Elfriede and Heinrich Colm, parents of Alma College donor Hilde Heyman.
Hilde Heyman remembers the Nazis.
Every Sunday, a tall black-uniformed Gestapo man came to Hilde’s family residence in Hamburg, Germany, to collect the weekly Jewish tax. It was the 1930s. Hitler was in power. Hilde’s mother was Lutheran, her father Jewish.
“The Gestapo took my father’s business away,” recalls Hilde. “It was a good business, a clothing store he opened in 1908. They also took away my parents’ bank account, their car … everything. They were harassed. They had to move to a smaller apartment with other Jewish people. They had to smuggle food.”
Hilde and her brothers fled Germany for America in 1938. They eventually settled in Saginaw, where they built a new life.
“We left Germany in the nick of time,” says Hilde. “We tried to get my parents out of Germany, but couldn’t. Nice people helped us in Saginaw. They took us grocery shopping because we didn’t have a car. My husband found work, and we rented a room. We were young, in our 20s. We never went back to Germany.”
In Germany, her parents continued to live an impoverished life but were never imprisoned or sent to a concentration camp. Her father, suffering from heart disease, died in 1944. For many years, her mother tried to get her husband’s business back. Unsuccessful, she eventually left Germany in 1953, settling in Saginaw with Hilde.
Today, Hilde is 95 years old with a sharp memory, pleasant demeanor and a desire to honor the memory of her mother, who died in 1978 at the age of 94. Hilde never attended Alma College or set foot on the campus. Nonetheless, she recently donated $10,000 to create an endowed scholarship to help keep her mother’s memory and story alive.
“I have heard so much about how young people enjoy going to Alma,” says Hilde. “The scholarship, besides helping young people go to college, is a tribute to my mother.”
Her mother, Elfriede Colm, was born in 1884 in Berlin, the youngest of 10 siblings.
“My mother was a very strong, capable, good person,” says Hilde. “She stood her ground all her life and worked hard. She was the kind of person who always knew what to do. In Germany it was not easy for her. After they lost everything, she had to take care of my father when he developed heart trouble.
“After she came to Saginaw, she couldn’t get over how friendly the people were and that people talked to her at the bus stop and in the stores,” Hilde says. “That didn’t happen in Europe. She enjoyed life and enjoyed living in Saginaw.”
Thanks to Hilde Heyman’s generosity, the Elfriede Colm Memorial Endowed Scholarship will provide an annual scholarship to a student who needs financial assistance to attend Alma College.
– Mike Silverthorn
