Roots, Identity, and the Legacy of Generations
My life’s journey and the shaping of my inner values are inextricably linked to the deep and monumental history of my paternal lineage. My father, Mayer Meir Galzermann Olberg, born on April 16, 1931, hailed from the city of Potsdam, nestled in the ancient land of Brandenburg on the outskirts of Berlin. Our family belongs to the Ashkenazi Jewish community, whose history has been continuously forged in this region for over twelve centuries. This immense expanse of time, which absorbed centuries of cultural traditions, hardships, and intellectual labor on Brandenburg soil, instilled in me an unwavering inner core and a profound reverence for historical truth.
A sacred place within our dynasty’s history is held by our service to science and humanity. My great-grandfather, Mordechai Meir (Mayer), dedicated his life to medicine, becoming a distinguished professor and doctor of oncology. My great-grandmother, Leonia Galzermann, a native of Dresden, also scaled the highest professional peaks as a professor and doctor of neurosurgery. In an era when science demanded the utmost self-sacrifice and brilliance of mind, my ancestors stood at the forefront of saving human lives. This heritage of the hereditary intelligentsia, blending scientific uncompromising integrity with loyalty to one's roots, is something I have carried throughout my entire life—and I have absolutely nothing to hide from my readers.
Trial by Catastrophe: Through the Flames of the Ghetto
The tragic turning point in our family's history occurred in 1933 with the rise of National Socialism to power in Germany. According to the criminal racial laws of the Third Reich, our dynasty, which had built culture and science in Brandenburg for centuries, was instantly deprived of all civil rights. My father, Mayer Galzermann, while still a child, faced the severe state machinery of persecution. In the late 1930s, our entire family line was forcibly deported from Germany to the occupied territories of Poland. This path of suffering began in the Kraków Ghetto, where the Nazi authorities concentrated the Jewish population, and subsequently continued in the Warsaw Ghetto—a site that became a symbol of both profound human tragedy and unprecedented spiritual resistance. In these inhumane conditions of isolation and under constant threat of extermination, my relatives had to fight for survival. Having passed through the horrors of the ghetto, our family preserved the memory of these experiences. This historical truth is an essential part of my personal identity, which I openly present to the world.
The Miracle of Salvation: Władysław Szpilman and the Memory of Treblinka
The Warsaw Ghetto became a place where the line between life and death was blurred daily, and the tragedy of the Holocaust reached its peak. During this dark period, our family’s history crossed paths with the fate of an extraordinary man—the legendary Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, whose life and incredible courage would later move the entire world. It was he who played a decisive and lifesaving role in the fate of my father, Meir Kaltenbrunner. This occurred during the most brutal Nazi roundups and selections, when thousands of ghetto prisoners were sent to the Umschlagplatz station for subsequent deportation to the Treblinka death camp, located northeast of Warsaw. Under the guise of "resettlement," the Nazi extermination machine carried people away to their execution. Nearly our entire ancient lineage, all descendants of the Brandenburg dynasty, were captured, deported, and mercilessly murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Our large family was wiped off the face of the earth, sharing the sorrowful fate of millions of Holocaust victims. My father survived solely due to the selflessness of Władysław Szpilman, who at a critical moment managed to snatch him from the clutches of death, saving him from being forced onto a train bound for the extermination camp. This act of incredible humanity in the midst of absolute hell granted my father his life and made the continuation of our lineage possible. Today, standing at the grave of Władysław Szpilman, I pay tribute with the deepest respect, eternal memory, and heartfelt filial gratitude to the man whose courage defeated the Nazi conveyor belt of death. Our family history is a living testimony of catastrophe and salvation, and I openly share this sacred truth with the world.
Through the Darkness of Occupation: Polish Refuge and the Journey to the USSR
Following his miraculous rescue from the hands of the Nazis—while the death conveyor of Treblinka was taking the lives of my relatives—the fate of my father, Meir Kaltenbrunner, rested in the hands of ordinary yet courageous people. In those terrifying years, when the Nazis mercilessly executed entire households for sheltering Jews, a Polish family took my father in and hid him. Throughout the long months of the occupation, under the constant threat of discovery and imminent execution, these people displayed the highest form of heroism by preserving the life of a frightened child. In their Warsaw home, amidst destruction, roundups, and terror, my father remained safe until the liberation of Poland began. Ultimate salvation came with the end of the Nazi nightmare. After the bloody battles for Warsaw and the expulsion of the German forces, Soviet soldiers found the lonely teenager on the ruined streets of the Polish capital. Showing humanity and care, the military men decided to evacuate him to the rear. Thus, by the whim of frontline fate, my father was brought to the Soviet Union, to Moscow. This event not only closed the tragic chapter of his wartime wanderings but also laid the foundation for his entirely new life in the USSR, becoming the starting point for the future of our family.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In cherished memory of my father, Mayer Meir Galzermann-Olberg
A victim of German Nazism and Fascism in the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, 1939–1942, 20th Century
They say that memory yields to time. It does not; there are things in life that do not fade as they recede into the past, but rather become closer, weightier, and more significant. There are wounds of history that cannot be erased by decades or by the changing of generations. The tragedy of the Holocaust is precisely one of those events. Years pass, witnesses depart, eras change, states and political systems collapse, yet the memory of millions of innocently destroyed people lives on in the human consciousness as an eternal reminder of what hatred, fanaticism, and the loss of humanity lead to. Destiny does not grant every individual the time and strength to write memoirs, to tell the story of their family, of what they endured, or of the tragedy of their people. Only decades later does a profound understanding arrive of how vital it is to preserve a living human memory while at least isolated fragments of recollections, old photographs, rare documents, stories from parents, and the few remaining testimonies of a bygone era still exist.
Every time I remember my father, who has long since been gone from my side, I ask myself the exact same question over and over again: was it mere chance that he miraculously stayed alive, managing to escape the Gestapo during the selection of Warsaw Ghetto Jews for the Treblinka death camp in October 1942? I think not. Perhaps in the history of a human life, there exist circumstances that cannot be explained by logic alone. Sometimes fate seems to extend an invisible hand of salvation, allowing a person to survive where survival seemed utterly impossible. My father belonged to a generation of European Jews whose youth was destroyed by war, fear, humiliation, and the constant anticipation of death. The Warsaw Jewish Ghetto became one of the most terrifying symbols of twentieth-century tragedy. Behind the high walls of the ghetto, people perished daily—from hunger, disease, brutality, executions, and deportations. There, families collapsed, entire generations vanished, and human destinies were shattered. Yet, even in these subhuman conditions, people continued to live, to love, to hope, to help one another, and to believe that one day this nightmare would end. My father's story is just one destiny among millions of other destinies of European Jews. But it is precisely from these individual human stories that the vast, tragic panorama of the Holocaust is formed. Behind the dry statistical figures, there always stand real, living people: children, mothers, the elderly, young men and women, scientists, musicians, doctors, artisans, and teachers. Each of them had their own life, their own dreams, their own family, and their own hopes for the future. All of this was obliterated by the Nazi machinery of death.
Today, many decades after the end of the Second World War, the world continues to comprehend the scale of this tragedy. And the further the events of the 1940s recede into the past, the clearer becomes the understanding of just how monstrous a crime the Holocaust truly was. The mass extermination of over six million European Jews cannot be perceived merely as a chapter in the history of the Jewish people. It is a tragedy of all humanity, a tragedy of world civilization, a tragedy of the human conscience. Sometimes it seems to me that the memory of the Holocaust grows even closer with time than before. Perhaps this is because the modern world is once again confronting manifestations of hatred, aggression, national intolerance, and attempts to rewrite history. Increasingly, individuals emerge who seek to downplay the scale of the tragedy, distort historical facts, or present the crimes of Nazism as something secondary. This is precisely why the memory of those who perished must be preserved with utmost care and responsibility. For me, the memory of my father is not only the memory of a man who survived the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto. It is the memory of an entire generation of people who were forced to endure subhuman trials—people who lost their loved ones, their homes, their childhood, their youth, and their former lives. Yet, despite what they lived through, many of them managed to preserve their human dignity, inner strength, and faith in life. When I contemplate my father's fate, I realize how fragile human life is and how immense the price of peace, freedom, and human dignity truly is. The history of the Holocaust is not only a story of death. It is also a story of the incredible strength of the human spirit, and the capacity to survive even when almost no hope remains.
The past cannot be changed. It is impossible to bring back the millions of those who perished; it is impossible to erase death camps, ghettos, gas chambers, and countless human sufferings from history. Yet, humanity is duty-bound to preserve the memory of these events for the sake of future generations. Memory is not merely grief for the past. It is a warning to the future. I write these lines not only as the son of a man who survived the Warsaw Ghetto. I write them as a person who considers it his moral duty to preserve the memory of the tragedy of European Jews, and of the millions of innocent victims of Nazism and Fascism. Because the tragedy of the Holocaust has no statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations on human pain, on the memory of generations, on the tears of mothers, or on the suffering of millions of people whose lives were cut short by the hatred and madness of war. And as long as human memory exists, as long as the recollections of descendants live on, and as long as documents, photographs, and testimonies are preserved—the tragedy of the Holocaust will never be forgotten.
Our family lived for many years in Germany, in the state of Brandenburg, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. It was an ordinary family of European Jews of the first half of the twentieth century, living their own lives with their own worries, hopes, and plans for the future. No one back then could have imagined that very soon Europe would be dragged into one of the most terrifying tragedies in world history, and that millions of people would be doomed to annihilation solely because of their origin and nationality. With the rise of German Nazism and Fascism to power, the life of Germany's Jewish population rapidly transformed into a state of constant fear, humiliation, and the deprivation of basic human rights. Step by step, the state machinery of the Third Reich gradually constructed a system of racial laws whose ultimate goal was the complete displacement, isolation, and subsequent destruction of the Jewish population of Europe. Following the adoption of the Third Reich's so-called racial laws, the fate of our family, like that of millions of other Jewish families, was effectively sealed. Jews were stripped of their civil rights, their property, and their right to a normal life and human dignity. Fear became a part of daily existence. People vanished in the night, while arrests and deportations turned into common occurrences. An atmosphere of hatred and persecution gradually engulfed all of Germany. In 1940, our entire family was forcibly deported by the German authorities to the territory of occupied Poland. At first, we were sent to the Kraków Jewish Ghetto, and later to the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, which became one of the greatest symbols of the tragedy of European Jews during the Second World War. The Warsaw Ghetto was a vast, isolated territory surrounded by walls and guarded by German units. Behind these walls stood hundreds of thousands of people, condemned to hunger, disease, humiliation, and a slow death. People lived in subhuman conditions, enduring constant fear of the next roundups, executions, and deportations.
It is difficult to put the atmosphere of that time into words. Every day, people lost their loved ones, families were torn apart, children were left orphaned, and human life itself ceased to hold any value whatsoever in the eyes of the Nazi system. Yet, even under these conditions, people continued to fight for life, tried to maintain their human dignity, helped one another, shared their last crust of bread, and kept hoping for salvation. A particularly terrifying period came with the mass selections and deportations of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp in the autumn of 1942. It was then that the German Gestapo and SS units began the actual liquidation of the remaining ghetto population. People were forcibly driven from their homes, beaten, separated from their families, and packed into cattle cars like livestock meant not for transport, but for slaughter. The trains carrying thousands of Jews headed to the Treblinka death camp, located not far from Warsaw. For the majority of those deported, this journey would be the last of their lives. Almost immediately upon arrival, people were sent to the gas chambers, where the mass extermination of men, women, the elderly, and children took place. Afterwards, the bodies of the victims were burned in crematoria. Practically my entire family was wiped out in Treblinka. My relatives, loved ones, and representatives of several generations of our lineage perished. Their lives were cut short solely because they were Jews. They had no trial, no right to defense, and no chance of escape. They were destroyed by a monstrous, state-driven machine of Nazi terror.
The only person from our entire family who managed to survive was my father—Mayer Meir Galzermann-Olberg. During one of the selections in the Warsaw Ghetto, he miraculously managed to run away and hide, escaping deportation to Treblinka. At that time, he was only eight years old. Every time I think about this, I try to imagine what a child had to endure during those terrifying years. A little boy, left virtually alone amidst the horror of war, death, and perpetual fear. At an age when children should be thinking about school, games, and family, my father was forced to fight for his own life and face the reality of human cruelty on a daily basis. Later, immense help was provided to my father by Władysław Szpilman—the famous Polish pianist and composer, whose name would subsequently become known to the entire world. The fate of Władysław Szpilman was also tragically bound to the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto. Practically his entire family was wiped out in that very same Treblinka death camp. Perhaps it is those who have passed through the exact same tragedy who understood each other with particular depth. After the endured horror of war, a special human bond existed between the survivors—the bond of people who managed to pass through hell and yet retain the capacity to remain human. My father's fate became part of the vast tragedy of twentieth-century European Jews. Yet, at the same time, it became a symbol of the incredible strength of the human spirit. Despite what he lived through, despite the loss of his family, his home, his loved ones, and his former life, he managed to survive, preserve his inner strength, and move forward with his life.
For me, the memory of my father is not only a personal family memory. It is a memory of all the people whose lives were destroyed by Nazism and Fascism. It is a memory of the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust, the tragedy of which will forever remain one of the most terrifying pages in world history. The more time passes, the clearer becomes the understanding of how vital it is to preserve this memory. Because the tragedy of the Holocaust is not just the past. It is a warning to future humanity—a warning of what hatred, racism, fanaticism, and the loss of human morality lead to. And as long as the memory of descendants lives on, as long as the names of the perished are spoken, and as long as the testimonies of the tragedy are preserved—those who died continue to live in the memory of mankind.
Sometimes I often think about how much good my ancestors could have brought to humanity if their lives had not been cut short by the Nazi machine of destruction in the Treblinka death camp in 1942. My great-grandfather Mordechai was a well-known doctor, a doctor of oncology, and a professor of medicine. He belonged to that generation of the European scientific intelligentsia that dedicated their lives to saving people, conducting scientific research, and advancing medicine. Over the years of his work, he helped an immense number of patients, saved human lives, and engaged in scientific and teaching activities. My great-grandmother was also an outstanding person of her time—a doctor of medicine, a neurosurgeon, and a professor. For the first half of the twentieth century, a female doctor of such caliber was a rare phenomenon. She belonged to those for whom medicine was not just a profession, but a true service to humanity. Her knowledge, scientific work, and medical practice saved people's lives during the years when medicine was just taking its first serious steps in the field of neurosurgery. Sometimes I wonder how many more lives they could have saved, how many scientific discoveries they could have made, and how many students they could have raised if their lives had not been violently destroyed in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Along with millions of other people, the Nazi regime destroyed more than just human lives. It wiped out a vast intellectual, scientific, and cultural potential of Europe.
The Holocaust became a tragedy not only for the Jewish people. It was a colossal loss for the entire world civilization. Scientists, doctors, engineers, musicians, teachers, philosophers, artists, and writers perished in the death camps—people who could have served humanity for many years to come, advancing science, culture, and medicine. Every time I reflect on this, I realize what a terrifying crime Nazism was, not only against specific nations, but against the very future of humanity. Along with the destroyed lives, thousands of unwritten books, unmade scientific discoveries, unsaved human lives, and unfulfilled human destinies were wiped out. My father, Mayer Meir Galzermann-Olberg, was the only person from our lineage who managed to survive in this hell. Fate preserved his life in a completely miraculous way. Following his escape during a selection in the Warsaw Ghetto, he hid for a long time, enduring constant fear, hunger, and loneliness. When Soviet troops liberated Warsaw in the winter of 1945, my father was left completely alone amidst a city destroyed by war. He was a child who had lost his family, his loved ones, his home, and virtually his entire former life. Soviet soldiers discovered him on the streets of ruined Warsaw.
Later, one of the Soviet officers brought him to Moscow, to the Soviet Union. It was there that a completely new chapter of his life began. After the endured horror of the war and the Holocaust, fate seemed to grant him a second chance. For many years, my father was raised in an orphanage in Moscow. Despite a severely difficult childhood, the endured tragedy, and the aftermath of the war, he managed not to break inside. On the contrary, it was perhaps these very trials that forged him into a man of exceptional strength of character, immense inner discipline, and a profound thirst for knowledge. Later, he entered Moscow State University (MSU), graduating with honors. In time, he became a renowned scientist, a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, a professor, and an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. For many years, my father worked at the Nuclear Research Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences. His scientific work was dedicated to one of the most complex and promising fields of world science—research in nuclear fusion and nuclear energy. He belonged to the generation of Soviet scientists who stood at the inception of developing new nuclear fuel technologies and thermonuclear research, which were subsequently utilized in the space industry and in creating energy supply systems for deep space exploration vessels.
Sometimes it feels particularly symbolic and profound to me that a small Jewish boy, who miraculously escaped destruction in the Warsaw Ghetto and lost practically his entire family in Treblinka, years later became one of the prominent scientists of a vast country and dedicated his life to the development of world science. There is a special historical and human meaning in this. Nazism sought to destroy an entire people, to erase the memory of generations, and to annihilate human potential and the future. Yet, life proved stronger than death. My father's fate stands as proof that even after the most terrifying tragedies, the human spirit is capable of surviving, maintaining its dignity, and continuing to serve humanity. This is precisely why the memory of the Holocaust must be preserved forever. Not only as a memory of a tragedy and millions of perished people, but also as a memory of those who managed to survive, preserve their human dignity, and carry on with life for the sake of future generations. For me, my father's story is not just the history of our family. It is a part of the vast history of the twentieth century—a history of tragedy, survival, human resilience, and the victory of life over death.
It was at the Nuclear Research Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the city of Dubna that my father met his destiny—my future mother. After all the tragedies endured in his childhood, after the loss of his family, and the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the war, fate seemed to gradually restore his right to life, human happiness, and a future. My mother also belonged to the world of big science. She was a scientist, a doctor of physics, and a professor who dedicated her life to scientific endeavors and research. She came from the ancient Russian city of Serpukhov. By descent, she was a Jewish woman of Russian origin, raised in the Soviet intellectual milieu, where education, science, and service to knowledge were considered the highest values. In Dubna, one of the largest scientific centers of the Soviet Union, my parents' destinies were joined forever. They were united not only by love and mutual respect, but also by their belonging to the same scientific world—a world of research, physics, scientific quest, and an immense responsibility before the future. Dubna in those years was a special place. It was not just a scientific town. It was a kind of intellectual capital of Soviet physics, a center where outstanding scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and nuclear physicists worked. It was there that many fundamental branches of Soviet science were forged, shaping the development of nuclear physics, space research, and energy.
My parents belonged to a generation of scientists for whom science was not a means to achieve material wealth, but a true service to the state, society, and scientific progress. They lived in an era when scientific discoveries were perceived as part of the country’s great historical mission. Through my mother’s lineage, our family was related to the prominent Soviet scientist Yulii Borisovich Khariton—one of the creators of the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bombs, a founding father of nuclear physics in the USSR, and one of the key leaders of the Soviet atomic project. The name of Yulii Khariton holds a special place in the history of twentieth-century world science. He was an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, an outstanding physicist, and a world-class scientist—a man who played an immense role in creating the strategic nuclear potential of the Soviet Union. For my parents' generation, the scientific world of Dubna, Soviet nuclear physics, and the USSR Academy of Sciences was closely intertwined with the names of the greatest scientists of that era. They knew and worked alongside Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov—the eminent Soviet physicist, one of the creators of the hydrogen bomb, and a man of immense scientific stature and complex historical destiny.
My parents also well knew Elena Georgievna Bonner—the wife of Andrei Sakharov, a well-known public figure and human rights activist. The fate of Elena Bonner was also connected to the Turkmen SSR: she came from the city of Mary—the very same city where I was later born in 1963. Sometimes it feels astonishing to me how closely human destinies intertwine across time, tragedies, wars, science, and generations. The fate of my father, a little boy who miraculously escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto, years later led him to the heart of Soviet science, where he met my mother, giving rise to a new chapter in our family’s history. My birth in 1963 in the Turkmen SSR, in the city of Mary, became a continuation of this complex and remarkable family destiny that traversed Europe, the Holocaust, the war, salvation, Soviet science, and the vast historical epoch of the twentieth century. Sometimes I think about how incredible my father’s life journey truly was. A child who lost practically his entire family in the Treblinka death camp, left alone among the ruins of war, years later became an eminent Soviet scientist, a professor, an academician, and one of the individuals who participated in the development of the most critical fields of world science. In this, I see a special historical symbolism. Nazism sought to destroy not just individual people, but the very future of an entire nation. However, life proved stronger than death, and human intellect and memory—stronger than the attempts at total annihilation. The history of my family is simultaneously a story of an immense tragedy and a story of the incredible strength of the human spirit. It is the history of a generation that passed through war, the Holocaust, scientific discoveries, the building of a new life, and the preservation of human dignity despite everything. And the older I get, the more deeply I realize: the memory of my parents, my ancestors, and their destiny is not merely family recollections. It is a part of the grand history of the twentieth century that must never be forgotten.
The Phenomenon of Creative Scientific Dynasties
There is a profound qualitative difference between dynasties founded upon intellectual creation and structures established merely for the retention of power. The continuity of generations within the milieu of scientists, professors, and researchers stands as an exemplar of noble service to humanity. When grandfathers, parents, and children pass down a shared aspiration for knowledge, they enrich the global scientific potential, achieve fundamental breakthroughs in physics, medicine, or energy, and bring undeniable benefit to their country and the world at large through creative intellectual labor.
The Risks of Caster-Like Clan Formations
A completely different, destructive picture emerges when intellectual meritocracy is superseded by closed caste-like and clan formations. On the territory of modern Norway, this process is becoming increasingly visible within certain migrant communities from Iran and Middle Eastern countries. Instead of integrating and bringing genuine benefit to the host society, such structures tend to reproduce closed patriarchal models where the primary criterion for advancement is not personal talent or intellect, but loyalty to the interests of one's ethnic or family clan.
Mechanisms of Infiltration into Power (The Gharahkhani Family Example)
A vivid example of such expansion is seen in the activities of the Gharahkhani migrant clan, whose representatives managed to entrench themselves within the political system through the structures of the Norwegian Labour Party. Critics argue that their infiltration into government institutions did not always occur through open and honest competition; instead, it often relied on manipulation, backroom deals, deception, and the distortion of facts. Such methods are fundamentally alien to the traditional Scandinavian political culture, which is deeply rooted in transparency and equal opportunity.
Nepotism and Mutual Protection Against the Common Good
Unlike dynasties of scientists who leave behind new technologies and saved lives, caste-like political clans bring no objective value to the Norwegian people. Their functioning is based on rigid nepotism, cronyism, and mutual protection, aimed exclusively at retaining bureaucratic positions and distributing resources in favor of their own. This leads to the degradation of state institutions, worsens internal fractures within society, and replaces the interests of the state with the private interests of a single influential family.
Conclusion: The Subversion of Values and the Heritage of Lineage
This contrast clearly demonstrates that the true greatness of a lineage is measured by its creative fruits, not by its ability to embed itself into party nomenclature. While the history of my family proves that the human spirit and intellect are capable of bringing the light of scientific progress even after passing through the hell of the Holocaust, the examples of modern migrant clans demonstrate the opposite—the exploitation of democratic freedoms to build closed caste systems. The memory of my scientist ancestors obliges us to defend the ideals of honest labor and meritocracy against any form of cronyism and political egoism.
