Jewish citizens.
With her family she led us through the winding forest path to the Jewish cemetery where we filmed the final scene.
And now it is September 2025 and Patricia has connected the descendants of Leopold Grünewald with the survivor of August Schneider!
Joslynne’s Halibard is the grand, grand, grand daughter
of Leopold Grünewald, the same Leopold who signed the founding document of the synagogue.
She lives with her family in Israel and she just visited Guldenthal with her husband and son.
Patricia took them to the former synagogue and to the cemetery in the forest.
Last week we met on Zoom, Joslynne and her mother, Marianne Katz and me and we talked and talked, it was golden.
I think about the threads connecting us, two families the Grünewalds and the Schneiders, founders of the synagogue in a remote wine village, the two locals Gunther Lucas and Patricia Erb seeking ways to remember the past, going out of their way to help Joslynne and me connect with our ancestors.
At the entrance of the former synagogue, the Halibard family and Patricia
The significance of saying their names, Leopold and August and sharing our stories on a zoom call between Israel and the USA.