Charlie Scheidt & Kat Rohrer: Holocaust Descendants on Different Sides of History

What happens when the son of a Holocaust survivor meets the granddaughter of a Nazi officer? In this powerful episode of TO BE CONTINUED... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, host Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Charlie Scheidt and Kat Rohrer, co-authors of Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Charlie grew up in a German Jewish household on New York's Upper West Side, surrounded by family members who had fled Nazi Germany, and a silence about the past that was deafening. When his mother died in 1988, she left behind an armoire filled with nearly a thousand documents: letters, visas, identity papers, and more. It would take Charlie twenty years before he could bring himself to open them. Kat is an award-winning Austrian filmmaker and the granddaughter of a devoted Nazi officer. Haunted by her family's role in one of history's darkest chapters, she had spent years grappling with what it means to carry that legacy. When they met, an extraordinary partnership was born. Over fifteen years, four trips to Europe, and hundreds of conversations, they pieced together a story of loss, memory, and unexpected connection. Together, they reflect on the silence that shaped them, the documents and discoveries that changed them, and why they believe that breaking that silence is the only way to ensure the oppressors don't own the story. TRANSCRIPT: This episode of our podcast is generously sponsored by Irene and David Beyth, in memory of David's parents, Hannah and Werner Beyth, who were both fortunate to escape Nazi Germany before the war. Let us start with a German lesson. The word is Erbe. It means both inheritance and legacy. Today's guests have spent more than a decade sitting with that word. One of them grew up in a German Jewish household on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, surrounded by relatives who had fled Nazi Germany in a family where the unspoken motto was "Forward, never back." The other grew up in postwar Austria. The granddaughter of a man who volunteered for the Wehrmacht, Hitler's united armed forces of Nazi Germany, and a family that kept its silence about what that meant and why. And yet remarkably these two people found each other. They traveled together through Germany, France, Austria, and the Netherlands on a joint journey of discovery and empathy. The result is a book called Inheritance - Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust, a memoir unlike almost any other in the crowded literature of Holocaust memory because it is written across the deepest moral divide of the 20th century, between the descendants of victims and the descendants of perpetrators. Welcome to this podcast, To Be Continued... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, where we explore the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience. Our goal is to lift up the experiences of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and to ask how did those memories form you? How did resilience create you as the person you are today? And what is the legacy that you will leave to those who come after you? I am your host Rabbi Jeff Salkin, and our guests are Charlie Scheidt, born in New York City, the son of German Jewish refugees. His father Bruno fled Frankfurt in 1933. His mother Sous followed, as did many other close family members. But unfortunately others did not and became trapped in the Nazi Weis in Germany, Holland, and France. And when Charlie's mother died in 1988, she left behind an armoire containing nearly a thousand documents, letters, visas, identity papers, a baby's autopsy report...that Charlie could not bring himself to absorb and deal with for 20 years. Kat Rohrer is an award-winning Austrian filmmaker whose films include "Back to the Fatherland," a documentary about Israelis living in Germany. Her maternal grandfather was a devout Nazi officer, a true believer who died fighting in Yugoslavia before her mother was born. Her family, her mother, her grandmother, her great aunt -- who by the way married a Jew and escaped to Australia -- did not speak of him. Charlie and Kat met almost by accident when Kat was filming the 75th anniversary of Charlie's company, Roland Foods. He noticed she spoke German. A few months later he asked if she might help him translate some papers. She said yes because, as she told him, she had a personal interest in that period of history. It would be some time before he understood what that meant. Eventually she sent him an email. It was time she said that he knew her story. She told him that she had been haunted all her life by the same patch of ash that haunted his family. What followed was 15 years of research, four trips to Europe, hundreds of conversations with strangers who turned out to be guardia