Real life - Where is the Blach family? - An uncomfortable search
If walls could tell stories, then some stories would be almost unbearable. Not often do they reappear as accidentally as they did at Heilgeiststraße 89, a baroque gabled house in Stralsund's old town.
Only recently have the walls gradually begun to reveal what happened to the former residents after the National Socialists seized power. No one has asked about it yet. The story leads into the darkest chapter of Germany's past. Shameful, stirring, tearful.
The Stralsund cellist Friederike Fechner asks: Who once lived in this old house? She sets out to find out and gets caught up in a maelstrom. The first traces in the city archives leave her no peace: Blach, Julius Blach, leather goods dealer, Jewish. His son Friedrich Blach, last owner of the house until shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. And his four sisters, who were killed in concentration camps.
Friederike Fechner is painstakingly putting back together a puzzle that has so far preferred to be forgotten. What happened? Are there any descendants? She finds some, scattered all over the world. In Amsterdam, in New York, in Boston. Almost no one knows about each other. The memory of the German roots is too painful. And only a few have dared to scratch directly at the scarred wounds!
The musician is driven by a similar motive. In her family, too, there was no talking. Not about what happened to the Jews during the war. Not about guilt, not about responsibility. Not with her grandfather, who was a general in the war, not with her parents.
But now Friederike meets her generation. It is the grandchild generation that begins to talk to each other, to reflect, to admit pain. During her breathtaking, meticulous research, Friederike meets Peter in Amsterdam, who survived Bergen- Belsen as a child; Casey in New York, who is a professor of American history at Columbia University; Kate, a screenwriter; and Christina from Boston, who remembers well her grandpa Friedrich, born in Stralsund.
Finally, Friederike invites everyone to a meeting in Stralsund at her home. Will it come about? In a place where the Blach family was once betrayed by their neighbors?
Broadcasting on 29th of January 2023 at 07.45am on MDR/ARD
Music: POPVIRUS Library