Rolf Schild (front far right) in Germany with his family
Rolf Schild escaped from Köln, Germany to England with the Kindertransport just like me. Though he left in early 1939 and I left later in July 1939. We were part of the same rescue of Jewish children, snatched from death by hastily organized train journeys.
The Schilds and the Zacks lived in apartments on Horst Wessel Platz, (renamed after a violent Nazi hero). Their was apartment located next to the big synagogue, ours directly opposite.
Months after we left, his parents and mine were deported on the same day, on the same train from Köln to Lodz, Poland. Both sets of parents were gassed in a grey truck driven from Chelmno to the forest where their bodies were burned to ashes.
Rolf and I never met, we were unaware of our common history.
After years of suppression I had begun to slowly embrace the depth of pain in the violent, evil ending of my parents and my own loss. I wrote A Garland for Ashes to honor their lives.
Hanna & Julian speaking in Köln Deutz
In October 2022 I was back in Köln with a film team making a documentary, i was 8814 (my Kindertransport number) and there on the railway platform where our parents had left Germany for Poland, the story of the Schilds and the Zacks collided.
Rolf had died in 2003 but Julian, his son, came from London and there on the underground platform of Köln Deutz we embraced. We had found each other through Imogen and Amy, researchers of the Holocaust.
Words tumbled out describing our common, hidden, fractured family stories, the Schilds and the Zacks. Each of us eager to fill the empty gaps of understanding.
What about Chelmno and the incinerators in the nearby forest? How can we honor our dearest’s endings in those fearful places?
In 2010 George and I with 8 close friends, a minyan, visited Lodz, Chelmno and the incinerator in the forest on the Anniversary of the day Amalie and Markus Zack’s drew their last breaths.We recited the Mourner’s Kaddish.
Our group in 2010, at the incinerator remembering my parents.
Julian in the forest near Chelmno, honoring his grandparents with UK teachers.
In 2025 Julian visited Chelmno and the forest twice, first with his family then with a group of British teachers. On a memorial wall He placed 2 plaques, one for his grandparents the other for extended family.
Yesterday January 4, 2026 Julian and I recounted the interweaving of our ancestral life stories, talking non-stop by phone, filled with wonder, sorrow and thankfulness.
Redeeming the past!
My visa…permission to leave Germany