What has befallen you, Isaak? : a quest for clues / by Sybille Eberhardt

Abstract

An unusual gravestone at the Göppingen cemetery aroused the author’s interest and triggered a search for clues in her. It was erected for Isaak Komras, a young Jew, a teenager, and she wanted to find out how he came to be in this place where he had never lived. Available personal data was scarce, consisting of date and place of birth - Wilna, today’s capital of Lithuania, Vilnius – and date and place of death - Heidenheim, a town in the region. The inscription on the grave stone reads “Former concentration camp prisoner.” The author set out on a virtual journey which took her to Wilna and its ghetto, slave labor in some Baltic states, on to Stutthof, in 1944 a shunting yard for Jewish slave laborers, then to south west Germany and its oil shale project. Finally Isaak, together with a cousin who had been his companion in tribulation and others, was liberated but not before he was forced on a death march. Together with the cousin and other family members who joined them, they ended up in the Heidenheim DP camp. He passed away less than six months later, without getting a chance to tell his tragic story.

Ein ungewöhnlicher Grabstein auf dem Göppinger Friedhof veranlasst die Autorin, in ihrer jüngsten Untersuchung nach Spuren des zu früh verstorbenen jüdischen Jungen Isaak aus Wilna zu suchen. Sein Schatten geistert durch die Geschichte des Wilnaer Ghettos. Er heftet sich an die Fersen eines Verwandten und zahlreicher Leidensgenossen in verschiedenen KL im Ölschiefergebiet Estlands, im Lager Stutthof und einem der „Wüste“-Lager im deutschen Südwesten in Dautmergen. Schließlich auf einen Todesmarsch getrieben, wird er bald nach der Befreiung doch noch vom Tod in einem DP-Lager in Heidenheim ereilt, ohne seine tragische Geschichte selbst erzählen zu können.