Charlie Scheidt & Kat Rohrer: Holocaust Descendants on Different Sides of History

What happens when the son of a Holocaust survivor meets the granddaughter of a Nazi officer?

In this powerful episode of TO BE CONTINUED... Reflections on Growing Up with Holocaust Survivors, host Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Charlie Scheidt and Kat Rohrer, co-authors of Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust.

Charlie grew up in a German Jewish household on New York's Upper West Side, surrounded by family members who had fled Nazi Germany, and a silence about the past that was deafening. When his mother died in 1988, she left behind an armoire filled with nearly a thousand documents: letters, visas, identity papers, and more. It would take Charlie twenty years before he could bring himself to open them.

Kat is an award-winning Austrian filmmaker and the granddaughter of a devoted Nazi officer. Haunted by her family's role in one of history's darkest chapters, she had spent years grappling with what it means to carry that legacy.

When they met, an extraordinary partnership was born. Over fifteen years, four trips to Europe, and hundreds of conversations, they pieced together a story of loss, memory, and unexpected connection. Together, they reflect on the silence that shaped them, the documents and discoveries that changed them, and why they believe that breaking that silence is the only way to ensure the oppressors don't own the story.

TRANSCRIPT:

This episode of our podcast is generously sponsored by Irene and David Beyth, in memory of David's parents, Hannah and Werner Beyth, who were both fortunate to escape Nazi Germany before the war.

Let us start with a German lesson.

The word is Erbe.

It means both inheritance and legacy.

Today's guests have spent more than a decade sitting with that word.

One of them grew up in a German Jewish household on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, surrounded by relatives who had fled Nazi Germany in a family where the unspoken motto was "Forward, never back."