May 2020 - bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 85: FURTHER EVIDENCE OF MY UNCLE WALTER BRUCK’S DEATH IN INFANCY

Note: In this post I relate the story of how in the process of helping a reader whose grandmother died in 1940 in Ratibor, the birthplace of my father, I improbably discovered information on some of my own ancestors.

Post 13: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

Post 13, Postscript: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

Figure 1. 1903 Ratibor postcard of the “Oderbrücke,” the bridge over the River Oder dividing the town

Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] (Figure 1), the town in the Prussian province of Upper Silesia where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907 was one of the largest municipalities in the region. Periodically, readers who are descended from former inhabitants of Ratibor will contact me through my Blog asking for information I have or may have come across related to their ancestors. Often, their relatives are entirely unknown to me but seeing what, if anything, I can uncover about them becomes an extension of my own forensic genealogical endeavors. And, the pleasure I derive in helping others is sometimes magnified when I learn something about my own ancestors in the process. The inspiration for the current post stems from precisely such a situation.

Figure 2. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the gentleman from Racibórz responsible for photographing and documenting all the headstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

One reader, Dan Ward, recently contacted me after perusing Post 13 and Post 13, Postscript, and learning the “Muzeum w Raciborzu” in Racibórz had given me an Excel spreadsheet with the names of the Jews that had once been interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, requesting a copy of this database. This cemetery was demolished in the 1960’s during Poland’s Communist era to further expunge evidence of German residency in the area. Fortunately, before the stout headstones were torn down and sold off locally, a Polish gentleman whom I wrote about in Post 13, Postscript, Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński (Figure 2), had the foresight to photograph all the gravestones; these images served as the basis for the creation of the Excel database, with the Racibórz Museum staff gleaning as much vital information as possible from the high-quality snapshots. Despite the sharp and fine details on the photos, not all the data is discernible. More on this below.

Dan Ward contacted me seeking information on the tombstone and burial location of his grandmother, Rosa Wartenberger née Perl, who according to records he found was buried on the 29^th of March 1940 in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor, Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, in Plot 153; she died or committed suicide before she was scheduled to be deported to a concentration camp. As a quick aside, the “Ward” surname is clearly the Anglicized version of the “Wartenberger” family name. Dan sent me screen shots with the source of this information, Jewish Gen. As readers can see, Rosa Wartenberger’s name was misspelled as “Risa Wortenberger,” although the transcriber obviously had trouble deciphering the script. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Screen shot from “JewishGen” with information on Rosa Wartenberger, misspelled as “Risa Wortenberger,” showing she was interred on the 29th of March 1940 in the “Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor” in Plot 153

Armed with the information Dan sent me, I immediately began my own research. The first thing I checked was the Excel spreadsheet with the names of Jews formerly buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and Rosa Wartenberg is not listed. Dan would later tell me his grandmother’s maiden name was “Perl,” and I found four individuals with this surname once interred in the Jewish graveyard, but being unfamiliar with Dan’s family tree, I am not sure how they might have been related to her.

Next, I checked address books and phone directories for Ratibor. I have previously told readers about a database on ancestry.com, entitled “Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974 (Adressbücher aus Deutschland und Umgebung, 1815-1974),” with address books for Germany, Poland, and other neighboring countries. In the only address book in this database for Ratibor for the year 1938, I found a single “Wartenberger.” It was for a man named “Kurt Wartenberger,” identified as a “gastwirt,” innkeeper, shown living at “Breite Straße 54.” (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Page from 1938 Ratibor Address Book listing “Kurt Wartenberger,” an innkeeper, shown living at “Breite Straße 54”

I asked my friend Mr. Paul Newerla from Racibórz, a retired lawyer whom regular readers have often heard me mention, who now researches and writes about the history of Silesia, whether the surname “Wartenberger” is familiar to him. It is not, but in a 1926 Ratibor Address Book not included among the “Germany and Surrounding Areas” directories, he too found “Kurt Wartenberger” listed, identified then as a “destillateur,” distiller, living at “Brunken 54.” (Figure 5) Other than finding Kurt Wartenberger’s name in the 1926 Ratibor directory, Paul could add nothing more.

Figure 5. Section from 1926 Ratibor Address Book listing “Kurt Wartenberger,” then a distiller, shown living at “Brunken 54”

I found it odd the address number “54” was identical in 1926 and 1938 but that the street names were different. Paul Newerla explained that “Brunken” was a connecting street to what is referred to as the Altendorf district, that’s to say, a little “outside” of Ratibor along the main road towards Oppeln [today: Opole, Poland] and Leobschutz [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. I located this street, respectively, on plan maps of Ratibor from 1927-28 (Figure 6) and 1933 (Figure 7), although a plan map from 1914 names it “Große-Vorstadt.” (Figure 8) In tiny print on all three plan maps, readers can see the number “54,” confirming it was the same corner lot with different street names over time.

Figure 6. 1927-28 Ratibor Plan Map with “Brunken” and number “54” circled

Figure 7. 1933 Ratibor Plan Map with “Brunken” and number “54” circled

Figure 8. 1914 Ratibor Plan Map with “Große-Vorstadt” and number “54” circled

I passed along what Paul and I had found to Dan Ward. He confirmed that Kurt had owned a tavern and that family papers in his possession place Kurt’s business at “Große-Vorstadt 54,” papers which must clearly pre-date 1927-28, by which time the street was known as “Brunken.” By 1938, the street had been renamed yet again because it was then called “Breite Straße.” According to Dan, Kurt Wartenberger was murdered in the Shoah in Buchenwald, and, indeed, Yad Vashem lists him as a victim of the Holocaust. (Figure 9)

Figure 9. Page from Yad Vashem confirming Kurt Wartenberger, born in 1884, was murdered during the Shoah

Next, I retraced Dan Ward’s steps to track down the source of the information on his grandmother, misspelled as mentioned above as “Risa Wortenberger.” The data, as I previously also said, originates from JewishGen, and relocating it was straight-forward. Here, however, is where things took an interesting turn. The source documentation for the data in JewishGen comes from elsewhere, namely, from the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2” (Figure 10), which is one of three microfilm rolls with data on the former Jewish inhabitants of Ratibor. While I had last examined this microfilm many years ago, when it was still necessary to order films from the LDS Church in Salt Lake City and have hard copies sent to a local Family History Library for viewing, I clearly remembered this roll as having limited or, at least, confusing information. Now that the Ratibor records are accessible online through familysearch.org, I decided to reexamine film 1184447.

Figure 10. Source of information on Rosa Wartenberger circled, namely, the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2”

For anyone interested in seeking similar information from familysearch.org for towns they are researching, they can replicate these steps:

1) Go to familysearch.org (you can create a free account);

2) Under the “Search” button, scroll down to “Catalog,” click enter, and go to the following page;

3) Next, type in “Raciborz” under “Place,” or whatever town you are seeking records for (i.e., different spellings yield different results, so for towns that are now located in different countries than they once were, you may need to try alternate spellings);

4) Scroll down to “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz),” then hit “Search”;

5) Select “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz) – Jewish records (1),” hit enter;

6) Next select “Matrikel, 1814-1940”;

7) On the next screen select “1184447, Item 2” (select the camera icon all the way to the right; if there is a key above a camera icon, the microfilm is unavailable online).

There are 342 pages on Microfilm 1184447 but only pages 220 through 338, referred to as “Item 2,” specifically deal with Ratibor. The film contains “Friedhofsurkunden 1888-1940” for Ratibor, which Peter Hanke, my German friend who helps me with translations and making sense of German records, tells me is more aptly referred to as “Friedhofsdokumente,” or cemetery documents. The cemetery administration would use these files to see which tombs were unused; which ones could be reused after 25 or 30 years if descendants stopped paying to keep their ancestors interred; which tombs were reserved in perpetuity for so-called “family graves”; or simply to help visitors locate specific graves. These files often contain useful information for genealogists, as I illustrate below.

Let me digress for a moment. Given the disparate sources of ancestral information I have accessed over the years, including in this current post, I am often reminded of the American television game show “Concentration” that aired from 1958 until 1991. Basically, the game was based on the children’s memory game of the same name. Players had to match cards which represented prizes they could win. As matching pairs of cards were gradually removed from the board, it would slowly reveal a rebus puzzle that contestants had to solve to win a match. The similarity I see with genealogical research is not so much solving the rebus, but matching pairs of cards. Often years pass before a “genealogical card” I newly discover can be “matched” to one or more I found earlier in my investigations. The challenge, particularly as I get older, is retrieving the earlier “card” from my memory. Such is the case with connections to Microfilm 1184447, Item 2.

I downloaded, saved, and studied all 119 pages from this film, and made several interesting discoveries and connections. Of immediate interest, I found Rosa Wartenberger’s name in an index (Figure 11); as readers can discern from what I have circled in Figure 11, the number “46” appears to the right of Rosa’s name; this refers to the page number in the “Friedhofsdokumente,” on which Rosa’s name and interment date appear. Initially, I found only one page 46, not realizing there was a left page-right page pair.

Figure 11. Page 69 from Ratibor’s Cemetery Records with Rosa Wartenberger’s name circled, showing that her specific information can be found on page 46 of this register

Let me briefly explain. When the LDS Church originally photographed vital records for Ratibor and other places, they typically started by photographing the left-side pages from the front to the back of the register, then in reverse order from the back to the front photographed the right-side pages; thus, the left page-right page pairs, either identically numbered or consecutively numbered, from any register will not be found on consecutive microfilm images. Thus, while Rosa’s name does not appear on the left-hand page 46, it is found on the right-hand page 46; for reader’s ease, I have “grafted” the two pages in one (Figure 12), and translated, using a different grafted left-right pair of pages, the headers for each column. (Figure 13)

Figure 12. Left and right-hand sides of page 46 “grafted” together

Figure 13. The column headers translated for a left-right pair of pages containing information on what are called “Erbbegräbnisse,” multi-generational “hereditary graves”

As readers can see, by “Grabnummer,” grave number, 153, the date of Rosa’s interment is shown, the 29^th of March 1940, which matches the information in JewishGen. The column titled “Belegt” translates to “occupied,” and signifies when a person was interred, rather than when they died.

Once a researcher understands the organizational “structure” of microfilms with cemetery documents, they are easy though tedious to use. On one left-right pair of pages, I was able to find both sets of great-grandparents on my father’s side. (Figure 14) Oddly, the names of Fedor Bruck (Figure 15) and his wife, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (Figure 16), are not found in the Excel spreadsheet at the Muzeum w Raciborzu, meaning no photo of their headstone was taken. However, Hermann Berliner (Figure 17) and Olga Berliner née Braun’s names do appear in the Excel spreadsheet indicating a picture of their gravestone exists. (Figure 18)

Figure 14. Index in “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2” with the names of both sets of my great-grandparents on my father’s side circled, Fedor Bruck and his wife, “Frau F. Bruck” (Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer), and Olga Berliner née Braun and her husband, Hermann Berliner

Figure 15. One of my great-grandfathers, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 16. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s wife, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924), who died in Berlin but was interred in Ratibor

Figure 17. Another of my great-grandfathers, Hermann Berliner (1840-1910)

Figure 18. Headstone for my great-grandparents, Olga and Hermann Berliner, once interred in the “Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor”

I know from a family tree in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute that my great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer died in Berlin on the 29^th of February 1924 (Figure 19), though she was not buried there. From Microfilm 1184447, I learned she was instead interred on the 11^th of May 1924 in Ratibor, almost 10 weeks later, presumably alongside her husband. Jews are typically interred within two to three days after they die, so a 10-week delay is very unusual. (Figure 20)

Figure 19. Family tree in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute showing my great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer died in Berlin on the 29th of February 1924

Figure 20. Page 7 from Ratibor’s Cemetery Records showing Friederike Bruck was interred in the Jewish Cemetery on the 11th of May 1924, more than 10 weeks after she died in Berlin

On Microfilm 1184447, I also found a single page mentioning one of my father’s older brothers who died in infancy, Walter Bruck. (Figure 21) His name is found on a page entitled “Kleiner Kinderfriedhof,” small children’s cemetery. This is further proof of his existence. A brief explanation. After I began immersing myself in family history and creating a family tree years ago, I started to wonder why there was a nine-year age difference between my father’s oldest brother, Fedor Bruck, born in 1895, and my father’s older sister, Susanne Bruck, born in 1904, in an era where families were large. I eventually learned in 2014 when I visited the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu” (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”) that another sibling had been born in 1900 (Figure 22) who died in infancy the next year (Figure 23), named Walter Bruck. I was able to retrieve both his birth and death certificates among the civil records archived at the Archiwum Państwowe. Thus, the discovery of Walter Bruck’s name on Microfilm 1184447 was confirmation he was once buried in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor.

Figure 21. Page 30 of Ratibor’s Cemetery Records with my Uncle Walter Bruck’s name, interred in the “Kleiner Kinderfriedhof,” small children’s cemetery

Figure 22. My uncle Walter Bruck’s birth certificate showing he was born on the 15th of August 1900 in Ratibor

Figure 23. My uncle Walter Bruck’s death certificate showing he died on the 11th of April 1901

Among the photos that Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński took at the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor before it was demolished is one showing the “Kindergräber,” children’s graves. (Figure 24) As readers can see, the children’s names on some of the headstones can be made out, though most are indecipherable. Interestingly, there is a separate index on Microfilm 1184447, entitled “Großer kinderfriedhof,” big children’s cemetery (Figure 25), with the names of older children buried in the Jewish Cemetery. Infants may have been interred in graves identified only by number, as I discovered in the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin.

Figure 24. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński’s photo of the “Kindergräber,” children’s graves, the section in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor where infants and young children were interred

Figure 25. Separate index on Microfilm 1184447, entitled “Großer kinderfriedhof,” big children’s cemetery, with the names of older children who died and were buried in Ratibor

As a tedious exercise for another day, which I started while researching and writing this post, is cross-checking the names on Microfilm 1184447 with those on the Excel spreadsheet. Some names on Microfilm 1184447 are not in the Excel database, while others are found in both. Preliminarily, I was able to amend death dates or years in the Excel directory, which, as previously mentioned, was compiled from photos, some of which are indistinct.

In closing, I would say one final thing. Based on the Excel index I obtained years ago, I mistakenly concluded then that none of my Bruck relatives had ever been interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, even though I knew some died there when the cemetery was still in use. However, with the benefit of the information I recently acquired from the Jewish records on Microfilm 1184447, I am certain that at least three relatives with the Bruck surname were once buried there. And, this discovery was spurred by helping a reader learn about one of his relatives, a case of helping yourself by aiding others, a most satisfying outcome!

POST 84: MY UNCLE DR. FEDOR BRUCK’S FRIEND, WOLFRAM E. VON PANNWITZ, GERMAN BARON

Note: In this post, I discuss a German Baron my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck befriended in a displaced persons camp in West Berlin while awaiting passage to America in 1947, a gentleman with whom my uncle had much in common and who went on to parlay a small investment in the stock market into more than $500,000 by the time he died. I also review the circumstances that led my uncle to immigrate to the United States after spending 30 months in hiding in Berlin eluding the Nazis, then being permitted to take over Hitler’s dentist’s office following WWII.

Post 31: Witness to History, “Proof” of Hitler’s Death in My Uncle Fedor’s Own Words

Post 40: Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, One of My Uncle Fedor’s “Silent Heroes”

Post 41: Dr. Otto Berger & Other “Silent Heroes” Who Helped My Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck Survive the Nazi Regime

Figure 1. My Uncle Fedor in his dental office in Liegnitz, Prussia

My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck has been the subject of multiple earlier posts which are among my most popular chronicles. I encourage interested readers to peruse these earlier written accounts to familiarize themselves with the broad outlines of my uncle’s life. For the purposes of this post, however, let me provide a brief review.

My uncle owned his own dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland] (Figure 1), in the Prussian province of Silesia, until April 1936, when he was forced to shutter his business by the Nazis. He relocated to Berlin, where he was able to resume work for a time, initially working for himself (Figures 2a-b), then later working under the auspices of a non-Jewish dentist. In October 1942, my uncle was ordered by the Nazi authorities to report to an age transport; realizing this meant deportation to a concentration camp and eventual death, he went into hiding. With the help of non-Jewish relatives and acquaintances, “silent heroes,” my uncle survived underground for 30 months until the fall of Berlin in early May 1945. It is estimated that fewer than 5,000 Jews survived concealment in Germany during WWII.

Figure 2a. Ancestry.com cover page for a 1937 Berlin Address Book listing for my Uncle Fedor, showing him as a “Zahnarzt,” dentist, with an office at Fasasenstrasse 20 in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin

Figure 2b. 1937 Berlin Address Book listing for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck

Figure 3. A young Käthe Heusermann née Reiss with my Uncle Fedor in his dental office in Liegnitz

When my uncle had his own dental practice in Liegnitz, one of his dental assistants was Käthe Heusermann née Reiss (Figure 3), a woman of some later recognition; after my uncle Fedor was forced to close his business, she too relocated to Berlin and wound up obtaining a similar position as dental assistant for Adolf Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke (Figure 4), an early member of the National Socialist party. As Dr. Blaschke’s assistant, Käthe Heusermann was always in attendance when der Führer had very distinctive yet outdated dental work performed on him at a special private office Dr. Blaschke was assigned in the Reich Chancellery; Dr. Blaschke’s private business office was located at Kurfürstendamm 213 in the district of Charlottenburg, the boulevard considered the Champs-Élysées of Berlin; this building still stands today. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, an early member of the National Socialist Party

Figure 5. Entrance to Kurfürstendamm 213 in Charlottenburg, where Dr. Blaschke once had his dental practice that my Uncle Fedor took over after WWII, as it looks today

As I explained to readers in Post 31, there is very clear evidence that because of their previous relationship and friendship Käthe Heusermann sheltered and hid my uncle for brief periods during his 30 months underground during WWII; she also gave him special rations and extra food vouchers she received as a member of the Führer’s extended staff, at great personal danger. Thus, throughout my uncle’s time in hiding during the war, he was periodically in touch with Käthe. This becomes relevant after the Russians occupied Berlin, and, by my uncle’s own account, he made his way to her apartment at Pariserstrasse 39-40 (Figures 6a-b):

“On April 26, 1945, Steglitz, in the southwestern part of the city [Berlin], was occupied by the Russians. Behind the advancing troops, I arrived, on May 4th, in the apartment of my former assistant Käthe Heusermann. This apartment was situated at Pariserstrasse 39-40 near Kurfürstendamm. A friendship of twenty years tied my person and the family of Käthe Heusermann. Käthe was alone in the bomb-damaged apartment and was very upset and confused. She had only returned to her apartment the day before, May 3rd, having spent the time before that in the Air Shelter in the Reich Chancellery.“

Figure 6a. Ancestry.com cover page for a 1938 Berlin Address Book listing for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, interestingly showing him living at Pariserstrasse 39-40, where Käthe Heusermann also lived

Figure 6b. 1938 Berlin Address Book listing for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck

Käthe Heusermann related the events to my uncle of what had occurred at the Reich Chancellery as the Allies encircled Berlin in the waning days of the war, and how Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide (see Post 31 for the complete account in my uncle’s words). Following the fall of Berlin, Käthe Heusermann advised my uncle to obtain permission from the pertinent authorities to take over Dr. Blaschke’s dental practice. His dental office was intact, and Dr. Blaschke had already fled to Obersalzburg, so was unlikely to return. As a person persecuted by the Nazis, my uncle had a right to make this claim. The authorities did in fact grant my uncle permission to take over Dr. Blaschke’s apartment and practice at Kurfürstendamm 213 in Charlottenburg; as discussed in Post 17, post-WWII Address Directories from 1946 (Figure 7), 1947, and 1948 locate my uncle at this address. My uncle’s knowledge of the events surrounding Hitler’s fate stem primarily from his friendship with Käthe Heusermann, but also from his occupancy of Dr. Blaschke’s dental office following WWII.

Figure 7. 1946 Berlin Address Book listing for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, showing him as a dentist at Kurfürstendamm 213 in Charlottenburg, the former office of Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke

According to my uncle’s account, following his tenancy of Dr. Blaschke’s dental premises, he was visited on a few occasions by Russian counter-intelligence agents:

“. . .On Wednesday, May 9^th, 1945, I met a Russian Lieutenant Colonel in the building, as well as woman in uniform and a gentleman in mufti, as they inquired from the Superintendent as to the whereabouts of Blaschke. As I learned later, they were the deputy military governor of Berlin, a female agent of the Russian secret police, and a certain Doctor Arnaudow, who had been assistant at the Berlin Charité with “Geheimrat Sauerbruch” [“Geheimrat Sauerbruch” is a successful and respected physician]. The latter was a Bulgarian and had brought the Russians who were looking for Hitler’s dentist . . .; furthermore, he acted as interpreter, although the agent of the Russian Secret Police, who called herself “Lola,” spoke a little German.”

Figure 8. Yelena Rzhevskaya in 1943, a military interpreter for SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency

As I eventually learned, “Lola,” was a 26-year-old Jewish woman named Yelena Rzhevskaya (Figure 8), born Elena Moiseyevna Kagan in Belarus in 1919, who was travelling with the Soviet vanguard when they entered the center of Berlin on April 29, 1945. She was a military interpreter for SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency. Like my uncle, she was a witness to events and findings about Hitler’s fate, corroborating much of what my uncle knew and later reported. As the Soviet forces advanced through Berlin, Rzhevskaya’s unit was tasked with finding people who could provide information on Hitler’s whereabouts. It is only in 2018 that an English version of Yelena Rzhevskaya’s memoir, “Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker,” was published and that mention of her role in helping identify Hitler’s teeth was made.

Thus, in 1945, what led “Lola,” Yelena Rzhevskaya, to visit my uncle Fedor at Dr. Blaschke’s former dental offices was her search for information about Hitler’s fate. While questioning my uncle, Elena and the Russian authorities would learn about and eventually interrogate Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Echtmann, Blaschke’s dental technician, about their respective roles during Hitler’s dental procedures and their knowledge of his whereabouts; Käthe identified Hitler’s dental bridge for the Russians confirming his death, a fact the Soviets kept hidden for many years. Käthe and Fritz’s familiarity with Hitler’s fate would eventually result in both being abducted by the Russians and imprisoned in Russia until around 1955, a few years after Stalin died in March 1953. It served Stalin’s expansionist goals to have the world believe that Hitler had survived WWII and was an existential danger to the world, thus the need to remove from the scene anyone who could refute his narrative. It is precisely for this same reason that my uncle was in danger of being spirited away by the Russians, namely, because of his indirect knowledge of Hitler’s fate.

My uncle was alerted by the American post-war occupation forces who now controlled Charlottenburg, the Berlin district where Dr. Blaschke had once had his dental practice and where my uncle now lived and worked, that he was in danger of being snatched by the Russian intelligence services. Realizing they would eventually track him down wherever he hid and having already received a visa for the United States, my uncle abandoned his profession. Like my father, he would never again practice dentistry. Thus, began the next phase in my uncle’s life.

The precise date on which my uncle left Berlin is unknown to me. However, he wrote an affidavit in November 1966 in the matter of a probate hearing on behalf of the estate of Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, a German Baron he met in June 1947 in West Berlin, providing a general timeframe for when he departed Germany. My uncle and Mr. von Pannwitz befriended one another that month in a displaced persons camp where they had been assembled awaiting passage to the United States. Both left for America on the 8^th of July 1947 aboard the “Marine Marlin” from Bremen, Germany, and arrived in New York City on the 17^th of July 1947 (Figures 9-10a-b); the two would remain friends until von Pannwitz died in New York City in 1966. (Figure 11)

Figure 9. “Alien Passenger Manifest” for the “Marine Marlin” with my uncle Fedor Bruck’s name showing he departed Bremen, Germany on July 8, 1947 and arrived in New York City on July 17, 1947

Figure 10a. Cover page for the Passenger List with Wolfram von Pannwitz’s name showing he traveled aboard the same ship and left at the same time from Bremen, Germany as my uncle

Figure 10b. Passenger List for the “Marine Marlin” with Wolfram von Pannwitz’s name showing he left Bremen, Germany the same date as my uncle, the 8th of July 1947

Figure 11. Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, far right, at my aunt and uncle’s wedding on March 4, 1958 in New York

Wolfram E. von Pannwitz was born on the 7^th of July 1889 in Botzanowitz, Prussia [today: Bodzanowice, Poland], approximately 84 miles northeast of Leobschutz, Prussia [today: Głubczyce, Poland], where my uncle was born in 1895. Beyond both having been born in Upper Silesia, my uncle and von Pannwitz shared other things in common; they were close in age, only six years separated them; both were from the upper class; both were veterans of WW; both were victims of the Nazis; and both were anti-fascist.

Von Pannwitz was a Lutheran member of the Prussian nobility, who had been a captain in the German Army during WWI. In the early 1930’s, von Pannwitz operated a large garage business and dealt in fuel in Berlin. Not wishing to join the Nazi party, he went to Paris to live between 1937 and 1939. He was forced to return to Berlin, having been declared an “enemy alien” by the French, although he was able to use family influence to return to Paris. Once returned, he became involved with the movement that attempted to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, an ultimately unsuccessful effort that forced him to go into hiding.

Figure 12. Else Petrea von Pannwitz’s baptismal record showing she was born on the 19th of February 1893 in Botzanowitz, Prussia

Wolfram von Pannwitz had a younger sister, “Else Petrea, Magda, Ernestine, Ottilie, Leonie, Gertrud,” born on the 19^th of February 1893, also in Botzanowitz, Prussia. (Figure 12) He married Clara Virginia Rohde on the 18^th of October 1920 in Berlin, a short-lived marriage that ended on the 28^th of February 1922 and produced no children. (Figures 13a-b) He remarried Frida Mueller in 1931, who died of cancer in 1934, another childless marriage.

Figure 13a. Page 1 of Wolfram E. von Pannwitz and Clara Rohde’s marriage certificate showing they married on the 18th of October 1920 in Berlin with a notation in the upper right-hand corner indicating they divorced on the 28th of February 1922

Figure 13b. Page 2 of Wolfram E. von Pannwitz and Clara Rohde’s 1920 marriage certificate

Let me briefly digress. During this Covid-19 pandemic we are currently living through that requires most of us to self-quarantine, I have spent countless hours listening to webinars on an investment service to which I am subscribed. In this context, an interesting fact about Mr. von Pannwitz caught my attention. Investing largely in aircraft stocks, he parlayed $15,000 he saved in 1948 and 1949 into $500,000 by the time he died in 1966. I find this interesting on multiple levels. He was heavily invested in the stock market long before this was commonplace, and seemingly followed a path to building his wealth by buying and holding stocks, a strategy the investment service I follow also subscribes to. He was also invested in a segment of the market, airlines, which have largely fallen out of favor, for obvious reasons, during the current pandemic.

Figure 14. The Hotel Seville where Wolfram E. von Pannwitz rented modest accommodations for $23 a week

Figure 15. Contemporary newspaper account from a New York daily discussing Wolfram E. von Pannwitz’s $500,000 bequest, split equally between Cardinal Spellman and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Wolfram von Pannwitz died on the 28th of January 1966 in St. Vincent’s Hospital. At the time he lived modestly in a $23-a-week 9-by 12-foot room in the Hotel Seville on Madison Avenue (Figure 14), known today as the “James New York-NoMad.” His death made the news (Figure 15), including the New York Times, because he left his $500,000 estate equally to Cardinal Spellman of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “HIAS.” While Mr. Pannwitz was not Jewish, his bestowal to HIAS was his way of showing gratitude to his Jewish friends for their professional and personal help during his life. His bequest to the St. Patrick’s Cathedral was, in his own words, to thank them for the “. . .strength and power [they gave him] to accomplish the hard struggle for this life.”

Interestingly, Mr. von Pannwitz typed his will, dated the 4^th of September 1958, on a conventional printed form. In the will, he stated “all my relatives, near or remote, shall be excluded from my inheritance, there being special reasons for this direction.” While none of the contemporary newspaper accounts discuss these “special reasons,” I know from my uncle’s November 1966 affidavit that upon Mr. von Pannwitz’s mother’s death, Gertrud von Pannwitz née Scholz in 1957, he was cheated out of his inheritance by his younger sister.

Based on surviving correspondence in my possession, sadly, Cardinal Spellman and the Catholic Church reached an out-of-court settlement with Wolfram’s sister, Elsa Petrea Reymann née von Pannwitz, after she contested the will. In the back-and-forth correspondence between my uncle Fedor and one of Mr. von Pannwitz’s friends in California, both expressed outrage that she managed to obtain any part of her brother’s estate.

Figure 16. German General Helmuth von Pannwitz in 1941, one of Wolfram von Pannwitz’s cousins, who fought for the German Army in the Battle of Stalingrad and later against Tito’s partisans in then-Yugoslavia

This would likely have been particularly galling to Mr. von Pannwitz given that he was estranged from his sister and because of his family’s connections to the Nazi regime. A certain Helmuth von Pannwitz (14^th October 1898-16^th January 1947) (Figure 16), also born in Botzwanowitz, Prussia and likely one of Wolfram’s cousins, was a German general; he fought in both world wars. In WWII, he was in command of a battle group assigned to cover the southern flank in the battle of Stalingrad, where he wiped out a Soviet cavalry brigade, a Soviet cavalry division, and an enemy infantry division. Later, Helmuth von Pannwitz established a Cossack volunteer force, the 1^st Cossack Division, which fought against freedom fighters in the Ukraine and Belorussia, before eventually fighting partisans commanded by Tito in Yugoslavia. During punitive operations in Serbia and Croatia, the Cossack regiments under Pannwitz’s command committed several atrocities against the civilian population, including mass rapes and routine summary executions. In 1947, the same year that Wolfram immigrated to America, Helmuth was executed by the Russians for these war crimes.

REFERENCE

Rzhevskaya, Yelena. “Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker.” 2018. Greenhill Books. London.