FRANZ ROSEN

List

Beerman, Felix, 1887–1915

Beerman, Siegfried, 1894–1916

Beerman, Walter, 1890–1915

Mayer, Isador, 1891–1918

Rosen, Hugo, 1886–1914

Rosen, Julius, 1881–1918

Rosen, Louis, 1888–1914

Rosen, Max, 1891–1915

Schlösser, Artur, 1897–1915

Schlösser, Ernst, 1882–1916

Silber, Willy, 1895–1916

So there it is, the list that I never thought I would make. The list, even, that I may have called barbaric. But I suppose it was always in my mind. More recently I have stayed up late with record books and family albums, fretting, deducing, counting. You may imagine that it was a sleepless devotion, conceived in shame and doubt. Of the 12,000 or so Jewish men who died fighting for Germany in the Great War, it seems that these eleven were my blood relations. What pride, what sadness, too. Sadness even that I should do such a thing, make such a list, a man with my history, a man over seventy years old. They say, about such matters as the Shoah, that we must never forget. But there are others things that must never be forgotten as well.