Ursula Randt

Abstract

Ursula Randt lives in a quaint, cozy house on a quiet residential street in Klein Flotbek. All afternoon she had escorted a group of former Hamburg citizens through Karolinenstraße in conjunction with the Senatskanzlei program. This program, run by various city governments in Germany, invites formerly persecuted Germans, primarily Jewish, who have never been back to their former “homes” to return at the city’s expense. Their airfare, hotel, cultural events, and tours are paid for. My father could have been part of such a group. He chose not to, and when the Senatskanzlei kept pressing him, he insisted with sincerity that he is not and was not ever Jewish. He did accept their invitation to visit apart from this group, primarily because I was living in Hamburg. Ursula told me that my father would have been fine in this group atmosphere as she was surprised how many people in the group were not Jewish (rather, were “mixed,” as she and my father had been labeled) and had been baptized. Some clearly felt out of place. K. Dohnke, a journalist with whom I worked, told me that when he was interviewing members of this group, he noticed that Ursula, one of the leaders, did not mention her Jewish background to the former Hamburgers. Why not?

“One had, at the time, enough possibilities to die”