My grandmother, Henrietta Gerson,
was elected mayor of Oberwesel in the late 1920s,
which was rather remarkable, first of all, to have a woman as mayor,
and secondly, to have a Jewish woman as mayor, but she, by reputation,
was one of the brightest people in town.
And she had her term.
I think also the fact that they had lost two sons,
who died for the Fatherland, so to speak-- That made a difference.
But in the end, with the rise of Nazism,
nothing that Jews had done for their country--
because they saw themselves as German citizens-- made any difference.
They were singled out not because they were German Jews, but because they were Jews,
irrespective of the "German-ness" of their life.
So the fact that my grandmother had been mayor of Oberwesel,
that her two boys were killed fighting for Kaiser Wilhelm on the eastern front,
in the end, made no difference.