The demolished villa that lives on

MIRAH LANGER

“I can remember that one evening. I heard noises and everything appeared so peculiar. The noises reminded me of drunk people, and I listened more and more because certain noises were mixed with voices.” So recounts a now elderly Bergmann in a documentary about the history and fate of the Heimann Villa in the town of Steinfurt.

“Suddenly there was a rattling noise that came from the windows being destroyed. I could clearly hear the glass breaking. I saw that items were thrown out of the windows; the Nazis were getting preserved food from the pantry, and throwing it out.

“Then I heard a woman’s voice, Mrs Heimann. She asked if it was really necessary to throw these groceries into the street. She said they were too good to be wasted, and asked if instead they could be donated.”

Bergmann remembers the Nazi’s reply, declaring that they would never accept anything that came from a Jew.

“The woman cried. I heard that.”

“The next evening, the synagogue was almost entirely burnt down.”

The documentary, Villa Heimann: A Lost Monument, was recently screened at the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre in Forest Town as part of an event which included an address by the descendants of the original Heimann family, as well as a Skype link-up to city officials and residents of Steinfurt today, including Bergmann himself.

In the documentary, Bergmann recalled the after-effects of his experience that night.

He said he went to ask his father about what he had seen. His father condemned the action, telling him that the Nazis would come to regret it. He noted that his father, a “common master craftsman”, had offered political comment that showed a humanity few others were willing to assert at that time.

“If you wanted to, you knew what was going on,” said Bergmann.

He recalled his father’s final instruction about the incident, “You have seen it; you have heard it; never forget!”

It’s a command that Bergmann has, in the decades that have ensued, never faltered in following, as he has fought to continue the memory of the Heimann family.

The story of this villa and its Jewish ties begins with the purchase of the property by Jewish cattle trader Albert and his wife, Frieda. Along with their four children, Wilhelm, Ottilie, Antonia, and Elsbeth, the family was happily living in the 12 room, two-storey villa, at the time Nazi rule began.

After the pogrom night in 1938, in which Nazis smashed apart the home rendering it inhabitable, the Heimanns were forced to leave.

Albert, under duress and without legal rights, had to adhere to a contract for the sale of the house, issued under the Third Reich, which sold the house for well below its value.

While the children were later able to leave Germany – with Wilhelm coming to settle in South Africa – Frieda and Albert’s attempts to immigrate were thwarted. Instead, they were soon deported, and later murdered in Auschwitz.

Over the years, the villa continued to play a key role in the life of the town, serving as an extension of the municipality in various forms.

Chillingly, when the Heimann family sought compensation for the property after the war, the German local government chose to recognise the legitimacy of the previous Nazi contract in determining the compensation claim.

Although the villa had fallen into disrepair by the 21st century, proposals were made to use its exterior wall as part of a new fire station on the site. Yet, in spite of protests and petitions, including from the Heimann descendants, the city elected to tear down the building in 2014.

Nevertheless, Bergmann, as a member of the Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) initiative, has been part of a collective effort by non-Jewish Germans to find ways to commemorate Jewish history that otherwise would have been largely obliterated.

In 2006, the initiative placed brass plaques at the front of the property to mark the home’s previous Jewish inhabitants. These plaques are part of a project that spans 23 countries and has resulted in about 75 000 of these 10cm by 10cm concrete cubes erected at key sites. Each plaque records the name and life dates of a victim of the Nazi regime, and is placed at their last “freely chosen” place of residence or work.

The initiative’s members in Steinfurt also placed enlarged photographs of the family in the windows of the villa, and after its demolition, salvaged window frames from it to build a mobile museum. They have also designed a self-guided walking tour of the town’s Jewish history, as well as seeking to preserve various artefacts from the Jewish community including fragments of the Torah that was desecrated during the attack on the synagogue.

Madeleine Fane and Claude Heimann, the grandchildren of the original Heimann patriarch, spoke at the documentary screening. They discussed the warm welcome they received during a trip back to the town in 2017, as well as how deeply touched they have been by the work of the Stolpersteine initiative.

Yet, they also noted that a photograph of their grandparents that forms part of a memorial board erected at the town’s railway station has been vandalised three times.

“A Hitler moustache has been painted on the portraits of both my grandparents, and my grandfather had a swastika on his forehead,” said Claude.

“After repairing the boards three times only to have them vandalised again, the Stolpersteine folk decided to leave them defaced to show that anti-Semitism is still a serious problem in the region. The swastika has been removed, however,” he said.

Claude said he hoped the story of the villa would ultimately highlight the profound work of the Stolpersteine initiative. “They are a remarkable group of people.

“I would like people to contact the Stolpersteine initiative from the towns they came from, because they really need our support. They really need to know that we recognise what they do. They are non-Jewish Germans fighting anti-Semitism.”