Your presence here, today, at this event, in this building – speaks volumes about your hopes for the future. I am awed by your courage, your vulnerability, your optimism, and your determination.

This is what reconciliation looks like. Reconciliation is not about denying the past. On the contrary, reconciliation is about acknowledging the past – but together. And, that is exactly what we are doing here today – every person in this room – acknowledging the past while taking the next step in reconciliation - together.

Now more than at any time since the Holocaust, telling the stories of our families feels essential, but one of the most powerful changes that remembrance can bring about is repair, renewed trust, friendship and good will, things my grandmother cherished most.

I’m busy writing a happy book now. I got the idea over the summer, spending an afternoon with my family in a restaurant on the Elbe. Eighty-five years after my grandmother was exiled from her life in Germany, when she sailed into the North Sea …

Now I am a grandmother myself, I realise how important it is that young people know about the past. When they grow up, they can all help challenge those who would prefer the world to forget, and help promote the values of inclusivity, empathy and understanding.

I now know that my family history resonates today, when millions of people are running for their lives, fleeing wars, famine, drought or oppression…

When my husband and I returned from our trip to Germany, I felt that a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.  I had met some very wonderful compassionate Germans:  the organiser of the Circle of Friends for Christian-Jewish Cooperation was doing valuable work to preserve the memory of the Jews of Bad Laasphe; the couple in Kirn who welcomed us to their home and supplied me with information to enable me to research my family, and the co-author of the book about Jews in Sötern and Bosen who has dedicated her life to creating a lasting memory of this community, and finally the hotel owner, who is proud to tell the story of his very very brave grandfather who risked everything to ensure his Jewish friends had bread to eat.  I now have German citizenship and am proud to honour these fellow Germans.

Today, as Germans, we look at the future with enthusiasm, tenacity and satisfaction for having endured our long journey. The next generation of our family can now dream their own dreams and have the possibility of realizing them freely, living, if they wish, a full life in the Land of our ancestors.

It was a wonderful thing to be welcomed warmly with my sons at the German Embassy in London, and to receive our certificates of nationality together. But I feel I was already German. I always had been, I just didn’t realise it.

That it is even possible for someone like me to obtain German citizenship is a tremendous gift from Germany and the German people. Germany has shown me, shown the world, what is truly possible by apologizing, and doing so deeply and sincerely.

Words can not express my gratitude to Felix and Isabelle Couchman.  Their tireless efforts have helped many people to bring closure and healing with the past.  Having the opportunity to share my grandmother’s nationality means a lot to me.  I’m grateful the German government is continuing to work on reconciliation issues like this. 

This June my family will be honored with six Stolpersteine to be installed by the artist, Gunter Demnig, in front of the homes in Kassel where they last lived. Thirty five members of my family will meet there from cities all over the world to join together in a ceremony of hope and reconciliation: honoring our past and celebrating the message of healing that comes with it.

Obtaining citizenship, was a hugely proud, symbolic and emotional moment for me, and I felt a sense of wholeness publicly recognising my father’s plight and my own German roots and identity. In 2023 I travelled to Germany and met with some of my relatives in Hamburg, this time entering the country as a German citizen. The warmth of my relatives was, as always, amazing, as was their delight at my new citizenship. I have always felt at home in Germany, the pull of Heimat probably, and the pleasure of being a citizen of such a great country. I

I have since had a baby, and am pleased that my German citizenship has passed to her. It connects her to my grandmother, and it will bring her the safety and opportunities that my grandmother had taken away from her.

I enjoyed wonderful assistance from the embassy staff in London. It has since been my pleasure to be welcomed by German parliamentarians at the Reichstag. I now feel that I and my family are now rightful and accepted citizens of Germany. I also appreciate not losing the citizenship of the country which took in my mother, enabling her and her parents to survive.