Tony sent this to me today. He is currently visiting and teaching in Germany. It is a work in progress.

LANDSBERG AM LECH
For Klaus Post

Tourists smile for pleasant family
photographs.  They saunter into town
through cobblestoned centralplatz–
a neat row of curved pastel-colored houses
and shops, red brick medieval gate.
These facades are like tubs of ice cream:
raspberry next to vanilla next to pistachio,
and the ice cream here
is some of the best in Bavaria.

It’s all lovely.
Even as I wander these quiet streets
in search of someone willing to talk
about the shadows that still hang over
this place.  How could an entire town,
so friendly and well-behaved,
turn so sharply to the right
that it fell off
into a deep-river current of hate?

Buried in mass graves under a lime-green forest
four hundred yards outside the town gate,
the anonymous thousands that died
building Hitler’s last prayer secret weapon,
jet engine Messerschmidts, machines
that eventually shared the same fate
as those that were forced to fabricate;
Allied bombs rained down
before a single plane got off the ground.

All things human are shadow stained
and, like the father in “Hansel and Gretel,”
we often make the same mistake
believing the forest is there
to hide and abide our darkest bidding.
History casts long shadows
from the woods outside this town;
groves of pine grow sturdy and strong
their roots nestled in among the bones of those
who knew only suffering and then were gone.

And photographs of slave labor camps
underground are, I suspect, exceedingly rare
in Bavarian towns with reputations to protect
for quaint little ice cream shops.

Still, what must happen late at night
when crisp alpine winds
exhale deeply through wooded pines
and shadows rise from the forest floor
to reach out, like gloved fingers in moonlight,
towards this pretty little town
on the edge of the river Lech.

We visited with family in Los Gatos and San Jose, and took trips to Santa Cruz and Turlock to fill in some gaps in the narrative. Above are a few pictures. The first is the old Cohen home in Santa Cruz on Otis Street. The second is a family gathering at the Terraces is Los Gatos: Walter Newman Jr. on the left, me in the middle in black, my sister Marilyn on the right in back and my mom, age 95, in front. The third is my meeting with Scott Atherton in Turlock. He is part of the Movie “Turlock” and a Turlock history expert. He owns one of the Max Strauss buildings in Turlock.

CENSUS YR:  1870  STATE:  California  COUNTY:  San Francisco  DIVISION:  2nd Ward-San Francisco  REEL NO:  M593-79  SHEET NO:  167A REFERENCE:  Enumerated on 13 Jun 1870      by  Isaac Ayer;      POST OFFICE: PAGE NO: 61

Strauss  Louis  46      M     Dry Goods Mcht  $10,000   Prussia
Strauss  Lena  33        F      Keep House                             Bavaria
Strauss  Pauline 14     F                                                       California
Strauss  Samuel 12     M                                                      California
Strauss  Fanny   7       F                                                        California
Strauss   Max    5        M                                                       California

My Grandfather Max was 5 years old when the census taker knocked at the door!

Stanislaus County Evening News
Wednesday Evening, October 4, 1893

One Entire Business Block Totally Destroyed

The Fire Fiend visited our neighboring town of Turlock last night and the main business block of that place with nearly all of its contents was burned.  The fire broke out at 10:30 o’clock in the rear of the shoe store of Leitchman near the middle of the block which was composed entirely of wooden buildings and burned both ways until it reached the street upon either side.  Turlock is entirely without facilities for fighting fire and when it was found that the fire had gained a good headway the entire population worked diligently with buckets of water and wet blankets to save the Allen hotel, across the street, and the old Dallas warehouse.  The trees in front of the hotel were a valuable aid toward saving the building. At the warehouse a number of men arrived with buckets of water and wet woolen articles and put out numerous small blazes which started there.  The building was badly scorched but was finally saved from total destruction.
The properties entirely consumed were L. Strauss & Co’s building and very large stock of general merchandise, M. A Fuller, saloon; — Leitchman, shoes and children’s shop;  R.J. Lecusson, barbershop and building; E. Hill, saloon;  Patrick McGrath saloon and building: Charles Davis, saloon; William Convey, chop house; Meyer Bros., meat market; W.A. Smith, drug store; Sherwood’s tin shop; Charles Huber, saloon, and empty buildings belonging to J.T. Davis.
The shoemaker in whose place of business the fire started lives in the back of his shop and cooks his victuals upon an oil stove. He has set the place on fire two or three times prior from his carelessness and is considered to be mentally unsound. He is known in Turlock as the “crazy shoemaker.”
It is impossible to state the loss at this hour nor the insurance. The loss of Strauss and Co., however, will be the heaviest and will equal if not exceed, all of the rest.

Walking through smoldering timbers of their store the next day was a harrowing experience.  You could hear Max swearing bitterly about the shoemaker. While Sam kept his voice low and controlled, he was in a rage.   The brothers struggled emotionally with the magnitude of the event, and for a week or two they argued about what to do.  Of course Helena was consulted.   Not only did they lose the building, but everything in it, an astonishingly large loss.