The Wächter-Parnass Shoah Heritage Center
The Wächter-Parnass Shoah Heritage Center in Hamburg was established to shift the focus of Holocaust remembrance from solely mourning and loss to one of restoration and continuity.
Our project, The Broken Biographies Revival, aims to recover and celebrate the intellectual, artistic, and cultural contributions of (primarily) German Jews who were forced to flee Nazi Germany.
Many of these individuals — once luminaries in their respective fields — have since faded from public memory, with their pre-war work neglected or forgotten in the post-war narrative.
This project outlines the center’s manifesto and introduces key figures whose legacies we seek to revive, like in the case of our Patron's biographies of Walter Wächter and Peggy Parnass
Our other project, Grave Reservations, aims at digitalizing the pre-Shoah tomb coupons that speak about their owners who perished in Shoah. We wish to reconnect the ancestors with their living families.
The namesakes Walter Wächter & Peggy Parnass
In blessed memory, the Shoah Heritage Center is named after these important people and wishes to preserve their legacy.
Photo Torkel S Wächter
Walter Wächter
(1913 - 1983)
Walter Wächter Hamburg-born Jewish athlete and anti-Nazi resister. Arrested in 1936 for political activism, he fled to Sweden in 1938, where he became a psychologist, lecturer, and author. Commemorated today at Walter-Wächter-Platz in Hamburg.
Photo Armin Levy
Peggy Parnass
(1927 - 2025)
Hamburg-born Jewish author, actress, and court reporter. Rescued by Kindertransport to Sweden in 1939; her parents were murdered in Treblinka. After the war, she returned to Germany, becoming a prominent voice in Hamburg’s left-wing scene and reporting on trials, including Nazi cases.
Current Project: Oskar Goldberg (1885-1952)
Reconnect the past ancestors with the present living descendants.
Forthcoming Projects
About our scholar goals and aims.
Our Partner
Contact
Phone: +49-176-34338656
E-Mail: Hamburg@shoah-center.de
Address: Rothenbaumchaussee 19a, Hamburg, 20148, Germany