“It will soon blow over”
Ernie Hunter shares the story, experiences and testimony of his mother, Fanny Höchstetter.
Fanny was born in 1902. The Höchstetter’s lived in Laupheim, Germany.
Looking back in history, we might wonder how the Nazis managed to persuade people in an educated, cultured democracy to carry out the mass murder of Jews and others. The Holocaust did not happen overnight or start with the gas chambers.
In 1933, after Hitler was democratically appointed Chancellor of Germany, many Germans, including Jews, felt that surely the Nazis could not crush German democracy. They felt “It will soon blow over”. Fanny was one of those.Fanny’s story and experiences tracks the ramping up of anti-Jewish Laws and Actions from 1933 onwards, reflecting the incremental stages of exclusion, discrimination, dehumanisation and persecution. Fanny, despite being a woman and Jewish, was a senior civil servant. Already in 1933 a Nazi Law forced her to retire from her job as a senior civil servant – purely because she was Jewish. At the age of 30 Fanny did not want to retire!
Fanny eventually realised that “It would not soon blow over”. Luckily her sister, Bertl, found her a job as a domestic in the Wirral – saving Fanny’s life. Fanny finally managed to flee in August 1939 just days before WW2 started.
The story also mentions the fate of Fanny’s uncle, Richard Rothschild, deported with 1,000 others on the first transport from Baden Württemberg [December 1941] for “Resettlement East” to an unknown destination. They ended up in Riga, Latvia, where, on or soon after arrival, they were forced to dig a trench for their own burial and were shot one on one. Within a year Jewish culture, religion and life in Laupheim had been extinguished. Extinguished to this day.
This presentation is suitable for adults and secondary school students.
"Ernie's talk showed what ordinary life was like before the Nazis - and how life changed for the Jewish people. Fantastic experience for our students." History Teacher, Wigan
