Not your usual translations

December 1998. It had been a long day, somewhat pleasant business discussions, but tiring. Worn out by nonstop budget and personnel deliberations, I had retreated to the comfort of a nice hotel room in a Munich suburb, made even nicer by its silent warmth as a snowstorm raged outside.

I turned on the television and fell into a fascinating news segment occasioned by the just-announced results of the Washington Conference. A civil but impassioned debate was already underway. Two older German politicians argued against the principles memorialized by that conference. The past is the past, let’s let it be, they said. Two young German journalists vehemently insisted the forty-four signers had not gone far enough, that the principles for the return of looted art should be stronger, more heavily weighted in favor of Jewish owners.

And between the two warring factions: Ignatz Bubis (see photograph by Túrelio), then president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. He represented the most basic aspect of Jewish ethics: There is neither collective guilt nor collective innocence. All guilt or innocence rests solely in the sphere of the individual. He called for enforcement of the Washington Conference Principles in a rational, even-handed manner.

In December 1998, I assumed that the Washington Conference signaled the beginning of the end for this thorniest of Nazi-era issues. It seemed logical to me that now that a framework had been put in place, families and museums and governments would work together to repair a tangible injustice still left over from the Third Reich.

I could not have been more wrong. Years later, Jewish families still face sometimes-impossible hurdles to reclaiming artwork that belonged to their ancestors before Hitler came to power. Museums use aggressive tactics and legalese to quash claims before they go to court. Others claim that Third Reich sales of valuable paintings (usually at ten cents on the dollar or less) were valid and not coerced. Often, many years later, justice still has not been served.

I have also run across cases in which a “non-Jewish” German family likewise illegally lost family property because of an injustice perpetrated by Hitler’s regime. One such case had a partially happy ending. Lilo Ramdohr’s uncle incurred Hitler’s wrath by taking a stand against the Chancellor’s unconstitutional Enabling Act in 1933. Hitler passed a law that affected only the Ramdohrs, forgiving a large debt owed the family by their hometown.

Ramdohr was additionally wronged postwar, when family property in former East Germany was appropriated by the government. Her partially happy ending came about post-Wende, when that real estate was returned to her.

Similarly, a family that had long held coastal property in Hamburg lost it when the NSDAP took it from them, exercising the right of eminent domain (but without paying even close to market value for the land) to build a naval base. A Houston-based attorney hired me to translate then-fifty-year-old documents in an attempt to gain compensation for his clients, since the family had emigrated to Texas after their land was confiscated.

In other words: We may be almost eighty years past the end of World War II, but we are nowhere close to wrapping up legal claims that stem from the vastness of the crimes against humanity from that era.

Yet legal claims represent the smallest fraction of Nazi-era documents deserving of translation. Those miles and miles of files at the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen (Germany); the reams of paper residing at Yad Vashem; Bundesarchiv and various city and state archival holdings; collections of newspapers (both underground and aligned); documents microfilmed and preserved by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; ‘stuff’ boxed up and shipped to our own national archives and to archives at major universities – if we ever hope to understand how “Hitler happened” and how to prevent those crimes against humanity from reoccurring, we must make all that paper accessible, and accessible in more languages than just German.

While we must rely on financial and legal translations, along with accounting and management consulting, to pay rent and buy groceries, we are also open to joint projects that promote the dissemination of primary source materials from 1933 – 1945. Center for White Rose Studies, a 501(c )(3) nonprofit, along with Exclamation! Publishers, dedicates its energies to the translation and distribution of primary source texts in English translation.

If you have a collection of German language documents that date back to 1933 – 1945, or an endeavor encompassing multiple elements or resources, we would be interested in speaking with you. Specific joint ventures we would especially welcome:

Collections of letters and diaries from a single (extended) family
Legal claims for art or real estate
Scientific, philosophical, theological, political, and literary discourse, both “aligned” and anti-Nazi (or “gray”)
Family newsletters (Rundbriefe) and genealogical exchanges
Handbooks, guidelines, and manuals on proper etiquette and cultural norms
Please contact us to discuss a collaborative effort. This is one of the few areas of “business” where a monetized project can also positively affect the future with solid scholarship.

Note: Fraktur is not an issue! And old cursive is equally acceptable, especially with a collection of documents. Without multiple documents in the same handwriting, transcription is more difficult and less accurate. But with larger projects, this is usually easily resolved.

Translation projects help us stay afloat. Note: If you wish to underwrite one of our outstanding projects, you can donate to that specific project through CWRS' Web site (via QGiv/Bloomerang). This takes you to outstanding projects: Projects. And this to the donation page specifically for projects: Projects Donation Page.

Postscript: In the 1990s, a group of German women inherited their families’ possessions. They quickly realized that the artwork and other valuables that formed their legacy had been stolen from German-Jewish families. They searched for the original owners, but as is often the case, could not locate them.

They therefore sold the treasures and established Stiftung Zurückgeben, the “Give It Back” foundation. All proceeds from sales of inherited valuables support the entrepreneurship of Jewish women in Germany.

It’s one of my favorite German-Jewish reconciliation projects.

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Bottom photograph--German loot (art) stored at Schlosskirche Ellingen (Ellingen, Bavaria, Germany) found by troops of the U.S. Third Army. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Chief Signal Officer. Public domain. Unbelievable that Nazi bigwigs would turn a church into a warehouse for their plunder.

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