David Rothenberg

 

This photograph was taken around 1941, or at least the picture within the picture was from 1941. This “group photo” (taken in New York) includes my maternal grandfather Henry Korngold, his sisters Jean and Karla and his brother Herman as well as their cousin Amy (the young woman holding the group portrait). My grandfather and his siblings fled Berlin starting in the mid 1930’s due to the Nuremberg Laws and rising persecution of Jews in Europe. Their parents stayed behind in Europe where they eventually were captured and sent to Bergen-Belsen and later died as prisoner passengers on the “Lost Transport”. The four Korngold siblings were reunited in New York at the time this group photo was made. What was Amy’s intent to include herself in this photograph with group portrait in hand?  A heartbreaking surrogate of a family reunion;  a photographic chain letter to pass on to loved ones? Was Amy simply duplicating the picture of the siblings reunited to share with others? After scanning this picture onto my computer, a previously unnoticed detail revealed itself in the background- the soft reflection of an unknown photographer in a mirror. While my Grandfather rarely spoke during his lifetime of our family’s traumatic history, I embrace these tiny and maybe inconsequential discoveries, such as the blurry background detail in a photograph in an attempt to grab hold of an elusive past.