The odyssey of our exodus from Hamburg with my parents in April 1939, via Belgium, came to its conclusion in August 1998 when my husband and I flew to Germany. The scattered pieces of this period of my life have come together to close a circle and the memories of this moving visit will remain with me forever.
        On the plane, shortly before landing, a German woman sitting next to me asked, "Is this your first visit to Hamburg?" "It is, since my family's departure in 1939", I answered. She patted me on the arm and said spontaneously, "I am so sorry."
        I explained to her briefly that the motive of my sojourn was to visit with Peter Moser, son of Richard Ernst Moser, born on May 13, 1885, for whom my father had worked in an export and import firm in Hamburg, from 1931 through 1938. My father was arrested the day after Reichskristallnacht, the night of the burning of the synagogues and the shattering of windows of Jewish owned shops and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. My mother, who was fraught with fear and anxiety about the whereabouts of my father, turned to Mr. Moser to seek his help. Richard Ernst Moser wrote a letter to the Gestapo requesting the release of my father. One can imagine that it must have taken extraordinary courage to solicit help from the Gestapo on behalf of a Jew at a time when the official policy of the state was to rid itself of its entire Jewish population. And now, after sixty years, I was travelling to Hamburg to thank the son of this man for what he had so bravely done for my family.

It was not just the help he had given my parents and myself, because a few years ago, reading the newly found letters of my grandparents written between 1938 through the end of 1941 they revealed that they were helped by Richard Moser with food and money, when it was forbidden for a German to help a Jew. Moser had taken great personal risk by helping Nathan Hersh Bernstein and Etel Bernstein née Bernfeld, my father's parents, and for that I wanted to thank him personally.

       This woman seemed sincerely moved and said, "I apologize for what the Germans did." She assured me that there were no Nazis in her family and said that her best friends, whom she visited yearly, lived in Jerusalem.
        A representative of the Senate program received us at the airport. The Senate invites Jews who fled Hamburg during the Hitler regime to visit its reconstructed city. The Senate hosted us for a week of cultural events and nostalgic visits to former Jewish historical sites.
        We were taken to the Hamburg Steigenberger Hotel. In our room we found a wonderful arrangement of flowers, from Peter Moser and his wife Irmgard, awaiting us.
        Wednesday, July 29th was the beginning of our intense and emotionally charged week in Hamburg. The group of over twenty persons originally from Hamburg, but now living in many different lands, met in the lobby of the hotel to be escorted to our first meeting held at the Jewish community center.
        Mrs Meinhardt, the coordinator of the program, addressed the former Hamburg Jews. As we sat around the breakfast table she asked that each one tell something about themselves and describe under what circumstances they had left Germany.
        Some of the men had studied at the same school as my father and his brothers, the Talmud Tora Realschule, which was the Jewish boys' school. Other men had been students at German secular schools. A woman who was sent away to Scotland on a 'children's transport' (Kindertransport) with her sister, so that they could remain alive, told of her student years at the Jewish girls' school on Carolinenstrasse. She broke down in tears and could not go on. The anguish of those memories and her forced expulsion from Germany were too painful to recall. Her husband then continued in her name.

        I was the last to speak. Although I tried to be as brief as possible I had a story never told before. I told the guests that three years previously correspondence from my grandparents in Hamburg to my father and to his brothers in New York had been found among the folders of my father's recently deceased brother. These letters which were written from 1938 to 1941 came to a halt in November 1941 when correspondence from Germany to the United States ceased. The letters reveal, in a subtle manner, the systematic increase in the severity of the decrees against the Jews as well as their difficulty in obtaining visas from the American consulate. I went on to tell them that my grandparents received financial and material help from Richard Moser when it was strictly forbidden for a German to have any contact with a Jew. I thanked the Senate for having given me the opportunity to return to Hamburg, the city of my birth. The Germans seemed to be extremely interested in my unique story.
        We returned to the hotel to rest before the next activity. My husband and I then took this opportunity to walk to Grossneumarkt 56, the last residence of my grandparents before their deportation to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, where they perished. In the fall of 1942 the Gestapo designated property owned by the 'Jewish Religious Federation Hamburg' as so-called 'Jew Houses'. Grossneumarkt 54-57, the former 'Hertz-Joseph-Levy-Stift', was one such building, where Jews were compulsorily accommodated by the Gestapo prior to their deportation. By an extraordinary coincidence this street was just three blocks from the hotel in the Neustadt district of Hamburg where Jews had previously lived and had their businesses. The house still exists. The façade has bold bronze letters imposed on it, which reads: 'HERTZ-JOSEPH-LEVY-STIFT'. It was agonizing to imagine this building as the cruel and final spot Jews were forced to live in. The 'Stift' building at Grossneumarkt 56 faces the sunny, cobble-stoned triangular shaped Grossneumarkt square which today boasts a police station, cafes and restaurants.

        As I stood at the front door, the caretaker of the building came by. I asked, "Can I see the inside of the building?" He answered in the affirmative. We walked straight to the back door that led to a garden. He said, "This has been redone, but the steps to the cellar are the original ones."
        On the wall in the hall we noticed a plaque. It reads in German: 'This institution was established from a will (STIFT) in 1854. In this building, free apartments were provided for needy Jewish families. In 1942 this building was sold'.
        I walked away stunned in disbelief that destiny had brought me to this place as a final tribute to the memory of my grandparents.
        The program for the evening was an invitation for a dinner hosted by WIZO - a women’s Zionist organization, in the community center. There was entertainment by a Russian family who danced, sang and played klezmer music. The majority of the Jews in Hamburg today are immigrants from Russia, Iran and Slovakia.
        Thursday morning the group was treated to a boat ride through the port of Hamburg on the River Elbe, the third largest port in the world.
        Later on, we left for the 'Rathaus', the impressive City Hall. We were all guests of the Senate for lunch. My husband and I were seated at the main table together with the female Senator who presides in the Senate. The retired Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Unna and his wife Renate, originally from Hamburg, as well as other German officials sat at the same table. I was seated next to the director of the history department of the Hamburg State Archives. He had already heard about my story and I was told that a television station wanted to interview me. I felt compelled to oblige them as they were anxious to have a Jewish person relate how a German, Richard Moser, helped a Jewish family during the darkest period of German contemporary history.
        During the luncheon, the Senator addressed those gathered followed by a moving speech by Ambassador Unna. He explained the reason that his father, a renowned doctor in Hamburg, decided in 1935 to leave Germany with his family for Palestine.
        Dr. Unna had received a letter from the director of Yitzhak's school stating that: 'From this day on Jewish students are no longer permitted to participate in sport activities'. That same year the family witnessed a demonstration of German youths singing: "When Jewish blood squirts from knives, things will be even better." They knew that the time had come for them to leave Hamburg.
        During my interview I explained the close relationship of trust and mutual admiration that Richard Moser and my father had for each other. The fact that Moser wrote a letter to the Gestapo to request his release from Sachsenhausen concentration camp demonstrated a manifestation of sincere friendship. Richard Moser offered to protect us, by hiding us on his farm. My father knew the danger would be great for Moser as well as for us and therefore declined the offer. He was eternally grateful to him for his humane gesture in those most dangerous times and remained his lifelong friend until Richard died on April 5, 1967. This friendship then extended to his son Peter who had lived in Lima, Peru with his family throughout the war years. The help Richard Moser eventually gave to my grandparents was an act of unselfishness, bravery and human kindness.
        After my interview I felt emotionally depleted and we spent the next two hours walking around the Neuer Wall street, a shopping street that is comparable to Madison Avenue in New York. It is hard to imagine that behind such sophistication lurked the barbarism and cruelty imposed on a people who considered themselves good and loyal Germans and whose only defect was that they were born as Jews.
        There are modest plaques placed around the city that identify the various former sites of Jewish institutions and buildings once owned by Jews who fled Germany or who were deported.
        Friday morning we were taken to the former school for Jewish girls on Carolinenstrasse 35. This institution was founded in 1884 and closed when the last students were deported in 1942. This was the school where my grandmother went to study English twice a week. She was forced to walk the extensive distance from her residence as public transportation was prohibited for Jews. She was highly motivated to study English because it would enable her to converse with her grandchildren when she immigrated to America. She did not regard this as a great sacrifice. Dr. Ursula Randt, an historian and daughter of a Jewish father who left Germany so that his wife and daughter could remain alive, was our lecturer at this school and at the Talmud Tora Realschule.

        She researched its history and subsequently published her findings in a book Carolinenstrass 35. Geschichte der Maedchenschule der Deutsch-Israelitischen Gemeinde in Hamburg, 1884-1942 (Carolinenstrasse 35 - the story of the girls' school of the German-Israelite Community in Hamburg, 1884-1942).
        I used this opportunity to show her a class photo of my uncle seated together with his classmates and their teacher, Mr. Rothschild. Dr. Randt asked me to send her a copy of the photograph since there was none in their archives that included this teacher. I was pleased to be able to contribute in a small way to the archives of the history of the Talmud Tora Realschule.
        We were shown the Bornplatz, a block away from the Talmud Tora Realschule, the site of the former main synagogue of Hamburg that was completely destroyed. With a camera in hand I stood contemplating the ground of this former major synagogue of the Jews of Hamburg. In this very synagogue on the Sabbath before my father's marriage to my mother in 1936 he celebrated his Aufruf, his being called to the reading of the Torah to recite a blessing. I simply could not focus a picture. How can one photograph the pain of destruction?

        The boys' school, the Talmud Tora Realschule, stands as it did since its inception. Today it is empty and unused.
        My husband had heard from my father on numerous occasions about how patriotic he and his Jewish schoolmates were in Hamburg and about the wonderful youth they had had. It was difficult for my husband Pynchas to comprehend this until Dr. Randt spoke so highly about the school. She mentioned the 1911 inauguration when the principal cited the triple motto of the Talmud Tora Realschule: Judaism, German culture and Hamburg citizenship.
        Peter and Irmgard Moser came to the hotel to visit us on Friday afternoon. We were happy to see each other. We had last seen Peter about 30 years previously, on a trip to Lima to visit with my husband's parents. This elegant German gentleman had come to see us because he always considered my father his friend. Although at that time we had absolutely no idea of Peter's father's incredible demeanor towards my grandparents, we connected immediately. But this time I had been anxiously anticipating their visit because I now knew of the risks, loyalty, friendship and devotion that his father had shown to my family. Even though my grandparents did not escape their terrible destiny Mr. Moser had made their last two years more tolerable. He had made them feel that they were not alone in the midst of their would be assassins, by the help he gave them and by demonstrating that there were still some noble people around with feelings of solidarity toward other human beings. Now the time had come for a renewal of this friendship.
        On Saturday afternoon we returned to Grossneumarkt 56. I sat down on the bench in front of the building, fulfilling the wish of my grandparents. In their first letter written to my parents after we left Germany, they wrote: 'Always speak to Henny about us, so that she will never forget us.' Was it a foreboding of things to come? Destiny had brought me here that day to honor their memory.
        As I did not know on which floor my grandparents had lived I seized the opportunity to enter the building when a child opened the door. I walked up the narrow staircase for a quick look around and counted the number of steps they had had to tread on a daily basis in order to go about their daily errands. These included going to the American consulate for visas which never arrived as they were listed on the Polish quota, both having been born in Poland. There were 22 steps to the first floor. The building has four floors. It is a very narrow building which led us to believe that the rooms must be small. My grandparents had been forced to seek housing in the 'Jew House' after they were compelled to vacate their store and home. Germans were forbidden to sell merchandise to the Jews and that left them without a source of income. They found a room in an apartment of Frau Keller, a friend of my grandmother’s sister Leah, in this free house until June 1941. From that date on they had to pay a monthly rent of eight Reichmarks.
        One block from Grossneumarkt was the site of the Portuguese synagogue on Marcusstrasse where my grandfather went for prayers. There was no longer any indication that a synagogue had ever stood at this location. The synagogue was bombed and completely destroyed during the war and down with it went 80 years of Jewish communal history.

        Sunday was Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70. This sad day in the history of the Jewish people is commemorated yearly by prayers and fasting. When my husband left for the synagogue I returned to Grossneumarkt 56 and to Marcusstrasse because I felt a need to express this day of mourning in my own personal way.
        I looked into the lobby of the building built on the former site of the synagogue to see if there was a memorial plaque in memory of the Jews who perished. Not seeing anything I walked away. Across the street there were two young men engaged in a conversation. I approached them, "Excuse me for the interruption, but do you know if a synagogue ever stood at house number six before the war?" "No I don't know", one of them replied, but the land stood empty for many years and when they began to put in a new foundation, they had some problems", he said. I wondered if there had been a mikve, a Jewish ritual bath, in the basement of this building, which they could not have known about as no photos or building plans remained. "Were you taught about the Holocaust in school?" I continued. He gestured with his hand, "For eighty percent of us it went in one ear and out the other". "Do you dislike foreigners?", I boldly asked. He gave me an honest affirmative answer. "How about the Jews?", I said.
        "There are Jews in Hamburg; there is even an Ignatz Bubis Center for Jewish Christian relations." "Did your parents ever speak to you about the Holocaust period?" "No", he replied, "even though my grandfather was half Jewish, he was a Nazi."
        I said goodbye to this Jewish burial ground and to the destruction of Jewish life in Hamburg. I passed by the Stift once again on the way back to the hotel for the last time. I knew that the circle was closing. I have fulfilled the wishes of my grandparents, never to forget them and to honor their memory.
        In the afternoon, I was interviewed for a radio program answering questions of how we were helped by a German. We then left for Peter's home, which had been his father's house. It was built in 1927 by the Jewish architects Hans and Oskar Gerson who fled Hamburg to California before the war.
        Peter and Irmgard received us warmly in their house surrounded by old trees and flowering bushes. Most of the furniture in the house belonged to the father, Richard. Peter had added some items that they had brought with them from their many years of living in Lima and subsequently in Madrid, until their return to Hamburg in 1995.
        Before the other guests arrived we spoke about our families. They immediately made us feel at home and I felt that I was visiting with family, a newly found aunt and uncle to whom I was emotionally linked going back to the time when my father had been rescued from the Gestapo by Richard Moser.
        We showed them photos of our children and grandchildren. I told Peter what I knew about his father's special and unusual behavior toward my grandparents and of his discrete monetary help to them, as they no longer had any source of income before their deportation. Peter touched my arm and with tears in his eyes said, "Thank you Henny for telling me these things, they mean so much to me." Peter subsequently told me that his father had been a member of the 'Deutsche Getreidebund', whose name was changed to 'N.S.Getreidebund'. The president of that association wrote a letter to Richard stating that he knew that he employed a Jew who was in charge of the grain and seed business. He recommended that Richard replace him, as otherwise the firm could no longer belong to that association. Richard's answer was firm, in character with his persona. He decided not to comply with the letter and renounced his membership of the 'N.S.Getreidebund'.
        I asked Peter if he knew that his father had offered to hide my parents and me during the war. He did not know this but knew that his father had hidden his brother-in-law, Phillip Rappaport, on his farm in Vietow, Mecklenburg, 70 miles east of Hamburg. After the war this property was lost to the communist, German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
        Upon my return to Caracas, I wrote to Rappaport's daughter, Dr. Gerda Altpeter, a Protestant theologian who lives in Switzerland, to ask her what had become of her father. She replied to my letter: 'My father's parents and forbears were Jewish, in fact his grandfather had been a Rabbi, but my father was baptized as a child when his mother married the son of a Lutheran minister after the death of Phillip's father.' Nevertheless, toward the end of the war Rappaport was taken to a concentration camp, KZ Dor in Vorwohle, where he had to do hard labor.
        The entire family had been in danger of arrest. In 1933, Rappaport's wife Trude was advised to leave her husband to secure her own safety as well as that of her family. She refused to do so. Mrs. Rappaport was threatened with arrest but was able to hide for a time at the farm in Vietow, Mecklenburg, and later on at her brother Richard's home in Hamburg. A Christian minister took in Rappaport after his release until the Americans came to Essen to liberate the prisoners. Rappaport's daughter had to flee as well and spent two months on the farm (which was confiscated after the war by the Soviet army and never returned to the family) and then hid in various trains until liberation.
        After the war Rappaport was rehabilitated by the new German government as a high level official and died in 1955.
        Peter's nephew, a distinguished lawyer, Dr. Boerries de Grahl the son of Ingeborg de Grahl, a deceased sister of Peter, and his wife Irmgard, as well as Dr. Gunther Honicke and his wife, friends of the Mosers were also guests. Dr. Honicke is a journalist, a distinguished looking man of 79, with a full head of white hair. He related that when he was a student, his closest friends were two Jewish boys. One day they disappeared and he never heard from them again. This episode devastated him and he wrote a book: 'The end of the Jewish community in Altona, 1942' in their memory. (Altona is now a borough of Hamburg.) During our conversations, tears filled his eyes as he looked at Rabbi Brener and said, "Do you know, this is the first time that I have ever met a Rabbi."
        I asked Peter, "What became of Mrs. Zimmermann, Richard's private secretary?" She used to call my grandmother to come to the office to receive the money and food Richard gave them on a monthly basis to enable them to sustain themselves in this perilous time. Sometimes Mrs. Zimmerman would come to the 'Jew House' ('Judenhaus') herself when Richard Moser was away from Hamburg. Here Jews were allocated accommodation by the Gestapo. At this time all Jews wore the yellow star. The building was closely observed by the Gestapo.
        "She died in 1981 but her sons live in Hamburg", answered Peter. I requested the phone number of the elder son Klaus and called him that evening. I identified myself as the daughter of William Bernstein who was employed by the firm of Richard Moser. "I am calling to tell you that your mother was a noble woman, according to the letters of my grandparents, because of what she did for them in the name of Moser", I said. He seemed to be speechless as he had surely never anticipated hearing about this episode of his mother's life. He asked where we were staying and we bade each other good evening.
        The following day, I received a message from the younger brother, Horst Zimmermann. He said that he and his brother would like to meet me. They arrived at the hotel within the hour. We spoke in the lobby with these two prior unknown German men, as we now had a connection from the past.
        Klaus had studied in France and said that he had never heard his mother speak about the Holocaust. His brother Horst said, "I do remember my mother mentioning that William Bernstein worked in Richard Moser's firm but not that she ever brought a Jewish couple money or food". She also told him that she witnessed the deportation of the Jews from Hamburg at the train station, as their office was close by. One day Mrs. Zimmermann made a comment concerning the deportation of the Jews to Mr. Keller a fellow employee of the office. Mr. Keller turned over his jacket lapel to show her his Nazi insignia that signified that he was a member of the party. Horst said, "She understood the meaning of this and never spoke about the Jews again."

        Richard Moser insisted that my father had to leave with some capital to start life anew in America. As it was forbidden for a Jew to receive money in Germany, Moser requested his friend in Holland to lend my father an agreed-upon sum of dollars. My father then traveled to Holland to accept the loan while my mother and I left directly for our subsequent reunion with him in Belgium.
        The memory of this visit to Hamburg will forever be embedded in my soul. Had my grandparents' letters never surfaced I doubt that I would have had a special reason to visit Hamburg.
        The letters were the catalysts. I accepted the invitation from the Senate in order to have the opportunity to honor my grandparents' wish that I never forget them and to thank Peter Moser personally for what his father had done for our family.
        There was one last thing left to see before our departure. We asked the driver who took us to the airport, to stop at Rothenbaumchaussee 3, the place of our original residence in Hamburg. Holding a photo of myself sitting in a baby carriage in the rear garden of the house, I rang the bell of our former apartment that had been converted into real estate offices.
        I asked to be let in and quickly walked to the back window that faced the garden where I had played as a baby. Pynchas and I looked around. We saw large bright rooms, just as my mother had related. I could almost hear the knock on the door and the Gestapo shouting at my father the morning after Kristallnacht, "The Jew Bernstein out!" After November 11, 1938 the nightmare began. Luckily for us, we were able to escape in time.
        The rest is history.
        I have come full circle. In 1939 I left Hamburg with my parents, Bertha and William Bernstein and in 1998 I returned for a visit, together with my husband.

In December 1995, my cousin gave me letters written by our grandparents. By 1996, the discovery of the letters began to have a profound effect on us.
        In February 1996 the first letter to Yad Vashem was written asking for Richard Moser to be recognised as a "Righteous Among the Nations" based upon the information the letters disclosed. Yad Vashem is the only institution that has a forest that honors and gives recognition to non-Jews who hid and saved Jews during the Holocaust years.
        My father could not bring himself to read his parents'’ letters because of the (erroneous) pain and guilt he suppressed and bore for so many years. The thought that he failed to rescue his parents, could no longer be ignored and he agreed to my proposal of requesting an award for Richard Moser.
        The Spielberg Foundation was gathering testimony from Holocaust survivors to document this era for their archives in order to leave an oral testimony for future generations. I proposed to Dad that he give his testimony and to our surprise he agreed. The time had come for him to relate the pent up memories from his past. This proposal must have generated a sense of welcome relief for him. The taping was done in his office on 72nd Street, on April 26th, 1996. He answered all the questions in a clear and unemotional tone. After his interview my mother was also interviewed as she had been a victim of anti-Semitism during her student years in Frankfurt. This was an achievement for both of them. It was a first step in coming to terms with their past.
        Now we had to take the next step. Several Holocaust organizations were approached to inquire about the possibility of giving posthumous recognition to Moser. My request did not fit into the policies of most organizations because their main purpose was to give financial help to needy Christians who had saved Jews. Many recipients were plain folks, kind and simple farmers who helped their Jewish neighbors in time of need by hiding them.
        In 1996 I sent the first request to Yad Vashem. The correspondence was like a ball being tossed back and forth. Each time there was another hitch. They requested the testimony of those who had benefited directly from Moser. Can the dead and murdered give testimony?
        My grandparents' letters gave proof of the help Moser had extended to them. And of course there was the letter to the Gestapo to obtain the release of my father from Sachsenhausen which was a fundamental piece of evidence. All the documentation was sent to Yad Vashem but there was one requisite yet to be fulfilled. We needed proof that Moser had actually placed himself in personal danger by hiding a Jew. Even though Moser had offered to hide us and Yad Vashem considered this gesture a most noble deed, because my father had declined the offer, knowing that it would have put both families in danger, Yad Vashem considered the offer to be insufficient for the posthumous award.