Anyone who has ever made the difficult, life-changing decision to convert to Judaism has his or her own story to tell. But perhaps none is more dramatic than the one behind Bernd Wollschlaeger’s conversion.

Wollschlaeger’s father, Arthur, was a highly decorated German army tank commander in World War II who was awarded the Knight’s Cross – the highest honour given by Nazi Germany to soldiers for their military leadership – by Adolf Hitler himself.

It was Wollschlaeger’s discovery of his father’s involvement in the persecution of German Jews during the Holocaust that led him to ultimately turn away from him, and toward the Jewish faith.

“As a child… I idolized my father, and my father meant a lot to me. We spent a lot of time together, until I asked questions out of curiosity about his family and his past,” said the 55-year-old Wollschlaeger in a phone interview with The CJN hours before he shared his story at Chabad of Markham on Nov. 12.

“All he told me was that there was a war, it interrupted everything, caused tremendous harm, that I don’t have any grandparents because of the war and that was it,” he said.

The turning point in Wollschlaeger’s relationship with his father happened in 1972 when he was 14, and when Munich hosted the summer Olympic Games, during which Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes.

He said the massacre initiated a national discussion about the fact Jews were killed on German soil again, and the media reviewed the role of Germany during World War II and of course, the Holocaust.

Wollschlaeger said that until that point, he knew nothing about the Holocaust. In school, when taught about the war, they were told that six million Jews were killed among 80 million other people who perished in the war.

“It was regarded as collateral damage of the war, and not framed in the unique context of systematic murder of Jewish people as German policy, by the German government, elected by the German people,” he said.

“That led me to confront my father, to find out what he knew about it. He denied the existence of the Holocaust, denied that it ever happened, or that he had any knowledge about it.”

Wollschlaeger said he later found out the truth: that his father had not only known about the persecution of Jews, but had been part of a unit that participated in a human shield operation that killed about 200 civilians.

“Of course they knew it, they did it and that led me to turn away from my father in disgust.”

It also caused him to turn toward the very people his father despised.

“I was searching for answers, why these people? Why the Jews? What makes them unique that you would single them out to kill them? I didn’t understand it.”

Following a trip to Israel when he was 18 “to discover what it means to be Jewish in a Jewish country,” Wollschlaeger returned to his hometown of Bamberg and approached the small Jewish community there to learn about their culture and traditions.

“They accepted me as a Shabbos goy… over the course of seven years, I transformed from having an interest in learning intellectually to an emotional connection and then spiritual connection and finally a religious conversion,” he said.

Although difficult because it meant that he’d be tearing himself away from a family that didn’t understand his choice, Wollschlaeger said he embraced the idea of becoming a Jew and moved to Israel in 1987.

He lived on a kibbutz where he studied Hebrew and worked and served in the Israeli army, first in a hospital for a year to obtain his Israeli medical license and then in the military as a medical officer.

Upon starting his new life in Israel, Wollschlaeger chose to not to tell anyone, including his wife whom he met and married in Israel – about his family history and his conversion.

“I wanted to keep it as low-key as possible, because I felt embarrassed. I became Jewish, but I had such a family history where it was hard to believe that you can be the son of a father who represented exactly the antithesis that Israel stands for… I couldn’t reconcile that at that point.”

It was this decision to keep the details of his family history from his first wife – with whom he fathered two children and moved to Miami in 1991 – that ultimately led to the end of their marriage. He has since remarried and had a third child.

Wollschlaeger, who has been sharing his story with the public since 2007 and has even published his memoirs called A German Life: Against All Odds, Change is Possible, said it was his own son who inspired him to share his story when he began asking questions about his family history.

“I knew that if I concealed that from him, I might lose a long-term connection with him, so I told him when he was 14.”

But Wollschlaeger’s conversion to Judaism and his mission to speak out about his experience is not how this story ends.

Growing up, Wollschlaeger suspected that his mother might have been concealing a family secret of her own.

“She had knowledge about Jewish rituals. I thought it may be due to the fact that she lived in and grew up in Czechoslovakia and it had a large Jewish population… but she had some knowledge about Jewish rituals, even though she was a devout Catholic, and that puzzled me,” he said.

Following up on a suspicion that his mother had Jewish ancestors, he did some genetic testing that revealed his maternal family line might have been connected to the Marrano Jews of Northern Spain and France.

“I never knew this, nor did it motivate me [to convert], but now, of course, it’s curious and may be very revealing.”

Wollschlaeger said he hoped that through his lecture at Chabad Markham, he would help people understand “that individuals can make a choice, can change a life, face issues that affect all of us… and that you’re not doomed to make the same mistakes that you’ve been taught to repeat.

“What I’ve learned is that people are not inherently bad or good… There are many shades of grey.”