Peter Schwiefert (1917–1945)

Peter Schwiefert was born in Germany to a Jewish mother, Else Kirschner (later Schrobsdorff), and a non-Jewish father, playwright Fritz Schwiefert. In 1938, he fled the Nazis first to Portugal and then to Athens, where he lived in poverty. His mother escaped to Bulgaria with his half-sisters Angelika and Bettina. There she remarried to a Bulgarian and converted to Christianity. His maternal grandmother Minna Kirschner was murdered at the Nazi concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt). Schwiefert remained deeply attached to his mother, and his pain at their separation and his acute loneliness in exile were evident in letters he wrote to her. Although written in German, they were published in French translation decades later as L'Oiseau n'a plus d'ailes (The Bird Has No Wings, 1974), edited by Claude Lanzmann (Angelika's husband). The title was taken from one of the letters written in November 1944, which reached Schwiefert's mother six months after his death. The book was not only a fine literary work but a moving testimony of moral integrity. After three years as a refugee, Schwiefert chose military service with the Free French forces in World War II. He fought in Syria, North Africa, Italy, and France. During that period he came to regard Israel as his home, and although neither religious nor Zionist in the ordinary sense, he studied Torah and observed the Sabbath and festivals. He died in action in Alsace at the beginning of 1945, only a few months before the end of the war. The Bird Has No Wings: Letters of Peter Schwiefert was published in English in the USA in 1976.