The Themar Jewish community project began in 2008 when Andy Rosengarten, the son of a Jew born 1921 in Themar, who fled to Shanghai 1939, and then to USA, donated his father’s collection of letters, photograph albums, and other materials to the permanent collection of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In 1983, intense homesickness/Heimweh for his birthplace had prompted Manfred Rosengarten to contact the few non-Jewish schoolmates who had survived the war and still lived in Themar. The schoolmates had reciprocated and an “avalanche” of letters crisscrossed the ocean until Manfred’s death in 1987 — Manfred not only carefully kept track of all the letters he received but he also made copies of the letters he sent.

As a volunteer at the VHEC, I was asked to read and summarize the letters. In April 2008, intrigued by the unusual nature of the correspondence, I travelled to Themar to visit this city so cherished by Manfred, where one of the original letter writers, Willi Förster, as well as the children of several letter writers were eager to share memories. As well, many other Themarens wanted to talk about the city in Manfred’s time (1921-1936) — not just the good, but also the bad and the very ugly. They also told of how Jewish Themarens, their children and their grandchildren, had come to Themar particularly after reunification. But, when they arrived, they faced an almost unbridgeable communication barrier — for the most part, the second- and third-generation visitors did not speak German and, as former East Germans, post-war Themarens spoke Russian, not English, as a second language.

A website dedicated to the Jewish community of Themar, “Their Voices Live On,” went live in 2009; it has led to contact with descendants of Themar’s Jewish families throughout the world. Family members visit the town of Themar and connect with Themarens committed to ensuring that the former Jewish community is honoured.

For more about this project, see:
•  Sharon Meen, “How a box of letters became a website,” Zachor, Winter 2011.
•  Cornell Hoppe, “Behind the ‘dead’ files it is very much alive”, inSüdthüringen.de, August 30, 2018.
•  “Themar, Thuringia: No one could extinguish the love for the homeland,” May 2013.
•  Sharon Meen, “The Deportations from Themar: May 1942 to the Belzyce Ghetto”, and “Intimate Kisses: Last Words before Deportation [to the Belzyce Ghetto].”