Month: November 2018

POST 39: AN IMPERFECT ANALOGY: FAMILY TREES AND DENDROCHRONOLOGY

Note:  In this post, I discuss a vague similarity between some family trees and an archaeological dating technique, known as dendrochronology, that is, tree-ring dating.

Regular readers may recall me mentioning how my formal training as an archaeologist, which is what I did professionally, has been enormously useful in doing forensic genealogy.  The inspiration for this story is drawn from archaeology, specifically, an archaeological dating technique known as dendrochronology, that’s to say, tree-ring dating.  Admittedly, with slightly flippant intent, in this Blog post, I touch on a parallel between family trees and dendrochronology, and briefly explain the technique to provide the necessary context.  Regardless of whether readers accept the notion of any connection between these matters, perhaps, they may come away with a better understanding of how this technique is used in archaeology.

For some time now, I have been researching one of my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s cousins, Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, who will be the subject of the subsequent post.  Lisa Pauly helped my Uncle Fedor survive during his 30 months “underground” in Berlin during WWII.  I have a copy of a letter of recommendation she wrote on behalf of my uncle in 1947, along with a separate letter of reference written by a couple who also assisted my uncle during his years in hiding that mentions Lisa Pauly.  Despite having these letters and having found Lisa Pauly listed in Berlin Phone Directories between 1966 and 1977 at an address she is known to have lived at in the Steglitz borough of Berlin, I had until recently been unable to learn anything more about her.

Faced with this hurdle, I turned to “Family Trees” in ancestry.com, and, finally, found her on a tree listed as “Lisa Krüger,” born in the year 1890.  The title of the family tree in which I discovered her name is “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” translated as “Silesian Jewish Families.”  Because I utilize the free institutional version of ancestry at my local library, it is not possible for me as a non-member to contact family tree managers; only members can send messages to other ancestry affiliates.  Consequently, I asked a friend of mine who volunteers at the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society whether she could send an email on my behalf.  She graciously agreed to do this, and within a day, the family tree manager responded and invited me as a “Guest” to the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien.”  I was thrilled with this development.

I immediately opened the tree, and, to my amazement, discovered it includes 52,000 plus names!!  To provide some context, my family tree has about 500 names.  While seemingly faced with the daunting challenge of deciphering the connection between specific people in the larger tree and my own, I rationalized I might finally be able to discover the relationship between myself and people whose names I recognized if I could somehow find the names of one or more people on both trees.  I naively assumed all the names on the Silesian family tree would be bound together like tango partners on a dance floor.  I was sadly mistaken.  Instead, I discovered that what I thought was one large tree with all people interrelated was instead branches of discrete Jewish families from Silesia.  It was at this moment that a less-than-perfect archaeological analogy came to mind, namely, “dendrochronology.”

Dendrochronology, literally the study of tree time, is a multi-disciplinary science that provides accurate and precise dating information based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings, also known as growth rings.  It burst into the national consciousness with the publication in December 1929 in National Geographic of an article by an astronomer from the University of Arizona, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, detailing his 15-year endeavor to date archaeological sites in the American Southwest.  In the first half of the 20th Century, Douglass had established the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona with the intent of better understanding cycles of sunspot activity; he had reasoned that changes in solar activity would affect climate patterns on earth, which would subsequently be recorded by tree-ring growth patterns.

Prior to publication of Douglass’ article, archaeologists had no idea, for example, how old Puebloan archaeological sites and cliff dwellings found in the Four Corners region of the United States were; archaeologists had estimated they were 2000 years old when tree-ring dates later confirmed they were only about 800 years old.  When archaeologists realized sites were younger than previously thought, they were forced to change their interpretations about the rate of development of prehistoric societies in the American Southwest.

Tree rings or annual rings are the result of new growth in the vascular cambium, the layer of cells nearest the bark.  Each year trees create a layer of new wood under the bark.  In temperate climates, generally, one ring marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree.  Critical to tree-ring dating, trees of the same species from the same region tend to develop the same patterns of ring width during any given period.  Thus, researchers can compare and match these patterns ring-for-ring with patterns from trees of the identical species which have grown at the same time in the same locale (and therefore under similar climatic conditions).  Chronologies can be built up when one can match tree-ring patterns of the same species from one tree to another in the same geographic area.  It is this pattern that can be used for dating purposes whenever a piece of wood is preserved, such as in an archaeological site; matching wood from prehistoric and historic structures to known chronologies developed from tree-ring data is referred to as “cross-dating.”  [NOTE: “Cross-dating” refers BOTH to “a method of establishing the age of archaeological finds or remains by comparing them with other finds or remains which sometimes have known dates” as well as to “a method of pattern matching a tree’s growth signals of unknown age (floating chronology) to that of a known pattern that is locked in time (master chronology).”]

Critical to the imperfect analogy I am drawing between family trees and tree-ring dating is this concept of a “floating chronology” versus a “fully anchored and cross-matched chronology.”  A floating chronology is a tree-ring sequence whose beginning and end dates are not known.  Thus, in the case of the Silesian family tree, the 52,000 plus individuals in it cannot directly be connected to one another in any linear sense, they’re “floating,” so to speak, branches of distinct Jewish families from Silesia.  This contrasts with what’s dubbed a “fully anchored chronology,” where the beginning and end dates of a tree-ring sequence that has been established are known.  In this instance, my own family tree where every person can linearly be connected to every other person in the tree would be so characterized. 

In the case of trees and tree-ring sequences, a fully anchored chronology extends back 8500 years for the long-lived bristlecone pine in the western United States, and for the oak and pine in central Europe going back 12,460 years.  Just as archaeologists are frustrated when they can’t cross-date a piece of wood from an archaeological site to a fully anchored chronology, genealogists are similarly disappointed when they are unable to connect branches of seemingly related families from the same general area with identical or familiar surnames.  In the case of my own family, I know multiple living people with the Bruck surname whose linear connection to myself can’t be drawn.  While, admittedly, not a perfect analogy, I argue there is some parallel between family trees where all individuals cannot be connected and floating chronologies that cannot be anchored in time.

In closing, I would emphasize one final point.  Lisa Pauly, my uncle and father’s cousin who I began this post discussing, appears in both my family tree and the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree.  However, because I can’t directly connect her on the Silesian tree to people with recognizable surnames, such as other Brucks, Berliners, Holländers, etc., I’m unable to determine how she is related to them, and, by extension, how I’m related to them.  More forensic work is necessary.

POST 38: THE EVIDENCE OF MY FATHER’S CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY

Note:  In this post, I discuss the evidence for my father’s, Dr. Otto Bruck, conversion to Christianity from Judaism, confirmation of which I recently came upon completely inadvertently.

Growing up, my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, never discussed being born into the Jewish religion.  If my memory is correct, I think I first learned about it when I was visiting my maternal grandmother in Nice, France as a child. At the time, we were walking through Vieux Nice, when she turned, pointed to a building, told me that’s where my father worked as a dentist after WWII, and mentioned he was Jewish; it would be many years before I understood the significance of all this.  Regular readers may recall I discussed my father’s time in Nice after the war in Post 26 and touched on the fact that he was not legally permitted to practice dentistry in France because he was “apatride,” stateless.  He was eventually caught and fled to America before he could be brought up on charges that were eventually dropped by the French authorities.

Figure 1. My Baptismal Certificate showing I was baptized on August 2, 1957, in Lyon, France

Because religion was not a part of my upbringing, I never gave much thought to it, although, ironically, I was eventually baptized as a Roman Catholic in Lyon, France on August 2, 1957, when I was six years old. (Figure 1)  Given the events my father had lived through, it made sense to him I should have a religion.  It’s always puzzled me, however, why my father thought that being baptized would afford me any protection if a future anti-Semitic political entity gained power and decided, as the Nazis had, that anyone with two Jewish grandparents is a Jew.  Puzzles without answers.

Given my father’s casual attitude about many things, including relatives and religion, it’s not surprising that much of what I’ve learned about such matters has involved a lot of effort.  Because my father considered himself German rather than Jewish, it would have made sense to me if he had converted to Christianity from Judaism.  But, as I just remarked, because of my father’s casual attitude, it would also not have surprised me if he’d never made the effort to formally convert.  Regardless, I’d never previously been able to find definitive proof either way.

The archives at the Centrum Judaicum Berlin include documentation that my father’s brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, converted from Judaism at the Messiah Chapel in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, Kastanienallee 22 on June 11, 1939, very late indeed.  Similarly, the Centrum Judaicum Berlin retains archival records for my Aunt Susanne’s husband, Dr. Franz Müller, who converted much earlier, on November 25, 1901, but still lost his teaching position at Humboldt University many years later, in 1933.

I’m unaware of any comprehensive database that includes the names and records of Jewish converts in Germany.  However, since conversion records survive at the Centrum Judaicum for both of my uncles, and since my father attended dental school in Berlin, I began the search for proof of my father’s own conversion here; they found nothing although it was suggested that knowing the specific church where he might have converted could prove useful.  Knowing my father had also apprenticed in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] for a short period after graduating from dental school, I contacted the archives there, again to no avail.  The other place I reckoned where my father might have converted to Christianity was the town where he was a dentist between April 1932 and April 1937, Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland], although I had no idea at the time where to begin looking for such records.

I’ve learned, it was not uncommon beginning in the last half of the nineteenth century for German-Jews to convert to Christianity as a means of assimilating into German society.  A virulent wave of anti-Semitism that had emerged in Germany in the 1880s may have been another factor in the decision of some Jews to convert. 

Figure 2. Following a night of heavy drinking in which he totaled his Austin automobile, my father is standing by his 200cc Triumph motorcycle with a bandaged head, Tiegenhof 1934

I remember, as a child, my father talking about his time in Tiegenhof and how he drank heavily in those days.  Multiple pictures from my father’s days there exist showing him visibly inebriated. (Figure 2)  My father was by no means an alcoholic, and he justified his heavy drinking as “necessary to fit in.”  I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that my father was an active sportsman, particularly an excellent tennis player.  It’s highly likely there were barriers to becoming a member of the various sports and social organizations in Tiegenhof to which my father belonged, religion no doubt being one of them.  Thus, I have concluded that if my father did not convert to Christianity before he arrived in Tiegenhof, the provincial mores of this small town may have necessitated he do so here.  That said, until recently, I’d been unable to find any evidence my father ever converted.

Figure 3. Document found among my father’s papers initially thought to be dental invoice later determined to be receipt for payment in 1936 of Church Tax to “Evangelische Kirche” in Tiegenhof

Few of my father’s papers survive, but one document that has caught my attention only because it included the names of two members of the Joost family. (Figure 3)  Readers must understand that on account of all the Tiegenhof-related documents, books, and address directories I’ve perused over the years, many family surnames are now extremely familiar to me; such was the case with the surname “Joost.”  In reviewing this document, I was absolutely convinced it was a dental invoice because at the top of the paper it included my father’s name and identified him as a “zahnarzt,” a dentist.  Still, it seemed odd my father would have saved only one invoice among the many he’d no doubt written over the years as a dentist.

Figure 4. Baptism register for Alfred Albert Joost, born 4 June 1898, baptized 11 September 1898, whose name appears on the 1936 Church Tax receipt issued to my father
Figure 5. Card from the “Heimatortskartei” (File of Displaced Germans) for Albert Joost, showing his date of birth as 4 June 1898, and his religion as “Ev.” (=Evangelical)
Figure 6. Card from the “Heimatortskartei” (File of Displaced Germans) for Albert Joost’s wife, Käthe Großnick, showing her date of birth as 26 January 1902

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Setting aside this anomaly, I began to research in various databases the Joost names I found on the paper in question.  As readers can see, towards the bottom left side is written “Alb. Joost,” while on the bottom right side is written “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost.”  From ancestry.com, I discovered there lived a “Schneidermeister,” a tailor, in Tiegenhof, by the name of “Jacob Albert Joost,” born on July 27, 1865, who died on January 23, 1937.  The profession was passed on to his son, “Alfred Albert Joost,” born on June 4, 1898 (Figure 4-5), who died on February 18, 1975; he was married to Käthe Großnick. (Figure 6) The existence of the father and son tailors was confirmed by various Tiegenhof Address Books. (Figures 7-10)  Because both father and son had Albert in their name, I was uncertain whether the presumed dental work had been done on the father or son.

Figure 7. 1925 Tiegenhof (Kreis Großes Werder) Address Book listing Albert Joost’s residence as Vorhofstraße 44
Figure 8. 1927-28 Tiegenhof (Kreis Großes Werder) Address Book listing both father Alfred Joost and son Albert Joost residing at Vorhofstraße 44

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 9. 1930 Tiegenhof (Kreis Großes Werder) Address Book listing Albert Joost’s residence as Vorhofstraße 44
Figure 10. 1943 Tiegenhof (Kreis Großes Werder) Address Book listing Albert Joost’s residence as Adolf-Hitler Str. 44 in the Nazi Era

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To resolve this confusion, I asked one of my cousins to decipher the document.  I learned the document was a receipt not for dental work, as I’d thought, but for payment of a church tax.  Like in Germany and several other European countries, in the Free State of Danzig, where Tiegenhof was located, members of the Protestant or Catholic Churches were compelled to pay a church tax of 7.5% of their income.  In 1936, my father was obviously a member of the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof (Figures 11-14), and his annual tax amounted to 90 Guilden 90 Pfenninge; he was permitted to pay his obligation in four installments.  The first payment of 22 Guilden 74 Pfenninge was made on October 6, 1936, and it was receipted by “Alb. Joost,” while the second and third installments were made on December 29, 1936.  Kaethe Joost was the authorized representative of Albert Joost, so the “f” in “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost” stands for “fuer,” “for” or “in place of,” indicating she signed the receipt in lieu of her husband.  The last installment would have been due on March 15, 1937, a payment my father is unlikely to have made because by then he would no doubt have been expelled from the Church for being of the “Jewish race.”  By mid-1937, my father had left Tiegenhof.

Figure 11. The former “Evangelische Kirche Mit Pfarrhaus” (Church and Rectory) in Tiegenhof
Figure 12. The former Evangelical Church in Tiegenhof torn down during Poland’s Communist Era

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 13. A schematic drawing and model of the former Evangelical Church in Tiegenhof
Figure 14. A plan of the town of Tiegenhof showing the locations of the Catholic and Evangelical Churches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having found the clear-cut proof that my father had converted to Christianity and knowing he’d been a member of Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church, I contacted Mr. Peter Hanke from the Danzig Forum asking him whether conversion records for this church still exist.  He told me he’d never found such records, and that they’d likely not survived the turmoil of WWII.  This was disappointing but hardly unexpected.

Interestingly, Peter did find a brief reference to Albert Joost in Vol. 36 of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the one-time annual journal for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants.  In German it says: “Bei Joost war fruehmorgens um 4 Uhr Licht, um diese Zeit arbeitete er bereits in seiner Werkstatt; um 9 Uhr abends war immer noch das Petroleumlicht in der Werkstatt zu sehen. Der war einer von den Tiegenoertern, die ich nie in einem Gasthaus gesehen habe, aber jeden Sonntag im blauen Anzug in der Kirche.”  Translated: “Joost was already at work at 4 a.m. in the morning.  At 9 p.m. the kerosene lamp could still be seen in his workshop.  That man was one of the “Tiegenoerter,” never seen in a tavern but come Sunday always wore a blue suit to church.”  Possibly, Albert Joost was the “tithe collector” with his wife for Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church.

Proof of my father’s conversion to Christianity came in a most roundabout way.  As mentioned, it’s highly unlikely his actual conversion document survived WWII, but the important thing is that my father’s attempt to assimilate into German society ended in failure and he was still forced to flee to save himself.

POST 34, POSTSCRIPT: MARGARETH BERLINER, WRAITH OR BEING? DEATH IN THERESIENSTADT

Note:  This postscript about my great-aunt Margareth “Greta” Brauer née Berliner details the substantial amount of new information I’ve learned about her and her family in the few short months since I published the original post in September 2018. In the process, sadly, I also learned when and where she died.

Related Post: Post 34: Margareth Berliner, Wraith or Being?

Figure 1. Till Carl Brauer Mongil, charter fisherman in Puerto Rico, my third cousin once-removed

 

Aware of a Puerto Rican connection to my great-aunt Greta Brauer’s family and frustrated I had been unable to learn what happened to her after 1933, I recently did an Internet query on the member of her family I knew had lived there, namely, “Till Brauer.”  However, given the cataclysmic events associated with Hurricane Maria in September 2017, I had scant expectations I would be able to locate much less connect with any member of the Brauer family; on the contrary, I expected anyone from the family who’d survived the Hurricane to have decamped for an unknown destination on the U.S. Mainland, as many Puerto Ricans did.  So, it came as an enormous surprise when I quickly discovered a “Till Brauer Mongil” (Figure 1), operating a charter fishing business out of Carolina, Puerto Rico, which lies immediately east of the capital San Juan.  His website stated he was no longer in business, but because it had once been an active operation, an email address was provided.  I immediately sent a message with tempered expectations, but within less than an hour, surprisingly, I received a response from Till Brauer asking me to call him.  I immediately did.

Till Carl Brauer Mongil, born in 1959 in Puerto Rico, it turns out, is the great-grandson of Greta Brauer, and my third cousin once-removed.  As we speak, Till has contracts to conduct inspections related to cleanup and reconstruction of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure resulting from Hurricane Maria, and is extremely busy.  Understandably, we’ve had only one opportunity to communicate, so all I’ve learned is from a brief phone conversation.  Still, I was able to pick up enough information to correct and supplement what I discussed in Post 34.

Figure 2a. Greta Brauer, her daughter-in-law Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933
Figure 2b. Captions on the back of photo showing Grete Brauer, Herta Brauer, and Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3. Ernst & Herta Brauer’s son, Oliver, holding his daughter Margarita, Christmas 1966, Calvia, Mallorca

In my original post I included a picture of three generations of Brauer taken in 1933 in Neubabelsberg, near Spandau, outside Berlin.  The photo, reprinted here, shows my great-aunt Greta, her daughter-in-law, Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till as a baby. (Figures 2a-b)  I also showed an image taken in Calvia, Mallorca in 1966, similarly reprinted here, showing a son Oliver holding a young daughter named Margarita. (Figure 3) I mistakenly concluded that Till Brauer and Oliver were one person, but, in fact, Ernst and Herta Brauer had these two sons.  This was my first error, but not my only one.  Till Carl Brauer Mongil, I learned, is the son of the Till Brauer shown in the 1933 photograph.  To remind readers, in Spanish-speaking countries, newborns are given two surnames, that of their father and mother, thus the “Brauer Mongil” attached to Till’s name.

Briefly, let me discuss some of the documents and Passenger Manifests I found for Ernst and Herta Brauer’s family on ancestry.com and connect these to some of what Till Brauer told me. 

Figure 4. Brauer family listed on “Manifest of Alien Passengers” bound for New York City aboard the Spanish liner SS Marques de Comillas that departed Lisbon, Portugal on February 22, 1941
Figure 5. Brauer family listed on “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry,” showing their arrival in New York on March 12, 1941, and a notation they were “transshipped” to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on March 20, 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6. The SS Coamo, the US Merchant vessel on which the Brauer family was “transshipped” to Santo Domingo on March 20, 1941
Figure 7. Brauer family listed on “Manifest of Alien Passengers” departing New York on March 20, 1941

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The names of Ernst, Herta, and Till Brauer, along with that of a Yutta Maria Muenchow clearly traveling with them, are listed on a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” bound for New York City aboard the Spanish liner SS Marques de Comillas that departed Lisbon, Portugal on February 22, 1941; this document showed their last permanent residence prior to leaving Europe had been Rome. (Figure 4)  A “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry,” shows the arrival of these four people in New York on March 12, 1941. (Figure 5) The title of this manifest suggests the Brauer family was separated from passengers disembarking in New York; a notation in the upper right-hand corner of this document confirms the family’s stay in New York was brief as they were “transshipped to Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] on the SS Coamo (Figure 6) on March 20, 1941.”  And, this comports with a third Passenger Manifest showing the entire family leaving New York City on March 20, 1941 aboard this passenger ship. (Figure 7)  An Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) file, dated May 2, 1941, lists the entire family having traveled aboard the SS Marques de Comillas. (Figure 8)  Finally, another Passenger Manifest shows Ernst Brauer traveling alone to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic on October 7, 1947 aboard a Pan Am flight. (Figure 9)

Figure 8. INS File dated May 5, 1941 showing the Brauers traveled on the SS Marques de Comillas
Figure 9. “Passenger Manifest” for Pan American Airways showing Ernst Brauer traveled alone to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic on October 7, 1947

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The four Passenger Manifests and the INS file generally confirm what Till Carl Brauer (to distinguish him from his father Till Brauer) related.  Till Brauer was married to a Puerto Rican woman, a circumstance that eventually allowed the Brauers to settle in Puerto Rico, although not before first living in the Dominican Republic for several years by choice or necessity; Ernst and Herta’s son, Oliver, was born there, and judging from the various Passenger Manifests I found, it appears the Brauers lived in the Dominican Republic no longer than seven years, though Till Carl claims it was about four years.

Till Carl Brauer explained that Herta Brauer’s maiden name was “Stadach,” and that she had previously been married to a Karl Ferdinand Hermann Münchow (Figure 10), by whom she had had a daughter, Yutta Maria Münchow. (Figure 11)  Thus, the “mysterious” Yutta Maria who traveled with the Brauers was Herta’s daughter by her first marriage.

Figure 10. Certificate for Herta Stadach (later Brauer) and Karl Ferdinand Hermann Münchow’s marriage on October 3, 1925. They had a daughter together, Yutta Maria Münchow, born on August 30, 1926
Figure 11. Yutta Maria Münchow’s “Civil Death Record,” showing she died on October 26, 1986 in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As explained in Post 34, in ancestry.com I located a document titled “Report of the Death of An American Citizen,” for Ernst Hanns Brauer showing he passed away in Calvia, Mallorca on May 19, 1971. (Figure 12)  I found no corresponding form for Herta Brauer, and, in fact, the Social Security Death Index recorded her address at the time of death in August 1983 as San Juan, Puerto Rico (Figure 13); I assumed she had died there.  Till Carl told me that in truth both Ernst and Herta died in Mallorca.  The circumstances that lead the Brauers to relocate there are connected to historical events in the United States during the late 1960’s.  Readers will recall that at the time America was ramping up its presence in Vietnam.  The compulsory draft would have made both Till and Oliver eligible to be called up since Puerto Ricans are citizens of the unincorporated territory of the U.S.  Opposed to the war, and not wanting their sons to be drafted, the Brauers left the country.  It’s clear that neither parent ever relinquished their American nationality, and, both sons, had dual American-German nationality; Oliver ultimately died in Germany, place unknown.  Till Carl was unable to tell me anything about the daughter Oliver is shown holding in a 1966 picture of the two of them.

Figure 12. “Report of the Death of An American Citizen” for Ernst Hanns Brauer showing he died in Calvia, Mallorca on May 19, 1971
Figure 13. Social Security Death Index for Herta Brauer showing her address at time of death as San Juan, Puerto Rico, even though she died in Mallorca

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thing I had most wanted to find out from Till Carl was when and where Greta Brauer, his great-grandmother, died, but he didn’t know. I began to despair finding out.  On this note, Till Carl and I ended our conversation with a promise on my part to send him all the documents I’d uncovered related to his family.

Figure 14. Page from the “Gedenbuch,” one of the Holocaust databases, showing Greta Brauer died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on November 24, 1942

 

In compiling all this evidence, but convinced I’d already examined the various Holocaust victims’ databases, I decided to double check for Grete Brauer before sending all the family documents to Till Carl Brauer.  For reasons that are unclear, I had never found or simply overlooked my great-aunt’s name in these databases but this time I found her and confirmed she died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on November 24, 1942 (Figure 14), an all too familiar ending with Jewish relatives whose deaths remain unsolved during the Nazi era.

Figure 15a. Photo from left to right: Oliver Brauer, Ernst Brauer, Herta Brauer, Till Brauer, and a family friend “Ricardo,” taken on the day of Till Brauer’s wedding
Figure 15b. Captions in German on the reverse side of Figure 15b

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following my brief conversation with Till Carl, I exchanged an email with Larry Leyser, my third cousin once-removed whom I’ve alluded to in other posts.  I told him in passing I’d spoken to one of our relatives in Puerto Rico, and, a short time, later he sent me a picture and a clipping from a Puerto Rican newspaper asking whether it had anything to do with the people shown or mentioned.  Incredibly, it did.  The photo and newspaper article were scanned from a horde of items Larry had borrowed from one of his cousins, curiously included in this stash, and set aside as people to be identified later.  Simply because I mentioned Puerto Rico, Larry sent these documents to me on the off-chance they might be connected to what I was working on.  The picture shows Herta and Ernst Brauer book-ended by their two sons, Oliver on the left, Till on the right along with a family friend, on the day of Till’s wedding. (Figure 15a-b)  Herta and Ernst Brauer are rightmost in the newspaper picture, involved, as they were most of their lives, in dance and theater. (Figure 16)

Figure 16. A clipping from a Puerto Rican newspaper showing Herta & Ernst Brauer, third and fourth persons

 

One final thing.  My still-living 89-year old mother, who knew my grandmother, Greta Brauer’s sister, says my grandmother never mentioned having an older sister.  What, if anything, to make of this omission is unclear.