Broken Promises

"Broken Promises" tells the story of the Heppenheimer family, who came to Germany from Poland in the eighteenth century and ultimately became wealthy scrap metal dealers. When the Nazis rose to power, the family was reluctant to leave their successful lives. Most of the family was able to escape, but some waited too long and were murdered in the Holocaust. This book tells the stories of both those who were able to emigrate and those who perished.

My father-in-law Kurt Heppenheimer came to America as a German Jewish refugee in 1937, changed his name to Curtis Heppen, and raised a family. But Curtis shared little of his German past with his family or the fact that he had family that died in the Holocaust, including his grandmother and two aunts. After extensive research, I was able to piece together Curtis' life in Germany, as well as the history of the Heppenheimer family. "Broken Promises" tells the story of a family who experienced first-hand the key moments in the history of Germany's Jews and who, as owners of successful scrap metal businesses, played a role in the development of Germany as an industrial power. This book follows the individual family members who were either able to escape Germany after the Nazis came to power (many just before the borders were closed), or were unable to escape and found themselves in the most notorious of ghettos and the most notorious of Nazi death camps. Ultimately, this is a book about a family who was driven to succeed, but was also strongly patriotic, who believed the promises made when the German government provided Jews with the same rights enjoyed by other German citizens, and were repaid for the important contributions they made to Germany by either having all of their property stolen or by being murdered in the Holocaust.

Bonnie Suchman is a lawyer who used her legal skills to research the Heppenheimer family history. Bonnie has two adult children and lives in Maryland with her husband, Bruce.