Berlin, the beloved city of Max Heppner’s ancestors that betrayed them during World War II, will honor the family with engraved sidewalk plaques in their former neighborhood in a special ceremony this fall.
The memorial is part of the massive “Stolpersteine,” or “Stumbling Stones” project, which began in Germany in the 1990s and has spread across Europe. There are now more than 100,000 brass plaques, in countries such as Austria, France and the Netherlands, that commemorate victims of the Holocaust outside their last residence or in the immediate neighborhood.
Heppner, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Hillsboro Beach, reached out to project organizers in February to see whether his family qualified. He was thrilled to learn they did.
“Since Max is a survivor of the Nazi regime and 92 years old, we moved up his registration as fast as possible and so we will have the laying of the stones for his family in September,” said Stolpersteine volunteer Frank Segebade in an email. “I am very glad and also excited to meet him. He is one of the last living victims of the Holocaust. He knows a lot (!!) about his family, so I had no research to do on their biographies (which is usually the case).”
The Stumbling Stones are the “biggest decentralized memorial in the world,” Segebade said, with 11,000 plaques in Berlin alone.
“We are doing this because we want to give the victims a name and an address. A home, so to say, because they were our neighbours who vanished in the terror,” Segebade said.
The stones will honor Heppner’s father, Albert; his mother, Irene; and his grandmother, Dina. Each inscription will read “Here lived,” followed by the victim’s name, date of birth and what became of them during World War II; all fled their cherished city.
Holocaust survivor Max Heppner, 92, speaks about his childhood under the Nazi regime on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Heppner’s mother was pregnant with him when his parents departed from Berlin to Amsterdam in 1933 to get away from the Nazis. He has spent much of his life trying to reconcile his family’s love of German language and culture with the Nazis’ harassment, the theft of his family’s art work by Dutch police, and the lack of empathy of many Europeans.
“It’s hard for me to make sense of it all,” Heppner said. “My cultural background is German. But the worst that could have been done to me was done by Germans.”
Heppner lost several family members to concentration camps, including his maternal grandfather, who was murdered in Sobibor in occupied Poland with two brothers.
Heppner and his parents had to flee the Nazis again from Amsterdam in 1942. A Catholic farming family, the Janssens, who had nine children and lots of livestock, offered the trio and another family refuge in their chicken coop. The families survived until their little Dutch town of Zeilberg was liberated in September 1944. Heppner’s father, an art dealer who had served in the Imperial German Army during World War I, died in 1945, when Heppner was 11.
“He had been dodging the Nazis for 11 years and his body gave out,” Heppner said. “He died on the way back to Amsterdam with a load of food for his starving friends.”
Photos of Max Heppner’s family and of the Janssens, who helped them. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Irene and Max Heppner then moved to the United States, settling in Cleveland with an aunt and uncle.
Heppner graduated from Ohio State University and got a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He forged a career as a public information specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
He bought a place in Florida in 2006 and lived as a snowbird until 2013, when he settled in Hillsboro Beach full time. He has been married four times and has a daughter, Liora, and two grandchildren, as well as extended stepfamilies and a close relationship with the descendants of the Dutch farmers who rescued him and his parents.
“Even though I lived with the Janssen family for only three years, the shared adventures and escapes influenced the lives of all their children, numerous grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and they’re my family too,” Heppner said. “I visit them often, and we always have a great party when I come there, and I get so many invitations I can’t do it all. We’re now making a film in Holland that honors and cements our relationship.”
Heppner plans to travel to Germany with his daughter and grandchildren. He used to say he’d never go back because of the bitterness he feels toward the Nazis. But he has returned three times, even though his parents’ neighborhood was destroyed by bombs during the war.
“It’s a sense of completion,” Heppner said. “Part of our hearts still feel attached.”
Will Heppner get his own engraved stone? He was conceived in Berlin but born in Amsterdam, so it’s an open question.
“They still aren’t sure whether there will be a stone for me, as I wasn’t born yet when my parents left Berlin,” Heppner said. “It will be a surprise!”
Holocaust survivor Max Heppner, 92, reviews family photos from Berlin, Germany, at his home on Tuesday, April 21, 2026. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)