Lifelines 2.0 with Michael Guggenheimer

In Memory of the November Pogrom

The Nazi regime’s tyranny has also left a deep mark on the children and grandchildren of the survivors. In the series “Lebenslinien 2.0,” descendants of Augsburg’s prewar Jewish community share how the Shoah continues to affect their families.

Michael Guggenheimer, born in Tel Aviv to a father from Augsburg and a mother from Görlitz, never got to know his Augsburg grandparents, Julius and Anna Guggenheimer. Three years before he was born, in 1943, they took their own lives. They knew they were to be deported the next morning.

Michael Guggenheimer lives in Zurich. Even today, he often asks himself: “Why didn’t my grandparents leave Germany in time, especially since my father had gotten them visas? How could they have believed, right up until the end, that nothing would happen to them in Germany?”