January 20, 1942.
That's the date that we have been leading up to in this blog when we know (as historians) that the heartbeat of every single Jew in Europe is in danger.
This day is when the Nazis made a plan to kill the Jews.
This article by the Holocaust Museum in D.C. does a good job of explaining the day's events in a concise way. Please read it. We forget that up to this point, in Western Europe, deportation and execution of Jews was peripheral.
All of that is about to change.
At age 18, Tom Doeppner was smuggled out of Nazi Germany. He was 26 before he saw anyone in his family again. Tom was my Grandfather, “Opa.” Cleaning out my Grandmother’s desk ten years ago, I found a small box where Opa had kept letters from his family, written as early as 1938. When I opened that box, I found a story that I never knew. This blog tells the story of what happened to Tom and his family in that decade of separation.
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