Marcella and Alexandre Marx
This is the thank you speech given by Marcella and Alexandre Marx as they received their German citizenships at the naturalisation ceremony at the consulate in São Paulo, Brazil in February 2021
GUTEN MORGEN!
For more than two decades my brother and I have formally sought recognition of our origins, rights and also duties as German descendants. I remember countless moments in which we expressed to each other the desire, the dream of being able to live, study, work... in short, to have the freedom to exercise a full life in the land where our ancestors have been since at least the end of the 17th century.
My family's history, portrayed in the book I am writing, brings with it deep scars from what historian Eric Hobsbawm called “The Age of Extremes, the brief 20th century." My great-grandfather, Hermann Marx, a Jew, aged 23, gave his life for his country at the Battle of Verdun, in 1916, during World War I. My grandfather, Georg Marx, born in Munich in 1915, never got to know his father. In 1937, with family members prevented from exercising their professions and, after my grandfather was forbidden to return to his studies because he was the son of a Jewish father, my great-grandmother, Johanna Katchen Elisabeth Marx, a Christian,advised her son to flee his own country, anticipating the worst. My grandfather, then 21, embarked to Brazil on the Captain Arcona ship, in the same year. I remember him telling me that he had 10 marks hidden inside one of his shoes.
Even without speaking a word of portuguese and without knowing anyone, my grandfather said that he was welcomed by this Land as if he were his son. The fate of his grandmother, uncles and aunts, with the exception of two cousins, is Theresienstadt and Treblinka, from where they never returned. We reconstructed the fate of the members of our Marx family over years of research, since my grandfather spoke very little about his life before arriving in Brazil.
In 2016, I contacted the only survivor of the Marx family who remained in Germany, our cousin, Ursula. Sitting next to her, in the house where she lives alone in Aachen, we saw the Marx family photo albums, my great-grandparents Kaufman and Klara Marx and their children: Hermann, Emil, Anna, Albert and Julius, the beautiful house where they lived in Grossen-Linden, and we marveled at the physical similarities among us all. We discovered that my great-grandmother, Elisabeth Marx, a woman ahead of her time, was the first female doctor to open a clinic in the Grossen-Linden region, and one of the founders of the German Democratic Party -DDP, (we even found a book telling her story). We found out that Mr. Herbert Rosenbaum, the only survivor of the Rosenbaum family, who fled to New York City, tried for years to build a memorial in Grossen-Linden, where the two families, Marx and Rosenbaum, were neighbors. In 2019, his son, Mr. Daniel Rosenbaum obtained the authorization for a local artist to engrave the names of Klara and Anna Marx in the so-called "Stolpersteine".
In 2017, I traveled to Washington DC to visit the Holocaust museum and search its database for documents of the Marx family. I left with tears in my eyes and carrying documents with the dates of deportations to concentration camps and deaths certificates. I found out that my grandfather's uncle, Emil Marx, died on 5/28/1945, just a few months before the end of the war.
My book represents for me not only the rescue of my family's history, but a mission to give life to those who had their voices silenced. It also depicts the story of my maternal family. My Brazilian grandfather, Vasco Leite Praça, who embarked with about 25 thousand men from FEB (Brazilian Expeditionary Force) to Italy, composing the Allied effort to liberate occupied Europe. My grandfather's role was that of a ‘padioleiro’. He helped carry the wounded soldiers in the midst of conflict. This is how he says goodbye to his parents, on 19/06/1944:
"... do not be distressed, I don't know where they are taking us, but that is not why you will stop hearing from me. Whenever possible, I will send news from where I am. Now, when I return from the war, I will make a surprise, arriving there without warning, that is, if God allows me to return, because I have much hope of returning, and also, the weapon I serve is not dangerous, it is the health squadron, I do not fight, I only help the wounded. "
Unlike my grandfather George, my grandfather Vasco told us countless stories of his childhood and youth, including his participation in the War and, even before he passed away, in 2016, he still had nightmares that terrified him. The pain of a separation carries with it profound reflections and, from them, the possibility to ease the suffering of irreparable losses that last for generations.
Arising out of Brexit, people of diverse backgrounds and histories saw their paths intertwined… In this opportunity, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to Isabelle and Felix Couchman and to all members of the Art. 116 Exclusions Group, who courageously shared their painful family histories and shared a common dream: to obtain recognition of their origins by the German State and, in doing so, pay tribute to their loved ones. Thanks to the tireless work and effort of these people, in 2019, with the publication of two decrees, the German government created a possible path to be followed by those who claimed their original German citizenship.
Here, we also register our tribute to the German government for the courage to seek to correct mistakes, improve and willingly address issues of enormous sensitivity. For us this ceremony is an important milestone, as it publicly recognizes decades of effort by those who seek to rescue their origins and ancestral nationality.
With a sense of accomplishment, we are convinced that we have honored the legacy of resilience and strength in the face of adversity, which has helped us to remain firm and irreducible in our cause.
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, represented by my nephew Bernardo Marx, 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.
VIELEN DANK!
