TORONTO — Bernd Wollschlaeger, the keynote speaker at the 10th annual Dinner of Miracles on Dec. 11, brought a hushed silence to the room of 300 people with his stark declaration that he is not the son of a Holocaust survivor but of a perpetrator.

The event, which took place at Petah Tikvah Congregation, is billed as “a special evening of dialogue between young adults and Holocaust survivors.” It lets Jews in their 20s and 30s dine with survivors – more than 40 were in attendance, with at least one seated at each table – to better understand the horrors of the Holocaust by hearing their stories first-hand.

The evening culminated in Wollschlaeger’s address, in which the German-born physician described growing up Catholic in postwar Germany, surrounded by mixed messages about the events of World War II. 

Wollschlaeger’s father, a proud Nazi and former German tank commander, told him glory stories from the war. Meanwhile, at school, the young Wollschlaeger started to learn about the Nazis’ systematic massacre of the Jews.

“I grew up with the image of my dad as a hero,” he said, “But the truth came out, in phases.” 

Wollschlaeger finally drew the truth about the Holocaust out of his father and, horrified and guilt-ridden, sought out his hometown’s local Jewish community – which consisted of about 30 Holocaust survivors.

One man asked Wollschlaeger to be his “Shabbos goy,” and he spent the next several years forming close bonds with members of the community. He was eventually kicked out of his parents’ home and made his way to Frankfurt, where he began to study Judaism under the tutelage of a rabbi. 

In 1986, Wollschlaeger converted to Judaism and moved to Israel, despite, he said, having “no money or family there.”

He worked on a kibbutz, was drafted into the military and married a Jewish-American woman, all the while swearing to himself he’d never “speak about being the son of a Nazi.” 

Wollschlaeger harboured the secret until roughly a decade ago, when his son Tal, now 25, asked him why he never spoke of his father. He mustered up the courage to tell Tal the truth, to which, he said, his son responded, “Cool story! I’m going to tell my friends.”

This led to Wollschlaeger being invited to his son’s school to publicly share his story for the first time, an experience he found extremely powerful.

“It returned to me the core value of why I did what I did,” Wollschlaeger said.

Now living in Florida, Wollschlaeger has been openly discussing his family history ever since. 

Accompanied by his son, he recently visited Germany for the first time in 20 years, to visit his parents’ graves. 

“I looked at the graves and I told my son, ‘You can never escape history, even in death. It always casts a shadow. But you can learn lessons from what happened and go forward. You can learn to translate this into a better life.”

Wollschlaeger learned from his father, he explained, where hatred comes from, and that it’s not “ an evil force that comes from the sky, but from inside us… Hateful thoughts can become hateful deeds, and deeds can habits and social norms. This can lead to an entire people turning away when they witness unspeakable acts.”

Wollschlaeger concluded by stressing to the audience the importance of challenging hate, fear and prejudice in whatever form it emerges, and whomever it targets.

“The lesson,” he emphasized, “is to speak up, have courage and understand that, against all odds, change is possible.”