richardbrook@bruckfamilyblog.com, Author at bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 184: TIPS ON USING THE “HEIMATORTSKARTEI” DIRECTORY FOR DANZIG-WESTPREUßEN: A CASE STUDY

Note: This post will admittedly be of interest to a limited audience, mostly ancestral researchers looking for records related to their non-Jewish German ancestors displaced from West Prussia by the advancing Red Army towards the end of WWII. However, since people of Jewish descent were obviously embedded in their communities and invariably interacted with their non-Jewish counterparts as friends, lovers, neighbors, business associates and clients, etc., before many of these people turned on them, some Jewish readers may be interested, as I was, what may have happened to their ancestors’ contemporaries. This post provides tips on using the so-called “Heimatortskartei” directory for Danzig-Westpreußen. I show readers how to find records using as an example a family my father was friends with he originally met in Tiegenhof, giving a brief family history and discussing some vital documents I found along the way.

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART II)

POST 182: THE JEWISH ANKER FAMILY FROM DANZIG AS THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER DR. OTTO BRUCK

POST 183: FATE OF SOME OF MY FATHER’S FRIENDS FROM THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

My German friend Peter Hanke first made me aware of the “Heimatortskartei (HOK)” directory for Danzig-Westpreußen in 2018 when I was researching people from Tiegenhof my father knew as acquaintances and friends during the five years he lived there. Heimatortskartei literally translates as “home town index.” HOK is a systematic directory that lists the German population in the former German eastern settlement areas according to their place of residence in September 1939. Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the aftermath and destruction of the war. It helped displaced Germans to figuratively find their way back to their original home areas or connect with those from their former regions. Individuals from a particular “Kreis” (county or district) would register their names, addresses, and other relevant information with the Heimatortskartei, creating a sort of “social network” for those who shared the same origin.

When I originally looked at the HOK cards I was specifically searching for former residents of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], so Peter sent me links to two HOK microfilm rolls from there.

Link to the first part of Tiegenhof:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/008301757?cat=232907

Link to the second part of Tiegenhof and Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland]:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/008301758?cat=232907

The available microfilms reside on the familysearch.org platform. Organized alphabetically, using the Tiegenhof directory was seamless. I revisited these microfilms in writing the previous Post 183. Aware that some of my father’s friends and acquaintances from his years living in Tiegenhof were not in the HOK directory, it naturally occurred to me they might have lived in Danzig or elsewhere in West or East Prussia.

When I began looking at the Danzig-Westpreußen directory, I immediately realized it would be much more challenging to find HOK records for these areas. Unlike the HOK cards for former residents of Tiegenhof, the ones from Danzig-Westpreußen are organized by street address under each of the municipalities in West Prussia. I feared that finding addresses specifically for former Danzig city residents might require knowing which “borough” they formerly lived in, like when searching vital records for people who lived in Berlin. Daunted by the prospect of finding anyone absent an address and city sector, I again turned to my friend Peter for tips on how best to search the directory.

A brief digression. I was first introduced to my friend Peter Hanke through the online archive “forum.danzig.de” when researching my father’s friend from Tiegenhof who at the time I only knew by her sobriquet, “die Schlummermutter.” As I discussed in the previous post, Peter helped me discover her real identity, Margarete “Grete” Gramatzki. The forum.danzig is focused on researching and writing about people and places in the Free City of Danzig, discussing and answering members and reader questions broadly related to the area, and more. I’ve infrequently made use of the forum’s talents because the exchanges are primarily in German though members are very willing to help non-German speakers answer questions.

Returning to the subject of this post, when I asked Peter for advice on how best to search the HOK directory, I learned another very useful service the forum provides, namely, developing indices for finding records in various archives and directories. Peter sent me two links. The first link (Figure 1) is to all the phone and/or address directories since these were first produced for the municipalities in the Free City of Danzig; often multiple jurisdictions or towns are included in the back of the Danzig city directories:

https://momente-im-werder.net/01_Offen/01_Adressbuecher/Adressbuecher.htm

Figure 1. The portal page from the “Momente in Danziger Werder. . .” listing the various address and phone directories available for towns in the Free City of Danzig

The second link (Figure 2) lists the names of all the streets by municipalities in the Free City of Danzig. This link also identifies by microfilm number and page numbers where HOK records for people who lived on those streets can be found.

https://momente-im-werder.net/01_Offen/80_Werkzeug/Heimatortskartei/0_HOK.htm to get a first impression

Figure 2. The portal page from the “Momente in Danziger Werder. . .” listing all the municipalities (circled) which link to the microfilms and page numbers by street for each town

The top left item under this link is “Dzg. Stadt” (Danzig Stadt), city of Danzig. Clicking on this provides an alphabetical list of the former German-named streets of Danzig. (Figures 3a-b) Likewise, clicking on the other municipalities at the top provides a list of street names from former times for those towns. (see Figure 2)

Figure 3a. The portal page for “Dzg Stadt” listing microfilms and page numbers by street starting with letter -A-

Figure 3b. List of all the streets in the city of Danzig that once started with the letter -O-, including Ostseestrasse discussed in this post

As readers can see, the instructions are in German. I suggest readers translate them using the “Immersive Reader” function. Readers will notice that Address Books for some years are shaded in yellow. (Figure 4) These can only be read using the “DjVu Reader” which will need to be downloaded to your computer. Instructions are provided on forum.danzig.

Figure 4. List and links to all the address and phone directories available for the city of Danzig; those shaded in yellow can only be read using the “DjVu Reader”

Let me make a few points about the HOK directory. While HOK directories exist for areas other than Danzig-Westpreußen where Germans were expelled from following the end of WWII, this is the only area where the records have been digitized and are available online. To appreciate how daunting it would be to narrow one’s search for HOK cards for just Danzig-Westpreußen without the forum’s user tools, this directory alone includes 265 rolls of microfilm containing 1,000,000+ records!

The HOK directory is based on the 1939 census. While forum.danzig has uploaded many pre-1939 address and phone directories for Danzig and surrounding municipalities, readers searching the HOK directory should concentrate on those from 1939 to 1942.

A challenge the forum.danzig’s user tools can’t obviously address is when one does not know which jurisdiction in the city-state of the Free City of Danzig the person being researched may have lived. According to AI Overview, the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939) (Figure 5) included the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), and the towns of Zoppot (Sopot), Oliva (Oliwa), Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gdański), and Neuteich (Nowy Staw). In addition to these towns, it also encompassed 252 villages and 63 hamlets. When searching for someone in the HOK directory, it makes sense to begin by assuming the person lived in the city of Danzig proper, the largest municipality in the Free City, though clearly this will not always be the case.

Figure 5. 1940-41 map of the Free City of Danzig showing the major towns mentioned in this post

It’s worth pointing out that the HOK records for nearby East Prussia, which included the city of Königsberg [today: Kaliningrad, Russia], outside the Free City of Danzig, which had a population in 1940 of about 375,000 compared to Danzig’s approximately 400,000 at the time, have not been digitized. In 1940, Königsberg was considered one of Germany’s 10 largest cities. I suspect some of my father’s friends and acquaintances resided there as his albums include photos taken there.

The people who will be the focus of this post are Kurt Lau and his wife, Käthe Lau, née Pluskat, who my father first encountered in Tiegenhof, probably shortly after he moved there in April 1932. (Figure 6) My father also knew their sons, Peter (1923-2022) and Rudolf (1920-1944), though Rudolf was killed near Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] in 1944. My father remained friends with the Lau family throughout his life (Figure 7), a friendship my wife Ann and I continued until the death of Peter and his wife several years ago. (Figure 8)

Figure 6. Kurt and Käthe Lau at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] in 1935

Figure 7. From left to right: Paulette Brook, Lolo Lau, Christian Lau, Trixie Lau, Käthe Lau, and Kurt Lau in June 1963 in Deggendorf, Germany

Figure 8. In May 2012 in Oberhausen, Germany, me with Lolo and Peter Lau, Kurt and Käthe Lau’s daughter-in-law and son

I began my ancestral research around 2011, following my retirement, prompted by seven albums left to me by my father capturing moments in his life from the 1910s until around 1948. At the time I tried to make sense of who was pictured and their names, Peter and his wife, Hannelore “Lolo” Lau, nee Gross, both born in Danzig, were still alive. They were very instrumental in identifying people in my father’s pictures and relating stories about some.

Peter also told me about his parents, my father’s dear friends. I will briefly recap this and supplement it with what I learned or confirmed through my own documentary research. While I met both Peter and Lolo once as a child, it was obviously long before I developed an interest in ancestry.

The paterfamilias Kurt Lau (Figure 9) was born on the 25^th February 1892 in the West Prussian town of Thorn [today: Torun, Poland], located near the Vistula River. Kurt’s father was a customs house inspector who moved to Danzig following his retirement. Kurt worked for a bank before WWI. While fighting in Verdun, France he was twice wounded. I found evidence of this in ancestry. (Figures 10a-b, 11a-b) Following his second injury, he was transferred back to West Prussia to a town called Graudenz [today: Grudziądz, Poland], only about 40 miles north of Thorn where he’d been born. (see Figure 5)

Figure 10a. Ancestry cover page of WWI German Casualty List dated 18 May 1916 listing Kurt Lau as wounded

Figure 10b. WWI German Casualty List dated 18 May 1916 with Kurt Lau’s name circled

Figure 11a. Ancestry cover page of WWI German Casualty List dated 24 December 1917 listing Kurt Lau as wounded

Figure 11b. WWI German Casualty List dated 24 December 1917 with Kurt Lau’s name circled

In Graudenz, Kurt met his future wife, Kathe Pluskat (Figure 12) who was then working in a bookshop. A 1913 Graudenz Address Directory lists Kathe’s sister Ella and widowed mother Anna, with Ella appearing to be the owner of the bookstore. (Figure 13) The Pluskat family had previously lived in Gumbinnen in East Prussia [today: Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia]. (Figure 14)

Figure 13. Page from 1913 Graudenz Address Book listing Käthe Lau, née Pluskat’s widowed mother Anna and sister Ella

Figure 14. Map showing the distance from Gumbinnen (Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to Graudenz (Grudziądz, Poland)

Following Kurt and Kathe’s marriage in 1919, they moved to Danzig where Kurt went to work for the still existing Deutsche Bank. Their two sons were born in Danzig. The bank offered Kurt the job of managing the “Tiegenhofer Ölmühle” in Tiegenhof, which produced oil from the widespread rapeseed plant growing in the Großes Werder. The experience gained managing the mill in Tiegenhof allowed Kurt and a Polish partner to buy a different mill in Danzig-Neufahrwasser in 1937 (Figure 15), at which point the family returned to Danzig. As I mentioned in the previous post, as the Russians were approaching Danzig, Kurt shipped parts of the oil mill equipment from Danzig to Hamburg, and in 1948/49, from there to Deggendorf in Bavaria where the mill was reconstructed.

Figure 15. 1940-41 map showing Danzig and its surrounding suburbs, including Danzig-Neufahrwasser

More could be said about the Lau family but I’m merely trying to illustrate how I tracked down their HOK cards. Until I reviewed the notes I’d taken following my get-together with Peter and Lolo in 2012, I’d forgotten the Lau family had returned to Danzig in around 1937 so that their HOK cards would not have been filed under Tiegenhof. I’d also forgotten that I’d recorded the address of the home where they lived in Danzig, namely, Ostseestrasse 6. (Figures 16-17) Contemporary address books from 1939-1942 list Kurt Lau at this address (Figure 18), so had I not found my notes, I could still have retrieved his address. With the index that forum.danzig has developed cross-referencing street names and microfilm numbers, I quickly located the corresponding pages and their HOK card numbers. (Figures 19a-b) Absent this user guide, I would have had to scan multiple microfilms.

Figure 16. Painting of the Lau home in Danzig located at Ostseestrasse 6 done in 1972

Figure 17. 2012 photo of the still-standing former Lau home in Gdansk, Poland

Figure 18. 1942 Address Book listing Kurt Lau as the factory manager of the “Tiegenhofer Ölmühle” living at Ostseestr. 6

Figure 19a. Page 1 of the HOK directory card for Kurt Lau

Figure 19b. Page 2 of the HOK directory card for Kurt Lau

I already knew most of the information on Lau’s HOK cards. Often this is not the case. For example, in Post 67, Parts I & II and Post 183, I discussed the premature and tragic deaths of Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe, one-time friends of my father. The 1940 Danzig Address Book lists two addresses for Gerhard, presumably one of which was his work address. It required checking both addresses in the HOK directory to find the family’s cards. This is how I learned about the existence of their daughter Gisela, raised by Gerhard’s parents following his death, and how I managed to eventually speak with her and learn what little she’d been told about her parents’ deaths.

Admittedly much of the information in the HOK directory is now dated but, that said, can still provide ancestral researchers clues on possible towns to check for descendants.

A gentleman from Los Angeles whose Anker ancestors from Danzig were the subject of Post 182 had a great-uncle who had an affair with his cleaning lady. She lived in Zoppot in the Free City of Danzig. A child was a result of that affair. The LA gentleman has the former address and surname of the cleaning lady, but ironically, the HOK records for that specific street on which she lived were never scanned or destroyed. While ancestral research can at times be frustrating, it is the possibility that success is just around the corner that makes it so addictive.

POST 183: FATE OF SOME OF MY FATHER’S FRIENDS FROM THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

Note: This post is primarily a discussion about the fates, where I’ve been able to learn them, of some of my father’s closest friends from his time living in the Free City of Danzig. Knowing that some of these friends were Mennonites provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion begun in Post 121 on the connection of this religious community to the Holocaust, particularly to the notorious concentration camp in nearby Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland].

POST 3, POSTSCRIPT: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE “SCHLUMMERMUTTER”

POST 4: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 4, POSTSCRIPT: OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 5: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: “IDSCHI & SUSE”

POST 7: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE CLUB RUSCHAU

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART I)

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART II)

POST 76: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. FRANZ SCHIMANSKI, PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 77: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. HERBERT HOLST, VICE-PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 78: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, KURT LAU, JAILED FOR “INSULTING THE NAZI GOVERNMENT”

POST 121-MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS

POST 121, POSTSCRIPT: MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS—FURTHER HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS

If my father were alive, I’ve no doubt he would characterize the years that he lived and worked in the Free City of Danzig between ~1930 and 1937 as the halcyon days of his life. When he opened his dental practice in the nearby Mennonite farming community of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in April 1932, he was only 25 years old. He quickly developed a thriving business and joined various civic, community, and sports organizations in town. He had many friends and acquaintances, and an active social life. Never a practicing Jew, he nevertheless converted from Judaism to Protestantism while living there to “fit in.” Growing up, I remember my father telling me this was also the reason he drank so much during his years living in Tiegenhof.

It’s safe to say that the larger city of Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], where my father apprenticed, while still staunchly conservative was a more cosmopolitan metropolis than Tiegenhof and had a more diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. While I’ve been able to learn little about the social and religious background of his friends from Danzig, I’m sure they came from a mix of backgrounds including Jewish. By contrast, his closest friends in Tiegenhof were mostly Mennonites.

Given the widespread support for the Nazi Party among Mennonites in the Free City of Danzig that helped them gain a majority of seats (38 out of 72) in the 1933 parliamentary elections, it’s inevitable that my father was quickly “blacklisted” following the National Socialists’ electoral victory. Periodically, I contemplate how disconcerting and upsetting it must have been for my father and many persecuted Jews to suddenly be ignored or worse by Germans who’d only the day before been cordial, if not friendly.

Among my father’s closest friends during his years in the Free City of Danzig were people he commonly referred to as “the Schlummermutter,” “Idschi and Suse” (Figure 1), “Mochum” (Figure 2), and “Gerhard and Ilse.” (Figure 3) I had to work hard to figure out their surnames since my father was typically silent on this matter.

Figure 1. My father with Suse, the “Schlummermutter,” and Idschi in Tiegenhof

Figure 2. My father with his erstwhile friend “Mochum,” probably at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland]

Figure 3. My father in Danzig with Ilse and Gerhard in the early 1930s

The Schlummermutter (Figure 4), most often mentioned to me growing up, was an enormous woman, weighing over 200kg (~440lbs). She was a revered figure and like a surrogate mother to my father. He never once referred to her by name, only by her sobriquet. Knowing her date of birth from pictures my father had taken on her birthday in 1937, thanks to the help of my friend, “the Wizard of Wolfsburg,” I eventually discovered her real identity, Margaretha “Grete” Gramatzki (1885-1942). Because of her size, she was referred to locally as “Grete dicke,” “fat Grete.” Gramatzki is considered a Mennonite surname. The Schlummermutter ran a boarding house in Tiegenhof, co-owning the building where my father had both an apartment and his dental practice, at Marktstrasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. The Schlummermutter in Spring 1933 in Tiegenhof

Figure 5. The building in Tiegenhof located at Markstrasse 8 where my father both lived and had his dental practice

The Schlummermutter, born on the 13^th of June 1885, died on the 24^th of February 1942 at 56, relatively young by today’s standards. In one of my father’s last known photos of her, taken following his departure from Tiegenhof, she appeared to have suffered a stroke, probably not unexpected given her obesity.

Two very close friends of my father, Suse (Figure 6) and Idschi (Figure 7), lived in Tiegenhof in the same apartment building owned by Grete Gramatzki. I discovered from a day planner I found among my father’s surviving papers that they were related, that’s to say, the oldest and youngest sisters in their family. Their surname “Epp” is yet another traditional Mennonite name. I discussed the sisters long-ago in Post 5, so refer readers to that publication for more background.

Figure 6. Suse Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

Figure 7. Idschi Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

A 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book lists Ida Epp (Figure 8) as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at street level in the building then owned by the Epp sisters at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, previously known as Marktstrasse. As I discussed in Post 3, Postscript, a 1930 Tiegenhof Address confirms that one or both Epp sisters were business partners of Grete Gramatzki (Figure 9), rather than simply boarders in the building Grete owned.

Figure 8. Ida Epp listed in the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8

Figure 9. A 1930 “Kreis Grosses Werder” Address Book showing Grete Gramatzki and Epp in business together at Markstrasse 8

As the Red Army was approaching Tiegenhof in 1945, Suse and Idschi fled by ship to Denmark along with thousands of other Germans. They lived there in prison-like conditions, and that’s where Suse (1877-1948) passed away in 1948, at the age of 71. Idschi (1893-1975) eventually went to live in Munich with her nephew, Rupprecht Braun, and died there in 1975.

Given the close friendship my father had with the Epp sisters, he was naturally included in their social circle. One event he attended and took pictures at was hosted by Susie and Idschi’s brother, Gerhard Epp (1884-1959), at his home in Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland]. (Figure 10) Originally a Mercedes dealer in Russia, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gerhard moved with his first wife, Margarete Epp, née Klaassen, to Stutthof. There, he founded and operated an engineering workshop, where among other things, he provided electricity for the village and serviced agricultural equipment. (Figures 11a-b)

Figure 10. Gerhard Epp with his first wife Margaretha Epp, née Klaassen with their Great Dane “Ajax” in Stutthof

Figure 11a. Leadership of the Mennonite-owned Gerhard Epp firm

Figure 11b. Gerhard Epp and his daughter Rita Schuetze, née Epp from the leadership team photo

Let me digress and explain to readers how a recent query from a reader led me to learning more about Gerhard Epp and his connection to the notorious nearby Stutthof concentration camp. I think readers will agree that this is far more interesting than learning about the fates of my father’s friends. The recent query came from a historian researching the background of a Mennonite man named Johannes Reimer, an SS member from 1933 and an SS guard at Stutthof from 1939 to 1944. The researcher is trying to counter a not-so-uncommon narrative by descendants that their German ancestors were “reluctant” SS members and committed no war crimes.

I’ve never previously come across the “Reimer” surname so out of curiosity did an Internet query in combination with “Stutthof.” In the process, I stumbled upon a well-researched article entitled “Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation” written by Gerhard Hempel in October 2010 with multiple mentions of Reimer; it’s not clear all references are to Johannes Reimer, though I’m inclined to think most are. The author is or was a professor of history emeritus at Western New England College.

The collaboration of the Mennonites with the Nazis and their often-brutal treatment of inmates as camp guards was previously known to me, and, in fact, I delved into this topic in Post 121, specifically in connection with Gerhard Epp. The reader who contacted me found this earlier post. The reason I’m revisiting the topic of the Mennonites and the Holocaust is that Rempel’s lengthy article mentions Gerhard Epp several times and provides more detail than I previously knew.

Let me begin by telling readers a little about the prison camp at Stutthof. This was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof 34km (~21 miles) east of Danzig in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. This was the first concentration camp to be constructed outside of Germany. It was established in 1939 by the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel), an armed unit of the Nazi Party under the control of Heinrich Himmler. As an early stronghold of the National Socialists, Danzig had a contingent of 6,000 SS stationed within the area as early as 1933. This was expanded following a clandestine visit by Himmler in 1939 with the creation of the so-called “SS Heimwehr Danzig” and the “SS-Wachsturmbann Eimann.” The latter organization was tasked with developing plans for prison camps to accommodate anticipated arrests.

An isolated and secluded spot surrounded by water and swamps close to the village of Stutthof near the East Prussian border was selected. The initial barracks were begun and constructed by Polish inmates from the nearby Danzig prison in August 1939, with the first 200 prisoners arriving by September. The number of barracks was quickly expanded so that by January 1940, the camp held 4,500 prisoners. Eventually, the Stutthof complex included 200 outlying camps, so-called Aussenlager, and external commando units. The camp was under the command of SS Standartenführer Max Pauly.

A brief aside. My Bruck family is related by marriage to the Pauly family. I’m in touch with several Pauly cousins, so I asked one of them how and if we’re related to Max Pauly. He does not know. Suffice it to say that when one discovers odious war criminals with a surname like one’s own, sometimes one prefers not to look too closely into possible connections.

The prisoners at Stutthof included victims from 25 countries, including many Jews. Appalling sanitary conditions prevailed in the camps, with inmates suffering extreme malnutrition, disease, and torture. Many succumbed from the living conditions and the slave-like work; others were summarily executed through various means.

As noted, some of the Stutthof camp guards were Mennonites. It is worth noting that Stutthof was in an area with the highest density of Mennonite residents of any place in the world. Some Mennonite apologists have tried to minimize the role that people of Mennonite heritage played in the atrocities committed at Stutthof, but it has become clearer over time they played a significant role in the number of people killed there. Rempel writes: “Horst Gerlach [EDITOR’S NOTE: a prolific German Mennonite writer] emphatically denies. . .that any gas chambers ever existed at Stutthof, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, his optimistic estimate that only 9,000 people were killed at Stutthof is a huge miscalculation—the most recent research concludes that at least 65,000 victims died at Stutthof.” (P. 512)

Regarding one of Stutthof’s auxiliary slave-camps, Rempel notes the following: “The SS owned the factory, and the guard contingent was made up largely of a group of ordinary criminals and rowdies, many of them recruits from ethnic German communities in Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. But the worst characters were from Germany itself, among them two Mennonites.” (p. 518)

Very briefly, the larger context for the Mennonite participation in the Holocaust stems from the fact that many had earlier joined the counterrevolutionary forces of the former Tsar in Russia. With his defeat, the “Mennonites now found themselves on the losing side of the conflict as enemies of the new communist government.” (Rempel, p. 509) Stalin’s emergence and the period known as the “Great Terror” or the ”Great Purge” brought about a campaign to rid the Soviet Union of the so-called undesirable class. Mennonites were among the first to be targeted in the late 1920s, which led to a fraying of Mennonite communal life. As Rempel notes, “A decade later this trend [“moral and lawless indifference”] blinded many to the inherent evil of the carriers of National Socialism who came to Communist Russia in German uniforms as purported liberators.” (Rempel, p. 511)

Stutthof began as a camp for political opponents of the Nazi regime and socially undesirable minorities. Since the SS organization provided no financial support for expansion of the camp, the local SS command staff was determined to profit from the incarcerated inmates. Initially, land was allotted to grow vegetables and for animal husbandry, allowing the camp to quickly become self-sufficient. However, once it began to engage in local trade it started to generate profits. It became even more profitable when the SS command began to lease out inmates to work in public and private enterprises throughout the region. This resulted in the expansion of subcamps and special command units, all whose economic activities became SS-specific enterprises.

From 1939 until December 1944, Stutthof grew from 1.2 acres to 296 acres. It goes without saying that the establishment of additional subcamps was the result of an increase in the number of inmates. By 1944 Stutthof had become the destination of choice for transport from other camps and for those arrested after the Warsaw uprising. It is estimated that between 110,000 and 120,000 prisoners passed through Stutthof between 1939 and 1945. If the estimate that 65,000 victims died at Stutthof is accurate, clearly more than 50 percent of prisoners who passed through were murdered.

Theoretically Stutthof was a political prison, that’s to say, a forced labor camp for various industries owned by the SS or other government agencies. Holocaust scholars have tended to use “slave labor” and “forced labor” interchangeably, though some make a distinction. Slave labor included Jews working in concentration camps, death camps, and other work camps with the intent by Nazis to work these Jews to death. By contrast, forced laborers included anyone “who was compelled to leave his or her home in order to work for Nazi Germany.” As Rempel notes, however, “In any case, compulsory physical labor. . .was no less deadly than mass murder by gas or poison pellets.” (p. 516)

In June 1944, Stutthof was converted from a slave labor camp to an extermination camp. Outdoor furnaces were constructed to dispose of bodies. The crematoria were justified to eliminate dead bodies, but by 1944 Stutthof was nothing less than a killing center. Proof of this could be found in barracks built to “house” Jewish men and women transferred from eastern camps overrun by the Soviet Army that were merely walls with no internal furnishings. Clearly, arriving inmates were immediately sent to the gas chambers. (Rempel, p. 515-516)

Stutthof was liberated on May 9, 1945, the first camp established outside Germany and the last to be freed. The camp was dissolved on January 25, 1945, and the inmates forced to slog west on a death march that by some accounts resulted in the death of one-third to one-half of the inmates.

I’ve told readers more about Stutthof than I planned but let me move now specifically to a discussion of Gerhard Epp’s connection to Stutthof.

The direct involvement of Mennonites as guards at Stutthof has been well established by Holocaust scholars. What has also become clearer is the extent to which Mennonite farmers and businessmen exploited the inexpensive labor available from Stutthof. The inmates were particularly in demand during the hard work associated with harvest time. They received no salaries, although they appear to have been reasonably well fed and decently housed. The farmers had to pay the camps for use of prison labor, likely at a rate less than the going rate for unskilled labor.

As to Gerhard Epp’s role, Gerhard Rempel remarks the following: “A Mennonite builder, Gerhard Epp, for example, not only leased 300 Jewish slave laborers at Stutthof to build a new factory near the camp but also served as some sort of general contractor to the SS in assuming responsibility for the construction of all buildings on the premises. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that a Mennonite built the barracks for the first concentration camp on non-German soil.”

Epp’s stepson, Hans-Joachim Wiebe (Figures 12-13), whom I once met in Lubeck, Germany, was interviewed by the Mennonite researcher mentioned earlier, Horst Gerlach, to gather information about Gerhard Epp’s industrial machine factory. Quoting: “According to Wiebe, the inmates marched the two kilometers to the building site every morning and back again at night. Meals were delivered to the site from the camp kitchens.” (p. 523)

Figure 12. Gerhard Epp’s stepson and Rita Schuetze’s half-brother, Hans Joachim “Hajo” Wiebe, in 2013 in Lübeck, Germany

Figure 13. Hajo Wiebe in 2013 surrounded from left to right by his great-niece Paula Schuetze, his partner Gunda Nickel, and his niece Angelika Schuetze

Gerhard is mentioned yet again: “Gerhard Epp’s machine factory in the village of Stutthof was certainly the largest Mennonite employer of slave labor. Epp had endeared himself to the regime by building a home for Hitler Youth in Tiegenhof. His main factory employed some 500 prisoners from at least 1942 to the end of the war and focused on the production of various kinds of armaments such as small firearms. Epp’s factory, along with others, evacuated machinery and stock supplies to the West to continue producing armaments in a place safe from the advancing Russian Army.” (Rempel, p.525) Today, Epp & Wiebe GmbH continues to be a thriving business in the field of heating and air conditioning in Preetz, Germany.

Rempel’s mention that Gerhard Epp’s armaments-producing machinery was shipped West as the Red Army was approaching is the second case that I’ve come across that this took place. I don’t mean to suggest that the evacuation of industrial equipment from West Prussia was uncommon, quite the contrary. I mention this because the other case involved a good friend of my father, Kurt Lau (Figure 14), who came to purchase the rapeseed oil production factory in Tiegenhof. I’ve come across no evidence or accounts that implicate or connect Kurt Lau to the lease or use of slave labor. In any case, prior to the arrival of the Russian Army, Kurt evacuated his machinery to Hamburg Germany which was eventually reconstructed in Deggendorf, Germany.

Figure 14. My father (right) in Koenigsberg, East Prussia [today: Kaliningrad, Russia] with Kurt Lau (middle)

Kurt Lau and his wife Käthe were lifelong friends of my father, who he first met in Tiegenhof. They were Protestants but unlike other purported friends never distanced themselves from him after the Nazis came to power. In fact, Post 78 is the story of how Kurt Lau was jailed for three months for “insulting” the Nazis. I became friends with their surviving son, Juergen Peter Lau (1923-2022), who identified many of my father’s friends and acquaintances from his pictures.

One couple who were at one time my father’s excellent friends were Gerhard (1908-1941) and Ilse Hoppe, nee Grabowsky(i) (1907-1941). My father met them in Danzig when he and Gerhard were dental apprentices. Gerhard opened his own dental practice in Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland], located a mere 13km (~8 miles) SSW from Tiegenhof, but eventually relocated to Danzig. Both tragically died young under gruesome circumstances. I wrote about their deaths in Post 67 (Part I) & Post 67 (Part II). They had a son named Rudi and a daughter named Gisela. With the help of my friend Peter Hanke, I eventually was able to track down Gisela (her brother Rudi committed suicide in 1965). She explained what she knew of her parents’ deaths, and, while tragic, they appear to have been self-inflicted in Ilse’s case and an accident in Gerhard’s instance.

Peter Lau identified another of my father’s very good friends who I knew only as “Mochum,” but whose full name was Hans “Mochum” Wagner (1909-1942). My father’s photo albums include many photos of him, and at one time they were likely extremely close. He was a physical education teacher in the primary school in Tiegenhof.

I located the Wagner family’s “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. From this I learned Mochum was killed or went missing on February 11, 1942, in Volkhov, Russia [German: Wolchow], 76 miles east of St. Petersberg, formerly Leningrad. He may have died during the Russian offensive launched in January 1942 against the Germans around the Wolchow River. I recorded his story in Post 4 and Post 4, Postscript.

My father was a member of a social and sports club called the “Club Ruschau.” (Figure 15) My father’s pictures enabled the local museum in Nowy Dwor Gdanski to locate one of the surviving structures of this club, now privately owned. I wrote about this in Post 7. My father spent many hours socializing with its members, swimming, playing pool, bowling, ice boating, drinking, and partying. His friends included the club president Dr. Franz Schimanski (?-1940) (Figure 16), the vice president Dr. Herbert Holst (1894-?) (Figure 17), as well as Herbert Kloss and Kastret Romanowski (Figure 18), and likely other club members.

Figure 15. My father recreating at the Club Ruschau

Figure 16. Club Ruschau President Dr. Franz Schimanski

Figure 17. Club Ruschau Vice-President Herbert Holst

Figure 18. My father standing alongside two of his good friends, Herbert Kloss (left) and Kastret Romanowski (middle) at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] in June 1932

Franz Schimanski is often pictured holding a cane. Records indicate he was wounded during WWI. He was a lawyer and notary by profession. He died in 1940 according to his HOK card. The surname Schimanski is a Germanized form of the Polish surname Szymanski, suggesting the family had a Polish cultural heritage.

Herbert Holst was a high school teacher who, according to Peter Lau’s wife, taught in the Langfuhr district of Danzig after leaving Tiegenhof. His fate is unknown, and I’ve learned little about him.

Herbert Kloss’ destiny is similarly unknown to me. “Kloss” or “Kloß” is a common enough surname that without an HOK card for him or his family, it is difficult to determine his fate. He appears to have been about the same age as my father so was likely drafted into the German army. If this in fact happened, he could easily have died in battle.

Similarly, I’ve learned nothing about Kastret Romanowski. Using names of members found in the index to the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” an annual monograph once published for former Tiegenhof residents and/or their descendants, I wrote a letter to a woman listed named Clara Romanowski; her connection was through marriage so she could offer no clues as to Kastret’s fate. Romanowski appears to be another surname of Polish origin.

As I mentioned at the outset, my father’s circle of friends and acquaintances in Tiegenhof and Danzig was extensive. I’ve chosen to highlight a few of his best mates. My father’s photo albums include pictures of other good friends, but unfortunately there are no captions to help with their identifications.

As I touched on earlier, I often ponder how his relationship with non-Jewish friends and acquaintances devolved once the Nazis applied pressure on them to sunder their social connections and business associationswith people of Jewish heritage. I can only imagine this was initially shocking to my father until he realized how personally at risk he was.

REFERENCE

Rempel, G. Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation. The Mennonite Quarterly Review, 84 (October 2010), 507-550. https://www.goshen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/75/2016/06/Oct10Rempel.pdf

POST 182: THE JEWISH ANKER FAMILY FROM DANZIG AS THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER DR. OTTO BRUCK

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)

Note: This post is the result of a recent contact with a gentleman living in Los Angeles whose Anker family, like my father, once lived in the Free City of Danzig. Due to Nazi persecution, both of our families left there around the same time in 1937. Coincidentally, our ancestors were both singled out in a contemporary Nazi-era newspaper, “Zweischen Weichsel und Nogat.”

Followers of my blog understand many of my posts discussing snippets of information acquired about members of my family emanate from casual or regular readers. The previous post about the British RAF airman Joe Powell who, along with my father’s first cousin Heinz Löwenstein, escaped from a work camp connected to German Stalag VIIIB in 1943 is one such example. In that case, the particulars came from Joe’s son, John Powell; he highlighted some intriguing details about Joe’s capture after he and a fellow RAF airman were shot down by the Germans over the coast of the Netherlands, as well as facts his father told him about his and Heinz’s escape from Stalag VIIIB and recapture. It just happens they were retaken in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], a place my father had ties to as well the Anker family I’ll be talking about in this post.

The current post continues in the vein of presenting tidbits of family information acquired from blog readers. I was recently contacted by a Jewish gentleman from Los Angeles, George Jakob Fogelson. Having read about my father Dr. Otto Bruck’s connection to Danzig and Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig, George reached out to tell me about his own Anker family’s links there at the same time as my father lived and worked in the area. George’s mother was once a Danziger (i.e., resident of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state), as were his grandparents and great-grandparents. George’s great-grandparents were Simon and Henriette Anker, with Simon being on the Board of Directors of the Great Synagogue there for 15 years.

In conjunction with a family history George is currently writing, among his family’s papers he came across a copy of an article from a Nazi-era newspaper entitled “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937. (Figures 1a-b) This is believed to have been an insert to the “Der Danziger Vorposten,” a National Socialist journal. George’s mother donated the original paper to the Leo Baeck Institute. On page 2 (Figure 2) was an article which singled out George’s great-uncle Arthur Anker by name under a very provocative headline, “How Much Longer Will the Jew Anker Own a Farm?” As George aptly notes, the article was “. . .a striking example of the antisemitic rhetoric that had become normalized under Nazi influence.”

Figure 1a. Cover page of the Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937, mentioning both the Anker and Bruck families

Figure 1b. Header of Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Figure 2. Page 2 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” discussing Arthur Anker, George Fogelson’s ancestor

The article reads in part:

“Now that Jews and their associates, at least those living in the Grosses Werder district, have either fled or are packing their suitcases, it may be time to make the Jew Anker aware that the population expects him to return land in the village of Gnojau, which he currently calls his own, to German hands.

It is typical Jewish impudence not to have already drawn the necessary conclusions. It is a disgrace that elements alien to our land and our race are depriving native, down-to-earth German farmers of land cultivated by our ancestors—not by the Jews.”

George spells out what the National Socialists were ultimately successful in doing:

“This language—casually dehumanizing, racially charged, and threatening—illustrates how public pressure and propaganda were used to isolate Jewish citizens and drive them from economic and social life. Though phrased in the guise of communal interest, the article functions as a public denunciation, aimed at legitimizing expropriation and preparing the population to accept—or even assist in—the displacement of their Jewish neighbors.”

Continuing:

“Arthur Anker, a respected member of the community and former board member of the local synagogue, was not merely criticized; he was targeted as a symbol of everything the Nazi movement wished to remove from German soil. The article reflects the broader campaign of intimidation and exclusion that escalated in the late 1930s, culminating in deportations and mass murder just a few years later.”

Arthur Anker and his family owned the largest grain business in Danzig. In view of the deteriorating social and political climate in Danzig at the time, following a “family conference,” the family agreed to sell everything they had and take their money to America. According to a front-page New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938 (Figure 3), announcing the family’s arrival in New York headed to California, the grain elevators valued at $500,000 were sold for half of that; the family also sold all their buildings and land.

Figure 3. New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938, announcing the Anker family’s arrival in New York headed to California

Apropos the sale of property by Jews in Danzig, George notes the following: “In the final week of October [1937], a new decree was issued ordering the removal of all Jewish businesses and offices from the city’s main streets. Those who had been evicted were forbidden from reopening elsewhere. At the same time, a law was passed requiring special permission from the Senate for any Jew to sell personal property—effectively blocking any chance of a fair sale and ensuring that Jewish assets could be seized or devalued.”

I know from my father’s compensation file, a copy of which I obtained from the German Embassy in conjunction with my ongoing efforts to obtain German citizenship, that my father’s forced sale of his own dental practice, resulted in a similar devaluation of the assets, equipment, and inventory with him getting pennies on the dollar.

Readers may wonder about the relevance of the Anker family’s experience to my father’s own history. Surprisingly, on page 3 of the same newspaper targeting Arthur Anker, George found a blurb about my father (Figures 4a-b) that translated reads as follows:

“We wish to inform our readers that the Jewish dentist, Dr. O. Bruck, has left Tiegenhof. The practice has now been assumed by Dr. Erich Kendziorra, a German-born dentist.”

Figure 4a. Page 3 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” with the blurb about my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

Figure 4b. The blurb about my father from the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Clearly, the National Socialists felt the need to trumpet their success in forcing my father to sell his dental practice to a “German-born dentist,” though like many persecuted Jews he too was German-born.

The lead story in the issue of the “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” targeting Arthur Anker and my father was titled “Four years ago, the absolute majority of National Socialists, today the constitutional majority.” I won’t include the translation but will just quote from George’s family history as to what the publication effectuated:

“By singling out Arthur Anker and Otto Bruck, both Jews, the publication shifted from abstract ideological rhetoric to a direct personal attack—contributing to the broader machinery of social exclusion, economic dispossession, and ultimately, the path toward deportation and genocide. The safety and future of Danzig’s Jews were now under serious and immediate threat.”

Dr. Erich Kendziorra was previously known to me as the dentist who took over my father’s dental practice in Tiegenhof. Let me explain. The address of the office building where my father had both his dental clinic and where he lived was Markstrasse 8. Students of history know that during the Nazi era large cities as well as smaller towns and hamlets renamed their major streets as Adolf Hitler Strasse. Tiegenhof was no exception, Markstrasse became Adolf Hitler Strasse. A 1943 Address Book I have a digital copy of shows Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying my father’s former office, then named and numbered Adolf Hitler Strasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Page from the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book showing Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying the dental office at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, formerly Marktstrasse 8, that my father had formerly occupied

Curious as to Dr. Kendziorra’s fate, I turned to ancestry.com and familysearch.org. A database I’d accessed back in 2018 when I first investigated this question are referred to as “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. It helped displaced Germans to figuratively find their way back to their original home areas or connect with those from their former regions. Individuals from a particular “Kreis” (county or district) would register their names, addresses, and other relevant information with the Heimatortskartei, creating a sort of “social network” for those who shared the same origin.

While the need for the Heimatortskartei has obviously diminished over time, it continues to be an extremely valuable resource for genealogists and those interested in tracing their family history, especially in regions that were affected by displacement or significant population changes. Case in point, there is a Heimatortskartei for “Danzig-Westpreussen, 1939-1963.” Back in 2018, when checking this index, I happened upon an index card from Tiegenhof for an Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger. (Figures 6a-b) Usefully, it provides her date of birth as the 12^th of July 1911. The back of the index card confirms that she was the widow of Dr. Erich Kendziorra, whose birth date is also provided, the 12^th of September 1911.

Figure 6a. Front side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, Dr. Erich Kendziorra’s wife, showing she was born on July 12, 1911

Figure 6b. Back side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, identifying her husband as Dr. Erich Kendziorra, giving his date of birth as September 12, 1911, and the date and place of his death in Hungary during WWII

According to the Heimatortskartei, Dr. Kendziorra was killed in a place called Kaba, Hungary on the 17^th of October 1944. Presumably drafted into the Wehrmacht despite being a dentist, I assumed he had been killed on the Eastern Front battling the advancing Red Army. Such happens to be the case. Kaba turns out to be less than 40km (~25 miles) from a place called Debrecen, Hungary. (Figure 7) In October 1944, the same month Dr. Kendziorra was killed, the Battle of Debrecen took place. The siege of Debrecen was a significant part of the overall Hungarian campaign. The battle involved German and Hungarian forces against the Red Army, and while Debrecen was the main target, the fighting extended to surrounding areas like Kaba.

Figure 7. Map showing the approximate distance from Debrecen, Hungary to Kaba, Hungary where Dr. Erich Kendziorra was killed in October 1944

It’s unclear when Dr. Kendziorra arrived in Tiegenhof, nor where he came from. I located a fleeting reference to a dentist by that name in a 1936 address book from a place called Arendsee in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 721km (~448 miles) southwest of Tiegenhof, but am unsure whether this is the same person. (Figures 8a-b) What is certain is that his widow Erika died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried there in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf, interestingly alongside her husband. This information comes from Geneanet, and the date of birth and the name of Erika’s deceased husband confirm what I found on her Heimatortskartei. (Figures 9-10)

Figure 8a. Cover page from ancestry from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 8b. Page from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 9. Information from Geneanet showing that Erich Kendziorra’s wife died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf alongside him

Figure 10. Headstone for Erika and Erich Kendziorra from the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf in Berlin

Notwithstanding the fact that Arthur Anker, his siblings, and their children escaped Danzig, Leslie Anker, one of George’s cousins, estimates that no fewer than 28 descendants of Simon and Henriette’s extended family were murdered in the Holocaust.

I encourage readers to contemplate this post in the context of our ongoing political divisiveness and Martin Niemoller’s quote at the outset of this post. I don’t think any of us want to find ourselves on the wrong side of history by our descendants or future generations.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia notes three key facts about Niemoller’s statement, which begins “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out. . . “:

“(1) The quote that begins with the words ‘First they came for. . .’ continues to be used today in popular culture and public discourse. It has often been adapted to reflect current social issues and debates across the world.

(2) There are different versions of the quotation because it originated from Martin Niemoller’s impromptu public speeches.

(3) The quotation expresses Niemoller’s belief that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. He felt this was especially true of the leaders of the Protestant churches, which were made up of Lutheran, Reformed, and United traditions.”

REFERENCE

Fogelson, George Jakob (ND). “The Beginnings of Open Violence.”

POST 181: JOE POWELL, ESCAPEE FROM A GERMAN STALAG WITH MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN

Note: The son of an English prisoner of war whose father Joe Powell escaped from German Stalag VIIIB with my father’s first cousin Heinz Loewenstein recently contacted me. He shared some firsthand facts told to him by his father about their escape and eventual recapture.

POST 137, POSTSCRIPT-MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN, DISCOVERING HIS WHEREABOUTS DURING WWII—ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

POST 163: THE WARTIME ESCAPADES OF HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN, FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S BROTHER

POST 163, POSTSCRIPT: THE WARTIME ESCAPADES OF HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN, FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN’S BROTHER

Through my blog, I was recently contacted by an English gentleman named John Powell. His father, known familiarly as “Jack Powell,” but referred to as Joe Powell in a few books discussing prisoners of war from the English Commonwealth interned in German stalags, is a name I immediately recognized. In January 1943, Joe Powell escaped from a work camp connected to Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf [today: Łambinowice, Poland] with my father’s first cousin, Heinz Loewenstein. (Figure 1) Regular readers will recognize my father’s cousin name as I’ve discussed him in multiple posts. (Posts 137, 137-Postscript, 163, and 163-Postscript)

Figure 1. Group photo found by my friend Brian Cooper on Facebook of British POWs at Lamsdorf, astonishingly including my father’s first cousin Heinz Löwenstein

Naturally, John Powell contacting me provided an opportunity to obtain a few additional details about his father’s wartime escapades. Regrettably, Joe Powell left no memoir or diary of his experiences, and, like his comrades, rarely spoke of them. However, John mentioned a book by Chris Goss, entitled “It’s Suicide But It’s Fun: The Story of 102 (Ceylon) Squadron, 1917-1955,” that includes a few anecdotes his father related to the author, whom he knew.

At my request, John sent me a picture of his father in his flying gear taken circa 1942. (Figure 2) John also shared copies of two letters he obtained from the United Kingdom’s Air Ministry. (Figures 3-4) They describe where his father and a fellow RAF airman named Brian Treloar were shot down over the Netherlands on the night of July 8/9, 1942, and the Dutch farm where they landed by parachute. Fascinatingly, one of the documents was from the local mayor in Pieterburen, Eenrum, the Dutch town where the airmen came down. According to the letter, after landing they handed the farmer a scrip of paper with their names which he promptly hid and that was only rediscovered in 1950. The farm is where they remained hidden for a short period before they were taken captive by the Germans.

Figure 2. Joe Powell in his airman’s uniform circa 1942

Figure 3. Cover letter from the United Kingdom’s Air Ministry enclosing letter from the mayor of the Dutch town of Pieterburen, Eenrum about the airmen Joe Powell and Brian Treloar’s parachute landing there during WWII

Figure 4. Letter from the mayor of the Dutch town of Pieterburen, Eenrum about the airmen Joe Powell and Brian Treloar’s parachute landing there during WWII

John learned that the farm where the two RAF airmen landed is still owned by the same family. When the plane Joe Powell was flying on was hit, he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, the fragments of which were never removed and, surprisingly, never caused him any problems. The shrapnel came to light during a routine X-ray later in life and was a cause of great interest amongst the doctors who treated him.

Suffice it to say, these letters John generously shared bring the past to life in a way that is especially intriguing to me as a retired archaeologist; rarely am I provided such an up-close glimpse into the past.

In Post 137, I included an extensive passage from a book by Cyril Rofe entitled “Against the Wind” describing Joe and Heinz’s escape. I quote it again here:

“The first pair to escape were Joe Powell and Henry Löwenstein. Tall and ginger haired, Löwenstein had been brought up in Danzig and spoke perfect German. They had already been on one working party, which had been no use from their point of view. They had managed to get themselves sent back to the Stalag and then volunteered to come to Tarnowitz. As soon as they arrived, they wanted to be away. They were not fussy about their clothes, and it was easy enough to collect together all they needed. By the end of February they were ready to go. [EDITOR’S NOTE: BASED ON HEINZ’S PERSONALKARTE, WE KNOW HEINZ AND JOE WERE READY TO MAKE THEIR ESCAPE ATTEMPT AT THE END OF JANUARY 1943 RATHER THAN THE END OF FEBRUARY 1943]

On the morning of their escape they wore their civilian clothes under their battledress and overcoats. When groups left camp the men were always counted by the duty clerk, who handed them over to the guards, who also counted them. The guards were then responsible for the men until they handed them back to the duty clerk in the evening. The group to which Powell and Löwenstein belonged were working on the line just outside Beuthen station, about 10 miles from the camp, and travelled there and back by train each day. At the end of the day the Unteroffizier in charge always counted them before they got on the train for the return journey.

Joe Powell and Löwenstein had no difficulty in getting away at Beuthen. [Figure 5] Finding a quiet corner they slipped out of their Army clothes and walked away as civilians. They boarded a tram outside the station and travelled to Gleiwitz, where they caught a train to Danzig. None of the guards noticed their absence during the day. When the train arrived in the evening the men fell in quickly, the Palestinian corporal counted them rapidly and gave the full number as present. Before the guards had a chance to check the count the men broke off and clambered on to the train.

Figure 5. A map showing the approximate route Heinz and Joe Powell would have traveled by train between Beuthen [today: Bytom, Poland], where they escaped, and Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], where they were recaptured five days later

The Unteroffizier said nothing. Judging by his subsequent behaviour he had his suspicions but was not anxious to confirm them. He was a wily old fellow. When they reached camp he counted the men quickly, gave the same number as he had taken over in the morning and dismissed the men before the duty clerk had completed his check. The men broke off and entered the camp, while the clerk accepted the Unteroffizier’s figure as correct. The Unteroffizier had covered himself against blame.

Every night there was Appell (roll-call) in each of the barracks, the men falling into five ranks to be counted. That night Kaplan came around as usual with the Feldwebel and a guard, whose duty it was to count the men by walking along in front of them, checking that there were five in each file. Kaplan had it all carefully arranged. When he and the two Germans entered the barrack in which Joe and Löwenstein had slept, the men in the front rank were standing close together to prevent the guard from noticing the two empty places at the end of the rear rank. Kaplan talked to the Feldwebel, blocking his view while the guard started his count. As soon as he had passed the first few files, two men in the rear rank ducked low, ran quietly long the back, fell in again at the other end, and were counted a second time. The guard reported the correct number present and the Feldwebel was satisfied.

This was on Monday night. The next morning Kaplan, who arranged all the work lists for each day, marked the two escapees down on the light-duty list, so that they did not have to report for work at Beuthen. Kaplan kept them covered up until the following Friday, on which day I myself was working at Beuthen. During the lunch-hour the Unteroffizier came into the hut and asked for Löwenstein and Joe, the second by the name he had adopted. On being told they were sick he grinned all over his face and went out again. Apparently the Feldwebel had telephoned to ask if they were there.

When we arrived back at camp we heard that during the morning a telephone call had come through to the Feldwebel enquiring whether he had had anybody escape from the camp. On his answering in the negative, he learned that the police in Danzig had picked up two men using those names who claimed to have escaped from Tarnowitz. When the Feldwebel checked up he found the two men were missing and nobody had the slightest idea when they had left or how.

An officer came to investigate. The Feldwebel accused Kaplan of being responsible for this outrage, affirming that it was Kaplan’s duty to work with him, not against him and threatened to get even with him. This was right up Kaplan’s street. Not only did he inform the Feldwebel that he actually had helped the men to escape, but he added that he considered it his duty as a British solider to help anybody else who wished to escape and that he would do so whenever he could. Furthermore, he said, it was the Feldwebel’s job to guard us, not his, and the Feldwebel need expect no more cooperation from him until he apologized! Fortunately the officer agreed that Kaplan had only done his duty and managed to preserve the peace.

Kaplan had told them that Joe and Löwenstein had escaped on Monday, although he did not tell them how, and that he had covered them up ever since. They flatly refused to believe such a thing was possible until Kaplan showed them how he had done it.

There were no repercussions in the camp, except that thereafter the Feldwebel counted us himself at night, and for some days he and Kaplan were not on speaking terms. Kaplan refused to have anything more to do with the worklists. The result was chaotic, and within a week the Feldwebel was back begging to be ‘friends as before.’ This sounds fantastic, but it happened. Only a Kaplan could have brought it off, but knowing Kaplan one did not expect less. He was tall and bulky, and when one saw him ordering the Germans around he looked a veritable Gulliver among pygmies.”

John provided a few more details about his father’s escapades. Apparently, the Germans did not detail RAF airmen to work camps. Knowing that escape from the work camps was easier and not wishing escaped RAF airmen to successfully rejoin the war effort, they were kept together in separate barracks and not assigned to work camps. Nonetheless, Joe Powell was successful in swapping identities with a regular English soldier, which allowed him to gain an outside assignment. He appears to have escaped on at least two occasions from work camps, including the one time he escaped with my father’s first cousin, Heinz Loewenstein.

There appear to have been at least two things that worked in Heinz’s favor during his five or six escape attempts, unsuccessful ones mind you. He was born in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], and therefore spoke fluent and unaccented German. Secondly, according to various contemporary accounts, detailed in other posts about Heinz Loewenstein, he was a master forger able to authentically replicate official documents.

Given Heinz’s familiarity with the Baltic port city of Danzig, Heinz forged papers saying they were Belgian dock workers. The Germans were known to use foreign non-Jewish nationals for various tasks, so these identities made sense. For obvious reasons, during the train ride to Danzig Heinz did all the talking. According to John Powell, his father and Heinz miraculously managed to infiltrate the docks in Danzig upon their arrival there. They were hiding and waiting to sneak onto a Swedish ship when they were discovered.

I presume they were captured by a Wehrmacht soldier rather than by the Gestapo, the latter of whom were known to treat captured soldiers much more brutally and lethally. I say this because the German officer in charge burned their fake IDs, telling them they would otherwise be treated as spies, then tortured and killed.

John’s mother recalled receiving a letter from her husband during his captivity. While she recognized the handwriting and knew the letter was from him, she did not recognize the addressee’s name, evidence Jack Powell had assumed a false identity.

In closing, I will simply emphasize something I’ve previously alluded to, namely that gaining information about one’s ancestors may come from unexpected sources. What makes the kernels so intriguing is they enrich one’s understanding of the challenges our ancestors faced, particularly in uncertain and dangerous times.

POST 180: REICHSMARSCHALL HERMANN GÖRING: FROM TIEGENHOF’S MARKTSTRASSE TO PARIS’ JEU DE PAUME

Note: In this post, I draw a connection between two “encounters” my family had with the Nazi war criminal Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. This gives me an opportunity to discuss where so-called “decadent art” confiscated in France by the Nazis, including from my father’s first cousin, wound up and explore Göring’s role as leader of the “artistic underworld” during the Nazi Occupation.

From the window of his dental office (Figure 1) in Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in the Free City of Danzig, my father Dr. Otto Bruck witnessed and recorded increasingly large crowds of Danzigers (i.e., residents of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state) parading in support of Nazi candidates in 1933, 1934, and 1935. This culminated in the participation by Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in the 1935 procession. (Figure 2) My father’s unique pictures of the event that took place on April 5, 1935, capture one “interaction” of my family with this psychopath who played a key role in issuing orders that led to the Final Solution.

Figure 1. The office building in Tiegenhof, Free City of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937

Figure 2. Photos my father took on April 5, 1935, when Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring paraded through Tiegenhof

I recently discovered another indirect interaction of Göring with my family, specifically to artworks that once belonged to one of my ancestors. Though a remote connection, I’ve chosen to link it to my father’s 1935 “encounter” with Göring because it represents the culmination of an almost 11-year journey to repatriate on behalf of my family artworks confiscated by the Nazis from my father’s first cousin in December 1940 at the Port of Bordeaux in France. As the closest and only surviving heir, the task of recovering the paintings in question has of necessity fallen to me. While I have finally prevailed in my quest to have the three surviving paintings returned, I grapple with the existential question of whether I’ve simply attained success at the expense of obtaining justice? I’ve not satisfactorily answered this question, though one of my lawyers characterizes my achievement as “nothing less than a miracle.” I would only say that since France is governed by a civil law system, obtaining justice would have been an impossible bar to clear and would have jeopardized the success I have achieved.

Let me provide more background. One of my father’s first cousins was named Fedor Löwenstein, the oldest of Rudolf Löwenstein and Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck’s three children; Hedwig Bruck was my father’s aunt and likely the one he was closest to. Fedor Löwenstein has been the subject of several previous posts. He passed away before I was born so I never met him. However, I met his two younger siblings, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein and Heinz Löwenstein as a young boy in Nice, France. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Fedor Löwenstein (seated) with his sister Hansi, brother Heinz, and mother Hedwig on the balcony of their apartment in Nice, France in March 1946, several months before Fedor’s death in August 1946

As detailed in Post 105, in 2014 I uncovered a letter at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, outside Berlin, that Hansi wrote in 1946 to another aunt, Elsbeth Bruck, following her older brother’s death earlier that year. She mentioned that one of his paintings had posthumously sold for 90,000 French Francs, a sizeable amount of money at the time. In the process I discovered Fedor had been an accomplished artist.

After further investigation, I learned that France’s ministère de la culture, the French Ministry of Culture had uncovered three paintings by Fedor Löwenstein at the Centre Pompidou in the early 2010s that had been confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 and sent to the Jeu de Paume (more on this below); the three paintings were among a cache of 25 of his works originally seized on their way to New York, the remainder presumed to have been destroyed by the Nazis as examples of so-called “decadent art.” According to the information I discovered in 2014, France’s ministère de la culture is looking to return rediscovered stolen art to surviving heirs.

Let me provide more context. In 2014 my wife and I spent 13 weeks in Europe driving from northeast Poland to south-central Spain visiting places associated with my Jewish ancestors’ diaspora. Coincidentally, that year, soon after the Centre Pompidou recognized Fedor Löwenstein’s works to be stolen art, they were exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. (Figure 4) Given our extensive travels that year, had we known about Fedor Löwenstein and the exhibition, my wife and I would certainly have detoured there to see the artworks. Regrettably, I only learned of the exposition following my return stateside.

Figure 4. Cover page of the 2014 exhibition catalog from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux that featured Fedor Löwenstein’s three orphaned paintings

Online materials identified the curator of the exhibit, a Mme Florence Saragoza. Two days after learning about her, we were in communication. In her response, she wrote words that resonate with me to this day and probably will for the remainder of my life. Paraphrasing, she wrote words to the effect that learning that a descendant of Fedor Löwenstein survives brought tears to her eyes. While Florence and I have never met, a situation we hope to rectify at the upcoming restitution ceremony in Paris later this year, I consider her a friend who has aided and always supported my repatriation claim. I have tremendous admiration for her.

Given my background as an archaeologist, it was coincidental that at the time we first communicated Mme Saragoza was the Director of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, an archaeology, Velay crafts, fine arts, and science museum. (Figure 5) Today, Florence is the Director of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France. Florence’s familiarity with Fedor Löwenstein’s art given her involvement as curator of the 2014 Bordeaux exhibition was exceedingly helpful when she offered to help me file my claim with France’s ministère de la culture’s CIVS.

Figure 5. Mme Florence Saragoza when she was the Director of Musée Crozatier in le Puy-en-Velay, France

The CIVS, now called the Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisémites (Commission for the Restitution of Property and Compensation for Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliation), has three distinct missions:

to recommend measures to compensate for material and bank-related anti-Semitic spoliations that occurred in France between 1940 and 1944, exclusively based on referrals from heirs;
to recommend measures to compensate for the anti-Semitic spoliation of cultural property in France between 1940 and 1944, at the request of any person concerned or on its own initiative;
to recommend the restitution of cultural property looted in the context of Nazi anti-Semitic persecution, including outside France, between 1933 and 1945, when this property is held in a public or similar collection.

Let me shift gears and discuss the Jeu de Paume in Paris where works of art confiscated by Nazis from Jewish painters, private collectors, gallery owners, and art dealers living in France were shipped.

According to their mission statement, today, the Jeu de Paume is “. . .an art center that exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery (photography, cinema, video, installation, online creation, etc.) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It produces and coproduces exhibitions but also organizes film programs, symposiums and seminars, as well as educational activities. Jeu de Paume also publishes a few art publications each year. With its high-profile exhibitions of established, less known, and emerging artists, this venue ties together different narrative strands, mixing the historic and the contemporary.”

The Jeu de Paume, however, did not begin as an art center. It was constructed in 1862 in the Tuileries Garden as an area in which to play an early variant of tennis, the so-called jeu de paulme, literally the “palm game.” Nowadays, this sport is known as real tennis or court tennis, while in France it is called courte paume. Originally an indoor precursor of tennis played without rackets, thus the “game of the hand,” rackets were eventually introduced.

The relevance of the Jeu de Paume for the purpose of the present post was its use from 1940 to 1944 as the place to store Nazi plunder looted by the regime’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. This was the Nazi Party’s organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during WWII. It was under the command of the Nazi Party’s chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. The plundered works included masterpieces from the collections of French Jewish families like the Rothschilds, the David-Weills, the Bernheims, and noted dealers including Paul Rosenberg who specialized in impressionist and post-impressionist works. As mentioned above, the works of Fedor Löwenstein confiscated in December 1940 in Bordeaux were among those that wound up at the Jeu de Paume (Figure 6), 25 pieces of art according to the information gathered by Florence Saragoza from contemporary documents and included in my repatriation claim.

Figure 6. Details from the “Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume” about Fedor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Composition (Landcape)” drawn from a list of “Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg”

Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring directed that the looted art would first be divided between Adolf Hitler and himself. Towards this end, Göring visited the Jeu de Paume twenty times between November 1940 and November 1942. (Figures 7-8) The art dealer Bruno Lohse (1912-2007), art historian and specialist in Flemish and Dutch masters of the 17th century, attracted Göring’s attention because of his art knowledge. (Figure 9) He essentially became Goring’s envoy in charge of enriching his collection by tracking down the most beautiful works in French art collections. (Polack & Prevet, 2014) In conjunction with each of Göring’s visits, Lohse staged special expositions of newly looted art objects, from which Göring is known to have selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection; the remaining pieces were destined for Adolf Hitler’s unrealized art museum, the so-called Führermuseum, in Linz, Austria.

Figure 7. Hermann Göring entering the Jeu de Paume on one of his twenty visits there (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 8. Hermann Göring inside the Jeu de Paume (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 9. Hermann Göring and Bruno Lohse seated on a sofa at the Jeu de Paume (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 10 is a plan view of the Jeu de Paume. Salle 15, room 15, was specifically referred to as the “Salle des Martyrs,” the “Martyrs’ Room.” This is the room that was designated for so-called “degenerate art,” that’s to say modern art deemed “unworthy” in the eyes of the Nazis and slated for destruction. Much of the art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s professional and private collection wound up here, as did some, perhaps all, of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings.

Figure 10. General view of the Jeu de Paume including room 15, the “Salle des Martyrs”

Joseph Goebbels was the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He had privately decreed that the degenerate works of art should be sold to obtain foreign currency to fund the building of the Führermuseum and the wider war effort. Göring used this decree to personally appoint a series of ERR-approved dealers to liquidate the looted art and then pass the funds to him to enlarge his personal art collection. Much of the looted art designated as degenerate was sold via Switzerland. Unsold art, including works by Picasso and Dali, as well as my lesser-known relative Fedor Löwenstein, were destroyed in a bonfire on the grounds of the Jeu de Paume on the night of 27th of July 1942. This unparalleled vandalism was unfortunately not unprecedented; the Nazis had perpetuated a similar outrage in Berlin in 1939 when they destroyed 4,000 works of German “degenerate” art.

In a March 2014 article entitled “Bruno Lohse and Herman Göring,” the authors Emmanuelle Polack and Alain Prevet, discuss the art market in Paris under the Nazi Occupation. They characterize it as undeniably flourishing, the “. . .euphoria (being) . . .a reflection of a massive influx of goods taken from people of Jewish faith and from all opponents of the Third Reich.” The authors characterize Göring as the true leader of this “artistic underworld.” They use the French word “rabatteur” to describe essentially the “beaters” and “canvassers” Göring surrounded himself with, people such as Bruno Lohse, to flush out collections of great value.

I’ve included three photographs (Figures 7-9) in this post that immortalized at least two of the 20 twenty visits Hermann Göring made to the Jeu de Paume. They are attributed to German staff working for the ERR, either Rudolph Scholz or Heinz Simokat, both photographers at the Jeu de Paume. The one of Göring and Lohse is described as follows: “Comfortably installed on a sofa in a museum office, requisitioned for the benefit of the Parisian service of the ERR, under the satisfied gaze of Bruno Lohse, Hermann Goring carefully examines a monograph devoted to Rembrandt, most likely one of the publications of the German art historian Wilhelm R. Valentiner, a great painter’s specialist since his thesis in 1904.”

Preserved in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FR-MAE Centre des archives diplomatiques de La Corneuve, 20160007AC/7) are 14 negatives showing the rooms of the Jeu de Paume museum taken after November 1, 1940. This date corresponds to when the museum was made available to the ERR to store the confiscated works of art plundered by this organization in France. The shots were likely also taken by the photographers working at the Jeu de Paume. The photographs have been optimized thanks to a specific digitization of the details. This has allowed for the identification of 232 works of art. Among the 14 negatives are two photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs. More on this below.

A list exists of the works present at the Jeu de Paume at the beginning of 1942. The notes were compiled by Rose Valland (Figures 11a-f) and sent to her boss Jacques Jaujard on March 10, 1942; Rose Valland was an unpaid museum employee and the only one retained by the Nazis upon their takeover of the Jeu de Paume and was a clandestine member of the French resistance. The list translated into French, most probably surreptitiously, is an inventory drawn up by the ERR staff. It has the advantage of including a description of the looted works and providing the names of the people from whom they were plundered. The comparison of this list with the works visible on the two photographs of room 15 has made it possible for museum staff to identify many works that were previously unknown or poorly attributed. Figures 11b-c include a few details of some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated works of art from Rose Valland’s list.

Figure 11a. Page 1 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11b. Page 2 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art including details on some of Fedor Löwenstein’s works

Figure 11c. Page 3 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art including details on some of Fedor Löwenstein’s works

Figure 11d. Page 4 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11e. Page 5 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11f. Page 6 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

As confiscated art passed through the building, Rose Valland eavesdropped on German conversations and covertly kept notes on where the looted pieces were being shipped. Her records were instrumental in the recovery of tens of thousands of artworks, many of which were returned to rightful owners. Yet about 70 of the paintings belonging to the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, for example, are still missing.

Let me conclude this post by mentioning two ERR photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs, where some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated paintings were hung. Until recently, I was uncertain how many photographs of the Jeu de Paume existed. One picture I had stumbled upon, then lost track of, showed Rose Valland standing in the Salle des Martyrs. (Figure 12) Relocating this picture was of paramount interest because clearly visible in the background is one of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings, the one known as “Composition (Paysage),” which happens to be one of the three paintings I’ll be repatriating. (Figure 13)

Figure 12. Rose Valland seemingly standing in room 15, the “Salle des Martyrs” at the Jeu de Paume

Figure 13. Details and photo of Fedor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Composition (Paysage)” that I’ll be repatriating

Unable to relocate this image on my own, I asked one of my acquaintances at the CIVS if she could help me track it down. Of passing interest to readers but of great personal interest is that Rose Valland has been “photoshopped” into the Salle des Martyrs. If she was ever photographed there, such a picture does not survive; I’ve included an authentic one of Rose standing elsewhere in the Jeu de Paume. (Figure 14) The one I’d come across was based on a photo of Rose taken elsewhere where she was “inserted” into room 15. I include a copy of that original. (Figure 15)

Figure 14. Rose Valland in one of the rooms at the Jeu de Paume

Figure 15. The original of the photo of Rose Valland used to “photoshop” her into the “Salle des Martyrs”

The two contemporary authentic photos of the Salle des Martyrs both show Fedor Löwenstein paintings. So-called View 1 (Figure 16) includes two Loewenstein paintings. Photographed is a fragmentary section of an unknown painting (Figure 17), and a second one titled “La Ville Moderne,” “The Modern City.” (Figures 18a-b) Regrettably, the latter two were lost or destroyed. View 2 (Figure 19), the one where Rose Valland has been photoshopped into the image, includes the still existing painting “Composition (Paysage).” This is one of the three paintings I will be repatriating.

Figure 16. The so-called View 1 of the “Salle des Martyrs” where a fragment of an untitled work by Löwenstein and the painting known as “The Modern City” were hung

Figure 17. The description and view of the “Untitled Work” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 18a. The description and view of “The Modern City” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 18b. “The Modern City” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 19. The so-called View 2 of the “Salle des Martyrs” where Fedor Löwenstein painting known as “Composition (Paysage)” can be seen

Besides the painting “Composition (Paysage),” I’ll also be acquiring artworks entitled “les Peupliers” (Figure 20) and “Arbres.” (Figure 21) Neither of these paintings is pictured in the ERR photographs. Having personally seen the three paintings, it is obvious the Nazis intended to destroy them as evidenced by the fact that now faintly visible red Xs were scrawled across their painted surfaces. Whether Rose Valland played a role in saving Löwenstein’s paintings is unknown.

Figure 20. Fedor Löwenstein’s painting known as “les Peupliers”

Figure 21. Fedor Löwenstein’s painting known as “Arbres”

REFERENCES

Doré-Rivé, Isabelle. “La Dame du Jeu de Paume Rose Valland Sur Le Front de L’Art Sommaire.” “Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation.”

plan-général-dp2

“History of CIVS.” Premier Ministère, Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisémites (Commission for the Restitution of Property and Compensation for Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliation), Updated 19 April 2024.

History of CIVS | CIVS

“Jeu de Paume.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 21 May 2025.

Jeu de paume – Wikipedia

“Jeu de Paume.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 August 2024.

Jeu de Paume | Museum, History, Impressionism, Photography, & Facts | Britannica

“Jeu de Paume (museum).” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 13 March 2025.

Jeu de Paume (museum) – Wikipedia

Ministère De La Culture. “POP : la plateforme ouverte du patrimoine”

Vue 1 de la salle 15

La Ville moderne

Titre inconnu

Vue 2 de la salle 15

Paysage

Composition

Polack, E. (March 2014). “Rose Valland à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.” “L’Historire Par L’Image.”

Rose Valland à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale – Histoire analysée en images et œuvres d’art | https://histoire-image.org/

Polack, Emmanuelle & Alan Prevet (March 2014). “Bruno Lohse et Hermann Goering.” “L’Historire Par L’Image.”

Bruno Lohse et Hermann Goering – Histoire analysée en images et œuvres d’art | https://histoire-image.org/

POST 179: WHAT BARON CLEMENS VON ZEDLITZ, AL CAPONE, AND GUY DE MAUPASSANT HAVE IN COMMON, A RANDOM FACT LEARNED WHILE RESEARCHING THE CONNECTION OF THE BRUCK AND ROOSEVELT FAMILIES

Note: Photos recently sent to me by my third cousin caused me to investigate the Bruck family connection to former President Teddy Roosevelt’s family, and in the process learn a trivial fact and uncover some inaccurate information in a so-called “Roosevelt Genealogy.”

I was astonished to discover that “ChatGPT” (see end of post, Figures 22a-c) correctly divined the connection between Baron Clemens von Zedlitz und Neukirch and the infamous American gangster Al Capone and the celebrated 19th century French author Guy de Maupassant, a disparate group to say the least. Having thought I’d merely come up with a catchy title for my post, I was quickly brought down to earth by artificial intelligence. Let me be clear, I have no known ancestral connection to either Al Capone nor Guy de Maupassant, and only a distant link by marriage to Baron Clemens von Zedlitz. Regular readers may vaguely recognize the von Zedlitz surname as it came up briefly in Post 177.

The current post is inspired by high-quality pictures my third cousin Christopher von Koschembahr (Figure 1) recently sent, including several of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz. (Figure 2) Family photos for me are always an inducement to researching and writing about people, as they make them come to life. As I will explain, these photos caused me to further explore the connection between the Bruck and Roosevelt families. This is a link I’ve long known existed. I’ve never previously investigated this because the Bruck von Koschembahrs, through whom I’m connected to the von Zedlitz family and by extension the Roosevelts, dropped the Bruck portion of their surname upon becoming naturalized American citizens. Having never interacted with the von Koschembahr family means I never thought much about the connection to their von Zedlitz kinsmen. I don’t mean to sound dismissive but am merely reflecting reality and the fact that for me connections to German aristocracy are just coincidental. This may simply reflect the fact I’m American.

Figure 1. My third cousin, Christopher von Koschembahr, in July 2024 at Żarki Średnie, Poland with his family’s dilapidated castle in the background

Figure 2. Five photographs from a Facebook account belonging to a George Weissgerber, Jr. with photos of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz and family

That said, the hand drawn ancestral trees left to by my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, though very incomplete, include the von Koschembahr and von Zedlitz relatives. (Figure 3) I think this was intentional on my uncle’s part, as I think he fashioned himself an aristocrat and wanted to draw the connection to aristocrats in the family, even if they were only related by marriage. There are two photos of him taken in 1926 in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland] on horseback that illustrate my uncle’s self-perceived sense of himself as part of the aristocracy. (Figures 4-5) They recall a snippet in Amalie von Koschembahr, née Mockrauer’s diary which was the subject of Post 177. The quotation is about her son Stanislaus von Koschembahr, patriarch of the family following her husband’s death, when he greets his mother atop a recently acquired stallion. Quoting: “Stanislaus arrived on horseback; the horse was newly acquired, and we were supposed to inspect it. It was indeed a charming animal, and I was delighted to see my son as a rider.”

Figure 3. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s abbreviated family tree showing the family link to two aristocratic families, von Koschembahr and von Zedlitz

Figure 4. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in 1926 atop his horse in Liegnitz [today: Legnica, Poland] dressed as an English gentleman

Figure 5. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in 1926 atop his horse in Liegnitz [today; Legnica, Poland] dressed as Frederick the Great

To help readers understand the link between the Bruck and Roosevelt families, I need to first review the link between the Bruck and von Koschembahr families. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s (Figure 6) younger brother Wilhelm Bruck (Figure 7) married Margarete “Gretchen” von Koschembahr (Figure 8) and was henceforth known as Wilhelm Bruck von Koschembahr, as I discussed in Post 177. Wilhelm and Margarete and their five children were favorites of Margarete’s mother, Amalie von Koschembahr, née Mockrauer, who often mentioned them in her memoirs.

Figure 6. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck

Figure 7. My great-grand-uncle Wilhelm Bruck who married Margarete “Gretchen” von Koschembahr and adopted her surname in conjunction with his own

Figure 8. Wilhelm Bruck’s wife Margarete “Gretchen” von Koschembahr

The oldest of Wilhelm and Gretchen Bruck von Koschembahr’s five children was Gerhard Bruck. In Post 177, I included a very poor-quality photograph of his wedding in 1914 to Hilda Zedlitz und Neukirch (Figure 9), with whom he would go on to have thirteen children (Figure 10), all of whom were known in America as von Koschembahr. As readers will surmise, Hilda von Zedlitz was the daughter of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz. Baron Clemens von Zedlitz married Cornelia Roosevelt in 1889 in New York as reported in the New York Times. (Figure 11)

Figure 9. Wedding of Gerhard Bruck with Hilda von Zedlitz und Neukirch on the 21st of March 1914

Figure 10. Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr and his wife Hilda von Zedlitz und Neukirch with their 13 children

Figure 11. New York Times article dated the 17th of January 1889 reporting on the planned marriage of Cornelia Roosevelt and Baron Clemens von Zedlitz

One photo shared by Christopher von Koschembahr is an endearing one of Hilda as a child embracing her father. (Figure 12) Another photo shows Hilda as a baby with her mother, none other than Cornelia Roosevelt, a cousin of the former American President Theodore Roosevelt. (Figure 13) Another photo shows Cornelia standing alone. (Figure 14)

Figure 12. Hilda von Zedlitz as a child with her father Baron Clemens von Zedlitz

Figure 13. Hilda von Zedlitz as a baby in the arms of her mother Cornelia von Zedlitz, née Roosevelt

Figure 14. Cornelia von Zedlitz, née Roosevelt as a young woman

The “smoking gun,” so to speak, showing beyond a doubt the Bruck family connection to the Roosevelt family comes from Gerhard and Hilda’s 1914 wedding certificate where her parents are identified. (Figures 15a-b) Having none of my normally reliable translators currently available to me to translate the entire certificate, I’ve simply circled the relevant and very legible sections of it that show the Bruck and Roosevelt surnames. Interestingly, Gerhard Bruck, who would later adopt the von Koschembahr surname in America, still self-identified as a Bruck when he got married in 1914. Two of the witnesses at his wedding were his youngest brothers, Friedrich (1889-1963) and Heinz Bruck (1892-1915).

Figure 15a. Page 1 of Gerhard Bruck and Hilda von Zedlitz’s 1914 wedding certificate with the Bruck and Roosevelt names circled

Figure 15b. Page 2 of Gerhard Bruck and Hilda von Zedlitz’s 1914 wedding certificate with the names of Gerhard’s two youngest brothers, Friedrich and Heinz, circled identifying them as witnesses

Christopher sent several photos of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz including one with his elderly father Benno von Zedlitz with his stepmother Anna (Figure 16), and a charming one of Clemens with his sister Hedwig as children. (Figure 17) I turned to ancestry seeking additional information, specifically about Baron Clemens von Zedlitz. Here’s where things took a completely unexpected and fascinating turn.

Figure 16. Baron Clemens von Zedlitz with his father Baron Benno von Zedlitz and his stepmother Anna

Figure 17. Baron Clemens von Zedlitz as a young boy with his sister Hedwig von Zedlitz

On one page of a document entitled “Roosevelt Genealogy” (Figures 18a-b), clearly part of a lengthier compilation, was a notation about Baron Clemens von Zedlitz claiming he died in 1901 in a boating accident involving none other than the last German Kaiser’s yacht. This fact alone made Clemens’ death of interest to me. The last German Kaiser was Wilhelm II, and he reigned until the end of WWI in 1918. Regular readers may recall him as my Bruck family had several interactions with him during his reign and following his abdication after German’s defeat during WWI.

Figure 18a. Cover page from ancestry.com for the “Roosevelt Genealogy” discussing Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s purported cause of death

Figure 18b. Page from the “Roosevelt Genealogy” with the section circled explaining the purported cause of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s death and incorrectly naming his surviving daughter as Olga

The fact that Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, an aristocrat, would have been in the company of Kaiser Wilhelm II came as no surprise. As just implied, what was of far greater interest was that he was involved in a boating accident involving the Kaiser’s yacht during a regatta that resulted in his death in 1901, as the Roosevelt Genealogy claims.

Subscribers to ancestry may occasionally come across reference to newspaper accounts of contemporary events; typically accessing these articles requires a separate subscription to newspapers.com. I could tell from ancestry there are multiple articles about Baron von Zedlitz, so I asked a friend with a subscription if he could track these down for me, which he gratefully obliged to do.

Naturally, given the prominence of the Kaiser, I assumed newspapers of the time would have reported the boating accident. Sure enough, the Salt Lake Tribune published an article on the 19th of August 1896 describing the mishap in detail (Figure 19), and indeed a Baron von Zedlitz died as a result. The problem is that the news account was from 1896, not 1901 as the Roosevelt Genealogy reports. Also, a closer reading of the article showed that Baron von Zedlitz, notably no first name given, was crewing the boat with his brother, obviously another Baron von Zedlitz, again with no prename. Another detail noted in the 1896 article is that the Baron who died was not yet 40 years of age. Born in 1857, had Clemens died in a boating accident in 1901 as the Roosevelt Genealogy claims, he would have been over 40. Yet another clue something was amiss in the Roosevelt Genealogy is that his surviving daughter was supposedly named Olga; as implied above Clemens’ only child was named Hilda.

Figure 19. Salt Lake Tribune article dated the 19th of August 1896 reporting on the death of a Baron von Zedlitz that year with no forename provided

Since first names were not provided for either von Zedlitz brother, I was compelled to search elsewhere. Fortunately, I uncovered the death certificate for Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, and he did in fact die in 1901. (Figures 20a-b) Unable to read the certificate and ascertain his cause of death, I asked my German friend if he could decipher it. He found the cause of death not on the death certificate but on a contemporary Lutheran Church burial register, another document I’d downloaded from ancestry. (Figures 21a-b)

Figure 20a. Cover page of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s death certificate showing he in fact died on the 17th of October 1901 in Berlin

Figure 20b. Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s death certificate showing he in fact died on the 17th of October 1901 in Berlin

Figure 21a. Cover page from Lutheran Church burial register bearing Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s name showing his date of death

Figure 21b. Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s name on the Lutheran Church burial register identifying his cause of death as “Lähmungsirrsinn,” paralytic madness from late-stage syphilis

According to the church register, Baron Clemens von Zedlitz cause of death was supposedly “Lähmungsirrsinn,” what my friend thought might be “paralytic madness.” Having no idea what this means, I investigated on my own. I also asked my English fourth cousin, Helen Winter, née Renshaw, if a comprehensive German encyclopedia she recently purchased might have an explanation about this disease. Independently, we came to an identical conclusion, namely, that Baron Clemens died because of untreated syphilis, the final stages of which result in unpredictable behavior which manifests someone going mad. Since 1943, syphilis has been treated with penicillin or another antibiotic, though the first effective treatment was salvarsan (arsphenamine), discovered in 1909 by Paul Erhlich and Sahachiro Hata.

The realization that Baron Clemens died from untreated syphilis contracted much earlier in life recalled to me the movie “Scarface” about Al Capone starring Al Pacino. For readers who’ve seen the movie, towards the end of his life Al Capone exhibits increasingly erratic behavior, like what I assume Baron Clemens experienced. Helen’s own research had her learn that the famed French writer Guy de Maupassant suffered from and died from untreated syphilis. So apropos of trivial discoveries having virtually nothing to do with my family, Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, Al Capone, and Guy de Maupassant all died of the same condition. (Figures 22a-c)

Figure 22a. Part 1 of explanation from ChatGPT explaining the common link among Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, Al Capone, and Guy de Maupassant

Figure 22b. Part 2 of explanation from ChatGPT explaining the common link among Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, Al Capone, and Guy de Maupassant

Figure 22c. Part 3 of explanation from ChatGPT explaining the common link among Baron Clemens von Zedlitz, Al Capone, and Guy de Maupassant

One final thought about the misinformation I found in the Roosevelt Genealogy about the cause and timing of Baron Clemens von Zedlitz’s death. This is hardly the first time I’ve found incorrect ancestral information. The Russian proverb “Doveryai, non proveryai,” translated as “trust, but verify,” comes to mind. It was popularized by Ronald Reagan during nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union during his presidency. As I’ve regularly stressed, I strongly urge ancestral researchers to logically and systematically analyze data found in ancestry.com and on ancestral trees. Little should be taken at face value absent primary source documents.

POST 178: IMAGES OF MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-UNCLE JULIUS JONAS BRUCK (1813-1883)

CORRECTION ADDED ON 4/28/2025

Note: In this post, I publish images of my great-great-grand-uncle Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) spanning the period from when he was a young man in the 1830s to sketches done of him by his son on his death bed on the 4th-5th of April 1883.

My great-great-great-uncle Dr. Julius Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) is buried in the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu, the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland [German: Breslau], along with his son Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902), and their respective wives. Their restored headstones line an inner face of the wall surrounding the cemetery. (Figure 1) Jonas’ son Julius was the famed inventor of the stomatoscope, a water-cooled diaphanoscopic instrument for transillumination of the bladder via the rectum. (Figure 2) For this reason, his biography and photo can be found in Wikipedia, even on US Wikipedia. The Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław is one of the few places where graves of any of my Bruck ancestors can be found.

Figure 1. The restored headstones of Jonas and Julius Bruck and their respective wives in the “Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu,” the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland

Figure 2. Sketches of the urethroscope and stomatoscope invented by Dr. Julius Bruck, one of Dr. Jonas Bruck’s sons

Dr. Jonas Bruck was in his own right an accomplished dentist and is considered one of the founders of scientific dentistry in Germany and the author of one of the first textbooks on dentistry in Germany. Originally published I believe in 1856, it is entitled “Lehrbuch der Zahn-Heilkunde,” which translates as “Textbook of Dental Medicine.” He published another book in 1857 entitled “Die scrofulöse Zahnaffection,” translated as “the scrofulous tooth extraction.” Quoting from AI Interview as to what I think this was about: “Scrofula, or tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, is a type of tuberculosis infection primarily affecting the lymph nodes in the neck. While it doesn’t directly cause diseases of the teeth, it can manifest in the mouth and jaw area, and the presence of scrofula can complicate dental treatments and increase the risk of dental complications.” Clearly, Jonas was advancing a scientific approach to dental treatment of scrofula specifically as it related to its impact on the mouth and jaw area.

Despite Jonas’ prominence and my access to an extensive collection of images of my Bruck family, for the longest time I had no pictures of him. Relatedly, one of my cousins once gave me a picture arguably of Jonas. I never believed this photo was of him because it bears no resemblance to any members of my ancestral line. (Figure 3) Readers, I think, will agree that the person in question looks foreboding and menacing.

Figure 3. Picture of an unknown man given to me by one of my cousins falsely thought to be Dr. Jonas Bruck

The first image I obtained of Jonas Bruck intriguingly came not from any member of my family but rather from someone I now consider a friend, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who stumbled across my blog. (Figure 4) Besides being a medical doctor in Berlin, he is a phalerist, that’s to say a person who studies and collects orders, fraternities, and award items, such as medals, ribbons, and other decorations. This field of study is known as phaleristics. In former times, the medals and decorations were attached to sashes worn over the recipient’s shoulder, especially as part of a uniform or official dress, or worn on the lapel. Many readers have no doubt seen old photographs of individuals wearing their award items thusly.

Figure 4. Dr. Tilo Wahl (right) with his husband Jan Fieback-Wahl, and a statue of Emperor Franz Joseph

In any case, back in 2013, Tilo purchased at auction the medals and awards once belonging to my eminent Bruck ancestor from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937). (Figure 5) Walther was the subject of Posts 100 and 117. As I explained in those posts, Tilo acquired Walther’s medals and orders from Walther’s grandson, Nicholas Newman (1960-2015), whom he subsequently met in person. During their meeting (Figure 6), Tilo purchased additional items from Nicholas and took detailed digital images of Walther’s photo album. Tilo shared pictures with me of everything he acquired. Buried amidst all this paraphernalia was a high-quality photo of Jonas Bruck (Figure 7), Walther’s grandfather. This is the first picture I obtained of Jonas, but it would not be the last.

Figure 5. My esteemed ancestor Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck wearing his medals and orders on his lapel

Figure 6. Nicholas Newman (left), Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck’s grandson, meeting with Dr. Tilo Wahl following Tilo’s purchase of Walther’s medals and orders

Figure 7. The first picture I obtained of Dr. Jonas Bruck

Fast forward, a few years ago I was contacted through my blog by an English lady from Wolverhampton, Helen Winter, née Renshaw (1948-living), a lady I eventually determined is my fourth cousin. (Figure 8) Jonas Bruck was her great-great-grandfather, and her great-grandfather was Felix Bruck (1843-1911), brother of the previously discussed Julius Bruck; Felix was another of Jonas’ three legitimate sons.

Figure 8. My fourth cousin Helen Winter in her garden in Wolverhampton, England surrounded by her magnolia and clematis trees

Regardless, amongst the voluminous family materials she’s inherited are multiple paintings and photographs of Jonas, which I’m reprinting here with Helen’s kind permission. (Figures 9-13) Two even show Jonas on his death bed on the 4th and 5th of April 1883 limned by Helen’s great-grandfather Felix Friedrich Bruck (1843-1911), a gifted sketch artist. (Figures 14-15) In a future post, as a guest writer, Helen will discuss an endearing and detailed birthday card her grandfather Eberhard “Hardy” Bruck (1877-1960) drew for his father Felix’s 50th birthday, identifying all the family members illustrated. It seems that a talent for drawing ran in the family.

Figure 9. Miniature painting of Jonas Bruck as a young man in the 1830s that his wife Rosalie, Bruck, née Marle disliked because she thought Jonas had it made for another woman

Figure 10. Another painting of Jonas Bruck

Figure 11. Yet another painting of Jonas

Figure 12. Photo of Dr. Bruck taken in 1867

Figure 13. Yet another photo of Jonas taken towards the end of his life

Figure 14. One of two sketches of Jonas Bruck drawn by his son Felix Bruck as he lay on his death bed on the 4th-5th of April 1883

Figure 15. The second of two sketches of Jonas Bruck on his death bed possibly limned following his death

POST 145, POSTSCRIPT-OLD PHOTOS OF MY GREAT-GREAT-GRAND-UNCLE DR. JONAS BRUCK’S INN IN ŻYTNA, POLAND

Note: This is a brief postscript to a post I published in late 2023 including several images sent to me by Mr. Jan Krajczok, the Polish gentleman from Rybnik, Poland who assisted me in finding primary source documents about the inn once owned by my great-great-grand-uncle in the town of Zyttna, Prussia [today: Żytna, Poland].

Readers should refer to Post 145 for the background on the story of an inn that Dr. Jonas Bruck, my great-great-grand-uncle, owned in Zyttna, Prussia [today: Żytna, Poland], 120 miles away from Breslau, Prussia [today: Wrocław, Poland] where he lived. This was likely an investment property since he was a renowned dentist in Breslau.

Following publication of Post 145, Mr. Jan Krajczok, the Polish gentleman who assisted me in tracking down primary source documents for that post, sent me three images. Two of them show events that took place at the inn; one was the celebration of a national holiday (Figure 1) and the second was a wedding. (Figure 2) The third is an image of an old beer glass from the inn dating from the 19th or 20th century. (Figure 3) Jan estimates the pictures of the inn were taken in the 1920s. Both pictures include advertisements for Tyskie, a Polish brand of beer that originated in Tychy, Poland that has been in continuous production since 1629, making it one of the oldest breweries in the country. Polish flags can also be seen in both images.

Figure 1. Celebration of a national holiday during the 1920s in front of the inn in Zyttna, Prussia [today: Żytna, Poland] formerly owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck

Figure 2. Photo of wedding party taken in the 1920s in front of the inn in Zyttna, Prussia [today: Żytna, Poland] formerly owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck

Figure 3. Old beer glass from Dr. Jonas Bruck’s inn in Zyttna, Prussia [today: Żytna, Poland] dating from the 19th or 20th century

In the picture of the national celebration in front of the inn, the deteriorated state of the inn is clearly visible. The contemporary owners of the plot where the inn used to stand purchased it in the 1950s, tore down the dilapidated inn, and built their own house.

POST 177: SELECT OBSERVATIONS FROM THE DIARY OF AMALIE VON KOSCHEMBAHR, NÉE MOCKRAUER, WILHELM BRUCK’S MOTHER-IN-LAW

PICTURE POSTCARD OF CROWN PRINCE’S WEDDING ADDED ON 4/26/2025

Note: Drawing upon the diary of an Amalie von Koschembahr, née Mockrauer, a relative by marriage, I highlight some observations she recorded between 1897 and 1918 about contemporary events.

Wilhelm Bruck (1849-1907) (Figure 1) was my great-great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s (1834-1892) younger brother. (Figure 2) As discussed in Post 173, upon his marriage in 1884 to the aristocratic Margarete “Gretchen” von Koschembahr (1860-1946) (Figure 3), Wilhelm adopted her surname in the hyphenated form, Bruck-von Koschembahr. With the family’s arrival in America, the “Bruck” name was forever dropped. I ruefully think I’ve gone from what could have been a very large family to a smaller one on account of this.

Figure 3. Margarete “Gretchen” von Koschembahr

Margarete’s parents were Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) (Figure 4) and Amalie von Koschembahr, née Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 5) Curiously, Amalie’s younger sister, Friederike “Fritzel” Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 6) was married to Fedor Bruck; in other words, Amalie’s sister was married to her son-in-law’s older brother. In former times, such cross-generational “hookups” were not altogether uncommon.

Figure 5. Amalie von Koschembahr, née Mockrauer ca. 1904

Figure 6. Friederike “Fritzel” Bruck, née Mockrauer

Significantly the von Koschembahrs were not Jewish, though this did not prevent Wilhelm and Gretchen’s mischlinge children from being persecuted and forced to flee Germany during the Nazi Era.

Beginning in 1897 and continuing intermittently until roughly a year before her death in 1918, Amalie kept a diary. I became aware of the roughly 50 pages of her journal while researching Post 173. I obtained a typed German transcription of it from my third cousin and subsequently translated it using Google Translate. This resulted in a mostly very readable document.

Leopold von Koschembahr died at 45 years of age, but not before he and Amalie had 11 children born between 1855 and 1873. Amalie never remarried and reverted to her Mockrauer maiden name following her husband’s death. The children Amalie acknowledges in her diary are Hans (1858-1874); Stanislaus (1859-1914); Margarete (1860-1946); Leopold (1862-1908); Adolf (1863-1895); Elisabeth (1865-1865); Mathilde (1866-1931) (Figure 7); Max (1868-1890); Susanna (1869-1903); Erich (1871-1938) (Figure 8); and Friedrich Wilhelm (1873-1873). A 12th child I’ve documented elsewhere, Alexandra Mathilde Isidore von Koschembahr (1 June 1855-14 July 1855), died in infancy; this is a child I reckon was born before Amalie and Leopold were married. Two other children, Elisabeth and Friedrich Wilhelm, also died in infancy. Of the other children, Hans, Adolf, Susanna, Max, Leopold, and Stanislaus predeceased Amalie, with only Margarete, Mathilde, and Erich outliving her.

Figure 7. Mathilde “Tilchen” von Koschembahr in 1938

Select observations and noteworthy events from Amalie’s memoir will be discussed in this post.

A few comments before I launch into this presentation. In writing my posts, I’m ever mindful of the fact that I’m writing about my distant ancestors who are unknown to most readers. For this reason, unless the people’s stories are compelling, I’ll focus on the social and political context in which they lived and on noteworthy events or global developments they may have witnessed or written about that may be familiar and possibly of greater interest to readers. For example, Amalie’s observations on Germany’s expansionist aspirations are intriguing because they speak to Europe’s colonial past.

Another balancing act I have to tightrope is how much of the family “skeletons” to reveal. It is significant that Amalie self-censored her journal so that she removed some pages considering them in retrospect too inflammatory or disparaging. An example of pages she removed relate to the dissolution of her son Leo’s brief first engagement in 1901. Enough survives elsewhere, however, so that even more than 100 years after the journal was written, living descendants may retain some of the same sensibilities. I prefer to think that I’m not whitewashing my ancestors’ stories as much as soft-pedaling uncomfortable truths. I concede this may be a distinction without a discernible difference.

Many of Amalie’s observations speak to the weather, her belief in God, her health, and her relationships and visits across Germany to see her children and family; she also touches on the connection among her children. I consider these to be of limited interest to readers. Except where Amalie’s reflections relate to my great-great-uncle Wilhelm Bruck and his family, I won’t dwell on them.

Amalie appears to have been particularly fond and close to Wilhelm and Gretchen, and their five children, Gerhard (1885-1961) (Figure 9), Charlotte (1886-1974) (Figure 10), Marianne (1888-1975) (Figure 11), Friedrich 1889-1963) (Figure 12), and Heinz (1892-1915). Her brief vignettes of family gatherings with them are particularly memorable since so few written accounts survive of my Bruck ancestors. Wilhelm appears to have been very much adored by his family and mother-in-law. This reinforces the impression I have of some of my Bruck ancestors, namely, that they were charismatic, warm, funny, and extroverted.

At the time Amalie started to record her memoirs in 1897 she was already 63 years old. Until she moved from Berlin to Dresden in April 1902 to live with her unmarried daughter Mathilde “Tilchen,” her entries were recorded in Berlin. Her oldest son was Hans von Koschembahr (1858-1874) who died at sixteen and whom she lovingly remembered in an 1898 entry on what would have been his 40th birthday. Following his father Leopold’s death some months earlier in the same year, Hans would ordinarily have inherited the mantle as patriarch of the family. Instead this role was assumed by the next oldest son, Stanislaus “Stasch” von Koschembahr (1859-1914).

Notably, Stanislaus von Koschembahr was permanently transferred on the 1st of April 1898 to the German General Staff, also known as the Great General Staff [German: Großen-Generalstab]. This was a very big deal, as this was the full-time body responsible for military planning and strategy, initially for the Prussian Army and later for the German Army. Stanislaus was killed in Mulhouse in Alsace-Lorraine on the 9th of August 1914. At the time, General von Koschembahr was commanding the 84th Infantry Brigade.

An entry that Amalie records on the 6th of May 1898 speaks indirectly to Stanislaus’ negative attitude towards some of his sibling’s partners. When his younger sister Susanna Friederike von Koschembahr (1869-1903) got engaged to her future husband Friedrich “Fritz” Otto Freiherr von Ripperda (1864-1922), Amalie remarked that happily this marriage would not cause any conflict among her children because Susanna and Fritz would behave as relatives to Wilhelm and Gretchen Bruck. The implication is that contrary to the marriage of the latter, which Stanislaus opposed, he favored Susanna’s marriage. There are two ostensible reasons he did not approve of Gretchen’s alliance. First, Stanislaus considered Wilhelm to be non-aristocratic and second, he disapproved because Wilhelm was Jewish.

Stanislaus apparently held the same negative views towards his younger brother Leo’s selection of the “commoner” Alice Auerbach as his spouse; she too was Jewish. Here is what Amalie writes: “Since Stanislaus did not agree to this marriage, he behaved with reserve and, unfortunately, not in a friendly manner towards Alice. It was certainly painful for Leo to bring about a rift, but he had no choice, as he had to remain loyal and steadfast to his Alice. So there was another rift between the siblings, and it hurt me immensely. Of course, there was nothing we could do about it—we had to bear it and wait to see whether time and insight would help bring about a reconciliation.” Amalie later notes that Stanislaus and Leo eventually reconciled.

It is also noteworthy that Stanislaus (Figure 13) attended the wedding of Wilhelm and Margarete Bruck’s eldest son, Gerhard Bruck, when he married Hilda von Zedlitz und Neukirch (Figure 14a-c) on the 21st of March 1914. This suggests Stanislaus may also eventually have reached an “accommodation” with his sister and her husband, possibly because his nephew married an aristocrat.

Figure 14a. Wedding of Gerhard Bruck with Hilda von Zedlitz und Neukirch on the 21st of March 1914

Figure 14b. Gerhard Bruck on his wedding day

Figure 14c. Hilda von Zeidlitz on her wedding day

As previously noted, Gretchen and Wilhelm Bruck had five children. Amalie remarks on Wilhelm’s appointment to the Justizrat, Judicial Council, on the 17th of December 1897. Gretchen and Wilhelm appeared to have had a warm relationship. On his 48th birthday in 1898, and on subsequent birthdays, Gretchen wrote short plays for the children to perform that were the source of great merriment. The scenes are so intimate they are easily imagined.

Amalie’s diary, written as it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reflects societal approval of Germany’s colonial expansionism. She remarks very favorably on Germany’s 1897 takeover of Jiaozhou Bay [German: Kiautschou Bucht] in China. In 1898, a formal lease agreement was reached between the Germans and the imperial Chinese government. The Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory was a German leased territory in Imperial and Early Republican China from 1898 to 1914. It covered 213 square miles and was centered on Jiaozhou Bay on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula. The Russian Empire resented the German move as an infringement on their ambitions in the region.

Germany was a latecomer to the imperialistic scramble for colonies. Germany had two primary objectives, using the German colony to support a global naval presence and to support the economy of the mother country. Densely populated China was viewed as a potential market to be exploited with expansionist thinkers demanding an active colonial policy from the government. China was made a high priority because it was deemed to be the most important non-European market in the world.

Amalie remarked on how she was closely following the Spanish-American War of 1898, which had not yet been decided at the time she wrote. She may have oversimplified the cause of the war attributing it to “Spain’s poor economics.” The mysterious explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, which killed 266 American sailors, was the major catalyst for war. While the cause of the explosion has never been fully determined, many Americans blamed Spain. Sensationalized news coverage by American newspapers, referred to as “yellow journalism,” exaggerated Spanish atrocities in Cuba and inflamed public opinion, pushing for intervention. American business interests, particularly in the sugar industry, may also have played a part in intervention by America, prodded by businessmen who sought stability and continued profits.

Another contemporary conflict Amalie followed and remarked disapprovingly upon was the Second Boer War (1899-1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo-Boer War, or South African War. This was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State, over the Empire’s influence in Southern Africa. The Boers were descendants of Dutch colonists, along with French Huguenots and other European settlers, who established a colony at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. The descendants of the Dutch colonists are known as Afrikaners.

Amalie remarked the following: “It is the most unjust war that nations have ever waged, and the English are losing respect and prestige. How outrageous is their cruelty against a peaceful people who, through toil and tireless work, have created a flourishing empire.” Seen through a modern-day prism, the mistreatment and subjugation of the native population would render a more negative assessment of the Afrikaners.

Of scant interest to readers but of personal curiosity was that Gretchen and Wilhelm’s eldest son Gerhard was allowed to take a vacation to Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] during Easter 1900. Ratibor in Upper Silesia, as regular readers may recall, is where my father was born and where my family had a presence that lasted more than 100 years. Gerhard visited his widowed great-aunt Friederike “Fritzel” Mockrauer (i.e., Amalie’s sister married to Fedor Bruck, already deceased at the time Gerhard visited) while his father and sister relaxed in Krummhübel [today: Karpacz, Poland] near today’s Karkonosze National Park, which straddles the Polish-Czech border. This is a popular ski resort, and near where my father went skiing with friends many years later. (Figure 15) Given this is a place various members of my family vacationed over the years, my wife and I have decided to include it as a destination during our upcoming holiday in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Figure 15. My father in 1934-1935 in the Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains, Krkonose, or Karkonosze), same general area where Wilhelm Bruck vacationed in 1900

Another item of personal interest is Amalie’s entry that she was in Berlin visiting Wilhelm and Gretchen Bruck in June 1905 right before the German Crown Prince Wilhelm’s marriage to the Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the 6th of 1905. Wilhelm (1882-1951) was the eldest child of the last German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his consort Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, and thus a great-grandson of Queen Victoria.

I’m interested in this for two reasons. My famed ancestor Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] was the personal dentist to Kaiser Wilhelm’s second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (Figure 16), possibly the Kaiser himself, and other members of the Prussian aristocracy. More directly, the German Crown Prince’s wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, visited the flower shop and school owned by my great-aunt Franziska Bruck in Berlin. Official postcards and photographs exist of this visit, one I guess took place in the early to mid-1910s. (Figure 17)

Figure 16. Kaiser Wilhelm II, his second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, her daughter by her first marriage, and his entourage in exile at Huis Doorn in the Netherlands following WWI; in the middle of the group is my ancestor Dr. Walther Wolfgang Bruck’s wife, Johanna Gräbsch

Figure 17. The German Crown Prince’s wife, Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, visiting the flower shop and school owned by my great-aunt Franziska Bruck in Berlin

Amalie describes the Berlin scene preceding the Crown Prince’s marriage (Figures 18 & 21): “Even though, at my advanced age, I couldn’t see much due to the associated exertion, the general enthusiasm filled me with joyful participation, especially when my grandchildren returned home from their outings and spoke with delight about all the splendors they had seen. But at least I was able to admire the Unter der Linden boulevard, as Gretchen took a carriage for a ride. The street was transformed into a rose garden, and Pariser Platz, with its tall masts adorned with rich rose tufts in the sun, looked like something out of a fairytale. And the Opera House was beautifully decorated above all else. Long, yellow-tinted garlands of rhododendrons hung from top to bottom, and large bushes on balconies, windows, and corners, as well as the Crown Prince’s Palace, were framed with pink roses and greenery, even all the window frames. One can imagine there was no way there could have been such an abundance of natural, precious roses at the beginning of June, so everything was decorated with artificial ones. Despite the tremendous heat that had prevailed here for days, masses of people gathered in the streets and squares, participating in the event in our Imperial Palace with astonishing stamina and such sincere, enthusiastic joy that every heart had to rejoice. The young bride was immensely popular. The young couple, in general, won the full sympathy of the crowd through their friendliness they gratefully extended to the enthusiastic people. Our Emperor was also very pleased by his people’s joyful participation in the joy that moved his father’s heart. He expressed it in a wonderful speech at the wedding banquet; few can speak like this ruler with his great understanding, spirit, and kind heart.”

Figure 18. The German Crown Prince Wilhelm and his wife Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

Figure 21. Picture postcard shared by a reader showing the palace in Berlin on the day of the German Crown Prince’s wedding to Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the 6th of June 1905

In an entry Amalie recorded on the 13th of October 1906 she reflects on her life. In part she writes:

“My upbringing was such that I lacked any practical experience, and this became particularly detrimental to me now that, at the age of 21, when I married, I found myself in circumstances of which I had no idea. My upbringing at home was, in terms of education and the formation of the heart, the best imaginable and even astonishing for that time in the early 19th century, in a simple middle-class home. . .My parents valued decency and morals, raised us very modestly and unpretentiously, but never discussed in depth our future and our destiny in the event of marriage [Editor’s note: this is a criticism of the complete lack of knowledge in sexual matters]. Such matters were strictly kept at arm’s length, as was business knowledge, which must be important to a woman.”

She continues, characterizing her husband’s equal level of idealism and inexperience, and the detrimental effects:

“The great inclination and enthusiasm of youth prevailed. My husband, at 26, was just as idealistic and inexperienced as I was, and we lived like children in fairy tales. The awakening was very bitter, and since my husband never explained or confided in me the financial situation we were living in, I only learned in outline about the situation, which had already been poor when I married. The estate of Mittel-Sohra near Görlitz was too large for the means available to my husband, and since I received only a very small dowry, it was too difficult to maintain myself there. The estate was beautiful and, as I imagined, a profitable property, but it required a great deal of diligence, energy, and enthusiasm to make progress, even with extreme frugality. My husband lacked all of this, and I was far too inexperienced to support and encourage him as a loyal companion.”

Ultimately, notwithstanding the fact that Leopold von Koschembahr’s mother gave him money to pay the usurious rates to which he was subjected, creditors repossessed their home in 1856-57. Having saved the capital the couple had received from Leopold’s mother, they began to search for a house in Amalie’s hometown of Tost [today: Toszek, Poland] in Upper Silesia. While waiting for the proper opportunity to buy another estate, Amalie ruefully notes Leopold was led “. . .to the incredible idea of investing the money in speculative securities. At the time, the Union War was raging in America, and American securities were being traded. My husband speculated with these securities and lost all his money. That was a terrible blow—for we were not only penniless, but there were also differences to be paid, for which we didn’t have the money. Now, the courts were still at risk of seizing all our belongings.” Friends and relatives, fortunately, pooled money to help the couple pay their debts and lease a property near Posen [today: Poznań, Poland]. However, because of Leopold’s character, as Amalie describes it, “. . .a serious, steady mind was out of the question. He was composed of kindness and great weakness, an invincible stubbornness and idealism.” Because of Leopold’s failings, the couple eventually also lost the lease on the estate near Posen. Suffice it to say that while Leopold may have been an entitled member of the aristocracy, he was imbued with a terrible business sense.

Given her fondness for her son-in-law, my great-great-uncle Wilhelm Bruck, expectedly Amalie remarks on his sudden death on the 15th of February 1907, then again in 1909 on the anniversary of his death. Naturally, she records the deaths of her daughter Susanna in 1903 and her son Leo in 1908, bemoaning the fact she’s outlived them.

Interestingly, Amalie remarks on the celebration of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s birthday on the 27th of January 1909, a fact that will seem curious to an American audience. Unlike our American President, the German Kaiser was seen as the embodiment of German national identity and the leader who would guide the nation towards greatness. Initially, the Kaiser was seen as a symbol of national unity and strength, but his personality and policies, particularly as they impacted the First World War, led to a shift in perception.

Among Amalie Mockrauer’s siblings was a younger sister named Rosalie Mockrauer (1844-1927) (Figure 19) who was married to Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916) (Figure 20), the subject of Post 56. Rosalie and Josef lived in Posen [today: Poznań, Poland] and had nine children, eight of whom were girls. Suffice it to say, that many of the distant cousins whom I’ve found and am presently in contact with, are related to me directly or indirectly through the Mockrauers or their in-laws (e.g., Pauly, Kantorowicz).

Amalie died in August 1918, shortly before World War I ended in November 1918. Surprisingly, she makes no mention in her diary of the war, only a passing reference in 1909 of the unrest among Serbian nationalists against Austro-Hungarian rule. World War I was later sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

There is so much more I could extract from Amalie’s memoir, but I’ve simply highlighted a few items to discuss that transcend my own family, hoping this might be of slightly greater interest to readers.

POST 176: THE IMPROBABLE DISCOVERY OF PLANE CRASH PHOTOS FROM THE ACCIDENT THAT KILLED MY GREAT-UNCLE RUDOLF LÖWENSTEIN IN 1930

Note: This post is yet another example of a reader supplementing what’s known about some person, event, or place I’ve written about. In this case, the reader directed me to the website of the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A) where he astonishingly found contemporary plane crash photos of the aircraft my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was traveling on when he was killed on the 22nd of August 1930 in then-Czechoslovakia.

In the recently published Post 174, I discussed the Rudolf Mosse “Annoncen-Expedition-Reklame-Büro,” the advertising expedition/agency for which my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was the General Agent. I think he worked for Rudolf Mosse & Co. in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] from around 1905 until his untimely death in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930 in what is today the Czech Republic.

Following publication of Post 174, my friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen, sent an email with some positive words. He included a link to information about the accident. Several years ago, my “other” Peter friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsberg,” had previously found and sent me and translated news clippings from several contemporary German newspapers with accounts of the August 1930 plane accident. I erroneously assumed the new link was merely to another article. It turned out to be something much more engrossing.

This is a good moment for a brief digression to give another “shout out” to the readers of my blog. It has happened on more occasions than I can recall that readers have found and/or brought to my attention information, websites, visuals, artifacts, etc. related to people, events, and places I’ve written about. In many instances I would never have found these on my own nor knew they exist.

In the current instance, Peter Albrecht included the link to the website of the so-called Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A), which according to the founder of the website, Mr. Ronan Hubert, was established in 1990 for the purpose of dealing with all information related to aviation accidentology. Mr. Ronan self describes as a “Historian in aircraft accidents. Aviation accidentologist. Specialized in psychological preparedness for mass disaster and human factor.” He further writes that “The primary goal of the B3A is to collect, manage and archive all information relating to aviation accidents worldwide since 1918 till [sic] today. Therefore, its records is [sic] currently composed of thousands of documents, reports, photos, etc. representing to date more than 34,400 events.”

Crash of a Ford 5 in Jihlava: 12 killed | Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives

Astonishingly, the B3A website includes one photo of the Ford 5 aircraft (Figure 1) on which my great-uncle Rudolf was traveling on the fateful day he died, plus six contemporary photos of the crash. (Figures 2-7) The plane crashed near Jihlava, Czech Republic [German: Iglau]. Details of the plane, the year it was made, the operator of the airline, the number of crew and passengers, the number/of fatalities among the crew and passengers, the captain’s hours of flying experience, the itinerary, etc. are provided. (Figure 8)

Figure 1. The Ford 5 Tri-motor plane Rudolf Löwenstein was traveling on the day he was killed in August 1930 (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 2. 2nd photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 3. 3rd photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 4. 4th photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 5. 5th photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 6. 6th photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 7. 7th photo of the plane accident that killed Rudolf Löwenstein (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

Figure 8. Details from the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives of the Ford Tri-motor plane my great-uncle Rudolf Löwenstein was flying on the day he was killed in August 1930 (© Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)

The circumstances surrounding the plane accident are also described:

“The aircraft departed Prague-Kbely Airport at 1505LT on a flight to Bratislava with an intermediate stop in Brno. While cruising at a height of 700 metres, weather conditions worsened, and the captain decided first to reduce his altitude. Shortly later, he realized the weather conditions were becoming worse and worse with thunderstorm activity. Due to low visibility, he decided to make a 180 turn to go back to Prague. While flying at a height estimated between 15 and 20 metres in limited visibility, he saw the chimney of a brickwork and made a sharp turn to the left to avoid the collision. Doing so, the aircraft stalled and hit the roof of a farmhouse then crashed half in a garden. While a passenger (Professor Vojtěch Kraus) was seriously injured, all 12 other occupants were killed. Up to date, this accident was considered as the worst involving CSA Czech Airlines since its creation in 1923.”

The names of the crew and passengers are given.

Crew:
Josef Sedlář, pilot,
Josef Trafina, mechanic.

Passengers:
Ing. Mirko Káš,
Ing. Vojtěch Jokl,
Anton Müller,
Vladislaw Müller,
Rudolf Vonka,
Boh. Jarolímek,
Ing. Bernard Eimann,
Judr. Anton Hamrle,
Prof. Vojtěch Kraus,
Marie Rybníčková,
Mr. Lowenstein.

As readers can see, my great-uncle “Mr. Lowenstein” was among the passenger fatalities.

According to the contemporary newspaper accounts, translated in Post 71, of the aircraft accident which killed Rudolf and the other passengers and crews, the impact of the plane drilling into the ground was so violent that the petrol tank exploded. The plane was enveloped in a sea of flames. Even though it was raining heavily at the time, the roof of the house into which the plane crashed also caught fire. While the fire brigade extinguished the fire, help came too late. Of the 13 passenger and crew on board, 12 were killed. While the plane’s fuselage appears to have been largely intact, the engine was completely destroyed.

Most people are not apt to have had relatives, friends, or acquaintances killed in a plane crash, but for those rare readers who have lost someone in this manner, it’s intriguing to realize that a website exists which tracks this information.