German visitor rediscovers 'family'

When Magdalena Müllner was 16, she watched a program on synagogues and realized that one synagogue shown was actually the one from her home town. This was the first event that gave her the desire to track down the displaced members of the Jewish community from her small village of Laa an der Thaya.

One year later she had only located one member of the community but now, about five years later, she has found over 50 Jewish people who lived in Laa before 1938, which was the year Nazi persecution began to drive them away. Of the approximately 4,500 people from Laa, Müllner figures that there were 30 Jewish families that made up the community.

"It is most important for me to not let these people be forgotten. Most people didn't think of themselves as a community and it's important for me to let them know they have friends from their past," Müllner said.

Sydney Rosenfeld, professor of German, saw an article that Müllner had submitted to a contest and wrote to her. Through this connection, Müllner, now a sophomore at the University of Austria in Vienna, was able to come and give a lecture about her research to an audience of about 45 in King last Thursday.

She has also spoken at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and will be speaking at Beachwood High School in Cleveland on Monday to a student body that is 80 percent Jewish.