Holocaust Remembrance: A son recalls his mother's courage

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. – Imagine you wake up tomorrow to find out that you are no longer a citizen of the country you were born, the one your family had lived in for generations. That was the reality Ralph Troll’s mother faced on Sept. 15, 1935.

Troll’s mother was Jewish, and on that fateful day, the German government, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, passed the first Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. This law, and others that would soon follow it, were known colloquially as the Nuremberg Laws.

“As early as 1935 Hitler deprived Jews of German citizenship and other rights,” said Dr. Ralph Troll during a talk at the Rock Island Arsenal Museum April 22, 2024. “Jews weren’t allowed to attend films or concerts, to sit on public park benches, to drive or buy newspapers.”

Troll told his story as part of U.S. Army Sustainment Command’s Holocaust Days of Remembrance or Yom HaShoah observance. Yom HaShoah is observed throughout much of the world and is held on the 27th of Nisan. Nisan is a month in the Hebrew Calander, and usually falls in April or early May. For 2024, the Days of Remembrance are from May 5-12.

Yom HaShoah is observed in Nisan because it is the month that most of the camps were liberated by the Allied armies, and because it memorializes the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which began on April 19, 1943.

This year’s observance theme is, “Behind Every Name a Story: The Courageous.” According to a memorandum issued by the Department of Defense, the theme was chosen as, “an opportunity to recognize and reflect upon the individual suffering experienced by 6 million Jews and millions of other who endured tremendous hardship and loss.”

For Troll and his family, it took courage to live. Over the next few years life in Germany became more difficult for the Troll family.

Along with depriving Jews of their civil rights, the Nuremberg Laws also forbade marriages between Jews and gentiles. This meant that Troll’s parents’ marriage was illegal, as his father was Catholic. It also meant that Troll was, in the eyes of the state, only partially German. He was officially classified as a Mischling ersten Grades, or mixed race first degree. This classification prevented Ralph from fully integrating into German life.

He was allowed to attend the local elementary school but wouldn’t be permitted to attend higher level schooling.

“My grades in elementary school were such, that after four years I was entitled to go to gymnasium, or secondary school,” said Troll. “However, I was denied it because a half-Jew was unworthy of being educated.”

On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, elements of Nazi society, with the approval of the German government, attacked Jewish homes, business and synagogues. Due to the damage inflicted it is remembered as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass.

“Hitler was determined to snuff out the life of all whom he deemed unworthy of life,” said Troll. “Anyone who did not measure up to his ideal of a pure master race.”

After that night Troll’s father realized his family was no longer safe. However, it wasn’t possible to leave Germany as many countries, including the U.S., had quotas on the number of Jewish refugees they would take. So, the family moved from Darmstadt to the countryside in a primitive farmhouse with five acres of land. “We had no electricity, no running water and there was a single wood-burning stove for heating and cooking,” said Troll. The farm kept Ralph’s family alive during the war and more importantly, it kept his mother safe. “My mom never ventured into town,” he said.

It wouldn’t be until the Gestapo showed up at their door in February 1945 to arrest his mother, that she would leave the farm. She was taken to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, located in the present-day Czech Republic. She would be reunited with her family in June of that year. While she was, in Troll’s words, a “strong healthy woman” when she was arrested, she weighed 90 pounds when she returned.

Troll said his mother refused to talk about her experience in the camps until almost three decades later. “Shortly before she died, she sat me and my sister down, and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to tell you this story once, and that’s it.’,” said Troll.

After the war, the Troll family made plans to move to the U.S. They arrived in Chicago in January 1947 where Troll’s father got a job as a chemist at the University of Chicago.

Even though the Nazis didn’t believe he was worthy of an education, Troll graduated from high school and attended college where he studied biology. He would go on to teach biology Augustana College for 40 years before retiring.

WATCH: Dr. Ralph Troll Speaks at Days of Remembrance event