Growing up, Ryan Lilienthal, a Princeton immigration lawyer, always heard stories about his Jewish relatives who disappeared during the Holocaust.
However, it wasn’t until he became an adult that he decided to find out what happened to his grandmother’s uncle Theodor Israel, his wife Minna and their son Walter. Using his primary research skills, Lilienthal was able to fill in the blanks in his family’s history and earlier this week, he stopped by his son’s Princeton Academy class to share his journey.
Lilienthal, who is the founder of Ryan Stark Lilienthal Law Offices in Princeton, came to visit teacher Holly Weise’s fifth grade class, which is currently reading “Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry. Through his research, Lilienthal was able to give the students a personal perspective and real examples of what they were reading in “Number the Stars.”
“So many people were impacted by the Holocaust,” he told the students. “What struck me about all the records and documents I found was that it proved the capacity people had to dehumanize others.”
Lilienthal had analyzed letters his grandparents kept, conducted many Google searches, accessed concentration camp records, passport and transport permission files and located deportation orders. Eventually, he traced the Israels’ whereabouts during the Holocaust and confirmed the Israels’ son Walter had died in a concentration camp in 1942 at 16.
Before he left the class, Lilienthal showed the class a black and white photo of a smiling and laughing Walter and Theodor that was taken around 1935.
“They look happy right? What exactly did they do wrong to deserve the fate they got,” Lilienthal asked the class.
