- Shortly after I started working for the governor, the director of the mansion told me that the chandelier in the state dining room was actually donated by a Jewish family that had escaped the Nazis and sought refuge in North Carolina.

They donated it to the state out of gratitude for welcoming them.

I thought this story was so beautiful and so moving.

I felt drawn to it.

I wanted to know more.

And every once in a while, I would try to find the family.

We knew that their last name was Horowitz and that they had lived in Asheville.

And so I would try searching different terms to try and find them and I could never figure out who they were.

One day in August of 2023, former first lady Carolyn Hunt found some letters in her files that were from the woman who donated the chandelier.

She passed those along to the governor's office and they made their way to me.

I really went into detective mode and I was able to find who I was pretty sure was them.

And I took a chance and I sent a cold email.

Five minutes later, everything changed.

♪ - Today is December 15, 1988.

We're in New Haven, Connecticut.

Could you please tell us your name?

- My name is Carla Horowitz.

I'm really Caroline Charlotte Horowitz.

- What is that, what is your maiden name?

My maiden name is Carla Strauss.

- The chandelier belonged to Gustav and Selma Strauss who lived in Barmen, Germany.

And we've actually seen some pictures of the chandelier in their really grand home there before the war.

Their daughter was Caroline.

- I gave birth to my son November of 1937.

I was barely out of childbed when my husband came home and said, "Caroline, I've got to talk to you and this is not pleasant, but don't get upset.

We cannot stay here.

It's becoming, it's coming to the point where they're going to take everything we have away and they may be even threatening our lives.

(speaking in German) - The family ended up going to Holland.

And so at this point, it's Gustav and Selma who own the chandelier, their daughter Caroline, her husband Peter, and then their grandson, Robert Horowitz.

Ultimately, Gustav and Selma were caught by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp where they perished.

Caroline, her husband Peter, and their four-year-old son Robert were able to make an absolutely daring escape out of Europe.

They were able to get into free France on foot and then take one of the last boats out of Portugal before ultimately getting into the United States where they made their way to Murphy, North Carolina.

Every tale of people who were able to make it out of Nazi Germany or occupied territory is special and remarkable in its own way, but this story really took my breath away.

The level that the Nazis went to to prevent Jews from having passports, from having bank accounts, from having any type of resource to be able to escape Europe was just beyond comprehension.

And so they had to outsmart them at every juncture.

And then eventually when they were on foot, they had a four-year-old with them.

The story that really just strikes me and sits in my memory is Caroline tells about being almost crossing over out of occupied France into free France.

- We got a guide.

Guy spoke only French.

And he said, "We have to march."

And we marched.

Pete carried Robbie and I in my city clothes, tied up shoes, stupid shoes probably.

We marched all night.

All of a sudden, we came to a place where the man said, "Stop."

And we heard very distinctly that there was somebody there.

There were two border guards patrolling the border.

And our guide said to us, "Stop."

And we fell down on the ground.

And we all stopped breathing.

We heard one German soldier say to the other, "I have heard something there.

Listen carefully.

There's somebody here very close to us.

Let's try to get him."

But we were so close to them that the flashlight with which they searched the area shone over us.

And we were in a small trench just between the guys and the light.

Then a French girl came to our rescue.

She asked something in French.

And they walked away.

They left the people who they were searching for, and they walked with a girl with a bicycle.

And we lay another few minutes, and then we got ourselves up.

We were caked with dirt.

And we got up, and we walked, and we-- and the child did not give a sound.

He must have sensed that it was a very tense situation.

Got up.

We marched a little bit further, and then the guide spoke a little louder.

And he said, "Do you see the light back there?

That was the last German garrison.

We are in Bel-- we are in-- in Free France."

- At the time, my own son was four years old.

And I just felt such empathy for her as a mother.

How you get a four-year-old child to stay still and calm and absolutely silent when your life is on the line, the pressure involved with that is unimaginable.

And to be able to do that and then bounce back from it and lead this incredible life felt really special.

♪ In the first letter that we came across from Caroline, she talks about how after the war, she wrote to her family's lawyer back in Germany to see if he would be able to recover any of their possessions.

And he said that the family who was living in the house was eager to make restitution and return to the family what belonged to them.

And so at that point, she sent for and had shipped the chandelier.

People felt lucky to recover a candlestick or a small item.

And so to be able to reconnect with something so beautiful and so magnificent, it just felt like it really defied all odds.

- Wow.

That's stunning.

Definitely noticing those beautifully molded grape pendants and the scrolls.

And the globe is just really stunning quality at the bottom.

It's a beautiful piece.

So this is a really good example of a Maria Theresa chandelier.

You can definitely tell that it was manufactured in Austria.

Most people have heard of Swarovski, but there's another maker called J&L Loebmeier.

This is very much in line with their work.

But it does appear that it was originally electrified.

And if that's the case, what's really interesting about this chandelier is that Loebmeier was one of the first companies to ever make an electrified chandelier.

And they actually partnered with Thomas Edison to create the very first electrified chandelier in 1880.

So if this is from the late 19th century, this could be among the very first electrified chandeliers ever made, which is really, really neat, especially given all of its other history of donation and provenance.

It's quite an incredible story.

Confiscation of Jewish arts was quite prevalent.

So it is amazing that this chandelier even survived.

These pieces are very fragile.

They have hundreds of components to them that would have to be very carefully disassembled and then reassembled.

It's quite a delicate and intricate thing to ship, and I'm sure would have been extremely costly for them.

So it really speaks to their regard for the state of North Carolina that they wanted to donate it.

It's pretty amazing.

- One day, I think my children, my grandchildren specifically, will want to know what actually happened.

What, where... It's their family.

It's their roots, and they will want to know, why did we never know our grandparents better?

And, you know, it's one thing to read a history book and learn history that way, and it's another one to live through history.

And we lived through it.

We were in the very thick of it.

- This is the state dining room.

There it is.

- And the Strauss chandelier.

- Strauss chandelier, yeah, you just go in there.

- Having Robert and his son come to the mansion was a dream come true.

When I sat there thinking about the family that donated it, did I ever think I would be able to actually find them and have them come here and be willing to talk so openly about their story and their history?

- Speaking about, why did you feel called to tell this story today, to make the trip across the country to share this?

- Sadie.

[laughter and applause] - It felt important to me personally because it was almost like I had solved this mystery, even if it was one that I had created for myself.

It also felt important because there are so few Holocaust survivors left, and without people who are willing to tell their stories, the history can be very hard to access.

It's very hard to wrap your mind around the idea that six million people died.

But when you know somebody or you see an object, it brings it to life.

It makes it so much more real.

And I think that in this moment, where it feels so important to understand that if we allow indifference to take over, if we allow intolerance and hatred to take over, that that could easily happen again, it feels incredibly important that we were able to capture their story and really cement it as a part of North Carolina history.

♪ ♪