THE GREY FOLDER PROJECT
The Grey Folder
1. An introduction
THE GREY FOLDER entered my life one day in November of 2004, some five months after my father had died. My partner Steve and I were in the basement of the red brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago where my parents had lived for 52 years (and where my siblings and I grew up), sorting through literally thousands of items. Nearly every object held a memory and each required a decision: keep, donate or throw away. I had to be quick and decisive if this task were ever to be complete.
Sandwiched between boxes of old stationery from my father’s chemical business, the grey folder did not at first seem noteworthy. It was a plain paper binder with metal prongs to hold loose papers. At the top corner, my father’s slanting handwriting vaguely described the contents: “Old correspondence and certificates.”
I GAVE THE GREY FOLDER only a brief glance, just long enough to see swastikas on some of the yellowed pages, and note official looking letters from varied governments, dated from the late 1930s. Many of the letters and documents were in German, which I couldn’t read, but they seemed to be related to my father’s escape from Nazi Germany.
“Keep it,” I said, as I handed the folder to Steve.
Even though I was done writing about the Holocaust (I then thought), there was something compelling about this grey folder. Its contents were a mystery, and over the next dozen years, the questions it raised would lead me on a search to uncover the hidden and untold aspects of my family’s past in Nazi-occupied Europe.
"The Grey Folder: In Search of One Family's Story Under the Nazis" is a memoir of my quest to uncover and understand my inherited Holocaust history.
A sampling of the contents of the grey folder
AND THERE WAS MORE. Hidden between the pieces of bound paper, I discovered two envelopes I hadn’t seen before--one containing a letter to my father from his family, written when he was crossing the Atlantic to America in March of 1939; the other a letter my mother gave to my father in 1942 as he boarded a train from Chicago to Washington D.C. for an appointment with the State Department, to plead for a visa to save the life of his aunt Frieda, interned in Vichy France.
I had thought that I already knew about my family’s Holocaust history. I was finding out that I did not.
THUS BEGAN A SEARCH that I came to call my “Grey Folder Project” even as the research led me past the contents of the folder. I followed clues, carried on extensive conversations with archivists and historians over years, pored over obscure documents from archives in Germany, France and the United States, looked for information in Israel and the Ukraine. I traveled to archives and memorials, to internment camps and streets long-ago inhabited by my relatives in Paris and the French Pyrenees, in Mannheim, Munich and other towns in Germany, in search of memories and details, remnants and remembrance.
In short, I found the Grey Folder Project so compelling that I gave myself over to it, not knowing what I would find, sometimes not even sure what I was looking for. Why was I so determined to discover or retrieve these fragments and fading documents of my family’s past? I had no answer other than the search continued to fascinate me, to broaden my perspective and understanding of history and humanity.
The story of a family is the story of so much more.
NOTE: The Grey Folder Project is not a family genealogy, but rather a narrative of my search and discoveries. As such is designed to be read consecutively, with links within each "chapter" that show documents, give background and/or expand on the subject. As this is a work in progress, I will continue to add to the web site. An index to the main pages (or "chapters") and background pages of the site can be found through a link at the bottom of every page.
GIVING CREDIT: The letters, pictures, documents and written materials on this site, unless otherwise noted, are the sole property of Toby Sonneman. If you share any of these materials, please give credit to me as the author/owner and link back to this website. Thank you.
PLEASE contact me with comments or questions here.