Henry and Gretl Wald

Henry and Gretl Wald

Throughout Ken Wald’s childhood, a black and white photo of his paternal grandparents, Curt and Regina Schönwald, hung in the family’s dining room. Ken and his brother, Steve, the children of Heinz (Henry) and Margaret (Gretl) Wald, would never meet their grandparents, nor was their demise during the Holocaust discussed openly at home. Only later would a collection of letters from the 1930s and 40s, discovered amongst their father’s personal artifacts, reveal their family’s past.

Curt and Regina Schönwald lived in Großröhrsdorf, Germany, near Dresden for decades. They were the only Jewish family living in the town. The Schönwalds ran a department store and raised two children, Henry (Ken’s father) and Suse. Curt served in the Kaiser’s air force during World War I. When their lives were endangered by the rise of Hitler and National Socialism in the 1930s, Henry left Germany for the United States, shortening his surname to Wald. His sister, Suse, and her husband also fled. Curt and Regina moved to Berlin with a plan to follow Henry to the US. Their hopes were shattered when Jews were no longer issued documents to leave Germany. The written communications between his grandparents and parents that Ken discovered decades later ceased in late 1941.

Henry and Gretl met and married in New York. Gretl’s family, from Öhringen, a small town near Stuttgart, Germany, also struggled to gain safe passage to the US. Gretl speaks of her challenges in her USC Shoah Foundation Testimony. Henry was drafted for the US Army, returning to Germany during his service. He was tragically unable to help his parents escape the fate of Jews in Nazi Germany. Henry and Gretl worked and raised their family in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Hear Gretl Wald's testimony in her own words.