A German cellist’s obsession: Reuniting a family scattered by the Holocaust

The house in the German city of Stralsund was once home to a Jewish family named Blach and its leather business. It stood through Nazism and the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1994, a married couple moved to the east German city, which had entered a new era after four decades of communist rule. In 2012, they bought the run-down building, which had stood vacant since the 1970s, and renovated it, creating retail space on the ground level and apartments upstairs.