jews d
in
the
Commemorating
Life
Three
generations
return to
Germany to
remember a
grandmother.
JOYCE WISWELL CONTRIBUTING WRITER
RIGHT: Steven
Meyers is flanked
by his family at
the May 2017
unveiling of the
new gravestone
in Nuremberg,
Germany. From left
are granddaughter
Andrea Rottman,
daughter Fran
Martin, daughter
Karen Rottman,
son-in-law Morris
Rottman and
granddaughter
Emilie Rottman.
S
teven Meyers does not remem-
ber a whole lot about his
grandmother, who was mur-
dered in Treblinka, but he wanted
to honor her memory.
“She was a nice lady, a good cook
— the usual grandmother,” Meyers,
92, said of Paula Stern Klein. “She
deserved remembrance somehow.”
Meyers of Farmington Hills got
the idea when he visited his native
Germany last year. At a cemetery,
he noticed the memorial plaques
some families had added to com-
memorate relatives who perished
in the Holocaust.
Meyers immigrated to the United
States in 1939 at age 14, about
six months after Kristallnacht,
“the Night of Broken Glass.” He was
unaware of the pogrom against
Jews until he was walking to school
the next day.
Steven Meyers at an old family grave in Gemunden, Germany.
28
August 17 • 2017
jn
“I walked by the barber shop and
the barber said, ‘Go on home; you
shouldn’t be out.’ We didn’t real-
ize what was going on because the
night before the manager of our
apartment building told [the Nazis]
there were no Jews living there,” he
said.
He doesn’t remember a lot of the
details about the subsequent deci-
sion to move to America or why his
grandparents didn’t come along.
He arrived with his parents in New
York in May 1939; an aunt met
their ship, and the family settled
in Detroit. Meyers graduated from
Cass Tech High School in 1943. He
then entered the Army — “went
back to Europe paid for by Uncle
Sam” — and after World War II
attended Wayne State University on
the GI Bill.
Except for a brief time during the
war and once in the 1970s, Meyers
did not return to Nuremberg until
2016, when he visited with his
daughter and son-in-law, Karen
and Morris Rottman of West
Bloomfield. That’s when he got
the idea to add a commemorative
plaque to the grave of his grand-
father, Isaac Klein, who died of
pneumonia in 1941. (Meyers had
earlier learned his grandmother
was deported to the Theresienstadt
“camp-ghetto” near Prague, and
then to the Treblinka concentra-
tion camp in Poland, where she was
killed.)
Karen reached out to the
Nuremberg Jewish Community
Center for advice on obtaining
a commemorative plaque and
was helped by its president, Rudi
Ceslanski, who had done the exact
same thing for his own grandfather.
“His grandparents were the same
age as Dad’s, and they happened
to belong to the same synagogue,”
Karen said. “I like to think that
maybe they were friends.”
UNVEILING IN MAY
Meyers returned to Nuremberg
this past May to see the unveil-
ing of the stone. In addition to his
daughter and son-in-law, he was
accompanied by another daughter,
Fran Martin, and granddaugh-
ters Andrea Rottman and Emilie
Rottman.
Joined by Ceslanski, the family
held an informal memorial ceremo-
ny at Isaac’s grave where the new
charcoal-grey stone honors Paula
Stern Klein with the words “ermor-
det [murdered] in Treblinka.”
“I printed some things from the
internet and we each read from it,
and adapted a poem about ances-
tors and put my great-grandmoth-
er’s name in it,” Karen said. “My dad
told a little story that he remem-
bered about his grandparents, but
it was so long ago that he does not
remember a lot.”
Said Meyers, “We were three
generations right there. The kids
felt like they were part of the
descendants. We saw the apart-
ment building where we lived and it
was rebuilt just like it was nearly 80
years ago. I showed the kids where
my bedroom was.”
The family also visited the town
of Gemunden, where they saw the
former synagogue (now a private
home), the graves of some paternal
relatives and the names of three
uncles on a World War I memorial.
“We met the mayor and he gave
us a plaque,” Karen said. “We felt
like celebrities for the day.”
Meyers, a member of Oak Park’s
Congregation Beth Shalom, had
a long career as an industrial
engineer that included stints at
General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and
Volkswagen. He is still learning to
adjust to life without his wife of
nearly 65 years, Marcia, who died in
February 2016.
“I tell you, we enjoyed life togeth-
er,” he said. “Now I’m busy, busy,
busy, playing golf, playing bridge
with lots of good friends.”
He’s glad he could commemorate
his grandmother’s life and tragic
death.
“I know,” he said, “she would have
appreciated what we did.” •