April 7, 2010

Oberbürgermeister, and

Municipal Council, and

Ministerpräsident       

Stuttgart, Germany

I have recently learned that an “initiative” has been formed to preserve what was the Hotel Silber in Stuttgart and to establish a museum and educational-and-documentation center 

there since it was the place where many Jews were taken before being sent to concentration camps during the Nazi era.   My father, Dr. Paul L. Hecht, was one of numerous Stuttgart Jews who was arrested during Kristallnacht and subsequently sent to Dachau.  I was nine years old at the time and still remember being awoken by my mother to say good-bye to him.  

Before that time, my father had his license to practice medicine taken away and had applied for a visa to leave Germany.  Because he had also served in the German army as a medical officer during World War I, he was released from Dachau after a month.  However, he then had to undergo surgery because of a severe sinus infection caused by his incarceration and eventually escaped to Switzerland, then England, and a year later moved to the United States.

My sister, my brother, and I were sent to England, via the Kindertransport, to three different English families, with whom we lived for a year before emigrating to the United States with my father.  My mother, on a Czech visa, was able to join us there a year later.  Because all of my parents’ belongings from Diemershalden Strasse were confiscated by the Nazis, my father had to begin his medical career in the United States all over again. 

My grandparents, Dr. Ludwig Hecht and Rosa Thalmessinger Hecht, from Ulm, were sent to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died there a few weeks later, in January 1943.  They and other Jews from Ulm are commemorated in a beautiful book, Und Erinnere Dich Immer an Mich (Das   Gedenkbuch für die Ulmer Opfer des Holocaust).  

By preserving Hotel Silber, a similar tribute could be made to the Jews of Stuttgart.  I urge 

you to consider preservation of this site in honor of all those who, like my father, suffered

during the Nazi era.  Fortunately, my father was one of the lucky ones who through determination and great courage rebuilt a life for our family in the United States.  There are many others who sadly did not survive.  I hope the city of Stuttgart will take action to remember them.  

Sincerely,

Erica Hecht Kanter