Show Me Your Papers

Julie Meyers, University Advancement

Honorable Mention

On a Wednesday in 2014, a crumpled, slightly torn, and smudged piece of paper was tossed at me. If I recall correctly, it was presented with the words, “Here. Do this.” Dylan, my seven-year-old daughter, dropped it on my desk and disappeared.

I did not know it then, but this mangled sheet of paper would become the most treasured gift of my life.

Hours later, I unfolded what she had left. On it was a drawing of a strange little man, colored in by her. I looked at him. He stared back at me.

“Do this?” What was I supposed to do? She had already colored him in.

Then I saw a note explaining who this odd little guy was. He had a name: Flat Stanley.

I was to learn that this intruder was part of The Flat Stanley Project, an initiative that teaches letter writing, geography, and cultural awareness. What I was “to do” was send Flat Stanley somewhere—anywhere—and the recipient would adopt the paper doll, show him around, and return him to Dylan. The adopter would hold my daughter’s heart in their hands—or at least the paper version of it—and dedicate time and care to the project.

Day turned into night and then into the next morning. Dylan, as if programmed, marched back into my office, found the unsent Stanley, and delivered the command with even more insistence.

“Mommmmmmm!”

I stabbed the doll onto my bulletin board. The stabbing was intentional.

You see, try as I might, I did not have anyone to send him to.

The losses my family has endured are not something I ever spoke about. I sat down at the computer to explain the situation to Dylan’s teacher.

“Hi! Thank you for sharing Flat Stanley. I am sorry…we don’t have much family, and almost everyone we know lives right here. Perhaps we can come up with another assignment for Dylan?”

I hadn’t pressed send. The tears came quickly; the words did not.

My typing was interrupted by an incoming email. Whew.

The sender was unknown to me: a man named Raimund Adamczyk.

Dr. Adamczyk wrote that he was the archivist in Donaueschingen, Germany, and apologized for the email arriving out of the blue. He asked whether I had any photographs or documents from the time my mother had lived there.

To say the email was out of the blue was an understatement. It was out of the indigo. It was out of the full color spectrum.

Yes, I knew my mother was from this town—but that was it. She escaped Germany when she was four years old in 1939. I was receiving this email 75 years after she fled and a quarter century after I had lost her.

I began to type that I did not have “anythin…,” but before I pressed the “g,” my eye caught the eye of my nemesis on the bulletin board.

With a deep breath, I shared that while I knew almost nothing about Germany, I would love to know more—and then I asked if he might accept Dylan’s Flat Stanley.

I hit send.

The response came almost instantly—an emphatic “YES!”

From a bulletin board to a first-class envelope, Flat Stanley was on his way. Not to Disneyland but to Deutschland.

The result was hundreds of pictures; each sent in a separate email.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

The computer chirped joyously. Dylan and I were like Pavlov’s dogs—with every ding, we dropped everything and ran to the computer.

Sneaking chocolate and stealing hearts, Dr. Adamczyk wove tale after tale—some clearly written to charm Dylan; others to share my family’s tragic fate. Each ding carried stories, descriptions, photographs, and pieces of a past…a past we did not know we had.

We assembled the photographs into a little book. Dylan submitted her assignment.

Dylan’s project received a local Holocaust awareness award and was welcomed into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. By the end of 2014, Stanley was back where he began—a piece of paper in a book on a shelf.

As a small gesture, we sent Dr. Adamczyk copies of the book and several Flat Stanley dolls. He never thanked us. Years later, we learned that Dr. Adamczyk passed away suddenly, just after helping us with Dylan’s project. It is strange to mourn someone you never really met—but it is a loss we will always carry.

We believed we had closed the Flat Stanley chapter.

We hadn’t.

Fast-forward to February 2020. The world was about to learn how to “social distance” and debate the correct way to launder groceries.

I was not thinking about any of that. It was 4:13 a.m., and I was sound asleep when the phone rang.

The caller was direct.

“You come Germany, yes. Time is short. We fix day together. Take calendar. Open page. Mark with pen.”

The caller was a woman named Martina Weimer.

She had found a copy of Dylan’s book—the one we sent years earlier and never heard about again. Martina had devoted her life to documenting the Jewish families of Donaueschingen, and she was as thrilled to find the book as we had been to send it all those years ago.

As we got to know Martina, we got to know ourselves.

There were only four Jewish families in Donaueschingen during the Holocaust.

Four.

The Nazis silenced most of their voices, but Martina is determined their stories will be heard—loudly and clearly.

Amazingly, we are descendants of one of those families—one of the silenced voices.

Before Martina ever picked up the phone, she had arranged for an all-expense-paid trip for my family to visit Germany. The first time, it was just the paper doll. Now it was us—in paper masks—traveling at the height of a pandemic. My small family, including Flat Stanley (of course!), went to Donaueschingen as guests of the town.

The stories burned—forged in darkness; carried forward by a community demanding light.

It is now 2026, and people who were once strangers in Germany are among the most meaningful and treasured relationships in my life.

In the years since Flat Stanley’s journey began, I have come to know my mother long after I thought I had lost the chance.

I came to understand that my mom never blamed Germany for what had happened to her family.

She blamed people who lost their way.

She blamed a void of kindness.

She blamed a hatred that hardened.

In the 1930s, the Nazis demanded my mother’s papers—and stripped them away. Now, through a paper doll, my family holds new papers of our own: dual citizenship and a German passport.

And it’s not just citizenship.

Flat Stanley unfolded a history I didn’t know I carried.

He arrived as paper.

He left as family.