Remembering the past is of vital importance,
both to individuals studying family
history but also society as a whole,
especially as we grapple with
increasing hatred and divisiveness.
Seattle resident Michael Jacobson
knows this lesson all too well.
He's the grand nephew of Werner Hollander.
Werner was a gentle and kind and very
wellliked Jewish engineer who was ultimately
tried and executed during the Holocaust.
Well, just this last month,
Michael and other members of Werner's
family traveled to the Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC to donate pictures and
artifacts from Werner's life.
Michael joins me now.
Thank you for being here.
This is a project you
actually started in COVID.
Tell me about that you
called the Rabbit Hole.
So I inherited a box of artifacts,
papers and photographs from my mom.
Who inherited it from her younger sister?
Who inherited from my great aunt?
Who inherited it from my great grandmother.
So it was unsorted.
It was piles of photographs and I just
started getting into it and matching
Clef chin with Clef chin picture,
trying to figure out what.
Who was in what picture,
trying to understand where
each picture was taken,
what year it was in.
And I started documenting
every one of these artifacts.
There were letters that
were official documents.
There was a letter from the Vatican.
There were all sorts of interesting
things that I couldn't piece together.
So I started to map these out and
try to identify how all these
pieces related to each other.
I mean, that is a huge project and
what an undertaking. Tell me Verner,
what did you learn about him?
So I had heard about Verner's
story through the family,
but I didn't know some details.
In fact, there were some missed facts
about him and carried down through
the family as as often happens and.
There are a couple of books that
scrapbooks that he had put together
of trips that he had taken.
So it had friends.
There were pictures of him skiing.
He liked motorcycles and he was very
popular with with with men and women.
I mean they were the pictures of
him skiing and and going on hikes.
And so I started under uncovering
more about his life story.
A lot of the documents in the archives
that were about his imprisonment,
his arrest and imprisonment.
Let's talk about that, sure.
Werner was ultimately killed
because of something that the Nazis
referred to as race defilement.
Tell me about those charges.
Yeah. So an interesting twist to
all this is that the Nazis actually
studied US racial segregation laws
and then imported those to Germany and
then enforced them rather strictly.
So in in the 30s or something
called the Nuremberg Laws,
and that basically created Jews
as a separate race.
And that and and an inferior race
in the Nazis eyes.
And so if there was mixing between a
Jewish person and a non Jewish person
that was considered race defilement.
Ross and Shonda.
The English word is miscegenation,
which fortunately most people don't
know these days but basically
means intermarriage or or
relations between different races.
So he got he he had a girlfriend.
She got pregnant.
It's a little unclear how he was turned in.
There's one story about a piano
teacher that she confided in
her piano teacher and the piano
teacher then told the the Nazis.
So he gets arrested and put in jail
and then he's actually put on trial
for the for this race to file.
Make crime.
Oh my goodness. I mean was there any help
why, why even with the trial with those
way that the Nazis were were handling,
that's a great question.
So he had a Hungarian passport.
So he was being treated at that time as a
foreign national and he had been baptized.
I would say that they were not,
they were not religiously Jewish
nor were they religiously Christian.
But he had sort of the paperwork to you know
give him the proper handling if you will.
And then there were efforts the the,
the letter with the with the
Vatican was to get to get some
intercession to get him out of jail.
But in in fact,
that that didn't work in the end.
And I have his prison Diaries not
quite the right as like a kind of a
journal that he was keeping and he
was talking about where his artifacts
should go and who should get things.
So he kind of realized at one point
that it was kind of hopeless and he
kind of made peace with himself,
knowing that his fate was somewhat sealed.
Even the Vatican interceding could not stop.
That wasn't going to change.
That wasn't going to change
from what they did. That's right.
Ultimately, he was killed.
And and and your family
has to live with that.
You recently traveled with them.
Actually, your family from all
over the world recently traveled
with you to DC to present these
artifacts to the Holocaust Museum.
What was that like for you?
Yeah, So we've known that these
documents and things were interesting.
We didn't quite understand
the significance of them.
But the Holocaust Museum was very interested
in the set of documents that showed.
His whole life,
including the prison journals,
including the work of his fraternal twin
sister to get him justice after the war.
Her name was Helga and she fought,
you know, she wrote to American
authorities to get him out.
And for me it was very emotional
as one might imagine and but it was
also the surprise emotion for me was
relief because these things were in my
basement and I was taking good care of them.
They were sorted and secure and then acid
free containers and all that sort of thing.
But.
Knowing that they're going to the
Holocaust Memorial Museum allowed
me to just breathe a sigh of relief.
Know that they would be taken care of.
Know that they could be available for
researchers and and further preservation.
I have the chills because I think
that there's so many of us out
there that don't know and have
these things laying around and
haven't really looked at them.
But you're such a great example of
why it's important to pay attention
to these things left behind.
Remembering and saying the names
of these people are also very
important in our hearts and souls.
Tell me why.
That that is to you in your own words.
So I think it personalizes the individual.
It personalizes the individual story.
It it helps you connect.
This was my grandmother's brother.
This is not some far off historical figure.
This is my grandmother's brother.
We can all think of our grandmother,
we can all think if they
had a brother or not.
That's who this occurred to.
And I think with all the contention around
history and telling history these days.
This is part of that full
history that needs to be told.
So I'm really proud to have been
able to contribute these artifacts,
hope that the museums will be able
to use them in their educational
programming and and and other purposes.
I'm sure they're so grateful,
just as we are for you sharing your
story today. Thank you so much.
Thank you for being here.
Cannot wait to to to talk with you more.