a287  2034  14 Jun 89
AM-Germany-Jews Return, Adv 19,0856
$Adv19
For Release Mon AMs, June 19 and Thereafter
Jews Visiting German Birthplace Recall Nazi Mistreatment
By GEORGE BOEHMER
Associated Press Writer
    USINGEN, West Germany (AP) - Gerald Gunther, now a leading American
law professor, came back to his birthplace still remembering the Nazi
teacher who regularly called him a ''Jewish pig'' in the 1930s.
    As dozens of other West German towns and cities have done, Usingen
invited its former Jewish residents back a half-century after they
were driven out by Adolf Hitler.
    Gunther, now one of the foremost U.S. experts on constitutional law,
was born in May 1927 in Usingen, about 20 miles north of Frankfurt.
He started school there in 1933, the same year Hitler came to power
and began the harassment of Jews.
    The Nazi insults, particulary when they came from such an authority
figure as a teacher, left an indelible mark, Gunther said, but at the
same time they inspired him to excel.
    ''I was only 6 when Hitler took over in 1933, and I will never
forget the Nazi teacher who put us in the back corner of the
classroom to separate us from the Germans and called us 'Jewish
pigs','' Gunther said in an interview.
    ''Because of this Nazi teacher's passion for drilling us with dates
in German history, such as when German kings were born, I memorized
those dates and was always first with my hand up to answer.
    ''When I did that, he would turn his back on me and say to the
German kids, 'How is it that this Jewish pig knows the answers, and
you don't.''
    Gunther stood as he talked in front of Usingen's former Hugenotten
church, built in 1702 as a place of worship but used as a school from
1823 to 1965.
    ''Ironically, I believe my passion for constitutional law and the
division of power (in government) was born in that school because of
the Nazi insults,'' Gunter said.
    He was born Guenther Gutenstein, the son of Otto and Minna
Gutenstein, and fled to the United States with his parents and
brothers in September, 1938. Many of the 90 Jewish residents of
Usingen had already left.
    After arriving in the United States Gunther learned English and went
on to an engineering college. That was followed by university law
courses, and he graduated second in his class from Harvard Law
School.
    Gunther said he changed his name from Gutenstein ''because my father
felt a non-Jewish sounding name would help me get a job in
engineering. But then I got involved in law.''
    He now teaches law at Stanford University in California, where he
lives.
    Gunther is the author of the college textbook ''Constitutional
Law,'' which is used in nearly every U.S. law school.
    Among those welcoming Gunther and 18 other Jews back to their
hometown were an old German school friend, Mrs. Friedel Preiss.
    ''I always remember him as the cute chubby little guy with curly
black hair,'' she said.
    The hair is thin and gray now, but Gunther repaid Mrs. Preiss'
compliment with a kiss on the cheek as they stood near the site of
Usingen's former synagogue where the visiting Jews laid a wreath.
    Mrs. Preiss said German schoolmates were stunned by what the Nazis
did to drive out their Jewish neighbors and friends.
    ''After they left, we always talked at home about them. We always
wondered if they were OK, and where they were,'' she said.
    Also in the group of former residents was Laura Duering, 65, of San
Francisco. Her family name was Rosenberg.
    Mrs. Duering said her family made apple cider and other fruit
spirits in Usingen, which were delivered to restaurants as distant as
Sachsenhausen, a part of Frankfurt.
    ''We had a German driver, Wilhelm Kolte, who was a very good friend
of the family,'' she said. ''He would take the cider into
Sachsenhausen at night, because it became illegal for restaurants to
deal with Jews.''
    She added that after her family had emigrated to the United States
to escape the Nazis, Kolte was drafted into the German army and taken
prisoner in the Soviet Union.
    ''My family wrote a letter to Soviet officials to convince them
Kolte was not a Nazi, and they later set him free,'' she said.
    ''We were lucky because we could leave,'' Mrs. Duering said. ''My
husband Rudolf escaped too, but his mother and father died in
Auschwitz,'' she said, referring to the notorious Nazi concentration
camp in what is now Poland.
    Stefan Kolb, a local high school teacher, initiated the project to
invite Usingen's former residents back home at the city's expense.
Kolb said he had been working on it since 1980, ''after we decided to
study about what happened to our former Jewish residents as part of a
history class.''
    Usingen has a population of about 10,500. The city allocated mark
equivalent of about $70,000 to bring its former Jewish citizens back
home.
    Many of the group of 19 Jews, from Israel, France and the United
States, were in their 70s and accompanied by their spouses and other
family members for the week-long visit.
    End Adv for Mon AMs, June 19
    
 
AP-NY-06-14-89 2319EDT
***************