Hear My Story: Walter Frank & Bernd Kruse

“It was a very frightening period… hoping maybe one of the members of the family would be [alive], and that was not the case.” — Walter Frank, on his family’s search for loved ones post WWII

“I want to be a voice for people who don’t have a voice or cannot speak for themselves.” — Bernd Kruse, German researcher and educator

In this special two-part episode of Hear My Story, Trinity Johnson, Director of Holocaust Programs & Museum Experiences, first sits down with Holocaust survivor Walter Frank, and then welcomes German researcher, retired schoolteacher Bernd Kruse along with his translator, and representative of the city of Furstenau, Nicole Klosterman. Walter reflects on his family’s escape from Nazi Germany and the difficult postwar search for answers about the relatives who never made it out. In part two, Bernd shares how discovering a forgotten Jewish cemetery in the city of Fürstenau, Germany set him on a decades-long path to uncover the stories of the town’s Jewish families who were victims of the Holocaust — including Walter’s. Out of sheer compassion, Bernd has now spent decades researching the fates of the Jewish people who called Furstenau home and has made it his mission to bring awareness to their stories.

This episode is part of the Cynthia & Harold Guttman Family Center for Storytelling. Subscribe here https://www.youtube.com/@holocaustandhumanity

Our gratitude to Margaret & Michael Valentine for their ongoing support of this series.

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