Holocaust survivor welcomes German visitors

Alice and Tom Lewinsohn had two unusual visitors this week — Matthias and Beate Engelbert of Bonn, Germany.

What was unusual about the Engelberts’ visit was how it came about as part of a trend among Germans to seek reconciliation for injustices that occurred during the Holocaust.

Matthias Engelbert, 53, is a software engineer and the son of a German army veteran from World War II, Fritz Engelbert. The

Engelbert family — like the family of Alice Lewinsohn — lived before the war in the small town of Hilchenbach, near Cologne in the western part of Germany.

Matthias’ grandfather, Bernhard Engelbert, and Alice’s grandfather, Seligman Hony, were friends and lived just a few blocks from each other in Hilchenbach.

However, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Nazi crackdown on Jews and non-Jews who dealt with them prevented the two men from displaying their friendship in public.

Seligman Hony died of natural causes in Hilchenbach before he was forced into a Nazi concentration camp or otherwise harmed. Seligman’s son, Kurt Hony, who was Alice Lewinsohn’s father, managed to escape to America in 1938.

Fritz Engelbert joined the Hitler Youth and later the German army, surviving the Battle of the Bulge, among other engagements.

‘It was possible to change’
After the war, Matthias and Beate Engelbert said, Fritz was wracked with guilt for having served in the Nazi machine.
“He couldn’t forgive himself,” Matthias Engelbert said.

“At every family occasion, it was not a question of if, but when he would break down crying when he talked about the war,” Beate Engelbert said.

Matthias Engelbert said his father’s overall mood seemed to improve after having friendly encounters in 2004 in Belgium with some American veterans of the Battle of the Bulge.

“I saw it was possible to change his attitude toward things that happened,” Matthias Engelbert said.

Thus, in November 2008, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Fritz Engelbert mused aloud about whether any descendants of his old friend, Seligman Hony, were alive, Matthias decided to try to find out.

After some Internet research, he managed to track down Alice Lewinsohn in Overland Park, Kan., and they began a correspondence. That led to the Engelberts’ three-day visit this week.

Alice Lewinsohn said she was thrilled to meet the Engelberts and to learn from them about life in her hometown and native country today.

“Now I know how people can fall in love over the Internet,” Alice Lewinsohn quipped.

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