richardbrook@bruckfamilyblog.com, Author at bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 62, POSTSCRIPT: THE FAR-REACHING SEARCH FOR MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER—FURTHER PROOF OF HEINZ’S EXISTENCE

Note: In this postscript, I discuss some intriguing new information that has come to light about Heinz Ludwig Berliner since publication of the original post, details of which bring me closer to determining his fate.

Post 62: The Far-Flung Search for My Father’s First Cousin, Heinz Ludwig Berliner

I can never predict when or from where further traces of ancestors I’ve written about in earlier posts may materialize. In my original publication, I explained to readers the challenges I encountered trying to uncover concrete evidence of Heinz Ludwig Berliner, one of my father’s first cousins. I first learned about him from a fleeting reference in a document written by my third cousin Larry Leyser’s grandmother detailing the fate of some of our family’s ancestors. His grandmother briefly remarked Heinz Berliner immigrated to some unspecified country in South America after WWII, where he purportedly committed suicide.

Figure 1. Cover of March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” showing Heinz Berliner’s stage name, “Enry Berloc,” along with the names of his co-performers, “Witha Herm” and “Maestro Kurt Kohn”

As discussed in the original post, I was able to confirm Heinz Ludwig Berliner’s appearance in South America through the cover of a playbill (Figure 1) sent to me by Tema Goetzel née Comac, the wife of Heinz’s nephew; the playbill showed that Heinz, using his stage name “Enry Berloc,” had performed at the “Teatro Municipal,” in an unspecified South American country, on the 19^th of March 1948 in the accompaniment of a “Witha Herm” and the “Maestro Kurt Kohn.” More on this later.

For two reasons, I never imagined it would be so difficult to track Heinz’s movements and eventual destination. First, both of Heinz’ s siblings, Ilse (Figure 2) and Peter Berliner (Figure 3), wound up in New York and were known to me since childhood. And, second, as alluded to above, I’m in touch with descendants of Heinz’s siblings, and assumed they would have letters or documents showing where he’d wound up; initially, all they found was the playbill cover to the 1948 recital in which Enry Berloc performed.

Figure 2. Heinz Berliner’s older sister, Pauline Ilse Berliner (1911-1981), standing alongside my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

Figure 3. Heinz Berliner’s older brother, Peter Berliner (1910-1977)

Heinz’s siblings were born in the same town in Upper Silesia where my father had been born, Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], and I was able to locate both of their birth certificates when I visited the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”; vexingly, on two separate visits I could never find Heinz’s birth record, though it was logical to assume he too had been born in Ratibor. I even asked my Polish historian friend in Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, to confirm my negative findings, and his initial efforts were similarly fruitless. As previously discussed, I began to think Heinz may have been born earlier out-of-wedlock and/or born in the town where his parents had married, Meseritz [today: Międzyrzecz, Poland]. I even contacted the archives there but was told the on-line birth records would not be available until this current year; this is on account of Poland’s legal requirement prohibiting the release of birth certificates until 110 years after a person’s birth, so in the case of Heinz possibly soon after his parents married in 1909 in Meseritz.

Figure 4. Page from MyHeritage ancestral database entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” showing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born in Ratibor on the 24th of September 1916, living in Berlin-Charlottenburg at the time, having immigrated to Bolivia

As readers may recall, this search became moot when I recently discovered a document in MyHeritage entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” listing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born on the 24th of September 1916 in Ratibor, showing he lived in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin in 1939, and indicating he had immigrated to Bolivia. (Figure 4) I had some initial doubts this was my father’s first cousin, but after transmitting this new information to Mr. Newerla, Paul was able to finally locate Heinz’s birth certificate in the State Archives in Raciborz, misfiled as it happens, confirming his parents’ names.

Researching the names and information found on the cover of the 1948 playbill, I thought the “Teatro Municipal” was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as I told readers in my original post. Hoping to locate Berliners who may have wound up there before or after WWII, I turned to family trees on JewishGen, and contacted a lady in Australia who put me in touch with a Ms. Marcia Ras from Buenos Aires with Berliners in her family tree, who turned out to be exceptionally helpful.

Figure 5. Cover of March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with the circled name of the sponsoring organization, “Ministerio de Educacion y Bellas Artes”

Following publication of my original post, I sent Marcia a link to it, and she explained that Argentina’s Ministry of Education that had supposedly sponsored the 1948 recital at the Teatro Municipal had never borne the name “Ministerio de Educacion y Bellas Artes.” (Figure 5) Quick online searches showed that in both Venezuela and República Dominicana they were called that way. I sent an email to the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Education but never received a response. Given Venezuela’s severely dysfunctional state, I never bothered to contact them. I searched for a similarly named entity in other South American countries to no avail.

Marcia could find no evidence Heinz was ever in Buenos Aires. She told me that if he was, he did not enter the country legally. Thousands of Jewish refugees entered Argentina and other South American countries illegally, especially between 1938 and 1949, so he may well have been among them. Marcia was unable to find his name mentioned anywhere. A Ms. Silvia Glocer, an expert in Jewish musicians seeking refuge in Argentina whom Marcia consulted, confirmed she’d also never heard Heinz’s or the maestro Kurt Kohn’s names. They stressed this did not mean they’d never been in Argentina, only that no evidence could be found they’d been there.

Figure 6a. Picture of the chatelaine with an attached photo locket containing the image of Heinz’s father, Alfred Berliner (1875-1921) (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

Figure 6b. Photo locket with the image of Heinz Berliner’s father, Alfred Berliner (1875-1921) (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

My ongoing search might well have ended here. However, out of the blue, Tema Goetzel sent me a photo from a chatelaine (i.e., a clasp or hook for a watch, purse, or bunch of keys) (Figures 6a-b), asking if I recognized Alfred Berliner, Heinz Berliner’s father. While I know Alfred Berliner was once interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor and included a photo of his former headstone in the original post, I had no photos of him against which to compare; eventually, Tema sent two more photos, a second of Alfred Berliner (Figure 7), and a third of Alfred Berliner’s wife, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe, with their three children. (Figure 8) At long last, I’d tracked down a photo of the elusive Heinz Berliner, albeit as a young child! (Readers are reminded that in Post 18, I told the story of Heinz Berliner’s mother who perished in Auschwitz in 1943.)

Figure 7. Alfred Berliner, Heinz Berliner’s father (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

Figure 8. Heinz Berliner as a child with his two older siblings, Peter and Ilse, and his mother, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

In the course of our recent conversations, I told Tema the Teatro Municipal I thought was in Buenos Aires was not in fact in Argentina; I related what Marcia Ras had explained to me. Tema, the source of the original playbill, thought it indicated the country. When I told her it didn’t, she again dug out the playbill and found three additional pages (Figures 9a-c) which she hadn’t previously sent, and these sheets specifically mentioned Bolivia, the country the “German Minority Census, 1939” document identified as Heinz’s destination. Armed with a country, I now quickly found a Teatro Municipal in La Paz. (Figure 10) Another puzzle solved.

Figure 9a. Second page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” confirming the theater was in La Paz, Bolivia (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 9b. Third page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with a summary of the critical reviews from different places where Witha Herm and Enry Berloc performed (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 9c. Fourth page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with the list of musical numbers in each act and the names of the performers (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 10. Teatro Municipal de la Paz in Bolivia (Photo Credit: Gatol fotografia)

Having confirmed from two independent sources Heinz’s connection to Bolivia, I again contacted the Bolivian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, Circulo Israelita De La Paz, asking if they could check on Jewish musicians who may have sought refuge in Bolivia between roughly 1938 and 1949. This office has been gracious and helpful beyond measure but, to date, they too have been unable to confirm Heinz’s presence there. I think what is true of Jewish refugees entering Argentina illegally is also true of Bolivia. It may well be I’m unable to ever confirm whether or when Heinz died in Bolivia.

Figure 11. The popular British-Austrian orchestra leader, Ray Martin, born Kurt Kohn (1918-1988), whose musical score may have been used in the 1948 recital Heinz Berliner performed in

Marcia Ras discovered one other final intriguing thing. In the original post, I told readers that the Witha Herm mentioned in the 1948 playbill was a stage name for a woman known as Herma Wittmann, who died in 1992 in Los Angeles and is interred there. Similarly, the other musician mentioned in the playbill, Kurt Kohn, used an artistic name, Ray Martin (Raymond Stuart Martin). (Figure 11) A quick online search revealed Ray was born Kurt Kohn in Vienna, Austria on the 11^th of October 1918, and came to live and work in England in 1937. He was noted for his light music compositions, and created a legacy for himself in British popular music through his work with his orchestra in the 1950’s. I even located a descriptive catalog of his musical recordings, and tried to contact the compiler, Alan Bunting, but learned he’d died in 2016. Fortunately, the discography was created in collaboration with a Nigel Burlinson, whom I was able to reach. Mr. Burlinson sent a very gracious reply telling me he did not think the “Kurt Kohn” who performed at the Teatro Municipal in 1948 was the popular music conductor “Ray Martin” because at the time he was in England conducting orchestras. What to make of this is unclear? Possibly, the musical recital in which Witha Herm and Enry Berloc performed in 1948 in Bolivia merely used one or more of Kurt Kohn’s musical scores as accompaniment?

So, as often happens in my forensic investigations, I take two steps forward, one step back. I now know what Heinz Berliner looked like as a child, and confirmed he indeed immigrated to Bolivia after 1939, but am still left to ponder how and when exactly he died and whether he passed away in Bolivia.

HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Name (relationship)	Vital Event	Date	Place

Heinz Ludwig Berliner (self)	Birth	24 September 1916	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
Heinz Ludwig Berliner (self)	Death	after 1948	possibly in Bolivia
Alfred Max Berliner (father)	Birth	6 November 1875	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	17 January 1909	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Death	19 February 1921	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
Charlotte Henriette Rothe (mother)	Birth	2 April 1886	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Marriage	17 January 1909	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Death	January 1943	Auschwitz, Poland
Peter Hermann Berliner (brother)	Birth	8 November 1910	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	24 December 1948	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
	Death	25 July 1977	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
Pauline Ilse Berliner (sister)	Birth	1 October 1911	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	2 April 1941	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
	Death	January 1981	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.

POST 34, POSTSCRIPT 2: MARGARETH BERLINER, WRAITH OR BEING? MORE DISCOVERIES

CORRECTED

Note: In this second postscript to Blog Post 34, I relate to readers additional information that has come to my attention about my great-aunt, Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner, and her family, largely the result of a member of the Brauer family having come across my family history blog and having contacted me.

Post 34, Postscript: Margareth Berliner, Wraith or Being? Murdered in Theresienstadt

One of my expressed desires when I launched my Bruck family history blog in April 2017 is that not only would I relate to readers forensic discoveries I’d made about my father’s family, friends and acquaintances, but perhaps from time to time readers would come across my blog, contact me, and tell me how we are related or share additional information or tales about people that have been the subject of my posts. My expectations have been met, in some cases exceeded, on multiple occasions. This is particularly satisfying when the people or family I’ve written about met a tragic end at the hands of the Nazis and their henchmen. The opportunity to relate even a small part of these people’s lives ensures they will not have passed through this world completely unnoticed.

Figure 1a. My great-aunt Margarethe “Grete” Brauer, her daughter-in-law Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933, a photo found among my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s surviving papers

Figure 1b. Captions on back of photo with Margareth “Grete” Brauer, her daughter-in-law Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933

Figure 2. Margareth Auguste Berliner’s birth record (March 19, 1872) (LDS Microfiche Roll 1184449, p. 101)

For readers who’ve not followed the previous posts about my great-aunt Margareth Auguste Brauer née Berliner, let me briefly review. In early 2018, while visiting my German first cousin’s son who is in possession of some of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s surviving pictures and papers, I asked if I could peruse these documents. Surprisingly, included among the pictures was a single photo captioned partly in my uncle’s handwriting, identifying my grandmother’s sister, Grete Brauer, a great-aunt. (Figures 1a-b) I’d never heard about her growing up, though had discovered a record of her birth on March 19, 1872 (Figure 2), in the Jewish microfilm records available online for Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] from the Church of Latter Day Saints; having previously never found any evidence she survived into adulthood, I’d erroneously assumed she’d died at birth or in childhood. While I knew my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner (Figure 3), growing up, I was only six years of age when she passed away in New York City, so it’s not unexpected my grandmother would never have spoken to me about her older sister. Readers may well wonder why my father never told me about her, and I can merely respond by saying that, apart from his beloved sister Susanne, murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942, he had scant interest in family. Regardless, the picture from my uncle’s estate dated 1933 proved that Margareth Brauer née Berliner had indeed lived well into adulthood. What happened to her after 1933 was initially a mystery.

Figure 3. My grandmother and Margareth Brauer née Berliner’s younger sister, Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957)

While learning about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer was a new development, I had previously come across the surname “Brauer.” In 2014, when examining the personal papers of two renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin, I’d come across multiple letters penned to Elsbeth Bruck by Ernst Hanns Brauer and his wife Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca, Spain; just to be clear, Franziska and Elsbeth were sisters of my father’s father, as opposed to Margareth, who was a sister of my father’s mother. At the time, I’d not yet worked out that my Bruck relatives were related to the Brauers through my great-aunt Margareth Berliner’s marriage to a man named Siegfried Brauer, and that Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 4) was their son and my father’s first cousin. (Interested readers will find a table at the end of this post with vital statistics of my great-aunt Margareth Brauer and her immediate family.)

Figure 4. Margareth Brauer’s youngest son, Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971), in 1967 in Calvia, Mallorca, Spain

Figure 5a. Photo from left to right: Oliver Brauer, Ernst Brauer, Herta Brauer, Till Brauer, and a family friend “Ricardo,” taken on the day of Till Brauer’s wedding

Figure 5b. Captions on the reverse side of Figure 5a

Regular readers may recall I was eventually able to track Ernst and Herta Brauer’s descendants to Puerto Rico. (Figure 5a-b) I discussed this in the first postscript to Post 34. In the earlier postscript I also explained to readers that my great-aunt Margareth Brauer had been murdered in Theresienstadt, a fact I uncovered in the Yad Vashem “Shoah Names Database,” a directory I’d neglected to check before publishing my original post.

Figure 6a. Death certificate for Margareth Brauer’s husband, Siegfried Brauer (1859-1926), with the name of their daughter, Hildegard Brauer, circled

Figure 6b. Translation of Siegfried Brauer’s death certificate

Margareth Brauer’s husband, Siegfried Brauer, died in 1926 in Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland]. (Figures 6a-b) His death was reported to authorities by a Hildegard Brauer, whom I confused with Herta Brauer, Siegfried’s daughter-in-law, Ernst Brauer’s wife. I hadn’t yet discovered that Margareth and Siegfried Brauer had had a daughter named Hildegard. Once I found Hildegard’s birth certificate (Figures 7a-b) and checked her name in the “Shoah Names Database,” I realized she too had been a Holocaust victim, like her mother. (Figure 8)

Figure 7a. Cover page of Hildegard Brauer’s birth certificate from ancestry.com showing she was born on the 8th of August 1892 in Cosel, Germany; her surname, along with those of her parents, is misspelled as “Brawer”

Figure 7b. Hildegard Brauer’s birth certificate

Figure 8. Page from Yad Vashem’s “Shoah Names Database,” showing Hildegard Brauer was deported to Auschwitz from Berlin on the 3rd of March 1943

Figure 9. My great-aunt and -uncle Margareth & Siegfried Brauer (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

Figure 10. The “Justizrat” (Judicial Councilman) Siegfried Brauer (~1859-1926) (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

Figure 11. Margareth & Siegfried Brauer’s daughter, Hildegard “Hilde” Brauer (1892-1943) (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

This current postscript was originally intended to merely update readers on Hildegard Brauer’s fate until I was contacted through my blog’s webmail by a delightful gentleman from Los Angeles named Eri Heller. Like other individuals researching their ancestors, he accidentally discovered my family history blog, specifically the posts about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer. He learned about some of his ancestors and family history he’d previously been unaware of; he also graciously shared with me high-quality pictures of Margareth and Siegfried Brauer (Figures 9-10), as well as their daughter Hildegard (Figure 11), and explained our familial connection. Unbeknownst to me, Siegfried Brauer (~1859-1926) had an older brother, Adolf Brauer (1857-1933) (Figures 12-14), that’s to say Margareth Brauer’s brother-in-law and Eri Heller’s grandfather. So, while Eri and I are not blood relatives, we are second cousins by marriage. Using MyHeritage, I was able to reconstruct much of Eri Heller’s ancestry and find additional photos of his family, although it is not my intention to elaborate on that here.

Figure 12. Adolf Brauer (1857-1933), Siegfried Brauer’s older brother and Eri Heller’s grandfather (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

Figure 13. Adolf Brauer’s wife and Eri Heller’s grandmother, Fanny Brauer née Krebs (1863-1944) (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

Figure 14. Adolf Brauer and his daughter, Margarete “Grete” Brauer (1892-1982), respectively, Eri Heller’s grandfather and mother (photo courtesy of Eri Heller)

I’ve previously mentioned to readers I’ve come across a Jewish Silesian family tree on ancestry.com with in excess of 60,000 names; my tree has slightly more than 750 names, and I use it mostly to orient myself when writing about various forebearers and figuring out ancestral connections. One of the greatest pleasures I derive is attaching photos to people in my tree. Without my blog, it’s unlikely I would ever have obtained pictures of my great-aunt and-uncle, Margareth and Siegfried Brauer, and their daughter, Hildegard Brauer, two of whom were victims of the Holocaust. As I implied at the outset, having pictures of individuals and researching and writing their stories makes these otherwise spectral beings in my tree come to life. And, likewise, this is the reason I liberally pepper my blog posts with documents and photos to “prove” these individuals once walked among us.

MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Name (Relationship)	Vital Event	Date	Place

Margareth “Grete” Berliner (self)	Birth	19 March 1872	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	14 July 1891	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Death	24 November 1942	Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia
Siegfried Brauer (husband)	Birth	1859	Biskupitz, Germany (Zabrze, Poland)
	Marriage	14 July 1891	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Death	5 February 1926	Cosel, Germany (Koźle, Poland)
Hildegard Brauer (daughter)	Birth	8 August 1892	Cosel, Germany (Koźle, Poland)
Hildegard Brauer (daughter)	Death	3 March 1943	Auschwitz, Poland (Oświęcim, Poland)
Kurt Brauer (son)	Birth	7 July 1893	Cosel, Germany (Koźle, Poland)
Kurt Brauer (son)	Death	27 August 1920	Cosel, Germany (Koźle, Poland)
Ernst Hanns Brauer (son)	Birth	9 August 1902	Cosel, Germany (Koźle, Poland)
Ernst Hanns Brauer (son)	Death	19 May 1971	Calvia, Mallorca, Spain
Adolf Brauer (brother-in-law)	Birth	10 May 1857	Biskupitz, Germany (Zabrze, Poland)
Adolf Brauer (brother-in-law)	Death	17 December 1933	Berlin, Germany

POST 70: MY UNCLE DR. FEDOR BRUCK AND HIS GERMAN AND AMERICAN CARS

Note: In this short post, I take a whimsical look at the cars my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, Theodore Brook in America, owned in Germany and later in New York. The opportunity for whimsy rarely presents itself when telling stories about my father’s Jewish family, so I’m relieved to take a brief pause from these to relate a lighthearted tale.

Figure 1. Dressed as an English gentleman atop a horse, my uncle Fedor Bruck in 1926 in Liegnitz, Germany before he acquired his first car

Figure 2. Dressed as Frederick the Great, my uncle Fedor Bruck in 1926 in Liegnitz, Germany

One of my English teachers once cited a writer, whose name is lost to me, talking about coming up with short story ideas who’d quipped these can be found on every street corner. As I near the three-year anniversary of writing stories on my father’s Jewish family, this is a sentiment with which I most heartily concur. The inspiration for this current post came from a gentleman, Raymond “Ray” Fellows, who contacted me through my blog after discovering several posts I’ve written on my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), known in America as Theodore “Teddy” Brook. (Figures 1-2)

It turns out Ray’s mother rented a room with kitchen privileges to my uncle in Yonkers, New York before he got married in 1958, a period in my uncle’s life I’m unfamiliar with. Ray, born in 1941, met my uncle when he was a teenager and my uncle was working as a toll collector on the New York State Thruway; at the time, he commuted to work in an AMC Rambler, manufactured by the American Motors Corporation between 1958 and 1969. Ray clearly remembers this car. He also has fond memories of my charismatic uncle because he treated him as a member of his family, vividly remembers my uncle effusively complimenting him on how nicely he’d decorated his “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree, and even amusingly recalls my uncle making him one of his “delicacies,” cow brains, something Ray has never again eaten! Years later, Ray visited my aunt and uncle in Yonkers, at which time my uncle drove a sporty Plymouth Barracuda, manufactured by Plymouth from 1964 to 1974.

In any case, in my photo archive, I discovered photos of my uncle standing by his AMC Rambler as well as his Barracuda. I also found images of him standing as an obviously much younger man by two cars he owned when he was a dentist in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland] before the war. One of these cars even has a brief anecdote attached to it from a story my two, now-deceased, German first cousins once shared.

Figure 3a. My uncle Fedor Bruck standing alongside his first motor car, a DKW “Typ P” model, also referred to as a DKW P15; the DKW logo can be seen just below my uncle’s right elbow

Figure 3b. Another image of my uncle standing by his first DKW

Clearly, having his picture taken alongside his latest set of wheels was a tradition my uncle shared with many other car owners. Following his tour of duty in WWI, my uncle obtained his dental license from the University of Breslau in 1921; then, between November 1924 and April 1936, he had his own practice in Liegnitz until he was forced to shutter it by the Nazis. Likely, my uncle’s first car purchase was a DKW (Dampf-Kraft-Wagen), judging from the picture, the DKW “Typ P” convertible model (Figures 3a-b), also referred to as a “DKW P15” (Figure 4), which rolled off the production lines beginning in May 1928. This was the first motor car made by DKW. It was a light-weight design with a unit body made of wood and imitation leather, that was powered by a two-stroke inline twin engine. DKW was one of the four companies that formed Auto Union in 1932 and is hence an ancestor of the modern-day Audi company. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Following the amalgamation of four German automobile manufacturers into “Auto Union” in 1932, the DKW logo can be seen above the Auto Union logo enmeshed with the four rings of the modern-day Audi company

Figure 6. My uncle Fedor Bruck standing alongside his second DKW motor car, a DKW Cabrio

Figure 7. Photo from the “Franschhoek Motor Museum” of a DKW Cabrio, similar to the car once owned by my Uncle Fedor

Subsequently, my uncle appears to have owned another DKW, the slightly larger DKW Cabrio. (Figures 6-7) While this is mere conjecture on my part, my uncle’s acquisition of a larger car may have been prompted by his “inadvertent” family. In earlier posts, I told readers my uncle carried on a long-term affair with a married woman, Irmgard Lutze (Figure 8), by whom he had two children, my first cousins Wera Thilo née Lutze (1927-2017) and Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014) (Figure 9); Irmgard never divorced her husband, with whom she raised the children, which afforded my half-Jewish cousins considerable protection when the Nazis later ascended to power; for this reason, my cousins retained the Lutze surname, though my uncle had ardently hoped they would adopt the Bruck surname.

Figure 8. My uncle in Liegnitz standing alongside Irmgard Lutze, the married woman with whom he had two children, my first cousins Wera and Wolfgang Lutze

Figure 9. In 2001, in Bruhl, Germany, with my two first cousins, Wolfgang and Wera (I’m seated furthest on the right)

My two first cousins, Wera and Wolfgang, whom I initially met in the mid-1990’s, clearly remember riding in the DKW Cabrio with my uncle and his paramour on Sunday drives through the Silesian countryside, although it would be years later before my uncle announced himself as their “real” father. What made these drives so memorable to my cousins as children was being seated in the rumble seat in the rear of the DKW in the freezing cold. (Figure 10)

Figure 10. Photo from the “Franschhoek Motor Museum” of the rumble seat in a DKW Cabrio, like the one my two cousins vividly remember riding in as children

Figure 11. My Uncle Fedor standing in front of his AMC Rambler

Figure 12. My Uncle Fedor standing alongside his sporty Plymouth Barracuda

Next, one must fast-forward to see my uncle standing by his first American car, the AMC Rambler (Figure 11), which Ray Fellows so clearly remembers. And, judging from my photo archive, my uncle Fedor’s last American car was his Plymouth Barracuda. (Figure 12) However, there is one other car alongside which my uncle can be seen, a Plymouth Savoy, produced between 1951 and 1964. It’s an advertisement for a 1964 Savoy, and, as readers can see for themselves, my uncle is standing in a toll-collection booth, dressed in his work uniform, reaching towards the driver to collect the toll; this photograph was likely staged on the Tappan Zee Bridge where my uncle in fact worked as a toll-collector. (Figure 13) How my uncle came to be featured in a magazine advertisement for Plymouth is unknown, but perhaps when buying his Barracuda, the dealer decided my uncle fit an older demographic towards which the Savoy was targeted, even though he ultimately wound up buying the sportier car?

Figure 13. Dressed in his toll-collector uniform standing at his toll booth on the New York State Thruway, my Uncle Fedor was featured in a 1964 advertisement for a Plymouth Savoy

POST 69: THE CASE OF DR. ERICH BRUCK, AN UNKNOWN ANCESTOR FROM BRESLAU, GERMANY [TODAY: WROCLAW, POLAND]

Note: In this post I describe the chain of events that led me to learn about a Dr. Erich Bruck, a man with whom I share a surname. His picture was given to me more than five years ago with the question of whether we’re related. I didn’t know then and still don’t, although I know much more about the doctor and his family today as I will relate.

Figure 1. Dr. Erich Bruck (1880-1915) in his German military uniform wearing his Iron Cross, an unknown relative interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław

In my previous post, I told readers about the very distinctive picture I was handed in 2014 by Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery, Branch of the City Museum of Wrocław), of a man named Dr. Erich Bruck, telling me he is buried there and asking whether I know anything about him or am related to him. The picture is memorable because, as readers can see for themselves, he is dressed in his German military uniform and is wearing an Iron Cross. (Figure 1) This is not a picture one forgets.

Fast forward. Recently, my 92-year old third cousin, Agnes Stieda née Vogel, mentioned my name and Blog to her 95-year old German friend with whom she communicates by “snail” mail. This friend originally hails from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] and mentioned in passing to Agnes, that as a child living there, she was friends with the daughter of her dentist, a Dr. Bruck as it happens; the daughter’s name was “Putzi.” This Dr. Bruck taught at the University of Breslau until he was summarily dismissed in 1933 by the Nazi Regime, and eventually committed suicide around 1938. Agnes’s friend wondered whether I might be related to this Dr. Bruck, no forename provided. Knowing that multiple of my Bruck ancestors were doctors or dentists in Breslau or had trained there, including my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, I Googled and checked MyHeritage for any Bruck relatives who might have been in the medical profession there. Imagine my surprise when multiple images of the identical photo I’d been given five years ago of Dr. Erich Bruck popped up on MyHeritage.

Figure 2. Dr. Erich Bruck’s parents, Ludwig Bruck (1842-1906) and Clara Bruck née Berliner (1853-1906)

Figure 3. Erich and Ada Bruck with their oldest daughter Erika as an infant

Figure 4. Dr. Erich Bruck and his wife Adelheid “Ada” Bruck née Oppe’s three children, Gertrude, Elisabeth and Erika in 1917

Figure 5. Erich Bruck’s wife, Adelheid Bruck, who was murdered in the Izbica Ghetto in German-occupied Poland in 1942

From MyHeritage, I was able to determine some vital events in Dr. Erich Bruck’s life, recreate three generations of his family tree, learn the fate of some of Erich’s immediate family, and even uncover photographs of his parents (Figure 2), wife, and three children. (Figures 3-4) (Interested readers will find a table at the end of this post with vital statistics of Dr. Erich Bruck’s immediate family.) As too often happens with Jewish families, I also discovered Erich’s wife, Adelheid Bruck née Oppe (Figure 5), as well as his sister, Liesebeth “Lilly” Bruck née Goldschmidt were both murdered in the Shoah. As for Dr. Erich Bruck, he was born on the 5^th of April 1880 in Waldenburg, Germany (Figure 6) [today: Wałbrzych, Poland], and died on the 28^th of April 1915 in France during WWI.

Figure 6. 1893 map of German Silesia with the town of Waldenburg, Germany [today: Wałbrzych, Poland], where Dr. Erich Bruck was born, circled

Having found new information and documents I thought Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska might be unaware of, I contacted her. We’d lost touch in the intervening years, but Renata remembered me. A few of the documents I uncovered were new but because she regularly conducts walking tours of the Old Jewish Cemetery, Renata naturally has made it her mission to acquaint herself with the Jews interred there and search out historic documents; additionally, much as I’ve done in researching some of my father’s family, friends, and acquaintances, Renata has sought and in some cases met descendants of these people. While much of our recent communications have centered on Dr. Erich Bruck, as I explained to readers in Post 68, I’ve helped track down where Dr. Julius Bruck’s daughter-in-law, Johanna M.S. Bruck née Graebsch, and granddaughter, Renate Bruck, alit in England after WWII; prior to my recent forensic work, neither Renata nor I had known whether either survived the war. Given the murderous rampage of the Nazis, it provides some comfort to know that some family ancestors somehow managed to survive the onslaught.

Figure 7. A German WWI Casualty list showing Dr. Erich Bruck perished on the 28th of April 1915

Figure 8. An announcement from a Breslau newspaper confirming Dr. Erich Bruck’s death on the 28th of April 1915, identifying the infantry regiment of which he was a part, and naming his wife

Not only have I been able to provide some new documents to Renata on Dr. Erich Bruck, but she has reciprocated with finds of her own. From MyHeritage, I was able to unearth a German WWI Casualty list showing Dr. Erich Bruck perished on the 28^th of April 1915 (Figure 7), as well as a death announcement from a Breslau newspaper confirming this. (Figure 8) Renata explained that Dr. Erich Bruck had been a member of the medical section of the “Schlesische Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur.” In the membership’s journal, “Jahres-Bericht der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur, Bd. 93-94,” covering years 1915-1916, Renata was able to locate Erich’s obituary explaining the circumstances of the doctor’s death. (Figures 9a-c) Contrary to my assumption that Dr. Bruck had been killed in combat, such was not the case. Instead, while riding a horse, Erich got caught on a telegraph wire resulting in an open wound that became infected and ultimately resulted in his death. Renate tracked down and gave me a copy of Dr. Bruck’s death certificate showing he perished at Château Parcien in France. (Figure 10)

Figure 9a. First page from the “Jahres-Bericht der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur, Bd. 93-94 (1915-1916),” with Dr. Erich Bruck’s obituary

Figure 9b. Second page from the “Jahres-Bericht der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur, Bd. 93-94 (1915-1916),” with Dr. Erich Bruck’s obituary

Figure 9c. Third page from the “Jahres-Bericht der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Vaterländische Cultur, Bd. 93-94 (1915-1916),” with Dr. Erich Bruck’s obituary

Figure 10. Dr. Erich Bruck’s death certificate indicating he died at Château Parcien in France

Figure 11. Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska at the tomb of Dr. Erich Bruck on one of her walking tours at the Old Jewish cemetery

Figure 12. Lieutenant Georg Sternberg’s obituary with the names of his next-of-kin

On her walking tours, Renata almost always stops by the tombstone of Dr. Erich Bruck (Figure 11), using this as an opportunity to talk about the role of Jewish soldiers in WWI. As an interesting aside, Renata mentioned in passing another Jewish WWI victim interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery, a Lieutenant Georg Sternberg (Figure 12), whose tombstone is topped with a helmet (Figures 13a-b); he was killed in the Battle of Lens in 1917. (Figure 14) Renata said she’d been unable to find a photo or learn much about him. Curious whether I might be able to contribute something, I searched in MyHeritage and ancestry.com.

Figure 13a. Lieutenant Georg Sternberg’s restored tombstone, topped by a helmet, at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland

Figure 13b. Closeup of Lieutenant Georg Sternberg’s restored tombstone

Figure 14. Postcard of the Monument at the Soldiers’ Cemetery in Pas-de-Calais for soldiers killed at the Battle of Lens in 1917, the battle where Lieutenant Georg Sternberg perished

While I was unable to find a photo of Lt. Sternberg, I was able to find his name on a German WWI Casualty list (Figure 15) as I’d done for Dr. Erich Bruck. He was born on the 26^th of March 1889 in Ostrowo, Germany [today: Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland], and died on the 27^th of August 1917 in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. Curiously, I discovered two different places where he was supposedly interred, the Langemark German Military Cemetery in West Flanders, Belgium (Figure 16), approximately 68 miles north of where he was killed, and, as expected, in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław. (Figure 17) Uncertain what to make of this discrepancy, I asked Renata what she thought. She provided a very reasonable and simple explanation. Since Lieutenant Sternberg was only 28 years of age when he was killed and his parents were still living at the time, it’s likely they requested that his remains be returned to Breslau for internment in the Jewish Cemetery.

Figure 15. A German WWI Casualty list with Lieutenant Georg Sternberg’s name and date and place of birth

Figure 16. One document showing Lieutenant Georg Sternberg is buried in the Langemark German Military Cemetery in West Flanders, Belgium

Figure 17. A different document showing Lieutenant Georg Sternberg is interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław

As mentioned above, Erich’s wife and sister were both killed in the Holocaust. Renata was able to establish that Erich’s wife, Adelheid “Ada” Bruck, was deported on the 13^th of April 1942 to the Izbica Ghetto. In 2018, on the 76^th anniversary of Jew deportations from Breslau and Silesia, the City Museum of Wrocław, in collaboration with the “Schlesisches Museum zu Görlitz” and the Jewish community in Wrocław, unveiled a plaque marking the event. In the presence of descendants of the deportees, the ceremony took place at the Odertor Bahnhof, the railway station in Breslau from which transports to the concentration and death camps departed.

Figure 18. Dr. Erika Bruck (1908-2011), Dr. Erich Bruck’s oldest daughter, who died in New Boston, New Hampshire at the age of 103

Renate has been able to locate and establish contact with surviving friends of at least one of Dr. Erich Bruck’s daughters, Erika Bruck (Figure 18), who emigrated to America in 1939 and passed away in New Hampshire on October 13, 2011 at 103! Following Erika’s death, her friends and former colleagues wrote a booklet of remembrances; Renata was able to obtain a copy of this document, which she generously shared with me. Erika’s two younger sisters, Elisabeth (Figure 19) and Gertrude (Figure 20) also survived the Holocaust.

Figure 19. Elisabeth Steinitz née Bruck (1909-2011), Dr. Erich Bruck’s middle daughter, who died in Israel

Figure 20. Dr. Erich Bruck’s youngest daughter, Gertrude “Trudi” Maiwald née Bruck (1913-2001)

It is not my intention to discuss the very rich and fulfilling life Erika led, but I want to highlight a little known, often overlooked, chapter in Holocaust history. By 1933, when the Nazis ascended to power, it quickly became apparent to many Jews, including Erika’s parents, it would no longer be safe for Jews in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Quoting from the booklet about Erika on what was happening then: “At the time, the government of Turkey under the visionary leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk invited many German and Austrian Jews to come to Turkey to help build the scientific, medical, and intellectual infrastructure of the new Turkish Republic. With her family’s urgent encouragement, Erika left Germany and resettled in Turkey in 1933, along with about 1000 other Jews. Before leaving her homeland, she was forced by German authorities to sign a declaration that she would never practice medicine in Germany because her Jewish heritage was unacceptable to the Nazi regime. Erika finally received her medical degree in 1935 in Istanbul. While in Istanbul, she worked at the Haseki Hospital, a government-run hospital which was primitive in most respects when Erika arrived.” Slowly, Erika brought the Haseki Hospital into the modern era.

After immigrating to America, Erika eventually became a pediatrician. She retained a very warm place in her heart for Turkey. Quoting from the booklet about her life: “Erika made regular visits to Turkey to visit old friends. For years after she settled in the U.S., Erika sponsored and trained medical residents from Turkey to repay the good turns done to her by the Turkish government. She retained a love of Turkey and a resolute devotion to the memory of Atatürk throughout her life.”

There is one interesting convergence I want to touch on. As previously mentioned, multiple members of my Bruck family were either doctors or dentists in Breslau or trained there. It just so happens that the subject of Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska’s PhD. dissertation, which she is currently writing, will be about Jewish professors from the second half of the 19^th Century and early 20^th Century who contributed to the development of the renowned medical and dental disciplines in Breslau in those years. Naturally, some of my Bruck relatives will be discussed, notably, Dr. Julius Bruck, Dr. Jonas Bruck, and Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck.

Finally, while I’ve not yet been able to determine how or whether Dr. Erich Bruck and I are related, there are two possible lineages to examine, obviously the Bruck patronymic, but also the Berliner matronymic, the maiden name of my grandmother, which is also the maiden name of Dr. Bruck’s mother, Clara Berliner.

REFERENCE

Jablonski, Nina. “Remembering Erika Bruck: April 5, 1908-October 13, 2011.”

ERICH BRUCK & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Name (Relationship)	Vital Event	Date	Place

Ludwig Bruck (father)	Birth	5 January 1848
Ludwig Bruck (father)	Death	23 October 1906	Waldenburg, Germany (Wałbrzych, Poland)
Clara Berliner (mother)	Birth	9 February 1853	Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland)
Clara Berliner (mother)	Death	26 March 1906	Waldenburg, Germany (Wałbrzych, Poland)
Erich Bruck (self)	Birth	5 April 1880	Waldenburg, Germany (Wałbrzych, Poland)
Erich Bruck (self)	Death	28 April 1915	Château Parcien, France
Liesebeth “Lilly” Bruck (sister)	Birth	5 September 1881	Waldenburg, Germany (Wałbrzych, Poland)
	Marriage (to Franz Louis Goldschmidt)	29 July 1913
	Death	March 1943	Auschwitz, Poland (Oświęcim, Poland)
Adelheid “Ada” Oppe (wife)	Birth	18 March 1883	Mühlhausen, Germany
	Deportation	13 April 1942	Izbica Ghetto, Poland
	Death	1942	Izbica Ghetto, Poland
Erika Bruck (daughter)	Birth	5 April 1908	Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland)
Erika Bruck (daughter)	Death	23 October 2011	New Boston, New Hampshire
Elisabeth Bruck (daughter)	Birth	28 June 1909	Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland)
	Marriage (to Kurt Steinitz)	9 May 1934	Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland)
	Death	28 April 2011	Kfar Saba, Israel
Gertrude “Trudi” Bruck (daughter)	Birth	22 June 1913	Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland)
	Marriage (to Georg Maiwald)	18 July 1938	Bolivia
	Death	3 March 2001	Dresden, Germany

POST 68: DR. JULIUS BRUCK AND HIS INFLUENCE ON MODERN ENDOSCOPY

UPDATED ON MAY 18, 2021

(UPDATES SHOWN IN RED)

Note: In this post, I talk about Dr. Julius Bruck, my first cousin three times removed, who laid the technical foundations for the development of modern endoscopy through his inventions of the stomatoscope and urethroscope.

POST 101: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK: HIS DAUGHTER RENATE’S FIRST HUSBAND, A “SILENT HERO”

Figure 1. Dr. Julius Bruck (October 6, 1840-April 20, 1902)

I first heard about my distant and renowned ancestor, the dentist Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) (Figure 1), from one of my German first cousins, probably in the 1990’s, when we initially met. I also learned he was buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] (Figure 2), and that his grave still exists. At the time, I was unaware of any surviving tombs of Bruck ancestors, although in the years since I’ve discovered others. For reference, two quick points. First, Dr. Julius Bruck’s father was Dr. Jonas Bruck (Figure 3), himself a dentist, whom I introduced to readers in Post 60 as the precocious lad who attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium, high school, in 1819 in its inaugural year. Second, Dr. Julius Bruck was my first cousin thrice removed.

Figure 2. Entrance to the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland as it looked in 2014

Figure 3. Dr. Julius Bruck’s father, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883)

Figure 4a. Panel at the entrance to the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland identifying the location of noted Jews interred there, including Dr. Julius Bruck

Figure 4b. Closeup showing the location of Dr. Julius Bruck’s tomb in the Old Jewish Cemetery

My wife Ann Finan can attest to the numerous cemeteries we’ve visited across Europe seeking discernible proof of my ancestors’ connections to different places. In 2014, during a lengthy 13-week trip exploring cities and towns between Poland and Spain associated with my family, we stopped in Wrocław, Poland and visited Dr. Julius Bruck’s tomb. A photo of the very distinguished dentist is featured on a panel at the entrance to the Old Jewish Cemetery, pinpointing his tomb, alongside other prominent Jews interred there. (Figures 4a-b) Upon touring Julius’ grave, my wife and I discovered he is interred alongside his father Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883), and their respective wives, Rosalie Bruck née Marle (1817-1890) and Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorff (1843-1917). (Figures 5a-b) At the time, the headstones had fallen into disrepair, although have subsequently been beautifully restored. As an aside, on ancestry.com, I even found Bertha Bruck’s death announcement. (Figure 6)

Figure 5a. The headstones of Dr. Julius Bruck and his father, Dr. Jonas Bruck, and their respective wives in 2014, prior to restoration

Figure 5b. Closeup of Dr. Julius Bruck’s headstone in 2014, prior to restoration

Figure 6. Death announcement for Dr. Julius Bruck’s wife, Bertha Bruck née Vogelsdorff, from 4th of February 1917

Figure 7. Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska, Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Museum) in 2014

Seeking to learn more about Dr. Julius Bruck, beyond what is easily retrievable from a web search, I inquired with cemetery personnel and was introduced to the on-site Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Museum), Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska. (Figure 7) I learned the Old Jewish Cemetery is a branch of the City Museum of Wrocław, and that Jews, obviously, are no longer interred there. Archivists and museum personnel are naturally curious and intrigued when some foreigner shows up asserting an ancestral connection to someone from their area, particularly when that individual was Jewish. Such was the case in this instance. While obtaining little new information about Dr. Julius Bruck, I’ve learned and explained to readers the value of developing local contacts, so I resolved to stay in touch with Renata. Before parting ways, Renata asked me whether I knew or was related to a Dr. Erich Bruck (Figure 8), also buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery, whose very distinctive picture she gave me a copy of. Beyond having a common surname, I conceded I had no knowledge of this individual. That was five years ago, but in the subsequent post, I will tell readers how I recently stumbled across information about this previously unknown Bruck.

Figure 8. Dr. Erich Bruck shown in his military uniform wearing his Iron Cross, an unknown relative Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska asked me about in 2014, about whom I would later learn much more

Dr. Julius Bruck was born in Breslau on October 6, 1840 and died there on April 20, 1902. He studied dentistry and medicine at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, Bonn and Paris, and received his diploma as dentist from Berlin in 1858 and as Doctor of Medicine from Breslau University in 1866. In 1859, he became assistant to his father Dr. Jonas Bruck, and eventually succeeded him in his practice. In 1871 he was admitted to the faculty of Breslau University as privatdozent, university lecturer, receiving the honorary title of professor in 1891.

Not only was Dr. Julius Bruck one of the most famous dentists of his time, but he was also a fighter for dentists’ education and a very successful inventor. He gained prominence in the mid-1860’s for his inventions of the stomatoscope (i.e., an apparatus for illuminating the interior of the mouth to facilitate examination) (Figure 9) and the urethroscope (i.e., an instrument for viewing the interior of the urethra), both of which laid the technical foundations for the development of modern endoscopy. Through development of the stomatoscope, Julius applied the same successes that had been achieved for treatments of eye, ear, and larynx diseases to oral and dental diseases using better illumination. (Lutze 2017)

Figure 9. The stomatoscope invented by Dr. Julius Bruck in the mid-1860’s which for the first time used an annealing wire to light the mouth

Julius Bruck produced light by using an exposed electrically heated platinum loop, which at the time was the most powerful light source known. He imagined the possibility of placing the source of light in the distal end of an instrument and invented a double glass tube with a water-cooling compartment. This water-cooled apparatus, or diaphanoscope (i.e., an instrument for illuminating the interior of a cavity to determine the translucency of its walls), could transilluminate the bladder by being inserted into the rectum or vagina. (Zajaczkowski & Zamann 2004)

Julius focused on the research of his father in the area of Galvanokaustik, electroplating. In layman’s terms, suffice it to say that, in medicine, electroplating is an operating method that uses galvanic current-generated annealing heat for surgical purposes which is particularly suited for operations in the mouth and rectum. For the first time, Julius used the platinum glow wire, 0.3 to 1 mm in thickness. Julius himself described this method as resulting in the teeth being full illuminated so they were almost translucent; this meant that dental decay and diseases of the mouth could be detected that were invisible to the naked eye. The urethroscope essentially allowed a similar method to be used to illuminate and detect diseases of the bladder.

As previously mentioned, following my and my wife’s visit to Wrocław in 2014, I stayed in periodic contact with Ms. Wilkoszewska-Krakowska. Then, in 2016, Renata sent several photos of the meticulous restoration the City Museum of Wrocław had recently completed of Dr. Julius Bruck and family’s headstones. (Figures 10a-b)

Figure 10a. The headstones of Dr. Julius Bruck and his father, Dr. Jonas Bruck, and their respective wives in 2016, following restoration (compare to Figure 5a)

Figure 10b. Closeup of Dr. Julius Bruck’s headstone in 2016, following restoration (compare to Figure 5b)

Renata and I have recently re-established contact following a lengthy hiatus. While the subject of our more recent communications has been mostly about Dr. Erich Bruck, who as mentioned will be the focus of the ensuing Blog post, we’ve also discussed the fate of Dr. Julius Bruck’s two granddaughters and daughter-in-law. Since Breslau’s Old Jewish Cemetery is a branch of Wrocław’s City Museum, Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska regularly conducts walking tours telling visitors what she’s learned about the Jews interred there and contacts she’s in some cases made with their descendants. (Figure 11)

Figure 11. Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska conducting a walking tour in 2019 of Dr. Julius Bruck and his family’s tomb

Julius’s two granddaughters were named Hermine Bruck (1924-1924), who died in infancy, and Renate Bruck, born on the 16th of June 1926. A clue provided by one of my fourth cousins, more closely related to Julius and his son, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 12), suggests Renate may have emigrated to England during or after WWII; I discovered a Renate Bruck listed in a Willesden, Middlesex, England marriage register, showing she had gotten married there to a man named Harry E. Graham in October, 1948. Uncertain whether this was Dr. Julius Bruck’s granddaughter, I ordered a copy of the marriage certificate from England’s General Register Office. It arrived only days ago, and the certificate confirms this is indeed the granddaughter of Dr. Julius Bruck and the surviving daughter of Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck. (Figure 13)

Figure 12. Dr. Julius Bruck’s son, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937)

Figure 13. The marriage certificate for Dr. Julius Bruck’s granddaughter, Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck, who married her second husband Henry Ernst Graham in Willesden, Middlesex, England on the 18th of October 1948

The marriage certificate provides additional names that has enabled me to partially work out vital events in Renate’s life. Renate’s full name was “Renate Stephanie Gertrude Bruck.” Not only is Renate’s husband’s full name shown, Henry Ernst Graham, but her future father-in-law’s name is also provided, Hermann Gradenwitz (1876-1940) (Figure 14); this confirms that Renate’s husband anglicized his name upon his arrival in England to “Graham.” Both Renate and her husband had previously been married, Renate to a man named Eugen Walter Mehne, and Harry to a woman named Ruth Philipsborn (1914-2003); Henry and his first wife Ruth, I later discovered, married in 1935 in London indicating Henry had already emigrated from Germany by this time. Renate and Henry were married in the presence of a Marie Luise Gradenwitz (1881-1955), whom I later confirmed was Henry’s mother, née Mugdan. Curiously, Hermann Gradenwitz is buried with a Leo Mugdan, possibly his brother-in-law, as readers may be able to detect from their headstone.

Figure 14. Headstone in Berlin’s Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde Cemetery for Hermann Gradenwitz (1876-1940), Renate Graham née Bruck’s father-in-law

Figure 15. 1908 Breslau Address Book listing Renate Bruck’s first husband, Eugen Walter Mehne, identifying him as an “instrumentenmacher,” an instrument maker

With new names in hand, I turned to ancestry.com and MyHeritage hoping to learn more about Renate and her family. Renate’s first husband, Eugen Walter Mehne, is initially listed in a 1908 Breslau Address Book showing he was an instrumentenmacher, an instrument maker (Figure 15); he is listed in a Breslau Address Book as late as 1939, and by then is a geigenbauer, violin maker. While I was unable to learn when or where Eugen was born or died, the fact that he was already in business in 1908, 18 years before Renate was even born, proves she married an older man. Similarly, her second husband, Harry Graham (aka Heinrich Gradenwitz), was significantly older when they married in 1948, he was 43 and she only 22. Harry, I discovered, was born on the 8th of November 1904 in Berlin, and died on the 7th of March 1959 in London.

I refer readers to Blog Post 101 in which I discuss in much more detail the Mehnes listed in the Breslau address books between 1908 and 1939. Suffice it to say, the Eugen Mehne listed as either an instrumentenmacher, an instrument maker, or geigenbauer, violin maker, between 1908 and 1934 is Albert Eugen Mehne, the father of Eugen Walter Mehne listed in 1935, 1936, and 1939 address books, identified as a geigenbauer or geigenbaumeister, master violin maker.

I found evidence of Renate’s third marriage in 1956 to a man named Gary Newman, thus before her second husband passed away in 1959. (Figure 16) A single reference indicates Renate died as Renate Newman on the 3rd of March 2013 in the United Kingdom.

Figure 16. Marriage register listing for Renate S.G. Graham (née Bruck) marriage to a man named Gary Newman in the last quarter of 1956 in Middlesex, England

Figure 17. “German Minority Census, 1939,” found in MyHeritage,” with Renate Bruck and her mother Johanna Bruck née Graebsch shown living in Wrocław at the time and giving their ages

To date, I’ve found no evidence that Renate ever had any children to continue Dr. Julius Bruck’s lineage. However, in the course of writing this Blog post, on MyHeritage, I just discovered that Renate’s mother, Johanna M. E. Bruck née Graebsch, whose fate was previously unknown to me, may also have emigrated to England. I last found evidence of her existence in a “1939 German Minority Census,” showing that she and Renate were registered as living in Breslau in May 1939 (Figure 17), a most dangerous time. I can find no indication she was murdered in the Holocaust, but the fleeting reference I just stumbled upon suggests she too emigrated to England and died there. As we speak, I’ve ordered the death certificate from the General Register Office for this Johanna Bruck to confirm my suspicion. Watch this space for an update.

REFERENCES

Lutze, Kay. “Und im Mund ward Licht!” Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen, Vol . 107, No. 18. 2017.

Zajaczkowski, Thaddaeus and Andreas Paul Zamann. “Julius Bruck (1840-1902) and his influence on the endoscopy of today.” World Journal of Urology, Vol. 22, Issue 4, August 2004: 293-303.

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

Note: This post is about two of my father’s former friends, non-Jews, from his time living in the Free State of Danzig in the 1930’s, and information I recently uncovered about their peculiar deaths.

Figure 1. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, in Winter 1930-1931 in Danzig

Figure 2. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, as a young dentist in Tiegenhof

My father, Dr, Otto Bruck, received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. These lasted until about mid-August 1930 according to letters of recommendation written by the two respective dentists. My father did not open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until April 1932, so inasmuch as I can surmise from surviving letters and photos, my father spent the intervening period apprenticing in the Free City of Danzig. (Figures 1-2) He may have been mentored by a Dr. Fritz Bertram, a dentist whom he took pictures of (Figure 3) and who is identified by name in his surviving pocket calendar (Figure 4), the subject of Post 6.

Figure 3. Zahnarzt (dentist) Dr. Fritz Bertram sailing in the Bay of Danzig with friends on the 18th of April 1931; Dr. Bertram may have mentored my father

Figure 4. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar listing a few names and phone numbers of business associates, notably, Dr. Fritz Bertram and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe

As a brief aside, my father’s decision to relocate to Danzig from Berlin may have been prompted by the fact he had an aunt and uncle who lived there, and that he was close to at least two of their three children (Figures 5-6), who interestingly I met when I was a young boy.

Figure 5. One of my father’s first cousins, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Loewenstein (1902-1986), on the 8th of March 1929 in Danzig, a cousin he may temporarily have stayed with while he was apprenticing there

Figure 6. Another of my father’s first cousins from Danzig, Heinz Loewenstein (1905-1979), brother of Hansi Goff

In any case, a gentleman whom my father befriended in Danzig was named Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 7) As I discussed in Post 6, I learned from a 1934 Danzig Address Book that, like my father, he too was a dentist, in the adjacent town of Neuteich, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Staw, Poland] (Figure 8), 8.8 miles southwest of Tiegenhof. Possibly, Gerhard, who appears from pictures to have been about the same age as my father, may also have been a dental apprentice when he and my father became friends. (Figure 9)

Figure 7. The earliest of my father’s pictures of his former friend from Danzig, Dr. Gerhard Hoppe, with whom he may have apprenticed

Figure 8. Page from the 1934 Danzig Address Book listing dentists in the Free State of Danzig with both my father and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe from Neuteich listed; my father’s first name is erroneously listed as “Heinz” when his actual first name was “Otto” although the address of his dental practice, Markstrasse 8, is correct

Figure 9. Dr. Gerhard Hoppe as a young man

Figure 10. My father with Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe walking along Wollwebergasse in Danzig during the Winter of 1931-1932

Gerhard and his girlfriend Ilse (Figure 10) are among a group of my father’s former friends whose fates I’ve so far been unable to determine; pictures exist of all of them in my father’s surviving photo albums. These friends were non-Jewish, and I refer to them as “former” friends since during the Nazi era they would have been under enormous pressure to disassociate themselves from any Jews and any businesses they might have run. So, in the case of my father, I know that while he still had a few non-Jewish friends who whom he socialized, he no longer had any dental clients by the time he shuttered his practice and left Tiegenhof for good in 1937. The relationship he had with these erstwhile friends may have been more nuanced, but I don’t know this for a fact. Judging from the dates on my father’s pictures, after mid-1936, his circle of friends had narrowed considerably.

I’ve told readers that I periodically recheck these one-time friends’ names in ancestry.com and other ancestral databases. I recently did this again with Gerhard and Ilse, and, astoundingly, uncovered historic documents related to both. I tell myself I should perhaps be less surprised I discover new documents, and more bewildered I did not find them during earlier searches. Regardless, my recent finds have allowed me to sadly put to rest the fate of Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. But, like most of the mysteries I seemingly resolve, they are like the mythological hydra, lop off one head and two grow in its place.

The search parameters I entered in ancestry.com were simply Gerhard’s first and last name, a place he might have lived, Danzig in this case, and the year I estimated he was born, so 1907, the same year my father was born. I immediately discovered his marriage certificate (Figures 11a-c), and the marriage register with he and his wife’s names, and their respective parents’ names. (Figure 12a-b)

Figure 11a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate showing they were married on the 30th of July 1932 in Marienburg

Figure 11b. Page 1 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate

Figure 11c. Page 2 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate with the names of witnesses

Figure 12a. Ancestry.com cover page of marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

Figure 12b. Marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

The two-page marriage certificate, among other things, provides Gerhard’s complete name: “Gerhard Ludwig Rudolf Otto Hoppe”; his date of birth: 18th of February 1908; the date and place he was married: 30th of July 1932, Marienburg [today: Malbork, Poland] (Figure 13); his wife’s complete birth name: “Frida Charlotte Ilse Grabowsky” (also ending in “i” in some documents); his wife’s date of birth: 3rd of August 1907; and Gerhard’s profession: “Zahnarzt,” dentist. Three things instantly confirmed I had found the “right” Gerhard Hoppe: his date of birth off by one day from the date listed in my father’s pocket calendar (Figure 14), his wife’s name, Ilse, and his profession, dentist. Very likely, my father would have attended Gerhard and Ilse’s 1932 wedding. The second page of German marriage certificates typically list witnesses, but unfortunately my father’s name is not among them.

Figure 13. Photo taken by my father of the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Marienburg, today Malbork, the town where Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe were married in 1932

Figure 14. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar showing Gerhard’s Hoppe birthday was on the 17th of February when in fact it was on the 18th of February

I would eventually locate documents for three generations of Gerhard and Ilse’s ancestors.

Now, here’s where things began to seriously stray from my preconceived notion of Gerhard and Ilse’s fates. With Ilse’s maiden name in hand, “Grabowsky,” I was now able to search entries for her. The first document I found for her was her death certificate showing she’d died on the 15th of April 1940 in the Langfuhr borough of Danzig (Figures 15a-b), known today as Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, the most upscale of Danzig’s boroughs, then and now. This document shows she died at less than 33 years of age, somewhat surprising but perhaps not so unusual given wartime realities. Shortly after discovering Ilse’s death certificate, I found Gerhard’s death record, showing he’d died on the 27th of July 1941 (Figures 16a-b), a little more than a year after his wife, also in Danzig-Langfuhr; at the time of his death he was 33, only slightly older than his wife had been. To say I was stupefied learning Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe had died so young, so soon after one another, and outside the theater of war would be an understatement.

Figure 15a. Ancestry.com cover page of Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate identifying her parents, whom she pre-deceased, as Richard Grabowky(i) & Else Grabowsky(i) née Ehmer

Figure 15b. Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate showing she supposedly committed suicide on the 15th of April 1940 in Danzig (her cause of death is circled)

Figure 16a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate, listing his parents, whom he pre-deceased, as Otto Hoppe & Anna Hoppe née Birkholz

Figure 16b. Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate showing he died on the 27th of July 1941 in Danzig (his cause of death is circled)

Immediately curious as to whether the death certificates listed their causes of death, I turned to Mr. Peter Hanke. He is a German gentleman from “forum.danzig.de” with whom I’m in touch and who’d recently offered to ask the Polish archive in Malbork, Poland for death certificates for some of my father’s former friends, including Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. I wanted to let him know I’d found their death certificates and ask if the records stated how they died. The answer left both of us horrified and saddened.

Ilse Hoppe’s cause of death was listed as:

“Todesursache: Durchschneiden der Halsschlagader (Selbstmord)” (Figure 15b)

Cause of death: cutting through the carotid artery (suicide)

And, Gerhard Hoppe’s death was caused by:

“Todesursache: Schädelbruch und komplizierter Oberschenkelbruch links- und rechtsseitig” (Figure 16b)

Cause of death: skull fracture and complicated thigh fracture on the left and right sides

Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe’s deaths leave us with more questions than answers given their extreme violence; they seem more like murders than suicides or health-related deaths.

According to Peter Hanke, an implausible but not impossible explanation as to the cause of Gerhard’s death may relate to the location of his apartment. I mentioned above that a 1934 Danzig Address Book indicates Gerhard was a dentist in Neuteich, Free State of Danzig, although by 1940-1941, a Danzig Address Book shows he’d relocated to Danzig proper and lived at Karrenwall 5 (Figure 17); he is not listed in the 1939 Address Book (Figure 18), suggesting he moved to Danzig in 1940 before Ilse’s death (i.e., Ilse commits suicide in Danzig, not Neuteich). Old German Address Books list people alphabetically as well as by street address and occupation, and, interestingly, in 1940-1941, Karrenwall 5 shows that not only did Gerhard Hoppe reside there but so too did numerous bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (Figure 19), a trend that continues into 1942. (Figure 20) Could it be that the Nazi Party wanted Gerhard’s apartment, and was not squeamish about asserting its interests? We may never know. Unfortunately, contemporary Danzig newspapers have not yet been digitized, although by 1941 the news outlets were most assuredly controlled by the Nazis and are not likely to provide an accurate portrayal of what might have happened to Gerhard.

Figure 17. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book showing Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s dental office was located at “Theaterplace 30” while his apartment was at “Karrenwall 5”

Figure 18. Page from 1939 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year

Figure 19. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year, including Dr. Gerhard Hoppe and various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

Figure 20. Page from 1942 Danzig Address Book, the year following Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s death, showing Karrenwall 5 still housed various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

There exists a database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” that include images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works); more than 20 million persons are included in these card files arranged by the town of origin. I discussed this database in Post 38. Peter Hanke checked the name “Hoppe” for Danzig, and, incredibly found HOK cards for Gerhard and Ilse’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939 in Danzig (Figure 21), and for Gerhard Hoppe’s parents, Otto Hoppe and Anna Hoppe née Birkholz (Figures 22a-b), who raised Gisela after her parents’ deaths. The timing of Ilse Hoppe’s supposed suicide less than a year after her daughter’s birth makes the cause of her death even more suspicious.

Figure 21. “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939, showing that in 1958 she lived in Bad Harzburg, Germany

Figure 22a. Front side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard’s father, Otto Hoppe, showing his granddaughter Gisela Hoppe’s address in 1958

Figure 22b. Back side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Otto Hoppe listing his wife, Anna Hoppe née Birkholz, and granddaughter, Gisela Hoppe

Gisela is shown living in Bad Harzburg, Germany in May 1958. As I prepare to publish this post, just this morning I learned that Gisela, who is about to turn 80 years of age towards the end of November, is still alive. As we speak, I’m trying to establish contact with her and share the multiple images I have of her parents. (Figures 23-24) Watch this space for Part II of the story!

Figure 23. Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe on the beach in Zoppot, Germany [today: Sopot, Poland]

POST 66: DR. WALTER ROTHHOLZ, INTERNEE IN NAZI-OCCUPIED NORWAY

Note: In this post I discuss the internment of Dr. Walter Rothholz, my second cousin once removed, in Nazi-occupied Norway focusing primarily on the historic events surrounding this occupation.

Figure 1. Dr. Walter Rothholz (1893-1978) in 1964

Dr. Walter Rothholz (1893-1978) who I first introduced to readers in the previous post (Post 65) was a lawyer with a Dr. jur. (Doctor juris). (Figure 1) He is my second cousin once removed. Even was I positioned to present a complete biography of Dr. Rothholz that is not my aim, nor would that be of any interest to readers. Where I delve into specific ancestors, my goal is to show how their lives intersected with major historic events of their time, so in the case of Dr. Rothholz, how his life was upended by the Nazi occupation of Norway starting in 1940 and how he barely survived that ordeal.

Figure 2. Else Marie “Elsemai” Rothholz née Bølling (1915-1976) in 1964, Dr. Walter Rothholz’s wife

Dr. Rothholz was born in Stettin, Germany [Szczecin, Poland] in 1893, a place previously discussed where various of my ancestors come from. Rothholz was decorated with the German Iron Cross for his heroism during WWI. Between the first and second World Wars, he was an international law expert who worked for the German Foreign Ministry. In 1936, he married Else Marie “Elsemai” Bølling (1915-1976) (Figure 2), a Norwegian woman, a move that allowed him to emigrate to Norway in 1939 and seemingly escape the Nazi scourge. Students of history will realize this was not to be Dr. Rothholz’s fate.

Briefly, some history. Operation Weserübung (German: Unternehmen Weserübung) was the code name for Germany’s assault on Denmark and Norway during WWII and the opening operation of the Norwegian Campaign. The name comes from the German for “Operation Weser-Exercise,” the Weser being a German river. The German occupation of Norway began on the 9th of April 1940 after German forces invaded neutral Norway. Conventional armed resistance to the Germans ended on the 10th of June 1940. Germany occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, ostensibly as a preventive maneuver against a planned, and openly discussed, Franco-British occupation of Norway.

German occupation of Norway lasted until the 8-9th of May 1945 following the capitulation of the German forces in Europe. Throughout this period, Norway was continuously occupied by the Wehrmacht (i.e., the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945). Civil rule was effectively assumed by the Reichskommissariat Norwegen, which acted in collaboration with Norway’s pro-German puppet government, Vidkun Quisling’s regime, giving us the origin of the word “quisling,” collaborator or traitor. During the “occupation period,” the Norwegian King Haakon VII and the prewar government escaped to London, where they acted as a government in exile.

Dr. Rothholz was interned in Berg prison on October 26, 1942. Berg interneringsleir (Berg internment camp) was a concentration camp near Tønsberg, Norway that served as an internment and transit center for Jews and later political prisoners during the Nazi occupation of Norway; it is located approximately 102km (63 mile) south-southwest of Oslo. Berg was the only prison camp in Norway that had only Norwegian prison guards, whose treatment of prisoners was particularly harsh, so much so that three of them were sentenced after the war to life-long forced labor. What precipitated Rothholz’s internment on October 26th was a message from Berlin received the previous day ordering the arrest of all Norwegian male Jews. Already by the 26th of October, 60 of the first Jews arrested had been gathered in Berg, where they were set up to build the camp.

The Jewish round ups involved both Norwegian police authorities and German Geheime Staatspolizei (abbreviated Gestapo, the official secret police of Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe); Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the intelligence agency of the SS and Nazi party in Nazi Germany); and Schutzstaffel (SS, the German “protective echelon” founded in 1925 as Hitler’s personal guards). By November 26th, women and children were also arrested for deportation. That same day, the male prisoners were divided into two groups: those who were married to Norwegian women, and those who were unmarried or married to non-Aryan women. The last group was sent to the extermination camps. A total of 227 Jewish men were deported from Berg to the extermination camp of Auschwitz in Oświęcim, Poland. Only seven of these men survived. The few Jews who were married to “Aryans” remained in Berg, as in Dr. Rothholz’s case.

There is a humiliating side story about the Berg internment camp. It was referred to as “Quisling’s chicken farm” because some Jews and other Nazi opponents wore metallic poultry leg bands on their fingers as protest markers against the Nazi authorities and the German Occupation; the pro-Nazi government decided to create a “hen farm” for these “chickens” at Berg. In a speech delivered to the National Assembly on Pentecost 1942, President Vidkun Quisling said, “. . .some people walk around with chicken rings on their fingers. . .we’re going to create chicken farms for them. Here near Tønsberg we will thus be able to get a large hen farm.”

In the Jewish campaigns in Norway, 767 of the approximately 1,800 Jews living there were sent to the German concentration camps in Poland. Only 32 of these survived.

On December 2, 1942 Dr. Rothholz was moved from the Berg internment camp to Grini (Norwegian: Grini fangeleir; German: Polizeihäftlingslager Grini), the Nazi concentration camp in Bærum, Norway, which operated between around June 1941 and May 1945. Bærum is a suburb of Oslo and is located on the west coast of the city. The camp was run by SS and Gestapo personnel. Dr. Rothholz had a good understanding of the geography of Germany so as the noose was slowly closing and the war was ending, he was able to keep his fellow prisoners informed of what the messages from the front meant.

Other than guards, the German occupiers devoted few personnel to the camp. Since many politicians, academics and cultural personalities were detained at Grini, a certain level of internal organization was established by the prisoners. They toiled in manufacturing, agriculture and other manual labor, with much of this work taking place outside the camp. Grini was liberated on the 7th of May 1945, although Dr. Rothholz had apparently already been evacuated to Sweden on the 2nd of May. Walter’s son, also named Walter Rothholz, was born while he was interned. (Figures 3-4)

Figure 3. Dr. Walter & Elsemai Rothholz’s son, Dr. Walter Rothholz, born on April 7, 1943 in Asker, Norway, while his father was interned in Norway’s Grini concentration camp

Figure 4. Dr. Walter & Elsemai Rothholz’s daughter, Dr. Anna Rothholz, born on October 25, 1937

Dr. Rothholz was granted Norwegian citizenship after the war and returned to Germany for a period. He became involved in the refugee situation and other international law issues.

Consequentially, Rothholz testified in 1967, along with other of his fellow prisoners, against Hellmuth Reinhard. Reinhard was the head of the Gestapo in Norway between 1942 and 1945. His ability to largely avoid being punished for his crimes against humanity is a sad commentary and worth a short sidebar.

Hellmuth Reinhard was born Hermann Gustav Hellmuth Patzschke in Unterwerschen, Germany, but changed his name in April 1939 to the more Germanic-sounding “Reinhard.” He joined the SS in March 1933, and soon became a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: NSDAP), the Nazi Party. He had a law office at the Reichsführer-SS Sicherheitsdienst in Leipzig from 1935; later served at the SD headquarters of the Reichsicherheitshaumptamt (RHSA, the Reich Main Security Office, an organization subordinate to Heinrich Himmler); then in 1939, transferred to the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo). From August 1940, he worked in Amsterdam at the central office for Jewish emigration from the Netherlands. Eventually, he came to Norway in January 1942 as head of the Gestapo.

Hellmuth Reinhard was second in command to Heinrich Fehlis in Norway. He had the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer, corresponding to captain, then became SS-Sturmbannführer, equivalent to major. According to historians, Reinhard had primary responsibility for the deportation of Jews from Norway. Whether Adolf Eichmann gave direct orders to deport Jews from Norway, or whether Reinhard took the initiative based on Hitler’s overall plans for Jews is not clear. Regardless, Reinhard was the individual responsible for notifying the Gestapo in Stettin that 532 Jews were on their way aboard the SS Donau (Danube) on November 26, 1942.

At the end of the war, Reinhard was in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where, using his birth name Patzschke, he was released by British occupation authorities, obviously unaware of his SS background. Incredibly, Reinhard reverted to his birth name, resumed contact with his wife and children, then, in 1951 after “Reinhard” was declared dead, remarried his wife who was then officially a widow. It was only later that the German War Crimes Office in Ludwigsburg, investigating the Gestapo commander in Norway, discovered that the “widow” had married a man of the same birth name as Reinhard. He was arrested in December 1964 and brought up on charges in 1967. The charges involved murder and complicity in murder.

The charge against Reinhard that Walter Rothholz and other former Jewish prisoners testified to related to the deportation of the Norwegian Jews. The various witnesses claimed the internment and deportation of the Norwegian Jews could not have happened without Reinhard’s knowledge. Despite the substantial body of evidence supporting Reinhard’s involvement in the Jewish deportations and several murders, on June 30, 1967, he was sentenced to a mere five years for complicity in the murders during a counter-resistance action dubbed “Operation Blumenpflücken.” While Reinhard was also found guilty of deporting Jews, he supposedly could not be sentenced for this crime because the statute of limitations of 15 years for deportations had run out. Unbelievably, Reinhard was released in 1970 having served barely three years.

The trail was followed closely in Norway, and the verdict, once rendered, was characterized by the Norwegian newspapers as “scandalously mild.”

Let me end on a personal note. My father, a German-trained dentist, was never able to convince the American authorities to recognize his German credentials following his arrival here in 1948; they wanted him to redo his dental studies, something he felt he was too old to contemplate. Still, hoping to resume his dental profession in Germany, he travelled there in the mid-1950’s. For reasons that remain unclear and which we obviously never discussed, my father’s return to Germany never happened. I’ve often wondered whether this might have been related to the “hostile” environment he found in Germany where “low-level” German supporters of the Nazi regime had comfortably resumed their lives and reoccupied positions of power, and protected their former co-conspirators? Perhaps, it’s a rhetorical question to which there is no answer. Or, maybe, the mild judgement meted out to the mass murderer Hellmuth Reinhard was a manifestation of Germans disregarding the past. My father was a man with strong moral principles and would have been deeply offended by this dismissal of past sins, particularly since his beloved sister Susanne was murdered in Auschwitz. During our own McCarthy Era, I remember my father abruptly cancelling his subscription to the former “Long Island Press” for their unbridled support of Senator Joe McCarthy, so it would not surprise me that my father could not abide returning to post-war Germany under the prevailing circumstances of the time.

POST 65: GERMANY’S LAST EMPEROR, WILHELM II, PICTURED WITH UNKNOWN FAMILY MEMBER

Note: In this post, I discuss a postcard given to me showing the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, taken in Doorn in the Netherlands in May 1926, following Wilhelm’s abdication from the throne after Germany’s defeat in WWI, with an unknown member of my extended family standing amidst the Royal family.

Among my father Dr. Otto Bruck’s surviving collection of pre-WWII photos are several unique ones of historic interest. These include a small number replicated in Post 8 showing Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, taken in 1935 in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]; at the time, Göring was participating in a campaign event in support of the slate of Nazi candidates running for office there, and an election parade passed just below the office building in which my father had his dental practice.

An equally fascinating photo, illustrated in Post 17, shows a young Käthe Heusermann, who at the time was working as a dental assistant for my uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland]. In 1933, after my uncle was forced by the Nazi overlords to shutter his dental practice, Käthe relocated to Berlin and was hired by Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, as his dental assistant. Following the end of the war, Käthe Heusermann, was instrumental in helping the Russians identify Hitler’s dental remains, although, as discussed in Post 31, it would be many years before this fact was publicly acknowledged by the Russians. Because Käthe had always attended Hitler’s dental treatments, she was well-positioned to recognize Blaschke’s distinct and outdated periodontal work.

And, apropos of this post with a photo of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, in Post 15 one of my father’s surviving photos illustrates the Kaiser’s daughter-in-law, the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, Princess Cecilie. (Figures 1-2) She is touring my renowned great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s flower school and shop in Berlin. Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (Cecilie Auguste Marie; 20 September 1886 – 6 May 1954) was the last German Crown Princess and Crown Princess of Prussia as the wife of German Crown Prince Wilhelm, the son of German Emperor Wilhelm II.

Figure 1. Last Crown Princess of Germany & Prussia, Princess Cecilie, visiting my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s “Schule für Blumenschmuck” (flower school)

Figure 2. Cecilie of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, daughter-in-law of the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II

The current post is about an intriguing, captioned family photo that was given to me by one of my third cousins (Figures 3a-b), Andreas “Andi” Pauly, whom regular readers will recognize from earlier posts. The photo was part of a collection of family pictures I obtained, so I only came to realize its significance after I had the message translated. (Figure 4) The photo was turned into a postcard, and obviously mailed in a stamped envelope because the postcard has no stamp and address on the flip side, but unfortunately the envelope has not survived so the sender is unknown.

Figure 3a. Postcard of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, his second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), taken in 1926 in Doorn, the Netherlands. An unknown member of the family is surrounded by the Royal Family’s entourage

Figure 3b. Flip side of postcard faintly dated 28th of May 1926 in lower left, signed “W.B.” in lower right

Figure 4. Translation of postcard’s message

I didn’t comprehend who the people in the photo were until I did an Internet query on “Doorn.” I discovered this is in the Netherlands and is where Germany’s former Emperor, Wilhelm II, went into exile after he abdicated the throne following Germany’s defeat in WWI. I had no reason to recognize Wilhelm II but mention of Royalty led me to ask one of my German cousins who is a historian whether he recognized anyone in the photo, and he confirmed it was Germany’s last Kaiser. My cousin was quite excited by this discovery because it reinforced his belief in our family’s connection to the upper echelons of Prussian society.

Figure 5. Postcard-sender’s wife circled standing behind Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath

The message on the card pinpoints only a young princess, “Carolath,” and the postcard-sender’s wife standing behind her without a hat, with no name given. (Figure 5) Comparing the postcard to known photos of the Royal family, we can identify in the front row, the German Emperor’s second wife, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947); her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972); and the former German Emperor, Wilhelm II. The writer tells us among the rest of the entourage are some of Princess Hermine’s older daughters, as well as some of the Emperor’s former generals. I’ve not positively been able to identify by name any of Princess Hermine’s other children, nor any of the Kaiser’s generals, although I was able to find a picture on the Internet with only Princess Hermine, Wilhelm II, and Princess Henriette (Carolath) taken at Doorn at about the same time. (Figure 6)

Figure 6. Photo from the Bundesarchiv Bild (102-11383) showing the German Emperor at Doorn with his second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz and Carolath, her youngest daughter by her first marriage, taken about the same time as the photo on the postcard

What I’ve also been able to learn is that after Princess Henriette’s father died in 1920, her mother, Princess Hermine, remarried in 1922 the former German Emperor, Wilhelm II. Hermine had five young children, but it was decided that only the youngest, Princess Henriette, would come with her mother to live at Doorn. Wilhelm II generally kept out of his stepchildren’s affairs apart from Henriette. He had a genuine affection for her, and when she got engaged to the Emperor’s own grandson, Prince Karl Franz of Prussia, on the 6th of August 1940 at Doorn, Wilhelm II made the official announcement.

The message on the postcard provides clues as to who mailed it and to whom it was mailed and was an obvious starting point for trying to unravel the sender and receiver of the card. Faintly visible at the bottom is the date the postcard was written, the 28th of May 1926. My intimate familiarity with my extended family tree and the fact the photo was given to me by a member of the Pauly family clearly led both Andi and me to conclude the card had been sent to my great-great-aunt, Rosalie “Salchen” Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927). (Figures 7-8) Rosalie Pauly was the only one of her Pauly generation still alive in 1926, although she would die the following year.

Figure 7. Rosalie “Salchen” Pauly née Mockrauer, my great-great-aunt as a young woman, the recipient of the postcard mailed in 1926

Figure 8. My great-great-aunt Rosalie Pauly in 1917

Having rather quickly satisfied myself as to the receiver of the postcard, I then tackled the much more challenging task of trying to resolve who sent the card to Rosalie Pauly. Readers will immediately notice the sender only signed his initials, “W.B.,” who, at first, I thought might be a member of my Bruck family; I quickly discarded this theory because the writer tells us that on the 28th of May 1926 his wife is due to give birth in about eight days, thus in early June 1926, and I know of no Bruck offspring related to Rosalie Pauly born in that timeframe.

We know the postcard-writer was male because, as previously mentioned, he identifies his wife in the picture standing behind Wilhelm II’s stepdaughter, Carolath, as he refers to her. It’s not clear whether “Carolath” was a diminutive intended as an affectionate nickname to be used only by close family and friends, or how she was known publicly. It seems odd that a member of my extended family would be photographed amidst the former Royal family in a seemingly intimate setting if they were not readily acquainted in some way. More on this later.

The writer of the postcard tells my great-great-aunt Rosalie that the visit of her grandson reminded him to send her the photograph of the Royal couple; Walter Rothholz senior (1893-1978) (Figure 9), mentioned by name a few lines further down, was Rosalie’s eldest grandson and would have been 33 years of age at the time the card was written.

Figure 9. Walter Rothholz in 1964, Rosalie Pauly’s eldest grandson whose name is mentioned in the postcard

Figure 10. Else Marie “Elsemai” Rothholz née Bølling in 1964, Walter Rothholz’s wife

I have a theory as to the sender of the postcard, so far unprovable but conceivable. Walter Rothholz senior was married to a Norwegian woman, Else Marie “Elsemai” Bølling (1915-1976). (Figure 10) Initially, I considered the possibility that one of Else Marie’s brothers had a prename beginning with the initial “W.” I located a Bølling family tree on Geni.com naming Else Marie’s siblings but none begin with this letter. However, I discovered on this family tree that Else Marie’s father had a brother born in Kristiania (Oslo, Norway) named Wilhelm Henning Bølling (1891-1930), that’s to say her uncle, who would have been the right age to have a young family in 1926; he would have been only two years older than Walter Rothholz. If Wilhelm Bølling was the writer of the postcard, his wife is the one pictured. Her prename was “Ingrid,” although no surname is provided. While the Bølling family tree includes multiple photos of family members, including one of Wilhelm Bølling (Figure 11), none of Ingrid are included making it impossible to compare against the woman on the postcard.

Figure 11. Wilhelm Henning Bølling (1891-1930), Else Marie’s uncle and possible sender of the postcard showing Germany’s last Emperor, Wilhelm II

According to the Bølling family trees on Geni, Wilhelm and Ingrid had a daughter named Wivi Aase Bølling, but no vital data is provided nor is any photo included.

Figure 12. Wilhelm Henning Bølling’s probate record showing he died in the United Kingdom in 1930

Wilhelm Bølling is known to Walter Rothholz’s living son, also named Walter; Wilhelm was a very wealthy shipowner who transported coal. According to Walter, he committed suicide. (Figure 12) Given Wilhelm’s connection to the coal trade and its importance to Germany at the time, it’s imaginable he may have been a business associate of and socialized with the German Emperor during and after his rule. Pending the discovery of a photo of Wilhelm Bølling’s wife or a date for the birth of his daughter Wivi Aase, the question of which family member stands amidst Germany’s last Royal family remains a mystery.

POST 64: MY COUSIN AGNES STIEDA’S FATHER, ART HISTORIAN DR. HANS VOGEL

Note: This is a post about Dr. Hans Vogel, father of my Canadian third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel who was the subject of Posts 46 and 63. In this post, I briefly relate a few aspects of Dr. Vogel’s life and highlight one of his major accomplishments.

Figure 1. Undated photo of Dr. Hans Vogel and his wife Susanne Vogel née Neisser, Agnes Stieda’s parents

In the course of doing forensic investigations into my Jewish ancestors, I often learn they were renowned and very accomplished people. Where the forebears are unknown to me, I typically begin by searching their names on the Internet. Since all my father’s immediate ancestors were German, I also search for them on German Wikipedia. This post is the tale of one such individual, Dr. Hans Martin Erasmus Vogel, my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel’s father. (Figures 1-2) Regular readers will recall that Agnes has been the subject of two earlier posts, and that her father has been mentioned in both. It is not my intention to present Dr. Vogel’s biography here, but merely to highlight a few relevant facts that reflect the era in which he lived and one of his major achievements.

I’ve previously told readers of my father’s family ties to Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] in Upper Silesia, but there are other larger Prussian cities to which my extended family was connected, notably, Posen [today: Poznan, Poland], where my Pauly relatives were from, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and Stettin [today: Szczecin, Poland]. Dr. Hans Vogel was born in Stettin on the 28th of July 1897, and graduated from the Gymnasium, high school, there in 1916. Following his graduation until 1918, he was a Sergeant Major during WWI, and was badly wounded during the war. Upon his recuperation in 1919, he studied political science and in 1923 received his Dr. rer. pol. (Doctor rerum politicarum), Doctor of Political Science. Then, from 1923 to 1925, he studied art history in Marburg and Leipzig, and graduated with his Dr. phil. (Doctor philosophiae), Doctor of Philosophy.

Figure 3. Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen, member of the House of Hohenzollern, as a young man in his regimental uniform

From 1925 until 1932, Dr. Vogel worked as an art historian. He was a volunteer at the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts) in Leipzig; established an art and local history museum in Zeulenroda in the state of Thuringia; was an assistant at the Städtisches Museum in Moritzburg; and was a lecturer for art history and a librarian at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Kassel; after the Kunstakademie closed in 1932, he worked as a “wissenschaftlicher Hilfsarbeiter,” an unpaid scientific assistant, at the Gemäldegalerie and Landesmuseum in Kassel. In 1934, Dr. Vogel’s continued employment at the museum in Kassel was no longer possible because of his so-called “mixed marriage” to Agnes’s Jewish or “non-Aryan” mother, Susanne Vogel née Neisser. Between 1934 and 1935, while trying in vain to emigrate, he managed to secure a grant to inventory the building content and art collection of the Hohenzollern in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany. This work caught the attention of Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen (Figure 3), who was a Prussian officer and member of the House of Hohenzollern, and led to a project in 1936 cataloging the Prince’s library and copperplate collection; by 1937 though Dr. Vogel was relegated to a clerical position in the property of the Prince.

Figure 4. Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen (1874-1940) in the 1930’s when Dr. Hans Vogel worked for him on his estate in Kamenz, Prussia [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland]

Figure 5. Another photo of Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen taken in the 1930’s

Dr. Vogel’s daughter Agnes has fond memories of Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen (1874-1940) (Figures 4-5), not the least because he protected her family and provided work for her father during the war. Friedrich Heinrich was an interesting character. He studied law at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn; upon graduation he joined the military under a position of à la suite, which was a military title given to those who were assigned to the army or a particular unit for honor’s sake, and entitled to wear a regimental uniform, but otherwise had no official position. However, in early 1907 he was relieved from his position à la suite as a regimental commander because of his homosexuality. He was excluded from the Prussian army for this reason, but at the beginning of WWI he was once again allowed to become a soldier, but only at the rank of Gefreiter, basically a Private First Class, with no opportunity for promotion.

In late 1906, Friedrich Heinrich was nominated by Kaiser Wilhelm II as Lord Master of the Order of St. John as the successor to his late father who’d died earlier that year. The poorly kept secret of Friedrich Wilhelm’s homosexuality, however, caused him to ask the Kaiser to withdraw his nomination, which he did. Eventually, the press learned and published the motive for the change in leadership for the Knights of St. John, “because he [Friedrich Heinrich] suffers from the inherited perversion of the sex instinct.” Having been “outed,” he was urgently advised to leave Berlin. After stays in southern France and Egypt, Friedrich Heinrich lived from then on withdrawn on his Silesian estates where Dr. Vogel worked for him. According to published accounts, Friedrich Heinrich contributed greatly to the economic development of the southeastern part of the county of Glatz [today: Kłodzko, Poland] where his estate was located and was popular among his subjects because of his concern for their well-being.

Dr. Vogel remarked that living in the countryside in a state of complete social isolation left him with much time to continue his private art history studies, which served him well after the war. As the war progressed, Dr. Vogel was increasingly at risk from the Gestapo, on account of his “mixed marriage.” Forewarned in time, he fled to Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. In Post 46, Agnes described it as such:

My father was responsible for bringing his Unit’s mail to the train, and when he noticed the train was headed to Berlin, he took that opportunity to jump onboard and defect, hoping to find us when he arrived in Potsdam; we had always found shelter there in the apartment of the mother of one my mother’s good friends. By defecting, my father had taken a huge risk since defectors were shot on sight. But he was not discovered and entered Berlin which was aflame.

Following the end of WWII, Dr. Vogel was unable to immediately find employment in a museum, so for a time worked at the local Municipal School Office in Potsdam retraining former teachers and training new ones. Then, in 1946, he was hired as the Director of the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Kassel (Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel). When Dr. Vogel arrived, he found a bomb-destroyed gallery, so the reconstruction of the Kassel Museum after the war was largely his doing. Many of the museum’s monuments and paintings had been moved elsewhere during the war for safekeeping. One of the most important events during Dr. Vogels’s tenure as Director was the return of the so-called “Viennese Pictures” in 1955; this involved the repatriation of 64 very precious paintings including Rembrandt’s “Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph,” as well as artworks by Albrecht Dürer, Titian, Rubens and von Dyck. (Figures 6a-b) Given the legitimate hostility countries felt towards Germany after WWII and the prevailing “cold war,” it was certainly not a given all countries would return art work that had been squirrelled away inside their borders; a few might reasonably have viewed retention of these valuable masterpieces as reparations. Regardless, the fact that Dr. Vogel, on behalf of the Museumslandschaft Hessen (Museum of Hessian History (MHK)) (Figures 7a-b), was able to recover the Viennese Pictures certainly stands as one of his most significant achievements, almost a “monuments men” moment.

Figure 6a. Dr. Hans Vogel in 1955 with the paintings he retrieved from Vienna, Austria that had been stored there for safekeeping during WWII

Figure 6b. Dr. Hans Vogel holding Albrecht Dürer’s, the “Portrait of Elsbeth Tucher,” painted in 1499, that was among the so-called “Viennese Pictures” he repatriated from Vienna in 1955

Figure 7a. The “Museumslandschaft Hessen” (Museum of Hessian History) in Kassel, Germany, where Dr. Vogel was the Director between 1946 and 1961

Figure 7b. One of the crated “Viennese Pictures” being carried into the “Museumslandschaft Hessen” in 1955

Dr. Vogel’s professional career, even circumscribed as it was by the Nazi era, was certainly more multi-faceted than the narrow description I’ve provided. MHK houses a diverse collection, carefully organized under Dr. Vogel’s tutelage, including the library and copper cabinet, picture gallery, pre- and early-historical collections, collections of folk art and costumes, the astronomical and physics cabinet, the collection of urban costumes, furniture and ceramics, as well as items from the former landgrave art chamber. On behalf of the museum, Dr. Vogel enriched the Old Masters Picture Gallery by acquiring 20 works by Jacob Jordaens, Thomas de Kayser, and an anonymous student of Rubens, as well as a series of paintings from the Tischbein Circle. He also purchased 14 Rembrandt etchings to form as a counterpart to the Rembrandt paintings hanging in Kassel retrieved from Vienna.

Having little to do with Dr. Vogel’s professional work, among his daughter Agnes’s papers, survives a very touching and simple hand-drawn picture by Dr. Vogel. It shows Dr. Vogel and his wife standing on the shore, depicted as a rabbit and a dog, watching sadly as Agnes, shown as a rabbit, sails aboard an ocean liner headed to Canada from Germany. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. Simple hand-drawn picture done by Dr. Hans Vogel showing his daughter Agnes’s departure from Germany aboard an ocean liner

Following his retirement in 1961, Dr. Vogel and his wife remained in Kassel where they are interred. (Figure 9)

Figure 9. Hans and Suse Vogel’s headstone in Kassel, Germany

POST 63: REMEMBERING SOME ANCESTORS THROUGH MY COUSIN AGNES STIEDA’S PHOTOS

Note: In this post, I recall through a series of sometimes poignant and touching images some of my ancestors, several of whom were murdered in the Shoah. The photos embedded in this post originate with my 92-year old third cousin who knew and was intimately acquainted with these individuals as a young child growing up in Germany before and during the Nazi Era.

Figure 1. Painting of Agnes Stieda née Vogel, granddaughter of Ernst and Margarethe Neisser, who comes from a family of fifth-generation musicians

Figure 2. Agnes’s great-grandmother, Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927), younger sister of Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer

Figure 3. My great-grandmother, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924), older sister of Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer

I first introduced readers to my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel in Blog Post 46. (Figure 1) Our respective great-grandmothers were sisters, Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927) (Figure 2), and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924). (Figure 3) I first learned about Agnes from another third cousin who, tired of incessant questions on family matters he couldn’t answer, referred me to her. We became acquainted in February of this year, and ever since we’ve engaged in a very active and lively email correspondence. I wrote about Agnes in Post 46. What’s made our exchanges so fascinating is that Agnes lived through historic events and was close to a few of the people I’ve researched and written about, including some who perished in the Holocaust. This post provides an opportunity to remember through photographs a few of these people seen in the throes of life before they knew what tragedy awaited them, and their lives were abruptly ended.

Figure 4. Agnes Stieda & me in Vancouver, Canada, August 2019

Figure 5. Agnes’s eldest daughter, Nicki Stieda, at her home in Vancouver, Canada

Agnes, I learned, lives in a retirement community in Victoria on Vancouver Island, about an hour-and-a-half west of Vancouver by ferry. Prior to meeting Agnes, my wife and I had already planned a cruise to Alaska departing from Vancouver to see the glaciers before climate-change deniers ensure their disappearance. After months of communication, it was only natural that Agnes and I should get together. (Figure 4) We arranged to meet in person at her eldest daughter Nicki Stieda’s home in Vancouver. (Figure 5) Nicki is the curator of her mother’s personal papers and photos, so upon learning of my upcoming visit, she organized all the items for my convenience. (Figure 6) Given that I neither speak nor read German, I focused on taking pictures of Agnes’s photos. Additionally, thanks to her perfect recall of the people in the images, we spent several enthralling hours talking about Agnes’s memories of them.

Figure 6. Agnes’s personal papers and photos organized by her daughter

Let me provide a little more context. Agnes is the granddaughter of Dr. Ernst Neisser and Margareth “Gretl” Neisser née Pauly, both victims of the Holocaust who committed suicide in Berlin, respectively, in 1941 and 1942; this was the subject of Post 48. Gretl Neisser was one of nine children of Dr. Josef and Rosalie Pauly, all of whom have been discussed in earlier posts and all whose fates I’ve now worked out. Ernst and Gretl Neisser had two children, Agnes’s mother Susanne Dorothea Vogel née Niesser (1899-1984) and Agnes’s uncle Peter Heinrich Neisser (1906-1929).

Figure 7. Agnes’s grandfather, Dr. Ernst Neisser, in 1911 amongst a group of other doctors outside the hospital in Stettin, Germany, where he would later deliver his granddaughter

Dr. Ernst Neisser was a medical doctor in Stettin, Germany [today: Szczecin, Poland], who delivered Agnes. (Figure 7) Another Pauly daughter, Edith “Dietchen” Riezler née Pauly (Figure 8) also lived in Stettin with her husband, Dr. Walter Riezler (Figure 9), who was the Director of the Muzeum Narodowe w Szczecinie, the National Museum, Szczecin; Walter and Edith Riezler were the subjects of Post 53. In writing that post, I communicated with curators at the museum to try and procure photos of Dr. Riezler; I eventually obtained some from my third cousin Andi Pauly that I shared with the museum since they had none at the time. Among Agnes’s photos were yet more of Dr. Reizler that I’ve also sent them.

Figure 8. Edith “Dietchen” Riezler née Pauly (1880-1961)

Figure 9. Dr. Walter Riezler (1878-1965)

Figure 10. An intimate moment between Agnes’s grandparents, Ernst & Margarethe Neisser

Because of Agnes’s family ties to Stettin following her birth in 1927, many of her photos date from this period. They illustrate in intimate fashion the close bond Agnes grandparents had with one another (Figure 10) and with their granddaughter (Figures 11-13). Several also show the deep affection between Agnes and her great-aunt Dietchen Riezler (Figures 14-15); Agnes has particularly fond memories of all three. There are multiple images of Agnes as a child at the beach along the Baltic Ocean, which is about 100km or 60 miles north of Szczecin. This series naturally includes photos of her parents Hans and Suse Vogel. (Figure 16)

Figure 11. Agnes as a toddler with her beloved grandfather, Ernst Neisser

Figure 12. Another image of Agnes with her grandfather

Figure 13. Agnes as a ten-year old with her grandparents, Ernst and Margarethe Neisser, in 1937-38 in Eberhausen near Munich

Figure 14. Agnes with another of her beloved relatives, her great-aunt Edith “Dietchen” Riezler née Pauly

Figure 15. Agnes as a toddler with her great-aunt Dietchen Riezler

Figure 16. Agnes as a toddler at the beach surrounded by her grandparents, her great-aunt, and her youthful parents

Figure 17. Agnes’s father, Dr. Hans Vogel, following WWII when he served as Director of the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, Germany

Dr. Hans Vogel (Figure 17) will be the feature of an upcoming post. Suffice it for now to note that Dr. Vogel was, among other things, an art historian, and, like Dr. Walter Riezler, also the Director of a museum, the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, Germany. (Figure 18) In anticipation of writing a future post about Dr. Vogel, I’ve also communicated and shared images of him with them.

Figure 18. The Hessisches Landesmuseum in Kassel, Germany

Figure 19. Wedding photo of Hans & Suse Vogel taken the 31st of July 1926 in Berlin-Charlottenburg

One photo hanging in Nicki Stieda’s home is of her grandparents’ wedding in 1926 in Berlin. (Figure 19) Having learned from a tribute Suse Vogel née Neisser, Agnes’s mother, had written in honor of her father (Dr. Ernst Neisser) that she and Hans had gotten married in the Charlottenburg Borough of Berlin, I was able to track down and order from the Landesarchiv Berlin the original certificate. (Figures 20a-b) Finding a photo linked to a marriage certificate I’d obtained from a completely foreign source is one thing that makes doing forensic genealogy so entertaining.

Figure 20a. Copy of page 1 of Hans & Susanne Vogel’s marriage certificate of the 31st of July 1926

Figure 20b. Copy of page 2 of Hans & Susanne Vogel’s marriage certificate of the 31st of July 1926

Figure 21. Peter Neisser, Agnes’s uncle, as a toddler

Figure 22. Another image of Peter Neisser as a toddler, taken in Stettin, Germany

Figure 23. Peter Neisser, Agnes’s uncle, who died prematurely of septicemia) on the 16th of April 1929

Figure 24. Peter Neisser (1906-1929), Agnes’s uncle

Figure 25. Peter Neisser as a toddler with his grandmother, Julie Neisser née Sabersky (1841-1927)

Particularly poignant images included among Agnes’s papers are some of her uncle Peter Neisser, who died prematurely of septicemia at 23 years of age in 1929 in Heidelberg, Germany as he was training to become a doctor. Photos of Peter span from when he was a toddler (Figures 21-22) to an adult (Figures 23-24), probably shortly before he died; one shows him with his grandmother, Julie Neisser née Sabersky (1841-1927). (Figure 25) I don’t expect readers to remember but I included one picture in Post 45 of a Pauly family get-together, reproduced here (Figure 26), estimated to have taken place around 1895, that included Julie Neisser. In examining Neisser family trees on ancestry.com, I came upon one that used as a profile image a painting of Julie Neisser, the original of which interestingly is in the possession of Agnes’s daughter Nicki Stieda. (Figure 27) This is yet another serendipitous connection.

Figure 26. Large Pauly family get-together, probably in the mid-1890’s, with Julie Neisser née Sabersky’s head circled

Figure 27. Painting of Julie Neisser née Sabersky, hanging in Nicki Stieda’s home in Vancouver

Another of Josef and Rosalie Pauly’s daughters with a connection to Stettin was Elizabeth “Ellchen” Herrnstadt née Pauly who was married to Arthur Herrnstadt (1865-1912); they had two daughters, Aenne Herrnstadt (1896-1942) and Ilse Herrnstadt (1897-1943). While Arthur died in Stettin well before the Nazis ascended to power, his wife and two daughters were all murdered in the Holocaust, at Theresienstadt. (Figure 28) Aenne Herrnstadt, it turns out, was Agnes’s godmother, and several photos survive (Figures 29-30), including the two of them together when Agnes was a toddler. Interestingly, while Aenne and Ilse were only a year apart, Agnes has no recollection of Ilse, and thinks she may have been institutionalized for unknown reasons.

Figure 28. Ilse Herrnstadt’s (1897-1943) death certificate from the Theresienstadt Ghetto, showing she died on the 21st of July 1943 and identifying her parents as Arthur and Elisabeth Herrnstadt

Figure 29. Agnes as a toddler with her godmother, Aenne Herrnstadt (1896-1942), murdered in the Theresienstadt

Figure 30. Another photo of Agnes with her godmother Aenne Herrnstadt

There exists a picture among Agnes photos reproduced here, showing Ellchen Herrnstadt, her daughter Aenne, and Agnes’s mother, Suse Vogel, taken between 1916 and 1918. (Figure 31)

Figure 31. Elizabeth “Ellchen” Herrnstadt née Pauly (left) and her daughter Aenne Herrnstadt (middle), both victims of the Holocaust, with Agnes’s mother, Suse Vogel, in a photo taken between 1916 and 1918

Helene Guttentag née Pauly was yet another of Josef and Rosalie Pauly’s daughters who, along with her husband Dr. Adolf Guttentag, committed suicide in Berlin in 1942 after being told to report for deportation. I told their story in Post 50. They had one son, Otto Guttentag, who escaped to America, served in the U.S. Army during the war, was stationed in Europe for a time after the war, and eventually became a doctor in California. While stationed in Europe, Agnes and Otto Guttentag met (Figure 32); they were first cousins once removed. (Figure 33)

Figure 32. Agnes with Otto Guttentag, her first cousin once removed, while he was stationed as a U.S. soldier in Germany following WWII

Figure 33. Dr. Otto Guttentag later in life

In closing, I concede this post (Figures 34-35) will be of limited interest to many, though I would only add that what may resonate with readers is the process by which they may pursue their own genealogical investigations to track down images and stories of their own ancestors. Admittedly, this can be a challenging though not insurmountable problem.