The letter · about 20 minutes
A son writes to his mother to tell her she is still a person. Read the German, then Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky’s English. Do not skip the credit.
Reichenbach Family Archive · For teachers
For teachers · a 45-minute path
A letter, one day, and what the record will not say
Three rooms. A family letter from 26 November 1938. Three people assembled for deportation on 12 April 1942. Time left to sit with a single object. The archive does not invent the ending.
A print-ready English packet adds a 90-minute extension, five source cards, optional private reflection and evidence-bound discussion prompts.
The hour
Move through three existing records
One day · about 15 minutes
12 April 1942. Kurt Reichenbach, Paula Wollenberg, and Hans Wollenberg are named for the Warsaw transport. The transport reached Warsaw on 16 April; no surviving record yet found traces their individual fates after that arrival. Ask the class what it would mean to invent a last chapter.
One object · about 10 minutes
Choose one: the store hanger—the name that left the building—or Fritz’s 1938 forced-sale deed at Breite Straße 7, the instrument that says the seller is a Jew. Stay with that object’s own page.
Source boundaries
What not to ask the class
- Do not ask students to decide Martha Reichenbach’s place of death. The Stolperstein and the Berlin transport list do not agree.
- Do not ask them to name a camp for Kurt, Paula, or Hans.
- Living descendants are not a research assignment. Vernon Jacob is living; current American addresses are out of bounds.
The Camps reading room shows how the archive names a place or prisoner number without extending a person’s record beyond its source. Its Warsaw section still stops with the 16 April 1942 arrival.
How to cite
Keep the source with the sentence
Cite the letter page the class actually read: https://www.reichenbacharchive.org/documents/letter — German source, English by Rabbi Dr. Esther Jilovsky. Letter · DOC-LETTER-1938.
What this page is not
A path, not an answer key
The packet offers source cards, timed routes and evidence-bound prompts. It does not supply a single correct emotional response, ask students to disclose family trauma or present a museum as the sponsor of this lesson.