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About ...And Often The First Jew
Product Description “...And Often the First Jew” chronicles the accomplishments, adventures, and “firsts” in Germany for Rabbi Stephen Lewis Fuchs and his wife Vickie, who are both children of Holocaust survivors. Rabbi Fuchs tells of the arrest and brutal treatment that his father, Leo Fuchs, received at the onset of Kristallnacht and how he was able to survive. Vickie discusses the events of her parents’ plight and subsequent new life in the United States.Rabbi Fuchs writes about their opportunities to speak and teach about the horrors of the Holocaust in the very place where the Nazi era began. Often their listeners have little knowledge of this tragic period in their history. “...And Often the First Jew” encapsulates the Fuchs’ straightforward message they leave with Germany’s post-Holocaust generation – “We cannot undo the past, but the future is ours to shape.” Review Rabbi Stephen Fuchs and his wife, Victoria, had a choice to make that would transform their lives. Should they cut all ties withGermany, where their parents were born and survived the Holocaust, or shouldthey begin a positive dialogue with Germans? They opted for the latter, devoting themselves to a simpleyet profound message of reconciliation and hope: We cannot undo the past, but the future is ours to shape. The couple's bittersweet mission is laid bare in ...And Oftenthe First Jew (Mazo, Jerusalem). Every time Victoria visits Germany, she wonders what German men and women were doing while Jews were beingpersecuted and murdered by their countrymen between 1933 and1945. Interestingly, although the husband and wife team returnedto Leipzig (where Stephen's father was arrested in 1938 on Kristallnachtand later imprisoned in Dachau), and although Victoria's mother, StefanieSteinberg, was born in Breslau and her fatherin Essen, the Fuchs' concentrated onmedium-sized cities that were "off the beaten path." Having established positive interreligious relationships witha host of Lutheran and Roman Catholic clergy and laypeople, they have been able to examine aspects of the Holocaust with thousands of Germans,many born postwar, through sermons and educational programs.Rabbi Fuchs has spoken in more than 20 churches where no rabbi had ever spokenbefore. Perhaps one of Rabbi Fuchs' most poignant public sermons was on October 26, 2014 in Kaltenkirchen, a picturesque village where700 prisoners had died in a nearby concentration camp and wherethe pastor had shed his ecclesiastical robes for the uniform of an SSofficer. (After the war, he was convicted of war crimes for themurder of 2,000 to 3,000 Jews.) After visiting the camp, Rabbi Fuchs preached in the localchurch. He recalls: During the church service people looked back and realizedthe horror of the era with genuine regret. There was visible emotion, [because]...most of those in the congregation had lived most of their lives [during theHolocaust]...[in addition]... some 80 students listened with rapt attention - somehad tears in their eyes - as Vickie spoke about her mother and I spoke about myfather. We emphasized how her mother and my father were among the truly luckyones to escape the inferno before it engulfed Europe's Jews. It is important for students tounderstand their history... Victoria's artistic mother, who lives in San Francisco andstill paints, is a true heroine. Underlying her daughterand son-in-law's teaching in German schools is a traveling exhibit about herterrifying personal experiences before she found safety in the United States. Rabbi Fuchs, who is currently the rabbi of Congregation BatYam on Sanibel Island in Florida and is a past president of the WUPJ, tells us that his beloved father, Leo, had neverspoken to him in detail about his horrific ordeal in Nazi Germany. He writes: I am so thankful, my father, that you made it out of Kristallnacht- and out of Germany - alive...and I hope you are proud that I am standing heretoday (in a Leipzig church). But I cannot be sure.
