A St. Louis Holocaust survivor was honored with a special memorial service late last month — 60 years after his death.
Walter Berger’s family members gathered June 30 to unveil a new monument at his grave in Memorial Park Cemetery in Staunton, Ill. It was a special moment for Berger’s only daughter, Gittel Burns.
“It’s very hard to describe because my heart kept beating,” said Burns, 87. “The whole time I was thinking of my dad. He had to be looking down and be so happy that we did this.”
The monument replaces the original that stood at Berger’s grave since 1968. That stone bore a cross at the top, which is not unusual for a cemetery that has served the Macoupin County Christian and Catholic community for a century. It also had a typo, indicating Berger was born two years after his real birthdate of Jan. 12, 1896.
The cross and incorrect were probably due to the family’s financial situation when Berger died, said Lisa Johnson, a historian and friend of Burns.
“When he died in 1964, Gittel was a single mother with little kids,” Johnson said. “She didn’t have a lot of money, and she wanted to bury her father. She went to a monument mason who had a stone in progress, which that family had abandoned.”
The stone mason offered a significant discount on the repurposed stone, which he modified with Berger’s name. It sat for decades, but Burns always yearned to give her father a proper graveside memorial.
Kristallnacht to Shanghai to St. Louis
Berger worked in his father’s general store as a boy. He loved music and learned to play the violin. He was a proud German who served his country during World War I. In his early 30s, he met Else Grünberger, whose family was also Jewish. They were married in the Beuthen Community Synagogue in December 1935, two months after passage of the Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of their citizenship.
A year later, Else delivered a stillborn daughter. In June 1938, during one of the first mass arrests of adult male Jews, Berger was taken prisoner and sent to Buchenwald. Gittel was born that year on Oct. 28, two weeks before Kristallnacht. Berger was released from prison and the family fled Germany to China, the only safe haven they could reach.
The Bergers lived in poverty but scraped by in the Jewish sector of Shanghai. On July 17, 1945, tragedy struck during an American bombing mission against a Japanese outpost, said Dan Reich, former curator and director of education at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum.
“There was a terrible incident in the Shanghai ghetto when the allies accidentally bombed the market on a Friday morning and 35 people were killed, including (Gutter’s) mother,” Reich said.
In 1947, Berger and Gittel left for America. They arrived in San Francisco and rode the train to St. Louis, where Berger hoped to find work. A new, peaceful life in the Midwest beckoned, but it was not without early complications.
“Walter got the flu and had to go to the hospital,” Johnson said. “While he was there, they stuck Gittel in child services. When he got out of the hospital a month later, child services didn’t want to return her to him because he was a marginally employed man and they thought it wasn’t a stable environment for a child. She was 8 years old. It got picked up in the newspaper, this refugee who lost everything and his wife and his job and his country. Now they’re taking his child away.”
Berger found a job and filed a petition to regain custody of Gittel, which was granted. The media coverage gained the attention of Linda and Henry Makler, a Staunton couple. The Maklers, who were fluent in German, invited Gittel and Berger to their home in the country. Gittel loved the fresh country air. She visited the Maklers every weekend and eventually moved to the town. She married and began a family of her own, while Berger remained in St. Louis. During the latter part of his life, Berger continued to enjoy his love of music. He practiced Judaism regularly and often visited Gittel and her children in Staunton.
New friends offer a helping hand
Staunton had many Jewish families in the early 1920s, according to Staunton’s chamber of commerce. Times have changed, and Gittel Burns’ children and grandchildren were raised in a non-Jewish environment. That didn’t lessen her commitment to honor her father.
Johnson, who is not Jewish, is a member of Central Reform Congregation. She is also fluent in German, which she studied when she arrived in St. Louis from her native New York. Johnson was a volunteer translator for the Holocaust Museum when she met Burns and began translating correspondence and documentation Berger brought to the United States in a suitcase during the flight from Shanghai. It finally took the form of the 2024 book “A Letter to My Family,” which Johnson assisted in compiling.
In 2018, Burns spoke about her history during the Yom HaShoah ceremony at United Hebrew Congregation. She has been an active supporter of the Holocaust Museum, and befriended Dan Reich and Gloria Feldman, who assisted in the quest to create a fitting memorial for Berger. Reich participated in the unveiling of the monument and led the reading of the Kaddish. He brought a few stones to lay on the grave, fulfilling yet another Jewish tradition.
Burns’ daughter Cindy Burns Schrage, speaking at the ceremony, called the new monument, “A true Jewish blessing. In this small town, there are very few Jews and no synagogues. I doubt if there were any other Jews around when we were growing up and when grandpa died. So he is buried out here in this Christian cemetery, and the original gravestone had the incorrect birthday. This is why we are here today.”
A removable Star of David was also placed behind the stone during the ceremony, created by Burns’ son Frank, who is skilled in metal fabrication. It was revealed when the stone was uncovered and took her by surprise.
“He made it out of metal he had in his shop,” Burns said. “I was so stunned because he does not talk much about the Jewish faith. But when I found out, he made this Star of David for me, that was one of the least expected things. I’ll keep that forever.”
There was one other piece of unfinished business that was addressed June 30. Else Berger’s name is also now included on the monument.
“Gittel had no place to recognize both her parents,” Johnson said. “Now the stone includes both Walter and Elsa and their dates are both correct.”
That addition, supported by Burns’ children, was the best possible outcome for their mother.
“I always wished I could do something better for that stone, and to have my mother’s name on it means a lot because I don’t have anything of my mother’s,” Burns said. “She was killed, and there went everything. To have her name on there just means the world to me. Now I can talk to her. I could always talk to her at night, but it just seems so much different to look at that beautiful stone.”
