By writing about my grandmother’s experiences, I was worried I’d expose her to modern-day antisemitism

The worrying rise of Holocaust denial and antisemitism worldwide made it feel all the more important to tell the story of my grandma presenting Adolf Hitler with a colossal bouquet of flowers as a nine-year-old Jewish girl.

There is no denying the fact there has been a lurch to the far right in governments across the world and no denying that antisemitic incidents are on the rise in the UK and in the US.

More than 100 antisemitic incidents are being recorded every month in Britain as monitors warn bigots are becoming “more confident to express their views”. Children as young as 11 have been physically attacked, unspeakable graffiti has been daubed on homes and synagogues and MPs have been targeted with antisemitic abuse after speaking out on the issue.

If this was not enough, a poll released to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day last Sunday, found more than 2.6 million British people think the Holocaust is a myth. Five per cent of UK adults do not believe millions of Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis – with survivors and anti-racism campaigners saying this points to a “terribly worrying” level of denial.

All of this makes it imperative to tell stories like that of Hanna Oppenheim – my 94-year-old grandma. The tale, something I have been aware of since I too was a little girl, is evocative of the extreme indoctrination carried out by the Nazi Party. The latter was evidenced in my grandmother’s old notebook which I looked through in her flat last week as she translated passages from German to English.

There was a pro-Hitler brainwashing session once a week called Heimatkunde (“Study of Your Home Country”) and my grandma still has an exercise book which contains evidence of it. It is replete with stuck-in pictures of Hitler and his stormtroopers and sketches she did of German flags, eagles and even swastikas.

An essay inside the book talks about the huge cost of reparations that had to be paid after the First World War and issues of inflation and vast unemployment. “Out of this dreadful crisis, one man will liberate us – Adolf Hitler”, it concludes.

But my grandma – just a small, innocent child – remained oblivious to what was happening to Germany. She did not realise her parents were making preparations to pack up their life in Germany, or that six million Jewish people would go on to be murdered by the Nazi regime during the Second World War as part of Hitler’s campaign of extermination.

An anecdote in the article about one of my grandma’s friends, Inge, no longer being able to play with her after she became part of Hitler Youth also demonstrates the insidious horror of the Nazi Party.

Depressingly, it is worth noting that interviewing my grandma and then writing the actual article was less sad than emailing her a link to the piece after it was published and worrying that there might be an antisemitic remark in the comments below.

While I am used to receiving antisemitic vitriol on Twitter from time to time, I am less used to the idea of my grandma, who personally knew dozens who died in the Holocaust, being exposed to this. Luckily the response to the piece has been overwhelmingly positive – with strangers reaching out to thank me and tell me their own stories of the Holocaust and the article being widely shared.

Yours,

Maya Oppenheim

Women’s correspondent