I Touched History

Monday, January 27th was Remembrance Day, the day that the Auschwitz Concentration Camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945; a humbling day in remembrance.

It is also the day we began working on the birth registers (1874-1899) for a new city, Castrop, Germany, about an hour and a half southwest of where we live in Detmold. It was a small city (now it is part of the larger Dortmund metroplex) but it had oil and coal so during WWII the city endured 35 bombing raids during which 24% of the city was destroyed.  

Originally these birth/death/marriage registers were kept in the court houses, but these places could be destroyed easily. During the war, the Third Reich moved government records of importance to places of safety where possible.  A castle/fortress with the formidable walls that surrounded them or a mine or cave were good places to protect the genealogical records for the Third Reich.

Birth records were particularly important to the Third Reich for citizens to prove their blood line, as defined by the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.  The Reich was building a "family tree" of pure German blood and "honor" which did not include anyone who had Jewish ancestry back even 3-4 generations. Even if they had become Christians or had not embraced Jewish traditions or culture in any way for their lifetimes, they could no longer call themselves rightful citizens of Germany.

Beginning in 1939, anyone with Jewish descent and whose first name was not on an approved list of names for Jews, had to have an added middle name of "Israel" for males and "Sara" for females on any government documents.

As we began working on the books for Castrop, the second book we looked at had holes in the front cover. 

These are large, thick books measuring 16" tall, 12" wide and some are 3-4 inches thick.  They weigh an average of about 7 lbs. They have between 400-600 birth records each. Hundreds of books were held in the Courthouses or other places of safety. Some were totally destroyed but at some point during the war, wherever these books were placed, there must have been some artillery fire.

 As we began, we found many more books were damaged in some way from gun fire piercing or grazing the books randomly. We don't know exactly where these Castrop books were kept, nor do we have concrete evidence of how these books were damaged, but we feel this was from some kind of gunfire. It could be shrapnel or machine guns; could be that allies, finding the hiding places, fired indiscriminately to make sure no enemy was hiding. Whatever the reason, some of these books were damaged. 

You may make your own judgement as you look at the few photos I can share: 

No metal of any kind was found inside the books. 

I thought about all of the damage that was done here in Germany and particularly in this area of the country where we now live. Hiddesen is the community we live in and we work just a few miles away from the "old town"  of Detmold and not far from the air strip that the Germans built here as a refueling station. Detmold was spared from the horrific bombing that occurred in so many other cities like Castrop and Bielefeld.  (Hamburg, our mission headquarters suffered destruction of 24% of the city and 37,000 people killed) 

The Americans came to Detmold from the direction of Hiddesen with its rolling hills and winding roads through fields and forests. I can't even begin to imagine the frightening way of life these farmers and small city folk endured. So many stories have been left untold I'm sure.

But the most amazing thing to me as we began digitizing these registers is this: 

In all the books we have digitized this week, about half of them had bullet holes and other clear damage but not one birth record was damaged to the point that vital information was lost. Most pages had damage around the data but not one we saw was lost. 

One more thing....

Look at the following photo:

Can you see how the paper of these pages is all crushed together with the force of whatever it was that hit to book? 

As I opened this book and began to turn the pages, I felt the tug from the compression of the paper. I realized I had to be very careful as I pulled the pages apart to then flatten them under the glass of our equipment to let the camera get the best possible photo. Over 200 times I carefully turned the pages of this book realizing that these books had not been opened since the damage had been inflicted on these precious records during the war.

I was touching history. 

Every once in a while, we come across a page with a note from after the war that gives instruction to remove the added Jewish middle name to the record.

From our first Family History mission in 2010 we were given a wonderful motto which I share whenever I can:

"Heavenly Father is planning a family reunion and I'm helping"

We are so grateful to be here working for our Family!

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.