On a warm spring day in June of 1999, I stood in the courtyard of the Heeres Kraftfahr Park (HKP¹) labor camp in Vilnius, Lithuania. Flanking the courtyard were tall buildings that had once housed over 1000 Jewish workers and their families, all slave laborers for the German war effort. I listened as my mother told the story of how she and her parents had survived the Holocaust, unlike so many other members of our family. She explained that her survival was largely due to the efforts of the German Army officer in charge of the HKP camp, a certain...

The summer of 1999 approached. In my medical practice, one partner a year can take a one-month summer “sabbatical” vacation, and the summer of 1999 was my first opportunity to take such a vacation. As it neared, I gradually decided that it was time to ask my parents and family to go to Vilnius and explore our roots. My father was immediately eager to go; my wife and my mother, however, had reservations.

After 17 years of observing me and my family, Susan had ample opportunity to discover some of the peculiar scars that we carry from the war. Once...

During the long flight to Vilnius in June of 1999, I finally read my Grandfather Samuel’s memoirs. They are contained in a massive volume 434 pages long, and as they sat perched on my lap, they weighed heavily on me. I had been avoiding them for almost a decade.

My family always claimed that I was my grandfather’s clone. I looked like him, I had the same interest in history and politics as he did, I even waved my hands just like he did when arguing politics. My grandfather’s nickname was “Munya” (short for Shmuel or Samuel), and within our...

On the first morning of our visit to Vilnius, Susan, Jonathan, Rebecca, my parents, and I all departed from the Hotel Palaite and walked toward the Green Bridge over the Vilya River.

“What is today’s date?” asked my father.

“June 22nd,” I replied.

“You’re kidding,” he said. “Today is the 58th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the German surprise attack against the Soviet Union.” As we stood overlooking the Vilya River, my father remembered the events of that day more than half a century ago. He recalled that he had gone out kayaking on the river with four of his friends....

On the second day of our stay in Vilna, my mother led us out of our hotel toward the old Jewish Quarter of Vilna. She wanted to show us the Vilna Ghetto. As we walked past her old home, she began to tell us how the Lithuanian police had chased her family into the Vilna Ghetto on September 6, 1941. Recalling how she had only moments to grab a blanket, a pillow, and a few possessions, she asked her grandchildren what they would quickly gather to take with them if they were forced to make such an exodus from their...

Our family journey to Vilnius made a deep impact on me. Upon returning home, I found myself frequently thinking about our trip, going over different parts in my mind, trying to digest all that I had seen and experienced. I had heard my parents tell their stories in the places where dramatic events had happened to them. I had seen with my own eyes the places I had been trying to imagine since I was a child. The trip made what had seemed like ancient tales from the distant past come alive with vivid intensity. The stories were real, the...

In Darmstadt, Germany, Dr. Marianne Viefhaus was in earnest pursuit of Karl Plagge. In the university archives, she found his school records with a graduation date in 1924 with a degree in mechanical and chemical engineering. She also found records that he had been employed by an engineering firm called “Hessenwerke” in Darmstadt during the 1930s. Hessenwerke was no longer in business, but by looking in the Darmstadt Chamber of Commerce archives she found that the company had been owned and run by a family named Hesse. Checking the modern Darmstadt phone book, she saw that there was still a...

When I was a young boy, I used to engage in childhood fantasies, imagining myself as a hero. Early on, I imagined that I was a fighter pilot, flying missions against the Luftwaffe, shooting down their fighter planes and bombers. As I grew older, my daydreams grew more detailed and elaborate, and I imagined myself as a superhero who could alter the course of history. I dreamed that I was a secret agent in Germany just before the war, setting out to assassinate Adolf Hitler, thus changing history and preventing the Holocaust from ever happening. However, in these fantasies, I...