Every kilometer I walked brought back memories I had tried to bury: the uniforms, the orders shouted in German, the smell of the camp. The address I had given was a gray building in a working-class district of Munich. I climbed the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding so hard I felt like it was about to burst from my chest. I knocked on the door.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGEA woman in her fifties opened the door. Her gray hair was tied in a bun, her expression stern, but her eyes were gentle. [Music] She stared at me for a long time before saying, “My stone propeller.” I nodded. [Music] She led me inside. The apartment was modest but clean. Pictures of children hung on the walls.
She invited me to sit down and poured some tea. Then she spoke: “My name is Greta Hoffman. During the war, I worked as a nurse in Vermarthe. Not by choice, but by necessity. I was assigned to the camp where you and your sisters were. I have an icy sense of humor. I had nothing to do with what happened to you,” she continued quickly, “but I witnessed it all, and every day I hated myself for not doing anything.”
He stood up and pulled a box from the cabinet. Inside were documents, folders, and lists of names. Fonsteiner kept meticulous records. He wrote down everything: the mothers’ names, the children’s birth dates, the German families who had taken them in. After the war, these documents were to be destroyed, but I managed to salvage a few.
He handed me a piece of paper; my name was written on it. And just below it, another line: Little child, born June 18, 1943, placed June 20, 1943. Foster family: Adler family. I read that line over and over again until the letters blurred. “He’s alive,” I whispered. “I don’t know,” he replied gently. “But now you have a lead.” With that folded piece of paper in my pocket, I returned to France and made a decision. I would find him.
No matter how long it took, no matter how many doors I had to knock on. My son existed somewhere, and I wasn’t going to die without trying. The search lasted almost twenty years: twenty years of unanswered letters, twenty years of knocking on the doors of the authorities, who looked at me as if I were crazy.
For twenty years, I saved every penny so I could take the train to Germany once or twice a year. The Adler family left Hamburg in 1950. No one knew where, or at least no one wanted to tell me. The 1950s were the most difficult. Europe was rebuilding, forgetting and burying its dead and its secrets with the same efficiency. Archives were destroyed, scattered, and hidden.
Witnesses refused to testify out of fear, shame, and cowardice. I contacted organizations that helped war victims. I sought advice from lawyers, who initially looked at me with pity, then explained that my case was extremely complicated and likely hopeless. I even wrote to the International Red Cross. The response was polite, professional, and completely useless.
The archives were incomplete. Witnesses were either dead or refused to testify. Even postwar Germany wanted to forget. I was just one voice among thousands, one mother among so many others searching for their children lost in the chaos of war. But I couldn’t forget. Every night I saw her face again, her closed eyes, her little hands clutching my finger.
I woke up sweating, convinced I heard a child crying. But in my empty room, only silence reigned. I worked as a seamstress, mechanically sewing hems and buttonholes. At night, I wrote letters, requests, petitions. I used dozens of pens and filled entire notebooks with names, addresses, and leads that led nowhere.
The 1960s arrived, and then the 1970s. My body was aging, my hair graying, but my determination remained unwavering. I didn’t want to die without knowing it. I refused to let my son fade into oblivion, as if his existence had never mattered. In 1972, a promising lead finally emerged. A former Vermarthe administration employee agreed to meet with me.
