Looking Forward, Going Back 

By David Weichselbaum, as told to Tzivia Meth

Hessdorf, Germany. August 2022

I never dreamed I would go back to Germany. After fleeing the Nazis as a child, I had no desire to return to my birthplace. But here I was, standing in the yard of my childhood home. My grandchildren had been asking me for years to take them, so we arranged a six-day tour of the sites in Germany that were significant settings in my youth. Between my wife, children, grandchildren, nephews, cousins from Israel, and myself, we were over 30 people.

This wasn’t actually my first trip to Germany. I’d first gone back in 1961, on business. I was just starting out as an accountant, and one of my first clients wanted to open a business in Frankfurt. I told him he had to give me a day or two to think it over. But I didn’t want to lose the client, so I went. Years later, in 1995, I went back again, accompanied by my wife and grown children.

Now, we congregated in the large yard between my grandparents’ house and my parents’ house. On the outside, the house looked exactly the same as it did when I was growing up. That’s where I told everyone my story.