Fürth in the Days of Youth

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“So, I visited with my mother in 2002, and they lived actually really close to the town square, around the corner from a department store actually that, we went there to buy an umbrella because it was raining when we were visiting. It was near the train station. It was off a main street. And it was a, I guess in New York you’d call it a brownstone? It was sort of semi-detached, multiple floors.

"My grandparents were fairly wealthy, sometimes I refer to them as German-Jewish aristocracy and I think the only reason I say that is that I know they had what my mother referred to as maids. They had a cook and they had somebody who took care of the house and cleaned, so they were quite well-off."

Editor’s Note: Jackie Sherman's mother, Dora, was born in Fürth, Germany, in 1925, to Alfred Regensburger and Johanna Regensburger. Years later, when Jackie and her mother visited that town, they shopped at a department store that Dora recognized as one she had shopped at as a child. It was located in the town square near where Dora and her sister Marianne grew up and they would visit it quite often as kids. The visit brought back positive memories of a childhood before the Nazis came to power, when the Jewish community was integrated into the bustling life of the town. Dora's mother Johanna's family were observant Jews who owned seats at their synagogue, and Dora learned Hebrew as a child by attending Sunday school. Dora's father was agnostic but accompanied the family to services on high holidays."