Pre­vious History

Mr. Gábor Gold­man in his let­ter dated August 9, 2003, offers to cede the indem­ni­fi­ca­tion pay­ment due to his mother, Mar­git Hor­váth, for her KZ impri­son­ment, to the City of Mörfelden-Walldorf.

This is extre­mely unusual with respect to a Ger­man admi­nis­tra­tive body being the recipient.

Mayor Bern­hard Brehl and First Alder­man Heinz-Peter Becker expres­sed their thanks to Mr. Gold­man in the name of the City of Mörfelden-Walldorf for the extra­or­di­nary con­fi­dence and the high reco­gni­tion that had encou­ra­ged him to take this step. Mayor Bern­hard Brehl, First Alder­man Heinz-Peter Becker, and Cor­ne­lia Rüh­lig, Cura­tor of the Museum for Local History, agree that this money can­not pos­si­bly just be booked onto one of the city’s bank accounts.

In per­so­nal talks with Mr. Gábor Gold­man, it beco­mes appa­rent that the idea of turning this money into the basic funds of a Foun­da­tion meets with his great sen­ti­ment. He now ‘finally’ sees him­self no lon­ger in the role of being ‘only’ the son of a holo­caust sur­vi­vor, but at the same time as an initia­tor of a Foun­da­tion with the idea of addres­sing the pre­sent and the future.

Our sug­ges­tion to name the foun­da­tion after his mother moves him deeply. Keeping the memory of the decea­sed has a spe­cial signi­fi­cance in the Jewish reli­gion. Mr. Gold­man agrees to the sug­ges­tion — with the pro­vi­sion that his mother’s name should be under­s­tood as ‘merely’ stan­ding for the 1,700 Hun­ga­rian Jewish women of the KZ Walldorf.

The indem­ni­fi­ca­tion pay­ment to Mar­git Hor­váth is the most dis­tin­gu­is­hed part of the Foundation’s basic assets. The Foundation’s assets should be increa­sed by fur­ther “addi­tio­nal endowments”.

Several talks with Mr. Gold­man make it clear that it would neit­her be in the inten­tion of his mother nor in his own to deal with Jewish topics only wit­hin the frame­work of the Foun­da­tion.

He repea­tedly empha­si­zes that it had always been his mother’s edu­ca­tio­nal objec­tive to impart gene­ral basic human values, par­ti­cu­larly tolerance, respect and inter­cul­tu­ral accep­tance. Only by vio­la­ting these basic values in the NS era, did the per­se­cu­tion and kil­ling of six mil­lion Jews become pos­si­ble. The­re­fore, the Foundation’s task will be to pro­vide spon­sor­ship and sup­port to the care and pro­mo­tion of basic human values and fun­da­men­tal rights, par­ti­cu­larly amongst the youth. For this rea­son, the cause of the Foun­da­tion focu­ses inten­tio­nally and not exp­li­citly on a com­plex of Jewish topics or Jewish sec­tors of the popu­la­tion. This key note pre­ce­des the sta­tu­tes as a preamble.