Charlie Scheidt is the author, with Kat Rohrer, of the new family memoir Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. He is the chairman emeritus of Roland Foods.
Q: Why did you decide to write Inheritance, and why did you choose to collaborate with Kat Rohrer on the book?
A: Weeks before passing away in 1988, my mother told me about documents she had saved and hidden in an armoire. It turned out to be an overwhelming trove of nearly a thousand.
At the time, I was too preoccupied really to deal with that inheritance—mourning her death, raising a family, running and growing the company my parents had founded. But I was curious and from time to time would look at some of the material. When I did, I saw names I’d never heard, the kernel of stories I didn’t know existed, and endless mysteries.
It wasn’t until 2009, after visiting Frankfurt for the first time, that I decided to organize and really understand the stories and secrets contained in the stash my mother had saved and bequeathed to me. I realized I knew frightfully little about my family history, what my loved ones had gone through, and I needed to know and understand.
But it was too large an undertaking to do alone. I needed help. Soon after returning, I happened to meet Kat Rohrer at a video shoot about the history of the company my parents had founded. That meeting involved pure chance and perfect timing. The beginning was practical. I had a vast number of letters and documents, in no particular order and mostly in German, so I needed someone who also spoke German.
Sometime later Kat revealed that she too had been wrestling with a family legacy but from the other side—her grandfather was a “true believer” and had abandoned his family to fight for and support the Third Reich.
I appreciated her honesty. She had the burden of her family history; I had the burden of silence about my family history. Neither of us imagined the relationship would deepen to a friendship and last 15 years and counting.
Q: How much of your family history did you know growing up, and how did you research this book?
A: I grew up an only child in a German-Jewish refugee family in New York City. My parents, aunt and uncle, and Shabbat dinner guests spoke German to each other. German was my first language.
From an early age, I was aware of being a very lucky kid: my father provided well for us, I was growing up in safety, and I was surrounded by a loving and intact family.
But there was mystery and silence about one subject—the Holocaust and its impact on the family. I only knew that a bad guy named Hitler hated Jews and killed many, and that my father fled out the back door of his office across some railroad tracks and out of Germany.
For my parents and family, silence was both protection and survival. They wanted to move on, live in the present, try to forget all they had witnessed, what and whom they had lost. And they wanted me to feel safe and be able to build a future unburdened by what had happened to them.
But the upheaval that led my family to become refugees left deep scars, ones I sensed growing up but did not understand. Silence about the past is its own inheritance—the emotional residue of trauma passed down without explanation. Looking back, I see how deeply that shaped my sense of self, my anxieties, and my connection to my family’s past, present, and future.
My family’s story was much richer—and more complicated—than the fragments I occasionally was told. After reading many hundreds of letters and documents, I understand far better the community in which I grew up.
The list of surprises is very long. For example, I discovered that many family members among whom I grew up escaped danger just in time, were lucky; others, who I had never even heard of and were very important to my family, were murdered, victims of the Nazi genocide. I knew none of this.
Regarding the research for the book, after my mother died, I asked her living relatives to write down and tell their own story and that of their family. This was both to gather information and to try and stay connected to that side of my family.
When we embarked on the research, Kat and I started with the many hundreds of documents I inherited. Later research involved online resources, U.S. archives, and overseas archives.
In addition to factual surprises, the most emotionally meaningful research was, after years of remote research, going to the towns, cities, and apartments where my family once lived.
Those trips and experiences made an enormous difference in my emotional involvement in the family history and in the writing of this book. Having read their letters, it was poignant and impactful to be there and imagine them in that environment.
Before going, Kat and I contacted local archives, historical societies, and groups that take care of Jewish cemeteries and found people were very willing to help.
Q: The author Kerry Whigham said of the book, “It reminds the reader that every refugee, past and present, is only seeking what we all deserve: love, safety, and a life free from persecution.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: This comment is his plea, and mine: that we regard refugees not as “others” and somehow a threat to “us,” but as fellow human beings with similar needs, including “love, safety, and a life free from persecution.”
Very few families choose to leave the culture and land of their birth unless forced to do so. Migration and creating a new home in a different language, legal system, and social structure, is very difficult. Refugees, including my family, focus all their energy on building a good future in their new environment for themselves and for future generations.
There are today tens of millions of refugees in our world. Inheritance provides first-person accounts of what it means to flee, always be on edge, persecuted, scared. My family members were for many years stateless human beings, deprived of a home, no country willing to give them a passport.
I hope reading about their lives as refugees leads more people to empathize with today’s 120 million displaced people, forced to flee their homeland where—like my family—they have often lived for centuries.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: My voyage of discovery is my version of something universal: the search to understand where we come from, our roots, and how the past shapes us.
Writing the book changed me in ways I didn’t fully anticipate. The process of traveling, researching, reading, and asking difficult questions became a way of confronting a long-standing silence in my family.
My parents’ generation had understandable reasons for keeping painful memories buried—they were focused on survival and on building a future. I came to this story later, with the distance, time, and perspective they never had.
In uncovering and piecing together what happened, I felt I was doing it not only for myself, but for my children and future generations. I also felt a responsibility to my parents and family to tell their stories honestly and shed light on what happened and can so easily happen again.
I hope that readers will recognize in my family’s history the larger patterns of persecution, displacement, and resilience that continue to shape the lives of refugees around the world today—people who, like my family, carry scars but press forward and make great sacrifices in hopes of creating something better for the next generation.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I devote much time and effort to refugee support and related issues, and I am actively involved with nearly two dozen NGOs and university programs across the country.
I’ve started thinking about a sequel to Inheritance. In writing the book, there were important episodes and pieces of history that had to be left out simply because they didn’t fit within the scope of one volume. I find myself returning to those stories, and exploring them more fully may be the next chapter of this journey.
Kat and I are also working on developing a film based on our travels and the history we uncovered together to write Inheritance. Retracing my family’s path across Europe was an emotional and powerful experience, and we believe the places, the discoveries, conversations, and all the people we met along the way lends itself naturally to the screen.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Many families carry silences, even secrets and lies, and avoid speaking about the past to the next generation. Refugee families such as mine have particular reasons for doing so.
But I believe that silence about past displacement, persecution, and trauma is itself a kind of harm, depriving survivors of the freedom to share their experiences and feelings, and leaving the next generation without a clear understanding of the world that had shaped them. Uncovering that past and its impact became the work of Inheritance.
I will be speaking on podcasts and at virtual and in-person events related to the publication of Inheritance through May. In the fall, more events are planned around the U.S. as well as in France, Holland, and Germany, where much of Inheritance takes place.
I am also happy to engage with book clubs and coordinate on book talks. Please get in touch via my website, www.InheritanceMemoir.com, where you can also sign up for my newsletter and find details for all upcoming events, and via social media on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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