When the message arrived from a volunteer in Germany, the Goldner and Pachefsky families were surprised.
Volunteer Jan Gutermuth from Germany reached out to a family member of the Goldner and Pachefsky families through Ancestry.com in March. He informed them of a stolpersteine ceremony for members of their family who lived in Gersfeld, Germany before the Holocaust. The ceremony was part of a larger memorial project that places concrete cubes into the ground in front of homes of the last freely chosen residences of Jews before the Holocaust. Each cube is topped with a brass plate engraved with the victim’s name, life dates, and details of their fate.
“I think the whole thing was divine intervention,” Stacy Goldner said, because Gutermuth at first had trouble finding the families. A message sent to an extended family member through Ancestry.com led Gutermuth to the Goldner and Pachefsky families in Wisconsin, including Lori, Stacy, and Brianna, who live in Slinger, and Andy, who lives in Bayside.
The family members, Stacy Goldner and daughter Brianna Goldner, and Lori Pachefsky and son Andy Pachefsky, went to Germany for the May 16 ceremony. They placed the stolpersteine “stumbling stones” for their Holocaust-era family members into the ground themselves. “It’s forever now,” Stacy said.
Stacy said none of this would have been possible without Gutermuth, a volunteer with a local history club in Gersfeld. He researches Jewish families who once lived in Gersfeld and helps coordinate stolpersteine installations in the area. Gutermuth started volunteering with remembrance projects in Gersfeld because he “just thought it would be right.”
“I like the stolpersteine because you can’t get away from them,” Gutermuth said. “If there is one memorial in the city, you can ignore it. But if the stolpersteine are all over town, everywhere Jewish families lived, you can’t really get around them because you have to see them.”
Gutermuth connected the family to the ceremony, but he also extensively researched the Goldner and Pachefsky families’ history. He showed the family around Gersfeld and took them to key places in their family history, including a cemetery containing their family members’ headstones dating back to the 1860s.
“That man knew so much about the family it was insane; the amount of research and time he put into everything was astounding,” Brianna said. “A tour guide for our past life in Germany is what it felt like.”
Manfred ‘Fred’ Goldner, father-in-law to Stacy and grandfather to Brianna, is the last living Jew from Gersfeld, according to family. He now lives in Chai Point in Milwaukee. Although Fred didn’t get to attend the ceremony in Gersfeld, he feels the stone placing “honors [him], in a sense.”
Fred said: “I feel honored in the sense that they put [stones] down in front of the homes of the Jews that lived there.”
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Our community
Stacy Goldner lives in Slinger and belongs to Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills. Her daughter, Brianna Goldner, lives in Slinger and grew up attending Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, where she served as a madricha. Lori Pachefsky, of Slinger, is a member of Temple Menorah and belongs to Haddasah. Her son, Andy Pachefsky, lives in Bayside and attends Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun. Fred Goldner lives in Chai Point and is the last living Jew from Gersfeld, Germany, according to family. Jan Gutermuth is a volunteer in Germany who researches Jewish family histories and organizes stolpersteine installations.
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