Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

68

Rolf Levy und Christina Ceballos-Levy

side world. Once a week my parents would receive a newspaper in the German
language called "Aufbau". It was our principal source of information
from the world outside of Colombia. Once we were able to gain a better
command of Spanish, we began reading a Colombian daily newspaper, "El
Tiempo" (The Time). The only friends I remember my parents having in
those early years were the Bloch family, who traveled with us aboard the
same steamship from Germany to Barranquilla, Colombia. The Blochs
stayed in Barranquilla and made their lives there, but my mother occasion-
ally would write to the matron of the family, Meta Bloch, until one day we
never heard from them again.

After World War II, we eventually began to hear news of my relatives'
fates. In November of 1938, my maternal grandfather, Leopold Hofmann,
was transported to the concentration camp at Dachau along with other
Schmieheim residents. In lune of 1939, he returned to Schmieheim, but he
died shortly after from injuries inflicted at the camp. My maternal grand-
mother, Adelheid Hofmann, emigrated to the United States in 1948, and
she lived with my uncle, Heinrich Hofmann, until her death. Due to economic
conditions, my mother was unable to reunite with her mother. As a
result, she never saw her parents again.

Our family vacation of the Summer of 2003 helped me fill in all of
these details for my sons. What did not come to me in the form of memo-
ries is the product of an extensive investigation my children and I have un-
dertaken since our return from Germany. It is with great pride that I can
now teil my sons where their father is from and the struggles their grand-
parents faced to ensure our survival. My story is not remarkable for that of
a Holocaust survivor, but it is part of our family's story. Now that I can teil
it, I can only hope that my sons remember it and one day take their own
children to Schmieheim to teil them a little bit about their past.

Christina M. Ceballos-Levy, 201 South Biscayne Boulevard, 1100 Miami Center
Miami, Florida, USA