About
June 24th, 2003 by Joel Goldwein
This web site is a chronicle of the Bar Mitzvah heritage trip in June of 2003 for Eric Goldwein and Charles Baron. Eric’s Great-Grandfather, Moritz Goldwein, had been the Rabbi and Jewish teacher for a small town in Germany up until approximately 1939. In 1938, Eric?s Grandfather, Manfred Goldwein, was sent by his parents to live with cousins in Delaware, USA. He was only 13 years old at the time, and was probably the last to have had a Bar Mitzvah in the synagogue in Korbach Germany. The synagogue and school, where Moritz, Rosa and Manfred had lived, were destroyed on Kristallnacht in November 1938. Moritz and his wife Rosa were not able to get out of Germany and perished in Auschwitz. By the end of WWII, Judaism in the town of Korbach was all but destroyed.
The last letter Manfred received from his father stated the following:
My dear, dear Boy!
When you receive this book, it will not be sent thru us but others. So you must not be sad, for we are in God’s dear Hand and really in God’s own Land. I want you to walk His ways, for you are a son of the Chosen People; you are a link of the long chain that began in the past and reaches into eternity. Be a worthy man, a good and true Israelite and so I hope to see you again.
I love you for ever and ever.
Your true Father.
This is the true story of our family’s fulfillment of this last wish.