Coming Home

as part of Polenaktion, the Nazis forced thousands of Jews out of Germany and into Poland, including Chaim Landsmann, who had to leave his family behind in Berlin – wife Malie and daughters Ida and Peppi. Malie struggled to maintain their home at 17 Hirtenstrasse in the center of Berlin, and 10 months later Nazi authorities forced her and her daughters to join Chaim in exile. In Chrzanów, Poland, the family lived hand-to-mouth until 1942, when the Nazis sent them to the concentration camp in Auschwitz and murdered them.

Now, 83 years later, the Landsmanns are back home – at least in spirit – because of the efforts of College of Charleston Jewish studies major Leah Davenport ’25. On March 9, artist Gunter Demnig installed four Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones (brass plates), inscribed with the name, birth date and fate of each member of the Landsmann family at the entryway of 17 Hirtenstrasse. Davenport attended the ceremony, along with Chad Gibbs, a faculty member at the College; Natalie Peyton ’24, who had helped Davenport share the Landsmanns’ story; and relatives of the Landsmann family – R. Scott Hellman ’96 and his parents, Max and Ann Hellman.

As the ceremony began, Davenport was happy to see neighbors join them, including one who asked how he would know if someone Jewish had lived in his apartment, and two women, one of whose grandmother has a Stolpersteine in front of her former Berlin home.

As Scott and Max Hellman read the mourner’s kaddish, Davenport felt grateful that she could give them a connection to these relatives they only recently learned they had.

“I knew there were letters in Special Collections, but I didn’t know the family’s name,” says Scott Hellman, referring to the 1930s correspondence housed at the College’s Addlestone Library that ultimately led to the placing of the Stolpersteine. “With the research that Leah’s done, future generations of our family and South Carolina students will have a lasting impression of the plight of the Landsmanns.”

With the Stolpersteine installed, Davenport knows this family killed by the Nazis will have a place in history. With each Stolpersteine carrying a story of one person’s fate, the atrocities of the Holocaust go from abstract to personal and remind everyday pedestrians of the horrors the Nazis unleashed on the world.

As Gibbs says, the letters are soul-crushing. A volunteer who had survived the Holocaust translated all the letters but the last. The last one was more than she could bear, so Gibbs and a friend completed the task.

When Malie first wrote Baum in March 1938, more than half the Jews who lived in Germany had left since the Nazis took over the country in 1933. The outlook was grim for those who remained. They faced insurmountable paperwork and demands from the German and foreign governments for money they didn’t have, which prompted Malie to write to her cousin – someone she never met.

In the letter, Malie explained their relationship and how industrious her family was. She then told of how the German government was forcing Jews to migrate, but an affidavit was required.

Malie wrote again in November, sharing that her husband was involuntarily sent to Poland, while she and the children remained in Berlin. Chaim was swept up in the Polenaktion, where naturalized Jewish Germans who had been born in Poland were forcibly deported. This move built on the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935, which stated that no Jew could be a German citizen.

“Now it depends only on you and the other cousins that we stay alive because I can only save my life as soon as I get the affidavit in my hands,” wrote Malie. “A delay in the processing of the affidavit can become my abyss, since without my husband I have no way of supporting my two poor children.

“Help, help, help we scream, and I expect this help from you by telegram before it is too late and before we are completely destroyed.”

What Malie didn’t know was that Baum had reached out to multiple organizations and government officials. She did everything she could, including contacting a Jewish orphanage in Denver to seek refuge for the children. Each outreach led to a dead end. At the same time, she and her cousins were pooling their resources to cover the travel and visa fees, a challenge for them after suffering severe losses during the Great Depression. Baum and her family were just starting to rebuild their lives.

Finally in December, Malie received the affidavits only to learn that due to the U.S. quota system limiting the number of visas from each country, it would take up to three years for their turn to come — more than 300,000 people were waiting for their quota number to be called. Malie urged Baum to work on a special dispensation.

In January 1939, Malie shared the option of waiting in Cuba until they were granted entry into the U.S. Two months later, she wrote that if nothing happened soon, they would be forced to go to Poland, although her husband wrote to tell them not to come because of the harsh conditions.

“I still cling to the hope that you won’t abandon me, that you won’t forget me, because I really have no one at all in the world to help me except you,” wrote Malie.

The letters took a toll on Baum, who knew the clock was ticking as she continued to reach out to different agencies without luck.

In A History of Kershaw County, South Carolina, a neighbor recalled Baum’s distress after receiving the letters from Europe. He said that while clutching the letter, she would often walk up and down the street weeping and pulling at her hair.

In January 1940, Malie wrote that she and her children had been deported to Chrzanów. While reunited with Chaim, they lost all their belongings. She requested that linens and clothing be sent.

“Our lives are in your hands,” she implored.

In June 1941, Malie admonished Baum for not writing and for not sending the packages.

“Dear Minnie, you don’t want to hear anything about us anymore, and you were our only hope,” she wrote.

These words must have pierced Baum’s heart. Clearly mail was not reaching Malie; she had no idea the lengths Baum had gone to get them out of Poland. Alas, the sea of bureaucracy from both the German and U.S. governments won out over Baum’s efforts. In 1942, Malie and Chaim were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Although there is no record for Ida and Peppi, it is presumed their daughters were also killed there with their parents.

“Once I started reading, I had to keep reading,” says Davenport, who is also majoring in women’s and gender studies. “By the time Malie reached out to Minnie, getting out of Germany was nearly impossible.

“I wish Malie knew that her family in the U.S. was doing everything they could to get them out of Poland,” she continues. “Both Malie and Minnie faced insurmountable systematic failures and barriers on both continents.”

No doubt Malie and Baum would be heartened to know all that Davenport has done to remember the Landsmanns and, by extension, the story of the Holocaust. She has shared the family’s story in an article for The Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina magazine, presented to groups, produced a podcast and collaborated with classmate Grace Shaffer ’23 to have the letters turned into a learning tool for South Carolina high school students.

Through the Samuel Freeman Trust – International Travel Scholarships, Davenport joined Gibbs for a study abroad program to Poland, the Netherlands and Germany. While on the trip, the pair visited the Landsmanns’ home in Berlin.

“The Germans are pretty good at putting things back together,” says Gibbs. “The neighborhood was heavily bombed, but they reshaped the street pretty much the same as it had been. It’s a sleepy, forgotten block between two major attractions, Alexander Square and the Volksbühne Berlin art house theater.”

Throughout the trip, Davenport saw some of the more than 100,000 4-inch-by-4-inch brass Stolpersteine embedded along the streets of more than 1,900 municipalities across Europe.

“When we visited a Jewish neighborhood in Amsterdam, the sidewalks literally glittered with Stolpersteine,” she says, noting that the experience sparked a desire to have Stolpersteine placed in front of the Landsmanns’ home. “The Stolpersteine makes sure we remember the people who lived in these homes.”

Before delving into getting Stolpersteine for the Landsmann family, Davenport asked permission from the Hellman family. With their support, she researched and compiled the documentation required to have the Stolpersteine placed in front of 17 Hirtenstrasse, namely providing where they lived, their fate and what the Nazis did to them between 1938 and their murder.

At the same time, during the year it took for her to obtain everything required by the Berlin Stolpersteine team, Davenport held bake sales to raise money for the Stolpersteine, which cost about $130 each as each plaque is engraved by hand. When Ann Hellman learned what Davenport was doing to raise funds, she graciously offered to cover the costs.

The Stolpersteine, now the largest decentralized memorial in the world, serve as a reminder that the people killed at the hands of the Nazis were not faceless numbers but neighbors who lived full, rich lives. It was a way to bring the reality of what happened home.

“Leah deeply, deeply cares about community and people,” says Gibbs. “When she puts her talented mind to do something, she’s going to do it.”

Davenport’s dedication and research unearthed a fair amount of documentation on the Landsmann family and their fate. Unfortunately, she was not able to determine what exactly happened to the children, Ida and Peppi.

“We have survivor testimonies regarding the fates of Malie and Chaim, but absolutely nothing about Ida and Peppi,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine how two loved children could just disappear, though it’s very emblematic of the Holocaust as a whole.”

After submitting all the paperwork with German translations, Davenport was thrilled to learn her application would be fast-tracked.

“Sometimes approval of Stolpersteine can take years, but because I am a university student, the team made the Landsmann Stolpersteine a priority,” she says. “Memorializing the Landsmann family felt like a responsibility. We can’t forget them, and we need to remember them as people, not victims.”

The Hellmans couldn’t be more appreciative and prouder of all Davenport and Gibbs have done.

“It is an incredible story that my own alma mater brought to the forefront,” says Scott Hellman, who serves as chair of the Jewish Studies Advisory Board. “Leah’s research allowed for the Stolpersteine to show where the Landsmanns lived, and Chad’s forethought to go through the letters in Special Collections has closed a remarkable chapter in my family’s life.”