3 March 2010

Dr. Wolfgang Schuster

Mayor

Stuttgart, Germany

Dear Dr. Schuster:

    Friends of mine in Stuttgart have told me of the town’s plan to sell the property and buildings on Dorotheenstrasse, including the building known as Hotel Silber.

   This is most unfortunate.  I understand a coalition of many organizations have suggested that this former headquarters of the Gestapo be made into a documentation center for the history of the Nazi period.  This is most essential, the atrocities of those times must not be forgotten.

   I remember well the day after Kristallnacht  in 1938 when the Gestapo came to our apartment in the Silcherstrasse, looking for my father.  Later in the day they arrested him at Gestapo Headquarters.  From this building plans were made for the deportation of Jews – eight of my family who lived in or near Stuttgart were murdered by the Nazis, including my maternal grandmother in Auschwitz and my paternal grandfather in Theresienstadt.

   I was born in Stuttgart (Heinz Kahn) and have visited several times in the past few years.  I have spoken at five gymnasiums on my experiences in Stuttgart as a small boy, being sent to England on a Kindertransport and then, luckily, being reunited with my parents in America after they managed to escape from Germany.  I now have several good friends in Stuttgart.  I have very warm feelings about my Heimatstadt and being born a Schwab.

  I therefore request most urgently that Hotel Silber be saved as a reminder of dark times which must never happen again.

                                       Sincerely yours,

                                                                        Henry O. Kandler, M.D.