EDITOR’S FOREWORD AND DEDICATION

At the time many people from Huenfeld used to shop at the well-known grocery store of the Strauss family located at Fuldaer Straße ( Fulda Street ). The Strauss family was a highly respected merchant’s family, and its members were closely connected to their hometown..
Alfred Strauss, who lives in the New York vicinity, thinks quite often of his childhood in Huenfeld and his rescue from the murderous persecution by the Nazis. In 1989 the City of Huenfeld invited him to visit his hometown and be a guest of honor at a special ceremony at the memorial plaque honouring the memory of Huenfeld’s Jews. This plaque was placed on the outside of City Hall in 1985. Again, in 2000 Alfred traveled to the Netherlands -Holland- to meet members of the families, who hid him from the fangs of the Nazis. On his way back he traveled via Naumburg, his mother’s hometown, to Huenfeld and to the Jewish cemetery in Burghaun where his paternal grandparents are buried. Ever since I met Alfred at the occasion of his visiting the Jewish cemetery in Burghaun,
we stay in regular contact.
How does a person feel, who comes back to the country of his forebears and his own childhood, which has
inflicted so much suffering upon him? Initially Alfred Strauss didn’t ever want to set foot on German soil again. However, during the course of the years Alfred changed his attitude and opened up heart and mind for new, conciliatory experiences and encounters with the ”old native country”. The last time he did so was in April of
2005 together with his daughter, Karen.
This presentation wants to contribute to the process of healing by reminding the reader of the Jewish share of the
                                                          history of Huenfeld. The story of the Joseph Strauss family is told as an
                                                          example of the life and fate of Huenfeld’s Jewry.
                                                          The work is dedicated to the memory of Alfred’s sister, Emelie, who did not
                                                          survive the Holocaust, she was murdered at the Sobibor extermination camp.
                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                             Burghaun, May 2006
                                                                                                                                       Elisabeth Sternberg- Siebert