My Oma • Anna Skrainka Schilling
The following is the first excerpt from a 36-page handwritten document written by my grandmother Anna Skrainka Schilling. She called the document My Life in Music because of the very important role music played in her life. My brother Dr F. M. Eggert has transcribed the handwriting and I’ve translated (with his help).
Since I am a Jew when the whole devilment of the Hitler era began, music was out of the question. A long, overwhelming silence intruded into my life; none of the beauty of music remained as solace. Only in Theresienstadt, in a concentration camp, did music begin to heal these wounds. Music helped me find the will to help others and to overcome the wretched conditions of that horrific camp.
In Theresien courageous people found one another—those who would not succumb to the horrific conditions and who would not let go of the goodness in their souls. There were concerts whose musical offerings were faultless. It didn’t matter where they occurred. Sometimes they were in the stables, sometimes in a large barracks.
Are you a Skrainka, Sskranka, Skreinka … ?
For those of you who have enjoyed reading “Walking with Oma”, I have a facebook page called “Anna Skrainka: Start with Me” which has photos of many of the persons I mention in the book.
Traces of World War II
Except for memories, memorials, gravestones and plaques, the land where many suffered and died in WWII is almost mute.
This photo gallery starts in the concentration camp Terezin at the door to the barracks where my oma lived in 1944-1945. It leads past a cell to the Ohre River where the Nazis dumped the ashes of 22,000 Jews at the end of the war. There is a memorial by the river beside a weeping willow.
I spotted the first of the WWII bunkers on the right side of the Labe in the Czech Republic. We also saw train cars and a train station reminiscent of the terrible times of human transport.
Dresden’s new synagogue has the look of a fortress. At the nearby Dresden-Neustadt train station a plaque reminds commuters that Jews were transported to their deaths via this facility. One of the witnesses told me that the bodies of the dead from the Dresden bombings were burned on wooden pyres and the ashes ploughed under where tourists now frolic.
In Torgau, one bridge abutment stands to commemorate the meeting of the Allies and Russians at the Elbe in April 1945. In the far corner of the photo stands the new bridge.
Outside Wittenberg we saw an inauspicious looking hill behind an iron gate. The hill was created by the wastes from Wittenberg’s chemical industry. Without the help of the memories of our hotel host, Mr Kobbe, we wouldn’t have known that the hills buried the site of a forced labour camp.
In Dessau’s Jewish cemetery, we saw a wall of gravestones. They stand as testimony to Kristallnacht desecration Nov 1938. A small memorial by a train station shows those who died defending a bridge near Tangermuende. The Jewish graveyard in Tangermuende, like many others in Germany, is locked.
David stands inside the Berlin memorial to those murdered in WWII. A stone memorial, project planned for and carried out by the students of Ulla Seeger near Nitzow reminds of the forced labour camp Glowen. Charlotte Voigt lies buried in a small cemetery in Damnatz. I stand beside desecrated Jewish gravestones in Hitzhacker. In the same graveyard, a stone to a German officer still bears the sign of the swastika!
Outside Hitzhacker lie the remnants of a huge subterranean fuel storage bunker. The Nazis bought the land in 1934 and had it fenced by 1936. Trees were planted above the super secret facility and the roads were painted green so that aerial surveillance wouldn’t find it. We needed a guide to find the remnants
Hamburg’s Jewish graveyard, like many others, is protectively fenced. Even in death, these Jewish individuals find themselves behind barbed wire. Finally in the large Hamburg cemetery Ohlsdorf where I went to visit my oma’s grave, we saw the graves of allied men who gave their lives to protect the freedoms we now enjoy.
Currents … cross-currents … much to ponder.
Sskranka, Skrainka, Skreinka …
With various spellings, the Skrainka family harkens back to Moravia in 1667 when Benesch, Loebel and Filip SSkranka held property in the town of Holesov. Many different branches of the Skrainka family grew from these seeds in 1667.
California librarian Mary Ryan (now deceased), a dedicated amateur genealogist, and Skrainka descendant hired a researcher to trace the Skrainkas in Jewish House number2 in Holesov. Through her work we know that three Skrainka brothers, William, Phillip and Joseph came to the U.S.A. around 1848. These three were among the 12 children of Moses Lazar Skrainka and Lea Levinsky and they account for most of the Skrainka descendants in the U.S.
Salomon Skrainka born in Holesov is our family’s furthest back Skrainka. He married Peppi (Pesel) Freud. I like to think Peppi is related to the Freuds of Freiberg as this town is very near Ober-Becva/Horni Becva where Peppi and Salomon lived and raised their son Josef Skrainka (born 1871). There is, however, a Selig Freud buried in the Holesov cemetery. With the Freuds thus distributed in Horni Becva and Holeov, it makes the Sigmund Freud connection in Freiberg tenuous (but I’m still hopeful.)
I have visited the Holesov cemetery twice. In 2009 I found graves for Caecilie (nee Koenig), Adolf Skrainka and Zilli Skrainka (nee Bruell). Other Skrainka gravestones for Sofie, Pesl (wife of Shlomo Leib), Rodi (nee Deutsch),Nocha (wife of Gimpel) and Isaias are on this website www.flickr.com/photos/cam37/sets/72157602214476547/?page=2 .
The gravestones for Caecilie, Adolf and Sofie are in the same style (Sofie’s has been vandalized/knocked over) and seem to have been refurbished in the post WWII years. By whom? The monument company Wulkan and Neubrunn of Vienna, later New York, might have done this refurbishing as their name appears on one of the stones. Most of these gravestones have dates on them placing these peoples’ lives before the Holocaust.
The name of Simon Skrainka appears on a plaque in the burial hall along with that of Adolf Skrainka; they are recognized as benefactors of the Jewish community of Holesov.
If you have information you would like to add, please email. I would like to see the global Skrainka family grow.
Results from Flickr: SKRAINKA Nocha wife of Gimpel – 1827?-1881?