Death and Love in the Holocaust

The Story of Sonja and Kurt Messerschmidt

By Steve Hochstadt

The first project of the newly created Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine beginning in 1987 was to record interviews with Holocaust survivors and liberators who lived in Maine. That big project has continued to pay dividends for spreading knowledge about the Holocaust. Among the first interview partners were Sonja Messerschmidt, interviewed by Gerda Haas and Margaret Meyer, and Kurt Messerschmidt, interviewed by Katy Beliveau and Paula Scolnik.

Because Kurt and Sonja lived in Berlin, they experienced the entire Nazi period from the takeover of power in 1933 until liberation in 1945. Their marriage in the Theresienstadt ghetto, survival of multiple concentration camps including Auschwitz and then death marches, and eventual recreation of family life in Maine offered intertwined personal narratives of the entire Holocaust, in which love defeated death.

I believe that interviews have great potential for teaching the Holocaust, but they are not ideal in their raw form as transcripts, where repetitions, sudden changes of subject, and movements back and forth in time can make reading confusing. Because I thought that the interviews with the Messerschmidts could be promising teaching tools, I did one more interview with both of them in 2004, trying to fill in gaps in their life stories and to get more details on their Holocaust experiences. Then I used interview excerpts and my own commentary on the more general history of the Holocaust to create a book which could bring a reader through all the stages of the Holocaust, combining a general overview with personal experiences, told in Kurt’s and Sonja’s gripping voices.

But in the early years of the 21st century, I was not able to find a publisher. I encountered the widespread belief that the market was glutted with Holocaust memoirs and that interviews did not make commercially successful books. After years of rejections, I partnered with the HHRC in 2012 to publish the book privately with a press in Jacksonville, Illinois, where I lived. Over 50 donors from Maine helped to defray the costs of printing several hundred copies, most of which were distributed in Maine by the HHRC.

In 2016, I retired from teaching at Illinois College. Since then I have thought again about various things I have written that were never published. The attitude toward Holocaust narratives has shifted as the number of survivors dwindles. So I tried again. Once more with the financial assistance of the HHRC, we found a publisher that believes in Holocaust narratives, Academic Studies Press of Boston. Publication was also supported by the Spungen Family Foundation of Illinois, and Sarah Cushman, executive director of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, wrote a preface. Death and Love in the Holocaust came out this year. Half of whatever royalties are earned will go back to the HHRC.

The narratives of the Messerschmidts began before the Nazis came to power in 1933. They watched as persecution accelerated during the next 6 years and engulfed their families, especially the destruction of Kristallnacht. Then deportations began from Berlin in 1941. Despite unbelievable conditions, Sonja and Kurt married during their 15 months in Theresienstadt, and then were both deported to Auschwitz. Nearly always a death sentence, they were both “lucky” to have been selected for slave labor in other camps. They describe death marches, liberation, and finding each other in the confusion of postwar Germany. They tell us what it meant to create a family life in Maine.

I know that the book is useful for students, because I assigned the 2012 edition in my Holocaust course at Illinois College. Students commented:
“Death and Love reads like a conversation.”
“There was a sense of hope, a sense of love, and a sense of overcoming.”
“Readers are likely to identify with the Messerschmidts and build a personal connection with them.”
Death and Love provides both male and female perspectives. A Study Guide at the end of this new edition helps students confront the unimaginable, understand the accelerating persecution, and think about the resistance of survival.

I hope the Messerschmidts can continue to teach about the Holocaust long into the future.

Steve Hochstadt
July 20, 2022