Loss & Legacy

John Gronner, son of the Jewish owners of a prominent clothing store in the small German town of Ilmenau, devoted his life to reclaiming the property and good name ofhis forebears after the Nazi Holocaust.

Having achieved economic success and social prominence by 1930,the Gronner clan was soon thereafter shunned by neighbors and subjected to economic boycott. Aryan laws forced them to relinquish their business. Deportation and execution followed. Still, the Nazis’ aim of obliterating this Jewish family from Ilmenau’s history was foiled by the sheer determination of the surviving son, who made it his life’s mission to right a grievous hate crime, and to establish his own legacy as an advocate against silence in the face of bigotry.