Helga Walter (Feb.1, 1928-winter,1941/1942)

Helga Walter, granddaughter of Jenny Lindner (1864-1943), lived all of her short life in the Bavarian town of Bamberg. When she was but ten years of age, she, like all the other Jewish residents of the city, witnessed the beginning of the end of their way of life- and indeed their very lives themselves- on the night of November 9, 1938. Now called Kristallnacht- their world came to an abrupt end. For the next three years, the Nazi regime in Bamberg issued an accelerating series of decrees restricting the rights of its Jewish population until, by 1941 the victims had no rights whatever; they were forbidden to do just about everything that humans beings do.

On November 27, 1941, Helga, along with more than one hundred other Jewish Bambergers, were transported to Nuremberg, then in freight cars to the vicinity of Riga, Latvia. There, after an unknown short stay they were herded together and shot in cold blood by the execution squads of the Nazi S.S. Einsatzgruppe A.which preempted the Holocaust before gas chambers had come into use for the fulfillment of the Final Solution.

Helga's father, Albert Walter, was a disabled German veteran of the first World War. He was deprived of that status and of his decorations, and he suffered the same fate as that of his daughter, although it is not known if they were separated at some time before they were executed.

Before 1993, I had never heard of Helga, or any other of my Lindner relatives who lived in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. It has since been my honor and privilege to have met a few refugees and survivors of these landmark crimes of this century. For those who were not so lucky, like Helga, I hope that Ýsome of the brief sketches in this report will ensure that their memories will not be destined for oblivion.

(This account was extracted from the English translation by Mr. Herbert Ashe, of Karl H. Mistele's book "The End of a Community. The Destruction of the Jews of Bamberg, Germany, 1938-1942". KTAV Pullishing House, Hoboken New Jersey.)