(What a douche!- CDH) German woman writes apology to NJ man who lost home to Nazis
 OCTOBER 26, 2017

MAPLEWOOD, NJ  — Peter Hirschmann has often recounted his own story of fleeing Germany as a teenager to escape Adolf Hitler's persecution of the Jews, then joining the U.S. Army to fight the Nazis.

But the 92-year-old started to cry as he read a three-page letter, neatly printed in blue fountain pen, which arrived out of the blue from Nuremberg and stirred very different thoughts of his past.

Its author, Doris Schott-Neuse, told him how her grandfather had acquired Hirschmann's family home under the Nazis, expressing her shame and imploring him for forgiveness.

Spurred to look into her family's past after helping a friend dealing with traumatic issues related to her own, the 46-year-old civil servant was shocked to find the family narrative she'd believed for years was a half-truth at best, and felt compelled to reach out to the elderly man in Maplewood, New Jersey, near New York City.

"I am deeply ashamed for what us Germans did to yourself, your family and to your friends and relatives and to the members of the Nuremberg Jewish community," she wrote. "It is hardly bearable to start thinking about the details — what a horror and nightmare it must have been to live through this."

Included in the envelo http://pix11.com/2017/10/26/german-woman-writes-apology-to-nj-man-who-lost-home-to-nazis/ http://pix11.com/2017/10/26/german-woman-writes-apology-to-nj-man-who-lost-home-to-nazis/