As longtime Waukegan resident Karen Glinert Carlson, the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, told how a cousin — Albert Einstein — helped save her family, she paused for a moment to compare 1930s Nazi Germany to contemporary America.
Spending significant time in Germany researching her family’s history over the last eight years, Carlson talked about the few who survived, and the scores who were murdered. Growing up in the Sauganash neighborhood of Chicago, her only family was her parents and brother.
She talked about how Jews were stripped of their rights, their property and their citizenship in Nazi Germany. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler not only changed the laws but also removed all opposition, she said. The first concentration camp prisoners were those who opposed him.
“It is said history repeats itself,” Carlson said. “Mark Twain said, ‘History does not repeat, but it rhymes.’ We are living in precarious times. What can we learn from history? What can we learn from Einstein? What might he do today? What can we do?”
She talked about her family history, the role her cousin Einstein played in saving who he could and more during an International Holocaust Remembrance Day talk Tuesday at the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie, sharing her story with more than 60 in attendance.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 1, 2005, commemorating the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp in Poland on Jan. 27, 1945.
Though Carlson does not know what Einstein — her grandmother’s first cousin, making him “my first cousin twice-removed” — she knows how he felt and what he did about racism in the United States.
“He felt what he saw about the treatment of Black people in America was like how the Jews were treated in Germany,” Carlson said of Einstein, who said in 1955 that “He helped a lot of Black people.”
Seeing parallels between the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany and how some of her Waukegan neighbors who immigrated from Latin America have been treated recently, Carlson said she is uncomfortable with what is happening.
“For me, ‘deportation’ is a trigger word,” she said. “People who came here and followed the rules are being deported. That’s what happened to so many members of my family under the Nazi regime who were never heard from again.”
When her mother left Germany for the U.S., Carlson said Einstein was her sponsor, something all immigrants needed at the time. He did the same for her maternal grandparents and four other family members. Her grandparents were forced to take the long route to the U.S. through Siberia, Korea and Japan.
“When they landed in San Francisco, there was a large crowd at the dock,” she said, “People there learned Einstein was the sponsor of someone on the ship, and my grandmother was interviewed about her famous cousin.”
As a child, Carlson said she had no idea her parents escaped the Holocaust or that they were Jewish. All she knew was they had European accents. Only English was spoken at home. They did not talk about their past. However, during her childhood, there were a few hints.
“My teacher asked why I was in school one day,” Carlson said, not understanding the question. “I came home from school, and my father was not at work. My mother said, Be quiet.’ He was in the basement praying and fasting,” she added, not mentioning it was Yom Kippur. “There were New Year’s cards on the table.”
While a freshman at Von Steuben High School in Chicago, Carlson said she got another hint. A boy who wanted to date her — she liked the idea — asked if she was Jewish, explaining he could only date Jewish girls.
“I asked my mother if I was Jewish, and she said, ‘You’re half-Jewish. Your father is Jewish,” Carlson said. “I told the boy I was half-Jewish. ‘My father is Jewish.’ He said, ‘Wrong half.’ We never dated.”
As a junior in high school, Carlson said students learned about World War II and the Holocaust. She asked her parents if it was true. She got a three-word answer.
“Read the book,” Carlson said. “I had no idea the Holocaust had anything to do with me.”
On her 18th birthday, Carlson said her parents told her she was 100% Jewish. Now she was an adult, and it was up to her to decide what she wanted to be.
After finishing high school, she said she participated in a program in Mexico helping people. She learned Spanish and developed strong feelings about the Latino culture. When she returned, she began studies at Northwestern University, becoming an educator, including time as an administrator in the Waukegan Public Schools.
Along with her mother and grandparents, Carlson said Einstein helped save four other family members. He did the same for dozens of colleagues and friends. Upon her arrival in the U.S., Carlson said her mother lived in Einstein’s home in New Jersey for a period of time.
Already a Nobel Prize winner — he won the award in 1921 — Einstein was a renowned scientist and mathematician when the Nazis came to power in Germany. He taught at the California Institute of Technology during the summers. Before he left in 1932, Carlson said there was a knock on his door.
“It was an officer,” she said. “He told him, ‘I understand you’re leaving the country. Don’t come back. You will not be safe here if you do.’”
Starting in 2018, Carlson said she began spending more and more time in Ulm, Germany, and other parts of Europe learning about both her mother’s and father’s families. Ulm was Einstein’s birthplace. She was involved in the dedication of a museum honoring Einstein and other members of the city’s Jewish community.
Toward the end of her talk, Carlson said it was also a time to remember those who did not survive the Holocaust and World War II. In all, approximately 65 family members were killed by the Nazis, she said.
