NJ Man Gets Tearjerking Apology After Losing Home To Nazis

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — What would you do if you found out that your home, passed down through generations, was likely seized from a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Germany?

It only took a three-page letter to make Maplewood’s Peter Hirschmann cry. But that’s the emotional roller coaster that he plunged off when he read an unexpected piece of correspondence from Doris Schott-Neuse, the Associated Press reported.

Schott-Neuse, who lives in Germany, recently discovered that her grandfather had acquired Hirschmann's home after his family fled to the U.S. in the 1940s. Despite the family narrative that she’d been told about the house – that her ancestors helped the Jewish occupants escape to America - Schott-Neuse eventually uncovered documents showing how the Nazis had bureaucratically seized the Hirschmann's home.

It was a discovery that tore her up inside, she wrote to Hirschmann.

Read the full report here.

"I am deeply ashamed for what us Germans did to yourself, your family and to your friends and relatives and to the members of the Nuremberg Jewish community," she wrote. "It is hardly bearable to start thinking about the details - what a horror and nightmare it must have been to live through this."

Schott-Neuse included current photos of the home with her letter.

Watch: German Woman Pens Apology To New Jersey Man Who Lost His Childhood Home To Nazis

Hirschmann, who was a teenager when they fled to the U.S., eventually joined the military to fight the Nazi regime and participated in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. He was captured during the war and survived the final months of the war in a Nazi prison camp. Any moment could have been his last; a single word of his native language might have betrayed his identity as a German Jew.

However, Hirschmann also encountered an unexpected kindness from one of his “enemies,” a young German soldier guarding him who gave him a chocolate bar.

"He was my enemy, and he treated me like a human being," Hirschmann told a reporter.

More than seven decades later, as Hirschmann opened a letter bearing German stamps, he was once again faced with a kindness from an unexpected source.

Here’s what he wrote back to Schott-Neuse:

“It is obvious that you, too, are suffering and it pains me to think of that… you, who are blameless. You were not satisfied with that and examined the depths of your heart to reveal the era's true impact. You had the option to ignore it and instead you confronted it. My tears reflect the fervent hope that the humanity, dignity, and compassion you have shown is shared by others of your generation and the generations to follow.”

Send local news tips, photos and press releases to [email protected]

Photo: Associated Press, YouTube