[Charlotte] Knobloch is right to worry about time. Even the most cursory examination of her life would require days, not hours. Born in 1932, the year before the Nazis took power, she witnessed the pogroms of November 1938, and went on to survive \u2014 miraculously \u2014 the regime\u2019s systematic attempt to murder the Jews of Europe, by hiding in a German village and pretending to be Christian.<\/p>\n
While initially after the war she was determined to leave the land of the perpetrators, she stayed in Munich, raised a family, joined the board of the local Jewish community, and embarked on a late career of advocacy culminating in a stint as president of Germany\u2019s Central Council of Jews. Above all, she became a builder: the cluster of constructions that grace the Jakobsplatz today are to a large extent the fruit of her vision.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes I catch myself thinking this cannot be true. Every day, when I arrive here, I draw such happiness from seeing the synagogue, and the museum and the community centre,\u201d she tells me as she spoons up her eggs. \u201cWhat is amazing is not just that we have this, but that it has become so accepted. When the tourist buses stop here, I often hear the Munich guide say: \u2018And here you can see our synagogue.\u2019 I cannot imagine anything more beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Knobloch and many others, the decision to build a new temple in the city where Hitler plotted his rise to power was deeply significant. It was, she tells me, the moment she decided to \u201cunpack her suitcase\u201d \u2014 to finally admit to herself she had made Munich her home, despite the past.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a> (subscription).<\/p>\n A beautiful, haunting Lunch with the FT with Charlotte Knobloch, Holocaust survivor. On Kristallnacht: “i asked my father: why isn\u2019t the fire brigade coming?\u201d she recalls. \u201cIt was then that I realised … that they were after our lives.” @TobiasBuckFT<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/JtqlKinHiV<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Guy Chazan (@GuyChazan) December 14, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n