Ralph Penglis |

Ralph Penglis was one of the few visitors in the group of the first generation. He was born in Frankfurt at Sandweg in 1936 and brought his birth certificate with him.

The house in which he was born no longer exists, but Ralph knew that already from an earlier visit in Frankfurt. I would have liked to give him a photograph of Sandweg from the thirties, but could not find one.

In 1937, the whole family – parents, grandparents and aunts – came to the conclusion that the situation in Germany would not get better. So they decided: “We leave!” and emigrated to the United States, to South Africa and to Australia. Since the grandmother did not speak English, the family in Australia continued to speak German, and little Ralph learnt German as his native language. Meanwhile a lot of it is lost, but now and then German words pop in as for example during his visit to Gagern Gymnasium when he encouraged the students to ask questions by saying “Du musst nicht scheu sein!” (“Don’t be shy!”)

Ralph’s father died at the early age of 25. His mother later married a Greek in Australia, and Ralph adopted the new family name: Penglis. He also changed his first name from Rolf to Ralph. In the discussion with the students at school, he ironically commented: “I am not what I was when I was born. I am a different person now.” When he was asked what about his roots, he answered, that he was half Geman, half Greek.

Since Mr. Penglis had lived in the East End of Frankfurt, the “Projekt” had arranged for a visit to Gagern Gymnasium, not knowing that after his return to Sydney, his aunt would tell him that she and his father had attended the Philanthropin (the liberal Jewish school) in the twenties. When Ralph told his son about his visit to Frankfurt, the son decided to dive deeper into the family’s history. He now hopes to become part of the City’s Visiting Program, too.

When the details of the school visit of Ralph Penglis and his partner Jeanette were discussed at our get-together at the Jewish Museum, another Australian couple, Estelle and Max Dzienciol, spontaneously decided to join them. Ralph Penglis had already signalled that he would like to speak to a school-class. On one of the first days of the visit, the “Projekt Jüdisches Leben in Frankfurt” arranges for a get-together of the visitors, students and teachers as well as representatives of the City of Frankfurt, of the local school authority and of the Hessisches Kultusministerium. This evening is also an opportunity to encourage those visitors who have not yet decided whether they want to speak to students.

Asked whether there were differences in the stories of the parents and grandparents, Max Dzienciol said that in general people started to talk about that period rather late. Those who had had their own experiences, talked very little about them, but his generation had had certain presentiments. Yet, it was only in the past fifteen or twenty years that people spoke more about it.

Estelle’s aunt, for example, wrote about her experiences and thus threw off the burden she had carried with her all along. Asked about the final reason for emigration, Ralph supposed that it had been fear which caused his then seventeen-years-old mother and his two years older father to escape. But there had been several things that came together. Ralph knew, for instance, that his mother’s best friend, who was not Jewish, did not want to have anything to do with her any more.

The conditions of life in Australia during World War II were hard. Max Dzienciol reported that his father, a Polish Jew, was considered a “friendly alien” and his mother, a German Jew, an “enemy alien”. It did not seem to make any difference that they had emigrated from Germany because of the fact that they were Jews. Ralph reported that his mother was exposed to racist comments in the bus because she spoke English with a German accent, and that for himself as a boy from Germany life in school was not easy either. One girl student asked whether the past had an influence on their present life, and the answer was “Yes, of course”.