"Nothing more to say and nothing more to say" is the title of a book in which we can read what the authors were able to find out about Ricka Hahn and her family from Kleinlangheim: At the Grave of an Old Jewish Woman. The Hahns.
The Postbus arrives in Kleinlangheim at 9 o'clock in the morning. You get off at the town hall.
The town center has hardly changed in all these years.
With two historical photographs in hand, we go in search of clues: "Wiesenbronner Straße number 5″.
A Jewish woman sits in front of the house. Next to her granddaughter and great-granddaughter. Three of four generations in front of a farmhouse in Franconia. An idyll - Germany sixty years ago.
An idyll - Germany sixty years ago.
Where is the old Jewish woman? Where is the granddaughter? Where is the great-granddaughter?
We find the house.
We know the story.
The history of Kleinlangheim.
The history of anti-Semites and Nazis, the history of Jews: of houses that burned, of chopped up fruit trees, drilled wine barrels and smashed windows. Of looted wine cellars, the burning synagogue and beaten people.
Long before 1933 - and even more so after 1933.
And we know the old Jewish woman. From stories.
From stories in Jerusalem and New York, in Lübeck and Petach Tikwah, Israel.
We know about Ricka Hahn.
And that a gravestone exists. Exists in Rödelsee.
And we can't find it. -
We have to rediscover it. Found by chance years ago, it's mossy again and overgrown with thick lichen. They have to be scraped off again, the stone cleaned with warm water - the name appears:
Ricka Hahn, Kleinlangheim, died 1938
And where are the children? Where are the grandchildren? Where are the great-grandchildren of the old Jewish woman in front of the house in Kleinlangheim, under the stone in Rödelsee?
Another photo: not a modest staircase in front of a farmhouse,
- no, a castle staircase. The castle steps of Veitshöchheim - from the summer palace of the bishops, the baroque Catholic bishops of Würzburg.
The descendants of the poor, afflicted Franconian village Jews stand for a group photo on the castle steps of Veitshöchheim.
Proud, self-confident citizens.
These are the children of Ricka Hahn:
The youngest of the sons, Simon, who finally left Kleinlangheim and went to Kitzingen with his wife Rosa, born Sondhelm, the daughter of Hermann Sondhelm from the beautiful large house at the beginning of Wiesenbronner Straße. -
And Justin, little Justin at the age of eight or nine.
Where have they gone, standing there like tin soldiers, one behind the other, the father, the mother, the son?
They stayed in Belzec, in Bergen-Belsen!
Starved to death, gassed.
On the castle steps of Veitshöchheim.
Next to Simon is Oskar, the older brother, the chairman of the local council, a member of the SPD, the "public" of the two brothers
from "Gebrüder Hahn", the wine shop at Bahnhofstraße 9
in Kitzingen.
Heinrich, the other, is on the far right.
And Jakob between them.
Jakob Hahn, who to this day nobody in the family knows exactly what happened to him.
He was deported from Frankfurt. -
The Frankfurt deportation lists include two Jakob Hahns, roughly the same age. Which one is ours, which
was his fate? We do not know.
Group picture of the Hahn family at the Ve1tshöchhe1meSr chießpark. Back row from left to right: Simon Hahn, Oskar Hahn, Jakob Hahn, Heinrich Hahn. Middle row: Rosa Hahn, Hannchen Hahn, Mrs. Schechter, g eb. Hahn, Fr1eda Hahn, Simon Schechter Front row: J ust1nH ahn, Erna Rossmanne, a daughter of the Fam1l1e Reich, Gerda Hahn.
We know that Oskar and Heinrich were able to flee Nazi Germany
with their families, with their wives Hannchen and
Frieda - standing here on the castle steps in Veitshöchheim in front of their husbands, both were members of the Chewrah Kaddischa
of women in Kitzingen, we also see them in the large picture of the Chewrah, on the far left in the back row and in the front far right. We know that their children now live in the USA; that Gerda, the daughter of Oskar and Hannchen Hahn, died in a traffic accident in the States; that the Schechters and Erna Rossmann survived the Shoah. And that the little girl in the front row, probably a child from the Reich family, was deported and murdered.
These are the people on the castle steps of the Bishops of Würzburg in Veitshöchheim.
These are some of the children and grandchildren of Ricka Hahn from Kleinlangheim, from Rödelsee.
Some were murdered.
Some survived.
Why? We don't know.
We only know that Ricka Hahn and her husband Löb Hahn were the only ones of the family to be buried in Rödelsee.
Before that, the dead were taken to the cemetery in Gerolzhofen,
as the family came from Kirchschönbach. -
And afterwards?
The grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren live in Israel and America.
We don't know which of them knows Ricka Hahn's grave. But when they come, we want them to find it.
That is the least of it.