Knowing our cultural background and where we came from can help us develop a strong sense of who we really are. The way we relate to our family stories and create our own narratives about ourselves helps establish our core identity.
LifeBook, the world’s leading private memoir and autobiography service, work with thousands of people across the globe, helping them to preserve their family history and ensure their legacy lives on, in a book which loved ones and future generations can enjoy, learn from and connect with in years to come. To find out more about capturing your life stories, visit the LifeBook website or speak to one of the team on 0808 296 5249.
OFFER: All Jewish Chronicle readers will receive an extra 5 copies of their memoirs worth £500 when they write them with LifeBook.
We talk to LifeBook author Ian Goldsmith, who grew up not knowing much of his father’s childhood or his Jewish ancestry, about writing his memoirs and why it was so important to unearth and record his father’s family history.
Ian, what prompted you to create your LifeBook?
Essentially it was the Brexit decision in June 2016. I was upset that the freedom to work and live across Europe was being removed. My daughter’s husband mentioned that he had read that descendants of Germans whose nationality had been stripped of them – Jews and many other minority groups - were able to reclaim their nationality as German citizens.
However, I needed to dig into my family history to find the proof that my father and his parents were German citizens. That’s where the journey to discovering my family history began.
Your father didn’t share much about his past when you were growing up?
My father was born Salomon Robert Goldschmidt, but keen to assimilate into UK life, when he grew up, he changed his name to Bob Goldsmith and became a naturalised UK citizen. He passed away when I was just 14 and never talked to me as a boy about his childhood or his family. He didn’t speak of his heritage or his Jewish ancestry and I have only two memories of events where his origins became apparent.
The first was when I was around seven. My family had moved to Kenya in 1952 and my Father and I were walking in Nairobi one day when a couple asked him “Wo ist der Bahnhof bitte?” and my father replied in German. I remember at the time thinking what has just happened? and asking him why he was talking like that. He told me then that he was born in Germany, but that is all he would say.
The second time, I was around ten. There was a Holocaust documentary on the TV about Auschwitz. It was really hard to watch, and I went to walk out of the room. My father said no and that I must sit down and watch it to the end. When it had finished, I asked him why he had made me watch it and he replied, “That is what happened to your family.”
How did you go about unearthing his story?
All I had to begin with was a photo of my father and his brother with their mother Laura and an address on 156 Grindelallee, Hamburg.
The key breakthrough was finding out that World Jewish Relief (WJR) team had a detailed file on my father and his brother from his arrival in England on the first Kindertransport in 1938.
Then by chance my nephew’s wife – who speaks fluent German - happened across the record of my father’s uncle, Paul Goldschmidt on the Stolpersteine (memorial steppingstones) website. I contacted the author of the bio, who put me in touch with a colleague who was continuing to investigate the Goldschmidt family – my family. I wrote to him and asked if he had any other information on other family members and to our great surprise, he told me he had just finished the bio of my grandfather Barthold.
What was revealed?
The horror of war and displacement felt both distant and immediate when I saw a picture of my father for the first time as a 14-year-old orphaned teenager in the WJR records. Their account of his life from 14-18 was wonderful to have, yet sad to read. The file included a letter to him in 1942 telling him his father had died recently in a concentration camp.
Discovering the steppingstones website was key to the discovery of our family history. Piecing together the stories of each member of my father’s family and realising how many of them had died in concentration camps made for upsetting and stark reading. An entire generation of my family were wiped out.
This led to my getting in touch with the Institute for the History of the German Jews, who had lots of material on my family. The team took me through the papers on my grandfather and what stood out was the anguish my grandparents felt and that it became increasingly worse from 1930 to 1933. One letter was from Barthold to the authorities pleading with them to provide free lunches for the children.
From letters they had on record, we found out that my grandmother Laura passed away from breast cancer and that my grandfather married again. The marriage didn’t last long, and my grandfather had an affair with a non-Jewish lady, which his estranged wife reported to the police. At that time a law had just passed that dictated that a Jew could not have a relationship with a non-Jew. My grandfather was put into prison because of his “crime” and around seven months later he was shipped off to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. My father and his brother went into an orphanage, which is what saved him, as children from the Hamburg and Berlin orphanages were taken out of the country by the Kindertransport.
Our research also led us to three living relatives from my father’s side of the family. I’ll never forget speaking for the first time to Lubert Stryer, a second cousin we never knew about and the first living relative we found. Coincidently, I had also studied his seminal Biochemistry textbook for two years at university.
What events during your research stand out in your memory?
The moments that will stay with me forever and of course feature in the book are the ceremony in Hamburg of the placing of the stolperstein for my grandfather, the family gathering at the newly laid gravestone for Laura and Barthold, who had previously lain in an unmarked grave and visiting Sachsenhausen in the pouring rain in 2018.
Can you tell us the importance of your LifeBook?
My sister and I co-authored the book. Had we not captured the story, in all likelihood, once we had passed away, our father’s story and what happened to his family would have remained buried forever. Now it will always be remembered and can be used to educate future generations of our family and beyond.
How have your family and friends responded to your LifeBook?
They have been fascinated and at the same time appalled by what happened to our family in Germany. We sent copies to the team in Hamburg that helped us unearth my father’s roots and there is now a copy in their library. There is also a copy of our LifeBook in the library at Sachsenhausen where my grandfather Barthold died.
How important is it to you that future generations of your family will now be able to know about your family history?
Hugely. My youngest daughter illustrated the point well. She said there was so much she did not know about me and my early life growing up in Kenya. But more importantly she had never been taught the full history of the Holocaust. The stories of our family have not only given us all a sense of who we are and where we came from, but have also been hugely educational in understanding this period and why remembering the Holocaust is so important.
Would you recommend writing your memoirs with LifeBook as a positive and meaningful project?
Yes definitely – you need to put in the effort and be dedicated to reading and re-reading the scripts - but in the process your family is likely to find out so many interesting things about you that they didn’t know.
Our LifeBook interviewer was fantastic too. Empathetic, friendly, encouraging and enthused, she made the process very friendly.
What value do you and your family place on your LifeBook?
The value is in what it will bring to future generations of my family – like my first grandson newly born – he might never hear the stories from me but there is comfort in knowing that he will be able to learn about his ancestry by reading the book.
If you were to suggest five questions anyone should ask their parents about their life, what would they be?
1. What were your mum and dad like? Tell me about their upbringing and where they lived.
I can only gather limited information from written records about my grandparents, I have no insight into my grandparents and great grandparents’ personalities.
2. What was life like in that time, from what you heard?
I am sorry not to have heard this from my mother or father about their grandparents.
3. Can you draw your family tree out for me please?
This would have made our research so much easier!
4. Can you find pictures of your family and write their names of the back?
We have one picture of the Goldschmidts and Freids (my Grandmothers family) in 1926. We think it’s from my father’s first birthday, but we have had to guess who is who.
5. What could you tell me that I would be surprised to learn about you?
