She knew his last name—Arlt. And his rank in the Waffen SS—Unterscharführer—equivalent to that of a sergeant. She knew he had been stationed in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. But she was haunted by missing details.
| Claudia’s search started nearly 30 years ago when she discovered that three of her grandparents were Jewish and that two of them (her father’s parents, Rudolf and Regine Wiener) had been murdered in the Holocaust. Out of this experience, Claudia wrote Letter from Vienna: a daughter discovers her family’s Jewish past. But while she learned much about her grandparents, questions about Arlt remained unanswered. |
| The mystery was unresolved until recently, when a thick packet arrived at her home in North Vancouver from the Federal Archives in Berlin. In the packet—a picture of Gerhardt Arlt, 30 years old, 176 centimeters tall, standing in a forest, wearing polished boots and a uniform with the SS lightning bolt insignia on his right collar. |
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Here is Claudia Cornwall, reading the story of her discovery:
Finally I’ve Seen the Face of My Grandparents’ Killer
The story about Claudia’s discovery was first published in Tyee on July 9, 2022 under the title, “Finally I’ve Seen the Face of My Grandparents’ Killer” and then reprinted on July 22, 2022 in BC BOOKLOOK under the title, “Picture of a Killer.”
Above, CLAUDIA as a child, with her parents. You can learn more about Claudia Cornwall, writer & author on Wikipedia. All her published work is available on Amazon.
