Note: A document I recently found in the Israeli Defense Forces Archives about my father’s first cousin, Heinz Löwenstein, substantiates and adds to what I know about this charismatic family member.
The mother of one of my ex-girlfriends would in jest remark to her daughter when she was working on her Ph.D. that she was learning more and more about less and less. Whenever I publish a postscript to an earlier post, I often think the same, that I’m delving deeper into the life of someone whose circumstances I’ve already explored. Oftentimes it adds a more nuanced or fuller understanding of that individual, at other times it confirms or refutes what I previously concluded. My measuring stick, however, is how much I’ve learned about an ancestor vis a vis what I knew when I started researching them.
Thus, in the case of one of my father’s charismatic first cousins, Heinz Löwenstein (Figure 1), whom I met on one occasion as a child, his wartime whereabouts were shrouded in mystery. Shrouded in mystery, that’s to say, until an English gentleman from Maidstone, England, Mr. Brian Cooper (Figure 2), contacted me and provided a wealth of documentary material confirming that Heinz had joined the English Army in Palestine, been deployed to Greece, was captured by the Germans during the Battle of Greece, and spent the remaining wartimes years in various prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in Austria, Poland, Hungary, and Germany. The reason Brian contacted me is that his own uncle, Henry William Jackson, whose fate he’s never worked out, had been interned in the same POW camp in Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland] as Heinz, and he’d come across Heinz’s name while researching his uncle. Whether they ever met remains unknown.
Having been born in Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland] in 1905, naturally Heinz spoke German fluently. On several occasions when he escaped from detached POW work camps, this allowed him to blend into the countryside for a brief time before he was inevitably recaptured. After his last escape, probably in August 1943, he made his way to Hungary, where he was detained on the estate of Count Mithaly Andrassy in Szigetvár, Hungary under the name of “Henry Loewenstein.” (Figure 3) Because there was no state of war between Hungary and the United Kingdom prior to Germany’s invasion of Hungary in March 1944, any British POW escapees, if caught by the Hungarian authorities, could expect no more than internment by Hungary as a neutral power; there was no concern that British POWs would be returned to German control.
Following Germany’s invasion of Hungary, however, Heinz inevitably was recaptured by the Germans. Inexplicably, by then he had successfully adopted an alias, “Henry Goff,” “Goff” being his sister’s married name. After his capture, he pretended to have been born in Manchester, England on his actual date of birth, the 8th of March 1905. The Germans never grasped that “Heinz Löwenstein” and “Henry Goff” were one and the same person, although the English military authorities who’d been given the names of British prisoners by their German counterparts realized this. (Figure 4)
Both Heinz Löwenstein and my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, were in the English Army’s Royal Pioneer Corps (RPC), though in different theaters. Heinz, as mentioned, joined the RPC when Palestine was a British mandate, while my father switched to the English Army in November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria after a five-year stint in the French Foreign Legion. In 2010, I wrote to the British Army Personnel Centre, Historical Disclosures Office asking whether they could find and send me his military file for the 2 years 226 days my father spent in the Pioneer Corps, to no avail.
Upon establishing contact with Brian Cooper, who is an expert on English POW records, I asked him whether he had any thoughts on where I might write to obtain both my father and Heinz’s military files. After telling him I’d already written to the British Army Personnel Centre many years earlier, he suggested I contact the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Archives, with whom I dutifully followed up. While the IDF undertook an extensive search, the archives suggested I contact the Pioneer Veterans Association. Thus, I approached them asking where I might possibly find my father and Heinz’s military files.
In the case of Heinz, Mr. Norman Brown, the Controller RPC Association, kindly responded after consulting with the Association’s historian telling me “There is no evidence of him transferring to the PC (the number is R Signals). I am afraid all records are in Jerusalem—somewhere.”
In the instance of my father, Mr. Brown was able to provide a few more details: “Your father did serve in our Corps. He was enlisted into 362 Coy Pioneer Corps on 19 Nov 1943. The following is an extract from the nominal roll of the Company (dated Jul 1944):
Norman helpfully explained that a Pioneer Company was commanded by a Major and usually consisted of approximately 10 Sections of 25 men each led by a Sergeant with a Lieutenant assigned to every two sections. Including the small headquarters element (cooks, clerks, etc.), the average strength of a Company was 288 men. A Group Headquarters commanded between 5 and 18 Companies in its geographical area. The abbreviations “SOS” and “TOS” shown in the diaries simply mean “struck off strength” and “taken on strength,” i.e. date posted out and date posted in.
According to the Association’s annotated records my father’s file was apparently sent to “North Africa Records,” the location of which to date remains a mystery. Norman thinks these records may reside in an unknown location in Cairo. I even asked my contact at the IDF Archives if she had any clue where these records might be found but unfortunately, she’s been unable to help.
After many months of not hearing from the IDF Archives, and believing they’d been unable to track down Heinz’s military file, suddenly a few weeks ago I was notified they had located a file with information about him. After completing the necessary paperwork to obtain the document, they sent me the attached two pages. (Figures 6a-b) Hoping they had found his military file, instead I received a 1960 application Heinz completed as a former POW requesting compensation from Germany for his internment; the file was found in the Jewish Combatant Collection. Other than the date, the application is written in Hebrew. I asked my fourth cousin once removed who lives in Haifa, a mere 15 miles from Acre, Israel, where Heinz was then living, to translate it. (Figure 7)
At Brian Cooper’s suggestion, I am currently working with the Israeli Archives to try and ascertain the outcome of Heinz’s compensation application.
Heinz Löwenstein referred to himself as “Hanoch Loewenstein” at the time he submitted his application in 1960 requesting compensation from the German government. I know from other documents, as well as his 1979 “Burial Certificate” (Figure 8), that he had changed his name to “Hanoch Avneri,” his surname at times spelled as “Avinary.” Heinz’s date and place of enlistment into the English Army were previously unknown to me but learned had been on the 5th of August 1940 in a place called Sarafand (believed to be Al-Sarafand). Heinz’s 1960 application confirms that he was captured in Kalamata, Greece on the 29th of April 1941, imprisoned in Corinth, Greece, Wolfsberg, Austria, and Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland], facts all previously known to me. Heinz’s Service Number (PAL8576) and PoW number (2332) were also confirmed. Heinz indicated he was liberated in Germany in May 1945, which I’d surmised.
Heinz identified three Israeli friends with whom he was interned during the war, namely, Simon Offenheimer, Shlomo Menachem, and Shimon Leichtmann. Brian Cooper found the names of Simon Leichtmann (Figure 9) and Simon Offenheimer (Figure 10) on POW lists with detailed information; nothing was found on Schlomo Menachem. On ancestry, I also discovered Simon Offenheimer’s 1923 marriage certificate (Figure 11) and military records that showed he fought in WWI. (Figure 12)
The information I’ve collected on my father’s first cousin, which has been of particular interest since I once met him and since the rumors surrounding his wartime escapades are legendary within the family, has been hard earned. I attribute much of my good fortune to what Branch Rickey, the former brainy executive of the Los Angeles Dodgers, often quipped that “luck is the residue of design.” I hope that my persistence may eventually result in learning yet more about Heinz.
Note: A recent article in “National Geographic” made me realize the Egyptian mummy displayed at the Museum in Racibórz, the town where my father was born in 1907, dates not from the 12th dynasty (1985-1773 BC), as I previously understood, but rather from the 22nd dynasty (943-716 BC). As a retired archaeologist, and in anticipation of an upcoming trip my wife and I have planned to Egypt, this inadvertent discovery allows me to correct the record and provide brief details on the evolution of Egyptian mummification.
The August 2023 issue of National Geographic includes a short article by Jason Treat entitled “The Golden Age of Mummification,” describing how archaeological excavations at an ancient mortuary complex is shedding light on how this craft was once a booming business including for more than just pharaohs. The workshop associated with the necropolis, or cemetery, of the ancient capital of Memphis, Saqqara, was discovered in 2016; this site is situated along the west bank of the Nile River not far from Cairo. Excavations in a burial shaft there referred to as “K24,” dating to the 26th dynasty (664 B.C.-c. 525 B.C.), provide evidence that embalming took place underground, in this instance at a depth of 40 feet. Astonishingly, the shaft at K24 extends to a depth of 98 feet. It is believed that the deeper a body was buried, the more wealthy or important the individual was likely to have been in life.
By the 26th dynasty, the rituals and processes of mummification had been around for more than 2,000 years. During the Early Dynastic Period associated with the 1st through 3rd dynasties (3150 B.C.- 2613 B.C.), the mummies found in Saqqara were believed to be royal, though as early as the Old Kingdom, beginning with the 4th dynasty (c. 2613 to 2494 B.C.), elite nonroyals were also being mummified.
A figure included in Jason Treat’s article, labeled “The Evolution of Mummification in Ancient Egypt,” alerted me to the fact that the mummy displayed at the Museum in Racibórz was incorrectly attributed to the 12th dynasty. The dates I initially provided, 946-722 B.C., I quickly realized correspond to the 22nd dynasty. I confirmed with Magda Wawoczny, my acquaintance from Racibórz, that my earlier understanding as to the age of the mummified Egyptian lady, Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch, was in error; Magda explained the mummy and sarcophagus were dated at between 800 and 750 B.C. using C-14 dating.
I expect that for most readers, the significance of the mummy in Racibórz is how the remains wound up there rather than its age, yet in the interest of accuracy I feel a need to correct the previously provided information.
Below, I’ll point out a few differences in how the Egyptian lady may have been mummified.
As mentioned, during the Early Dynastic Period associated with the mummification exclusively of royals, bodies were wrapped in linen bandages treated with resin and mineral salts, with the entrails left in the body. By the Middle Kingdom, including the 12th dynasty, techniques occasionally involved removal of the brain via the nostrils and the injection of resins to dissolve entrails, which were subsequently removed through body orifices. By the 22nd dynasty, part of the Third Intermediate Period, mummification had reached its apex. By this time, efforts were undertaken to make the body look as lifelike as possible and included stuffing the cavity to preserve its shape.
As mentioned in Post 140, the Egyptian mummy displayed in Racibórz supposedly originates from a necropolis in Thebes, near present-day Luxor. Baron Rothschild purchased it along with three canopic jars presumably containing the viscera in 1860 while on a trip to Egypt. Stripped of its provenience and absent any recorded information as to its origin, the hieroglyphics on the sarcophagus provide the most useful clues about the mummy. Supposedly, Baron Rothschild purchased it as a gift for his fiancé who was apparently not amused. I can find no indication a marriage to a second wife ever took place.
In any case, shortly after his return from Egypt, at his palace in Šilheřovice, in current-day Czech Republic, Rothschild in the presence of guests invited to a social gathering had two sarcophagi opened, the cartonnage cut, and the embalmed linen-covered corpse unwrapped. In 1864, the baron decided to donate the souvenirs from his Egyptian journey to the Antiquity Department of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Racibórz. When the museum in Racibórz opened in 1927, they formally took possession of the mummy.
While the Egyptian mummy ultimately wound up in a museum, where it rightfully always should have been, this incident reminded me of an account by the world-famous Egyptian archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass in connection with the 2006 Tutankhamun exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago. The incident in question speaks to the fact that antiquities belong in museums not in private collections. In Dr. Hawass’ own words:
“. . .my experiences have provided me with many interesting stories. Let me tell you one of my favorites here: In 2006, the Tutankhamun was going to open in the Field Museum in Chicago under the sponsorship of Exelon, an American energy company. At the press conference, where we were to announce the opening, the executive vice-president of Exelon apologized that the company president, John Rowe, could not attend the conference because he had a meeting with President George W. Bush. The vice-president mentioned that Mr. Rowe loved ancient Egypt and even had an Egyptian coffin in his office.
I stood up and said that King Tutankhamun would not have been pleased to see an ancient coffin in a private office. Antiquities, I announced, must be either left at their original sites or kept in museums where everyone could see and enjoy them. I said that this coffin had to be given to the Field Museum or I would remove Exelon’s name from sponsorship of the Tutankhamun exhibition. Rowe refused, and the story made the first page of the ‘Chicago Tribune.’ I wrote an official letter to delete Exelon from all the written documents associated with the exhibition—and Rowe finally agreed to give the coffin as a gift to the Field Museum. On its front page the ‘Chicago Tribune’ declared that two pharaohs were fighting and the real one won.” (Hawass 2019:14-15)
Note: This post features a discussion about how an Egyptian mummy landed at the Museum in Racibórz during the European period of “Egyptomania.” This installment allows me to make some intriguing connections to people and places I’ve discussed in earlier posts, while briefly telling readers about scholars who were involved in the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics following the discovery of the Rosetta Stone during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and Syria between 1798 and 1801.
One of the featured attractions at the Museum in Racibórz, the town where my father Dr. Otto Bruck was born in 1907 when Ratibor was still part of Germany, is an Egyptian mummy. (Figure 1) While I like to imagine my father wandering through the cavernous spaces of the museum as a child gaping in awe at this ancient object, the fact is the official opening of the museum did not take place until the 4th of December 1927, several years after my father had left for Berlin to attend university. Still, it’s possible my father contemplated this unusual artifact when he was a high school student at the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Ratibor (Figure 2) where the mummy then resided.
According to the museum’s website, the idea of establishing the Museum in Racibórz arose at the beginning of the twentieth century and was instigated by lecturers from the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium. The Gymnasium was the subject of Post 60. The site of the present-day museum is a 14th century deconsecrated building that once belonged to the congregation of the Dominican Order that had been abandoned and in ruins since 1911. Following its restoration and official opening in 1927, the first exhibitions included presentations of tin, glass, and porcelain, militaria, sculptures and sacred paintings, liturgical books, and objects, and ethnographic articles. Amidst the exhibits of mostly regional artifacts, what eventually stood out was an Egyptian mummy, along with cartonnage and sarcophagi, that was displayed after 1934. How these materials came to be housed at the Museum in Racibórz is the focus of this blog post.
Anselm Salomon von Schwartz Rothschild, Baron Rothschild (1803-1874) (Figure 3), was an Austrian banker and a member of the Vienna branch of the Jewish Rothschild family. He was lord of nearby Chałupki (German: Annaberg) and Šilheřovice (German: Schillersdorf, Polish: Szylerzowice), located slightly less than 16 miles south of Racibórz along the current Poland-Czech Republic border. (Figures 4-5) In about 1860, following the death of his wife in 1859, Baron Rothschild went on a journey to Egypt and brought back numerous souvenirs, including a complete burial of an Egyptian woman. This was intended as a present for his fiancée, who rejected his overture. As a related aside, I can find no evidence that Baron Rothschild ever remarried, so perhaps this peculiar gift convinced his unnamed fiancée she was no longer interested. In any case, shortly after his return from Egypt, at his palace in Šilheřovice, Rothschild in the presence of guests invited to a social gathering had two sarcophagi opened, the cartonnage cut, and the embalmed linen-covered corpse unwrapped.
In 1864, the baron decided to donate the souvenirs from his Egyptian journey to the Antiquity Department of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Racibórz. When the museum in Racibórz opened in 1927, they formally took possession of the mummy though at the time it was on loan to a museum in Gliwice (German: Gleiwitz) that refused to return it until 1934, keeping it for a dozen years.
According to a tourist brochure developed for Racibórz’s Information Center by Grzegorz Wawoczny, coincidentally the father of Magda Wawoczny who authored Post 139, the following is written: “Scientific research on the mummy done by the famous German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius revealed that the Egyptian woman lived during the 12th dynasty (946-722 B.C.). Her name was Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch, which means ‘goddess Amonet said she would live.’ She was a rich married woman, probably daughter of a priest and barber from Thebes. She died young at the age of about 20. The reason for her death, according to radiological research, was most probably pregnancy complications.”
Regular readers may recall from Post 136 my discussion on Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and Syria between 1798 and 1801. As I previously wrote, this campaign was initiated to defend French trade interests and to establish scientific enterprise in the region. This is also the expedition that led to the discovery of the renowned trilingual Rosetta Stone, which we all learned about in grade school was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 B.C. during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. Because the decree has only minor differences between the three versions, it was key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The writing systems used in ancient Egypt were deciphered in the early nineteenth century, largely through the work of Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) and Thomas Young (1773-1829). The decipherment of the ancient hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone marked the beginning of the scientific study of Egyptology.
Scientists had long wondered about the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, whether the scripts recorded a language and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (another term for ideogram which is a written character symbolizing the idea of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it). Prior to Champollion and Young’s work, many thought hieroglyphic script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical concepts and did not record historical information. Young built on the work of earlier scholars and identified the meaning of many hieroglyphs, including phonetic glyphs in a cartouche containing the name of an Egyptian king of foreign origin, Ptolemy V. Comparing Ptolemy’s cartouche with others, by the early 1820s Champollion realized that hieroglyphic script was a mixture of phonetic and ideographic elements. This upended earlier assumptions and made it possible to begin to uncover many kinds of information recorded by the Egyptians.
After Young’s death in 1829 and Champollion’s in 1832, decipherment efforts languished. Then, in 1837 the aforementioned German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius, who identified the Egyptian mummy at the Museum of Racibórz, pointed out that many hieroglyphs represented combinations of two or three sounds rather than one, thus correcting one of the most fundamental faults in Champollion’s work. Further refinements by later scholars meant that by 1850 it was possible to fully translate ancient Egyptian texts.
In France, Napoleon’s discoveries precipitated a period of “Egyptomania,” which refers to a period of renewed interest in the culture of ancient Egypt sparked by Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign in the 19th century. Napoleon was accompanied by many scientists and scholars during this campaign, which led to a large interest in the documentation of ancient monuments in Egypt. Thorough documentation of ancient ruins led to an increase in the interest about ancient Egypt.
Egyptomania was not confined to French culture. My earlier Post 136 was specifically focused on a Nubian boy, Sabac el Cher, who was “gifted” to Prince Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht of Prussia (1809-1872) in February 1843 while the prince was on his “Oriental Journey,” seemingly a compulsory destination among the upper classes. In that post I cited a diary written by Georg Erbkam, entitled “Diary of my Egyptian Journey, 1842-1843.” Erbkam was an architect and part of a research expedition commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who happens to have been Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht’s older brother. On the 7th of April 1843 the two groups met up while traveling in Egypt.
Among the scientists who was involved in the research expedition commissioned by the Prussian King was none other than Charles Richard Lepsius. He was recruited by the Prussian King at the recommendation of other scientists to lead an expedition to Egypt and the Sudan to explore and record the remains of the ancient Egyptian civilization. According to his Wikipedia entry, “The Prussian expedition was modelled after the earlier Napoleonic mission, with surveyors, draftsmen, and other specialists. The mission reached Giza in November 1842 and spent six months making some of the first scientific studies of the pyramids of Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur. They discovered 67 pyramids recorded in the pioneering Lepsius list of pyramids and more than 130 tombs of noblemen in the area. While at the Great Pyramid of Giza, Lepsius inscribed a graffito written in Egyptian hieroglyphs that honours Friedrich Wilhelm IV above the pyramid’s original entrance; it is still visible.”
I would conclude by saying that the involvement of the German Egyptologist Charles Richard Lepsius in the identification of an Egyptian mummy that curiously resides at the Museum of Racibórz who was also involved in the decipherment of the hieroglyphs resonates with me as a retired archaeologist in a way it may not with readers. If so, I apologize to readers for wasting your valuable time.
REFERENCES
“Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decipherment_of_ancient_Egyptian_scripts
Erbkam, Georg Gustav: Tagebuch meiner egyptischen Reise. Teil 3. Ägypten, 1844-1845.
The following is a guest post written by Ms. Magda Wawoczny, a student in Jewish studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, who hails from Racibórz, Poland. Magda first contacted me in 2021 when she was working on her bachelor’s degree and interviewed me about my family’s connection to Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), when the city was part of Germany. Regular readers know that my family owned the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor from around 1850 through the mid-1920s. Knowing I had visited Racibórz on a few occasions, Magda was also interested in my impressions of the city.
In May 2023, Magda reached out to me again in connection with her ongoing master’s degree work in Jewish studies, still centered around her hometown. Surprisingly, she asked if I could help her get in touch with Monica Lewinsky’s father, Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, who is a Radiation Oncologist in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to me, Monica’s immediate ancestors come from Ratibor and her great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky, was once buried in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor.
More recently Magda has been researching a Jewish woman by the name of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann (1873-1928) whose body had been exhumed in 1972 from the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor prior to its destruction in 1973 and reburied in the town’s Catholic cemetery. The reason for this is explained in the current post. Magda’s interest in contacting Dr. Lewinsky stems from the fact that the Lewinsky and Linzer families were friends. Whereas the Lewinsky family emigrated to El Salvador during the 1920s and thereby survived the Holocaust, most of Minna Linzer’s family stayed in Ratibor and therefore perished.
Separately, but at around the same time as I was trying to reach Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, a German lady by the name of Ms. Jessica Nastos contacted me through my blog’s webmail. Jessica had stumbled upon Post 72 where I discussed so-called cabinet cards. One studio I’d specifically mentioned that produced these cards in Ratibor was the Helios Photo Studio, which was the subject of my previous post. Jessica told me her mother had once worked in the studio and offered to send me contemporary photos of the studio including a picture of an old envelope with the studio’s name and logo. Upon receiving the pictures, I realized they included images of the Linzer’s that Magda has been researching, including most family members from Ratibor who died in the Holocaust; astonishingly, there was even a picture of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann with her oldest son Jan (Germans: Hans). Minna’s husband, Hermann Linzer (1874-1944), carried this photo with him throughout World War I, and a bullet hole through the photo attests to a wound he suffered during the war. (Figure A)
When so many Jews were murdered by the Nazis in their effort to obliterate proof of their existence, it is bitter satisfaction to uncover photos of some of these people to emphasize the fact that the Nazis ultimately failed.
With the above as backdrop, I now turn the lectern over to Magda.
POST 139: THE STORY OF A JEWISH WOMAN BURIED IN RACIBÓRZ’S CATHOLIC CEMETERY
BY
MAGDA WAWOCZNY
JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY
The most important places related to the Jewish heritage of Racibórz that survived the end of World War II were the synagogue and the cemetery. While the synagogue was destroyed by a fire on the 9th of November 1938 on Kristallnacht (Figure 1), it endured as a ruin until it was demolished, the exact date of which is still being investigated. By contrast, the cemetery survived basically intact. Unfortunately, the Jewish inhabitants of Racibórz disappeared from the city’s landscape during the war—those who managed to escape after Kristallnacht survived outside Germany, those who remained died in concentration camps. As a result, the Jewish cemetery in Racibórz was eventually razed since the community which it had served no longer existed to take care of it. Or so it seemed until now. . .
Currently, for the purposes of my master’s thesis, I am researching the Jewish cemetery which was ultimately demolished in 1973. Based on the available sources, it is known that before the liquidation, photo documentation of all the burials and headstones was made by Mr. Kazimierz Świtliński (Figure 2) at the request of the city authorities. The documentation is on file at the Museum of Racibórz, and illustrates impressive tombstones made of marble, granite, and sandstone. In this post I will focus on one belonging to Minna Linzer, née Guttmann. (Figure 3)
During my archival investigations, my attention was drawn to an application by a woman from Racibórz who requested permission from the city authorities to exhume the body of her grandmother Minna Linzer from Ratibor’s former Jewish cemetery and transfer it together with the tombstone to the Catholic cemetery in the Ostróg district on Rudzka street. The woman emphasized that in the face of the anticipated liquidation of the cemetery, she felt an obligation to save the grave of her grandmother that she had taken care of and maintained for many years. The granddaughter was Elizabeth (Elzbieta) “Lilly” Slawik, née Grzonka. Her application to the city authorities was accompanied by a card with the inscription “eternal memory of those lost in the Auschwitz camp: Hermann Linzer, Jan Linzer, Małgorzata and Henryk Schiftan, Lota and Maks Tichauer.” (Figure 4)
Knowing only Elizabeth’s name and address, I started searching for her relatives. Fortunately, I managed to reach Elizabeth’s son, Minna’s great-grandson currently living in Germany. He explained that Elizabeth was the daughter of a Jewish man and a Catholic woman, and that the above-mentioned names are inscribed on the relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery. Elizabeth’s son mentioned that his mother took care of his great-grandmother’s tomb, and when she learned it was about to be destroyed, asked permission for the grave to be exhumed. Fascinatingly, he also mentioned that his mother had looked after the grave of Monica Lewinsky’s great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky. (Figure 5) Despite directions from Elisabeth’s son to Minna’s grave in the Catholic cemetery, it was not easy to find.
Having been given the name of Salo Lewinsky’s still living grandson, Bernard Lewinsky, by Lilly’s son, I decided to try and contact him. For this purpose, I asked Richard Brook, author of this blog, for help. Dr. Lewinsky is an oncologist in Los Angeles, so he was quickly able to get in touch with him. Upon establishing contact, Dr. Lewinsky confirmed that his father George Lewinsky (1903-1989) had remained in contact with Elisabeth who took care of his father’s grave. Until the death of Bernard’s father, the families remained in contact. Unfortunately, the grave of Bernard’s grandfather, Salo, could not be saved when the Jewish cemetery was dismantled.
Thanks also to Richard’s help, I was able to obtain some information on the names inscribed on Minna Guttmann’s headstone and found on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s request to exhume her grave, such as their former place of residence, their occupations, and the date of the deportations to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
A breakthrough in my research came when Richard coincidentally received an email from Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, Jessica Nastos, about the Helios Photo Studio which was the subject of Richard’s blog Post 138; it turns out “Lilly” had worked there. Thanks to Jessica, I learned that Elizabeth was the child of a Jew, Jan Linzer (mentioned on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s application to the city authorities), and a Catholic, Paulina Grzonka, who could not be together due to the Nazi rule and the specter of war. (Figure 6) To protect themselves and Elizabeth, Paulina and Jan decided not to get married, although they symbolically exchanged rings as keepsakes, with each other’s initials engraved on them. Paulina (1895-1971) and Elizabeth (1926-2016) survived, while Jan (1901-1945) died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Thanks to Jessica’s information, it was possible to establish the identities of the people on the card. Minna Linzer (1873-1928) was the first wife of Hermann Linzer (1874-1944). She died in 1928, and after her death Hermann got remarried to a woman named Amalie Nebenzahl (1884-1944). Both died in 1944 in Theresienstadt. Hermann and Minna had four children: Jan (German: Hans), Małgorzata (German: Margaret), Lota, and Leo. Leo, the youngest son, was the only one who survived the war. (Figure 7) Małgorzata and Lota together with their husbands also died in Theresienstadt.
Thanks to Jessica, based on photos from the 1990s, which show a relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery, I was able to find it. It is still there and in very good condition. (Figure 8) When it seemed that only archival documents and stories remained of the city’s Jewish heritage, it turns out that there is a preserved remnant of Jews in Racibórz, and Minna’s grave is proof of that.
Note: Since late 2018, I have received three separate inquiries regarding the Helios Photo Studio in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]. The first query provided the inspiration for writing Post 72 about cabinet cards, a style of photographic portraiture popular from around 1870 until World War I. Following publication of Post 72, two additional readers contacted me, the first in January 2021 and the most recent in May 2023. The first reader informed me that Claus Ogerman, a famous German arranger, conductor, and composer who made his name in America, was the son of the owners of the studio, while the second reader graciously sent me photos of the inside of the studio from the 1930s and 1940s showing the owners and staff. While none of my family is connected to the workshop, several photos astonishingly picture people whose names have come up in connection with unrelated research I’m involved in. This is the first of two posts stemming from what I’ve learned, the second post of which will be written by a guest author.
This post is the first of two interconnected stories related to Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907. The stories are interrelated in a fascinating way and will be presented as two separate posts because the connection is asynchronous. I discovered the links years apart, as I will explain in the following two posts. I will author this first post, and a young Polish student, Ms. Magda Wawoczny, researching the Jewish history of Ratibor will be a guest author of the subsequent story.
The discoveries generally emanate from Post 72 which I published in February 2020 right around the time the Covid-19 pandemic was declared. In that post I introduced readers to so-called “cabinet cards,” a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870; these consisted of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm (4+ ¼ by 6+ ½ inches). (Figures 1a-b) Typically, the name of the photographic studio was imprinted on cabinet cards below the photograph. Often a lithographic design covered most of the photo backing. Many designs incorporated attractive graphics, including medals or awards the studio supposedly won at some exposition or competition, or perhaps a medal of merit or excellence that was awarded by a European monarch. Sometimes, there was even an indication that the photographer or studio was the “official” photographer of a named monarch.
The inspiration for Post 72 came from an English lady with a Polish surname, a Ms. Gisela Szpytko, who contacted me in December 2018 asking if I had ever heard of “Helios Photography” in Ratibor; Ms. Szpytko explained her mother, who passed away in 1998, had worked there during the 1930s. Unfamiliar with this establishment, I asked my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, who now researches and writes extensively about the history of Silesia and Ratibor whether he was familiar with this business. Paul indeed was and sent me a photo of the street along which the studio had been located (Figure 2a), a fuzzy photo of the store’s sign (Figure 2b), and an advertisement for “Photo-Helios” from a 1936 Ratibor Address Book (Figure 3); he also sent a page from the 1923 Ratibor Address Book listing all the town’s photographers at that time identifying the Photo Helios’ proprietor as Hans Ogermann, spelled with two “n’s.” (Figures 4a-b) I shared everything Paul sent with Ms. Szpytko who gratefully acknowledged receipt of the materials, telling me she was planning on visiting Racibórz soon.
After assisting Ms. Szpytko, I set aside the issue of the Helios Photo Studio though as mentioned it gave me the inspiration to write Post 72 about cabinet cards since they produced them. Naturally, I mentioned the studio in my post. I honestly expected this would be the last time I would write about Helios Photography. This was not to be.
A little less than a year after publishing Post 72, in January 2021, I received an intriguing email from a gentleman named Mr. Jakub “Kuba” Stankiewicz about my story. As it turns out, Mr. Stankiewicz is a jazz pianist and the director of jazz studies at the Academy of Music in Wrocław, Poland, known as Breslau when this section of Poland was part Germany. Kuba explained that the owner of Photo Helios, Hans Ogermann, was the father of Claus Ogerman (1930-2016) (Figure 5), who was one of the best contemporary composers and arrangers; Claus was born in Ratibor on the 20th of April 1930 and lived there until 1945.
Claus Ogerman, with one “n”, was born as Klaus Ogermann with two “n’s”, according to Wikipedia. The entry describes him as a German arranger, conductor, and composer best known for his work with Billie Holiday, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra, Michael Brecker, and Diana Krall. In addition, Kuba Stankiewicz also mentioned some of Claus’ recordings with Bill Evans and Joao Gilberto. Wikipedia provides further details:
“In 1959, Ogerman moved to the United States and joined the producer Creed Taylor at Verve Records, working on recordings with many artists, including Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Kai Winding, and Cal Tjader. Verve was sold to MGM in 1963. Ogerman, by his own reckoning in Gene Lees Jazzletter publication arranged some 60-70 albums for Verve under Creed Taylor’s direction from 1963 to 1967.”
For Americans like me who may be unaware of Claus Ogerman even though much of his career was spent here, the many pop hits he arranged during this period will no doubt sound familiar to readers, including Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me,” and Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party,” “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” “She’s a Fool,” and “Maybe I Know.” In 1965, Ogerman charted his own name and recorded the RCA single “Watusi Trumpets.” Ogerman also worked with Diana Krall arranging and recording her 2001 album “The Look of Love” and conducting parts of her “Live in Paris” performance.
At the time Kuba Stankiewicz contacted me in January 2021 he was in the process of researching Claus Ogerman and preparing a conference at the Academy of Music in Wrocław devoted to his music. While Kuba and I have stayed in touch over the years due to our mutual interest in the Jewish history of Breslau where some of my accomplished Bruck relatives hail from, I mistakenly concluded the Ogerman connection to Ratibor and Helios Photography would assuredly be the last time I would hear about this studio. Once again, I was decidedly wrong.
Several months ago in May, I was contacted by yet another person in connection to the Helios Photo Studio, a German lady by the name of Ms. Jessica Nastos. Amazingly, Jessica’s great-grandmother also worked in the studio during the 1930s-1940s. As we speak, I’m trying to determine whether Ms. Nastos’ great-grandmother may have known and/or worked at the business at the same time as Ms. Szpytko’s mother; that would indeed be quite astonishing.
Jessica graciously sent me photos in her possession of the inside of the Helios studio taken in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as an envelope with the name of the business imprinted on it. (Figure 6) Naturally, Jessica included several photos of her great-grandmother. (Figure 7) When I learned her ancestor was named Elzbieta “Lilly” Slawik née Grzonka (1926-2016) my jaw dropped, and a big chill went through my body. I want to keep readers in suspense until the subsequent post so suffice it for now to say that I was already familiar with Elzbieta Grzonka; her name had come up during Ms. Magda Wawoczny’s research on an altogether different topic when Magda asked for my help. Stay tuned for the subsequent post.
The photographs Jessica Nastos sent me included images not only of Elzbieta but also her mother Pauline Grzonka (1895-1971) (Figure 8), who features prominently in the subsequent story, as well as several group pictures of the staff that worked at the Helios Studio; only one staffer was identified by name, a Ms. Maria Labudek. While not identified by name, I think the older gentleman and lady shown in two of the images are Hans Ogermann and his wife Emma Ogermann née Wrazidlo, the parents of Claus Ogerman. (Figures 9-10)
Obviously, the only relationship with my Bruck family of any of the above-named individuals is their association with the town in Upper Silesia where my father was born. While I have several cabinet cards depicting my family that were produced by studios in Ratibor, I don’t have any made by Helios Photography. That said, thanks to the contributions of several readers I have been able to learn a little more about the people who worked there and even uncover pictures of several of them from almost 80 years ago. Given all that was lost and destroyed during World War II, and the transition from German to Polish administration of most of Silesia, I consider this a modest contribution to the historical study of Ratibor.
Note: In this very lengthy post, I discuss my father’s first cousin’s whereabouts during World War II, based on newly acquired information. As with other recent posts, I obtained the details from a reader whose uncle, serendipitously, was imprisoned in the same German prison camp in Lamsdorf, Silesia [today: Łambinowice, Poland] as my father’s relative. While researching his uncle, the reader came across the names of Heinz Löwenstein and his alias Henry Goff. Readers will discover than Heinz’s surname is spelled three ways, “Löwenstein,” “Loewenstein,” and “Lowenstein.”
To better understand all the places where my father’s cousin wound up, I’ve explored some of the historical events related to WWII. I’m disinclined to apologize for presenting this detailed background because of its relevance to Heinz’s story so I trust readers will understand and gloss over parts that are of limited interest.
I had the pleasure of meeting my father’s charismatic first cousin Heinz Löwenstein (1905-1979) once as a boy while vacationing with my parents in Nice, along France’s Côte d’Azur. (Figure 1) Since my father rarely spoke of his relatives, it would be many years before I would work out the ancestral connection. At the time I met Heinz, he had come to Nice from Haifa, Israel where he was living with his girlfriend to visit my father and his sister, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein (1902-1986). (Figure 2) In time, I would learn that Heinz and Hansi were my father’s two closest cousins, born around the same time as he was.
On the rare occasions when my father spoke of his family, the stories were always understandably suffused with a huge note of sadness so, in retrospect, I’m not sure I was ever told the unabridged story. Absent a complete telling of actual events, I may have embellished or fabricated some of what I thought I heard. My recollection in the case of Heinz is that he survived World War II by escaping from a Nazi detention camp, or that he had himself intentionally captured for the purpose of helping other detained Jews escape, admittedly heroic and rather vague accounts. With the benefit of hindsight, I realize how implausible these scenarios seem but growing up they were believable. Paradoxically, what I’ve recently learned is not so far removed from what I imagined as a child.
Heinz’s story is a tangled web that I will attempt to unravel and present to readers in a comprehensible manner, though some may be left wanting, as I am. But then I modulate my disappointment by reminding myself I’m reconstructing a story without the benefit of the protagonist’s own words that took place almost 80 years ago. Of course, there will be some things that are unknown and unknowable.
I introduced Heinz Löwenstein to readers way back in Post 16 when I discussed what I knew about his mother, my great-aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck (1870-1949), and his two siblings, Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946) and Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein (1902-1986). (Figure 3) Heinz’s older brother Fedor may sound familiar as he was the subject of Post 105. (Figure 4) That post relates to my ongoing efforts to obtain compensation on behalf of my family from the French Ministry of Culture for paintings confiscated by the Nazis from Fedor in December 1940 at the port of Bordeaux that have languished in a French storeroom for more than 70 years.
Though I met Heinz as a child, as previously mentioned, prior to researching him I knew virtually nothing about his life. A salacious story circulated that his girlfriend was the wife in a couple Heinz lived with in Haifa (Figure 5); everybody was apparently fine with this odd arrangement. The only other thing I vaguely recall is what I’ve already alluded to, namely, that Heinz survived the war by being an “escape artist,” though what exactly this means was never clear.
Fast forward to the beginning of February of this year. Through my blog’s webmail, I received an intriguing email from an English gentleman, Mr. Brian Cooper (Figure 26), who I would later learn lives in Maidstone, County Kent, England, telling me he had come across Heinz Lowenstein (without an umlaugh over the “o”) in connection with his research on prisoners of war. As I’ve already mentioned and will illustrate, Heinz’s tale is a complicated one. Accompanying his email was a very precise timeline of Heinz’s time as a prisoner of war with primary source documents substantiating his findings. As an aside, the detailed level of research Brian has undertaken exemplifies the standard to which I try and hold myself accountable when researching and writing my posts.
As I will explain in more detail below, there are two threads Brian found in Post 16 that convinced him “his” Heinz Lowenstein was the same person as “my” Heinz Löwenstein. First, his Heinz Lowenstein used the alias “Henry Goff,” Goff being his married sister’s surname. Second, he learned that my Heinz Löwenstein had the same date of birth, the 8th of March 1905, as the prisoner of war records indicate for the Heinz Lowenstein he is researching.
I immediately asked Brian why he was interested in Heinz Lowenstein. Though very familiar with this branch of my extended family, I assumed there was an ancestral connection of which I was unaware. Astonishingly, it turns out Brian’s uncle, Harold William Jackson from the 2nd Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, captured in 1940 in France, was interned in one of the same Stalags as Heinz had been held, namely, Stalag VIIIB/Stalag 344 in Lamsdorf, Silesia [today: Łambinowice, Poland]. (Figure 27) Much more on this below but suffice it to say that unlike Heinz who was at multiple Stalags and work labor camps throughout his captivity, Brian’s uncle seemingly was only a “resident” at Stalag VIIIB until January 1945 when the Nazis began marching the still able-bodied prisoners of war west as the Red Army was approaching. To date, Brian has only been able to trace his uncle’s movements to this point and is hopeful of finding the diary of a fellow inmate who might have recorded what happened to his uncle on the march westward.
As mentioned above, attached to Brian’s first correspondence was a detailed timeline of Heinz’s movements following his capture during the 1941 Battle of Greece. I’ve summarized much of this in the table found at the tail end of this post and intend the discussion that follows to primarily focus on the events that led to Heinz’s involvement in this conflict and his journeys and escapes following his capture and what they tell us. However, before launching into this, let me very briefly review the little I knew of Heinz’s life prior to being contacted by Brian.
Heinz Kurt Löwenstein was born in the Baltic port city of Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland] on the 8th of March 1905. I don’t know anything about his childhood. I’m next able to track him through his marriage certificate to a divorcee, Rose Nothmann née Bloch, which took place in Danzig on the 22nd of October 1931; Rose was eleven years Heinz’s senior. There is an illegible notation in the upper righthand corner of the marriage certificate indicating Heinz and Rose got divorced, which initially led me to believe they were divorced in Danzig. The only other pre-World War II entry I can find linking Heinz to Danzig are two listings in a 1933 Address Book. One identifies him as the inhaber, owner, of a so-called Reklame-Büro, an advertising office, named after his deceased father, Rudolf Loewenstein (Figure 6); as I discussed in Post 71, Heinz’s father died in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930 while on a business trip to then-Czechoslovakia. The second listing identifies Heinz Loewenstein, yet a third different spelling of his surname, as a Propagandist, promoter, for this Reklame-Büro. (Figure 7)
Based on this scant evidence, I theorize that Heinz, his sister Hansi, and their mother Hedwig departed Danzig sometime after 1933. I know that Heinz’s mother and sister wound up in Nice, France, but am unable to document that Heinz accompanied them. Having met Heinz in Nice sometime during the 1950s, obviously I knew he’d survived World War II. At the time he lived in Haifa, Israel but, as I would discover on my own much later, he had changed his name to “Hanoch Avneri.” Thanks to the intervention of a fourth cousin who lives in Haifa, with great difficulty I obtained a copy of Heinz’s burial certificate from Haifa Hevra Kadisha, a burial society in the State of Israel, showing he died on the 10th of August 1979. (Figure 8)
Until Brian Cooper provided documentary evidence, I had no idea how Heinz had survived WWII. The primary source of information on Heinz Lowenstein’s whereabouts and movements during the war can be found in the UK National Archives. Specifically, records created or inherited by the War Office’s Armed Forces Services containing “German Record cards of British and Commonwealth Prisoners of War and some Civilian Internees, Second World War,” are pertinent. Three entries related to Heinz Lowenstein, or his alias “Henry Goff,” can be found in catalogue WO 416. The National Archive website provides a summary of these German Record cards, but Brian obtained complete copies of the originals, which form the basis for the detailed synopsis he compiled of Heinz’s wartime activities.
The most informative German Record card in terms of tracking Heinz Loewenstein’s locations during the war is record number WO 416/412/223 (Figures 9a-d), alternately referred to as his Personalkarte, his personnel card. The information contained therein is summarized at the table at the end of this post, but in the following discussion I will highlight the most important details and place them in a broader, historic context.
Heinz’s Personalkarte, intriguingly including his picture, along with his father’s first name, his mother’s maiden name, his religion, and his date and place of birth, all previously known to me, confirm this was my father’s first cousin. Unknown to me was his service number (i.e., 8576), his service (i.e., Palestinian Army), the regiment or squadron he was a member of (i.e., Corps of Signals), his profession (i.e., electrician), the place he was captured (i.e., Greece), the date of his capture (29th April 1941), his POW number (i.e., 8576), and the camp name and number where he was initially interned (i.e., Stalag XVIIIA which was located in Wolfsberg, Austria).
The name and address of Heinz’s next of kin, Rose Löwenstein, is also given, confirming that Heinz and Rose were likely still married when they emigrated to Palestine and probably got divorced there following Heinz’s return from the war. As an interesting aside, the notation on Heinz and Rose’s marriage certificate that they got divorced, likely in Palestine, somehow made its way back to Danzig to be recorded on their 1931 certificate. In my limited experience, this is not unprecedented. About ten years ago, I was able to track down a second cousin presently living in Germany but born in Spain, by dint of a notation made on his 1946 Barcelona birth certificate stating he had gotten married in Haag, Oberbayern, Germany in 1982.
Based on the new information, I surmise Heinz either moved temporarily from Danzig to Nice, France with his sister and mother or moved directly to Palestine from Danzig. After emigrating to Palestine, he likely soon became a British citizen as others moving there during the 1930s did. Readers will notice the year “1935” lightly penciled in to the right of his nationality, perhaps corresponding to his arrival in Palestine.
Following his move to Palestine, he likely volunteered for the British Army. Two POW lists published, respectively, in September 1944 (Figure 10) and April 1945 (Figure 11) indicate the regiment/unit/squadron Heinz was a member of, “3 L. of C. Sigs.” This refers to the “3 Line of Communication Signals [Royal Corps of Signals, often simply known as Royal Signals].” For readers, like me, unfamiliar with the work of this squadron, this unit is responsible for providing full telecommunications infrastructure for the Army wherever they operate. Signal units are among the first deployed, providing battlefield communications and information systems essential to all operations.
Heinz’s Personalkarte shows he was captured on the 29th of April 1941. Before discussing where he is likely to have been captured, let me provide readers with a general overview of the Battle of Greece. (Figure 12) The Battle of Greece, also known as the “German invasion of Greece” or “Operation Marita” was the attack of Greece by Italy and Germany during World War II. It began on the 28th of October 1940 with the Italian invasion of Greece via Albania, then a vassal of Italy. Greece, with the help of British air and material support, repelled the initial Italian attack and counterattack in March 1941.
Realizing that the bulk of Greek troops were massed along the Greek border with Albania and that Italy was in trouble, German troops invaded from Bulgaria on the 6th of April 1941, opening a second front. The Greek Army was quickly outnumbered even with the reinforcement of small numbers of British, Australian, and New Zealand forces. The Greek forces were outflanked by the Germans at the Albanian border, forcing their surrender. British, Australian, and New Zealand forces were overwhelmed and forced to retreat southwards down the Greek peninsula, with the goal of evacuation. For several days, Allied troops were able to delay the German advance, allowing ships to be positioned to evacuate the units defending Greece. Still, by the 27th of April the German Army captured Athens, and reached Greece’s southern shores by the 30th of April. The conquest of Greece was completed a month later with the capture of the island of Crete. An intriguing footnote is that Hitler later blamed the unsuccessful German invasion of the Soviet Union on Mussolini’s failed conquest of Greece.
Knowing that Heinz was taken prisoner on the 29th of April, Brian reasons that he was seized in or near Kalamata on the Peloponnesian peninsula. (see Figure 12) Based on testimony from others, we know that POWs were quickly moved to a prison compound at Corinth (Figure 13) where, if what has been published is correct, some 4,000 prisoners were held in extremely poor conditions. Brian sent me a chapter of a book entitled “Friends Ambulance Unit, 1939-1943: Experiences in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, Greece and Germany,” by H. Martin Lidbetter. Let me quote a few passages from this book describing the deplorable state of things in the detention camps.
Regarding prison life in the hospital in Kalamata: “The place was a stinking mess, and we cleaned it up. Nobody was getting anything to eat, and two hours after we started, we served biscuit porridge and tea for breakfast, and gave the patients regular meals afterwards. . .The men were in a shocking state, and we cleaned them, dressed their wounds, nursed them.”
“On the 13th May we and the patients were moved by train to Corinth, where in almost tropical heat we were marched to an enormous Dulag (Transit Camp) which was to be our home for many weeks. Here the food was terrible, but it was possible to buy extras from the Greeks. For water we had to queue for hours at a well just outside the camp.”
“The experiences of the next few months in transit camps brought the biggest tests of endurance in maintaining human relationships that anyone in the Unit had undergone. To retain, when terribly hungry, the customary human decency was difficult indeed. To keep clean and presentable when water was scarce, even for drinking; to carry on with one’s duties calmly and normally, even when faint and weak through lack of food; to divide rations impartially; to resist the temptation to pick scraps of food from the rubbish bins—all these things called for a continual and maintained efforts.”
Regarding the transfer from Corinth to Salonika (Figure 14), tracking the same path Heinz likely followed: “On Saturday, 7th June 1941, after nearly a month in the Corinth camp, we moved to Salonika. We marched from camp soon after 2am bringing up the rear of the last of four contingents each consisting of about 800 men, so that we could help any whose physical health bordered on collapse. We marched 7 ½ miles to the nearest railhead north of the Corinth Canal which was one of the few parts of the railway not wrecked by recent military action and took to cattle trucks. Our particular trucks were designed to transport 34 men each, when not carrying cattle. During one part of our journey there were 52 of us and our kit crammed into one such wagon.”
The prisoners stopped briefly in Athens before continuing northwards. However, when they reached the tunnel below the Brallos Pass (see Figure 12), north of the town of Gravia, the prisoners had to dismount because the tunnel had been rendered unusable by explosives during the recent retreat by Allied soldiers. Thus began what is referred to as “The March,” the destination of which was the town of Lamia 40 miles north. This involved a long slog uphill, followed by a precipitous downhill walk in unpleasantly hot weather.
When the prisoners eventually arrived at the Dulag in Salonika, they saw what their treatment would involve: “There was a large transit camp holding about 4,000 prisoners. The first days we paraded with thousands of men in the burning sun for hours; many fainted and had to be carried off. Food was no more than a piece of bread or a biscuit, with thin soup and German ersatz tea.”
There was not enough food of any kind, both in the hospital and the barracks in which we lived. The supply of water was irregular and unfit for use without boiling. All we had was some very thin soup with modules of very tough meat—probably horse meat—and hard bread which was almost inedible. . .None of the beds had any mattresses, only the steel under mattresses, so we lay on our clothes to soften them and spent the night swatting the fleas and lice, and bedbugs which crawled up the legs of the beds to bite us or dropped from the ceiling.
In the hospital there were typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery, and diphtheria cases, and later the dreaded beriberi, which claimed several victims—this was caused by lack of vitamins in the diet which is contained in Marmite.
It was very hot, and I did not sleep a single night except for a few nights in early October before we left for Germany.”
A Facebook account about the “Battle of Kalamata 1941” estimates that by September 1941, 12,000 POWs had passed through the “Salonika Transit Camp Frontstalag 183,” on their way to the central Europe Stalags They included many nationalities—Scots, English, Australians, New Zealanders, Serbs, Indians, Palestinian Jews, Cypriots, Arabs, and Greeks. Many of the POWs died, and a few daring ones escaped. By 1942, following the transfer of the POWs to the Stalags, the Salonika transit camp had been converted to detaining Greek Jews before they were transported to the Nazi death camps.
From Heinz’s Personalkarte we know he was initially imprisoned in Stalag XVIII in Wolfsberg, Austria after being transported by cattle truck from the Salonika Transit Camp. (Figure 15) In a book written by John Borrie, entitled “Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War,” a map shows the route by which the author arrived in Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf in October 1941 (Figure 16), where Heinz ultimately also wound up. John Borrie appears to have arrived in Lamsdorf via a slightly different route than Heinz, who we know first spent time in Wolfsberg in southern Austria. A different German Record card for Heinz Lowenstein, WO 416/228/460, records his transfer from Stalag XVIIIA in Wolfsberg, Austria to Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf on the 8th of July 1941. (Figure 17-18) This corresponds to the earliest date on Heinz’s Personalkarte, German Record card WO 416/412/223, and corresponds to the date he was inoculated against typhoid, perhaps upon his arrival at Stalag VIIIB.
In the case of three of these transfers to work labor camps, the fixed places to which Heinz was assigned are specified, namely, working at an airfield, working at a paper factory, and working on road construction. His work assignments were interrupted on three occasions by stays at the hospital at Stalag VIIIB. Given the arduous nature of the work, the unsanitary conditions at the Stalags, the lack of food, and the sometimes-brutal treatment at the hand of guards, it’s not surprising POWs were in poor health.
The most interesting thing recorded on Heinz’s Personalkarte is the solitary confinements he was made to endure for neglecting or disturbing work operations and for two escapes. Remarkably, Heinz’s escape from work labor camp designated as “E479” in Tarnowitz is recorded in a book by Cyril Rofe entitled “Against the Wind.” Cyril himself escaped from a work camp that was subordinate to Stalag VIIIB on his third attempt, eventually making his way to Moscow before being repatriated via Murmansk. I quote at length from Cyril Rofe’s description of Heinz’s escape:
“The first pair to escape were Joe Powell and Henry Löwenstein. Tall and ginger haired, Löwenstein had been brought up in Danzig and spoke perfect German. They had already been on one working party, which had been no use from their point of view. They had managed to get themselves sent back to the Stalag and then volunteered to come to Tarnowitz. As soon as they arrived, they wanted to be away. They were not fussy about their clothes, and it was easy enough to collect together all they needed. By the end of February they were ready to go. [EDITOR’S NOTE: BASED ON HEINZ’S PERSONALKARTE, WE KNOW HEINZ AND JOE WERE READY TO MAKE THEIR ESCAPE ATTEMPT AT THE END OF JANUARY 1943 RATHER THAN THE END OF FEBRUARY 1943]
On the morning of their escape they wore their civilian clothes under their battledress and overcoats. When groups left camp the men were always counted by the duty clerk, who handed them over to the guards, who also counted them. The guards were then responsible for the men until they handed them back to the duty clerk in the evening. The group to which Powell and Löwenstein belonged were working on the line just outside Beuthen station, about 10 miles from the camp, and travelled there and back by train each day. At the end of the day the Unteroffizier in charge always counted them before they got on the train for the return journey.
Joe Powell and Löwenstein had no difficulty in getting away at Beuthen. [Figure 19] Finding a quiet corner they slipped out of their Army clothes and walked away as civilians. They boarded a tram outside the station and travelled to Gleiwitz, where they caught a train to Danzig. None of the guards noticed their absence during the day. When the train arrived in the evening the men fell in quickly, the Palestinian corporal counted them rapidly and gave the full number as present. Before the guards had a chance to check the count the men broke off and clambered on to the train.
The Unteroffizier said nothing. Judging by his subsequent behaviour he had his suspicions but was not anxious to confirm them. He was a wily old fellow. When they reached camp he counted the men quickly, gave the same number as he had taken over in the morning and dismissed the men before the duty clerk had completed his check. The men broke off and entered the camp, while the clerk accepted the Unteroffizier’s figure as correct. The Unteroffizier had covered himself against blame.
Every night there was Appell (roll-call) in each of the barracks, the men falling into five ranks to be counted. That night Kaplan came around as usual with the Feldwebel and a guard, whose duty it was to count the men by walking along in front of them, checking that there were five in each file. Kaplan had it all carefully arranged. When he and the two Germans entered the barrack in which Joe and Löwenstein had slept, the men in the front rank were standing close together to prevent the guard from noticing the two empty places at the end of the rear rank. Kaplan talked to the Feldwebel, blocking his view while the guard started his count. As soon as he had passed the first few files, two men in the rear rank ducked low, ran quietly long the back, fell in again at the other end, and were counted a second time. The guard reported the correct number present and the Feldwebel was satisfied.
This was on Monday night. The next morning Kaplan, who arranged all the work lists for each day, marked the two escapees down on the light-duty list, so that they did not have to report for work at Beuthen. Kaplan kept them covered up until the following Friday, on which day I myself was working at Beuthen. During the lunch-hour the Unteroffizier came into the hut and asked for Löwenstein and Joe, the second by the name he had adopted. On being told they were sick he grinned all over his face and went out again. Apparently the Feldwebel had telephoned to ask if they were there.
When we arrived back at camp we heard that during the morning a telephone call had come through to the Feldwebel enquiring whether he had had anybody escape from the camp. On his answering in the negative, he learned that the police in Danzig had picked up two men using those names who claimed to have escaped from Tarnowitz. When the Feldwebel checked up he found the two men were missing and nobody had the slightest idea when they had left or how.
An officer came to investigate. The Feldwebel accused Kaplan of being responsible for this outrage, affirming that it was Kaplan’s duty to work with him, not against him and threatened to get even with him. This was right up Kaplan’s street. Not only did he inform the Feldwebel that he actually had helped the men to escape, but he added that he considered it his duty as a British solider to help anybody else who wished to escape and that he would do so whenever he could. Furthermore, he said, it was the Feldwebel’s job to guard us, not his, and the Feldwebel need expect no more cooperation from him until he apologized! Fortunately the officer agreed that Kaplan had only done his duty and managed to preserve the peace.
Kaplan had told them that Joe and Löwenstein had escaped on Monday, although he did not tell them how, and that he had covered them up ever since. They flatly refused to believe such a thing was possible until Kaplan showed them how he had done it.
There were no repercussions in the camp, except that thereafter the Feldwebel counted us himself at night, and for some days he and Kaplan were not on speaking terms. Kaplan refused to have anything more to do with the worklists. The result was chaotic, and within a week the Feldwebel was back begging to be ‘friends as before.’ This sounds fantastic, but it happened. Only a Kaplan could have brought it off, but knowing Kaplan one did not expect less. He was tall and bulky, and when one saw him ordering the Germans around he looked a veritable Gulliver among pygmies.”
A few observations about Cyril Rofe’s description of Joe Powell and Henry Löwenstein’s escape from Tarnowitz. As Rofe states, the repercussions for Joe and Heinz’s escape from the work labor camp were minimal. Heinz’s Personalkarte shows he spent only seven days in solitary confinement after he was returned to Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf. The repercussions could have been much worse if the two prisoners had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo when they were recaptured, particularly in the case of Heinz who was Jewish. The Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany, rather than the Gestapo ran the POW system, so in a sense POWs were safer inside the Stalags, particularly in the case of Jewish prisoners.
The Wehrmacht resisted all efforts by the Gestapo to gain access to and control over the POW system until mid-1944 when Hitler appointed Gottlob Berger to head up the POW system, when it fell under Heinrich Himmler’s control. However, in practice nothing changed. The military camp commandants and staff remained in place and continued to manage the camps as originally instructed by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW). Berger appears to have had too much on his plate to deal with his new responsibilities in a manner that would have pleased Hitler and Himmler. This said, some POWs did disappear from the Stalags during the war.
One final confirming observation. Rofe, while wrong about the month Joe and Heinz were ready to make their escape, correctly notes that they escaped on a Monday and were recaptured on a Friday. The dates on which Monday and Friday in February 1943 fell match the dates on Heinz’s Personalkarte showing when he was on the lam, February 1st through February 5th.
Following the end of the war, Joe Powell, or “Jack” as he was familiarly known, completed a liberation questionnaire, “General Questionnaire for British/America Ex-Prisoners of War.” Brian was able to obtain a copy of this document, which he shared with me. One question deals with the main camps or hospitals in which he was detained, but the question that most interested me is one in which Jack briefly detailed his escape attempt with Heinz. I quote: “From Beuthen working party in civilian clothing together with a fellow prisoner, a German Jew, Heinz Löwenstein. Captured Danzig by railway police.” (Figure 20a-b) He claims to have been free for three days during this escape, which differs slightly from Rofe’s account.
An administrative entry appearing on Heinz’s Personalkarte dated the 6th of December 1943, states Heinz was transferred from Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf to Stalag 344 in Lamsdorf. (see Figure 9b) For some reason, the Nazis redesignated Stalag VIIIB as Stalag 344 but they are the SAME Stalags. I suspect an identical notation was made on the personnel cards of all POWs.
An entry was made on the 13th of August 1943 and then again on the 21st of August, following Heinz’s third escape and recapture, specifically from work labor camp E494 in Oppeln, Germany [today: Opole, Poland], when he was sentenced to six days in the brig. (see Figures 9b-c)
There are two other curious notations, respectively, dated the 15th of September 1943 and the 10th of June 1944 that appear related to another escape attempt. I will discuss these further below. Another administrative entry from April 1944 prohibits POWs from having sexual relationships with German women. (see Figure 9d)
Following Heinz’s release from the brig in August 1943 after his third escape, possibly in September 1943 or slightly later, it is almost certain that Heinz made a successful fourth escape from Stalag VIIIB/Stalag 344 or one of its subordinate work labor camps. The evidence for this comes from War Office record WO 224/95 (Figure 21a-d) which places him at Camp Siklós in Hungary in November 1943. What to make of the two notations mentioned above on Heinz’s Personalkarte from Stalag VIIIB dated the 15th of September 1943 and the 10th of June 1944, when we know positively he was already in Hungary, is a complete mystery.
ASKED FOR A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION, BRIAN COOPER SUGGESTS THE FOLLOWING WITHOUT ANY CONCRETE EVIDENCE THIS IS WHAT TOOK PLACE. ON PAGE 3 OF HEINZ’S “PERSONALKARTE,” FIGURE 9C, UNDER THE CATEGORY “KOMMANDOS,” IF THE GERMANS WERE AWARE THAT HE HAD ESCAPED YET AGAIN, THEY WOULD HAVE ADDED A NOTATION TO THIS EFFECT. BECAUSE THEY DID NOT DO SO BRIAN THINKS THE GERMANS MANAGING STALAG 344 CONTINUED TO BELIEVE THAT HE WAS A POW THERE UNTIL 1945. ACCORDING TO BRIAN, A NOT SO INFREQUENT OCCURRENCE WAS THAT A POW WOULD EXCHANGE IDENTITIES WITH ANOTHER POW TO INCREASE THEIR OPPORTUNITIES FOR ESCAPING UNDETECTED. THE SEPTEMBER 1943 AND JUNE 1944 ENTRIES MAY HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTS BY THE SUBSTITUTE POW TO OBTAIN REPLACEMENT DOG TAGS TO “TEST” WHETHER THE GERMANS HAD BEEN FOOLED BY THE SUBSTITUTION.
Record WO 224/95 is a Visit Report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) written on the 16th of November detailing prison conditions at the Camp Siklós Hungarian detention center inspected on the 8th of November 1943. While referred to as Camp Siklós the holding facility had in fact been moved from Siklós to Szigetvár on the 12th of August 1943 due to the poor conditions prevailing at Siklós. Attached to this report is a list of 16 British internees, presumably, all POW escapees, including “Henry Lowenstein.” It’s unclear at what point Heinz was arrested in Hungary but no later than the 8th of November he was in Hungarian hands. Szigetvár, incidentally, was the castle estate of Count Mihaly Andrassy, and incarceration conditions there were excellent.
The ICRC visit to Camp Siklós (Szigetvár) was conducted in its capacity as a Protecting Power which was formalized in the Geneva Convention of 1929. Protecting powers were allowed to inspect prisoners of war camps, interview prisoners in private, communicate freely with prisoners, and supply books for the prison library. The term “Protecting Power” is simply defined. It is a state which has accepted the responsibility of protecting the interests of another state in the territory of a third, with which, for some reason, such as war, the second state does not maintain diplomatic relations. I won’t discuss them but Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf was visited on numerous occasions by a Protecting Power.
Now, I will again digress to provide some historical context of Hungary’s situation vis a vis Nazi occupation at the time that Heinz was detained there.
In March 1944, Hungary was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. Before the Nazi invasion, there was no state of war between Hungary and the United Kingdom, so any British POW escapees, if caught by the Hungarian authorities, would expect no more than internment by Hungary as a neutral power. There was no concern that British POWs would be returned to German control. Based on the existing War Office records, Heinz escaped from Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf and somehow made his way to Hungary before the Nazi occupation, though a few entries previously mentioned on Heinz’s Personalkarte are confusing in terms of the timeline when this occurred.
Now we get to the murkiest part of Heinz’s story. From one moment to the next, he goes from being “Heinz Lowenstein” to being “Henry Goff.” (To remind readers, the surname “Goff” was Heinz’s sister’s married name.) As a Hungarian internee, Heinz is known as “Henry Lowenstein,” but when he falls into German hands a second time following Germany’s occupation of Hungary, he uses the alias “Henry Goff.” Since the Hungarians clearly knew Heinz’s real identity, they may have chosen not to share it with the Germans. Regardless, from this point forward, as far as the Germans are concerned, Heinz is known as “Henry Goff.” This is confirmed by War Office record WO 416/141/191. (Figure 22) This record matches his actual date of birth, but now shows him born in Manchester, England. The Germans, knowing no better, allocate him a new POW number, No. 156116. From Heinz’s standpoint, the change of surname and birth place was presumably an insurance policy because of his faith. Together with his new POW number, he presumably thought that his chances of survival improved.
Regardless of how Heinz again fell into German hands in Hungary, WO 416/141/191 tells us that he was returned to the Stalags in Austria. Precisely when this occurred is unknown, but by the 28th of July 1944, Henry Goff is transferred from Stalag XVIIA in Kaisersteinbruch, Austria to Stalag XVIIB in Gneixendorf, Austria. (Figure 23)
The British camp leadership at Stalag XVIIA and/or Stalag XVIIB was aware that Heinz Lowenstein was there but was known as Henry Goff. We know this to be the case from the POW list published by the British War Office in April 1945, record WO 392/20. (see Figure 11) This information was likely transmitted in a coded message to the War Office. According to Brian, some men were trained in anticipation they might be captured and then used to write coded messages that could be embedded in normal correspondence.
Alternatively, Brian thinks the news of Heinz’s name change may have arrived in London via the International Committee of the Red Cross. Possibly this information, along with how Heinz fell into the hands of the Germans a second time, may be found in the archives of the ICRC. Additionally, the archives may also hold information on how British POWs were transported from the “Salonika Transit Camp Frontstalag 183” to the Stalags in Germany in 1941. Search applications to the ICRC are only open a few times a year with the next opportunity to submit a request being on September 22nd. During the next open period, I will apply to obtain any ICRC records related to Heinz Löwenstein and Henry Goff.
On the 8th of April 1945, 4,000 of the POWs at Stalag XVIIB were forced by the Nazis to begin an 18-day 235-mile march to Braunau in Bavaria, Germany. (Figure 24) The remaining 900 men were too ill to make the march so were left behind in the hospital and were liberated by the Red Army on the 9th of May. It’s unknown whether Heinz was well enough to travel, but if he marched to Braunau he would have been liberated by the Americans. If so, he could have been repatriated to Palestine via United Kingdom or via Italy. On the other hand, if he was left behind at Stalag XVIIB he might subsequently have been released to the British 8th Army in Austria, then possibly moved south into Italy for direct repatriation to Palestine.
Brian has unsuccessfully tried tracking down Heinz’s military personnel file to obtain answers to open questions. He submitted a Freedom of Information request to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) to see if they know where service records for WWII Palestinian recruits are held, whether the records were left in Jerusalem when the British mandate over Palestine ended in 1948 or repatriated to the UK. The MOD claims the only way to determine this would be to examine every service record to establish where each service personnel was recruited. Not a very satisfactory response.
At Brian’s suggestion, I contacted the Israel Defense Force and Defense Establishment Archive (IDF Archive) inquiring about Heinz’s military personnel file, and about my father’s service records from his time in the Pioneer Corps (i.e., my father Otto Bruck was also a member of the English Army though at the opposite end of the Mediterranean theater in Algeria.) The IDF Archives referred me to the Pioneer Veterans Association, who responded in Heinz’s case that his military records “are somewhere in Jerusalem.” The search continues.
I will now bring this lengthy blog post to a close with a short commentary. First, I’m deeply indebted to Brian Cooper for all the new information and primary source documents he brought to my attention regarding my father’s first cousin’s whereabouts during WWII. Frankly, I’m astonished at all the materials related to Heinz he was able to track down. It never occurred to me to check the records of UK’s Ministry of Defence since I had no suspicion that he’d ever been in the English Army. After learning Heinz was once a member of the Royal Corps of Signals, I was rechecking the handful of photos I have and found one of him with his mother and brother taken in Nice, France after the war on the balcony of the apartment where his mother lived. Heinz is wearing a battle dress tunic jacket in which one can barely detect the Royal Signals insignia. (Figures 25a-b)
Regretfully, I never asked my father questions about his ancestors, which he might have been disinclined to answer given how painful many aspects of his past were. Thus, it comes as a pleasant surprise I’ve been able to fill in some holes in what I know about Heinz Löwenstein. It confirms in a general way my childhood belief that he was an escape artist. Though the consequences as a Jew of escaping so many times could have been dire, in all instances his punishment was light. Knowing this perhaps Heinz viewed it as a game to try and outwit the enemy? While I will never obtain the answer to this and other questions, what I have learned enhances my respect for this courageous man.
HEINZ LÖWENSTEIN TIMELINE (1905-1979)
DATE
EVENT
PLACE
SOURCES & REMARKS
8th March 1905
Birth
Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland]
1905 birth certificate
22nd October 1931
Marriage to Rose Bloch
Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland]
1931 marriage certificate
ca. 1935
Moved to Palestine, likely became a British citizen, & volunteered for the British Army (Pioneer Corps)
Palestine
29th April 1941
Taken prisoner at the end of the Battle of Greece likely near Kalamata on the Peloponnesian Peninsula
Greece
First held as a prisoner in Corinth, then moved to Salonika before eventually being sent to Austria for incarceration (WO 416/412/223)
8th July 1941
Given inoculation against typhoid fever at Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg, Austria)
Wolfsberg, Austria
WO 416/412/223
28th July 1941
Transferred from Stalag XVIIIA (Wolfsberg) to Stalag VIIIB (Lamsdorf)
Wolfsberg, Austria;
and
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/228/460
5th September 1941
Assigned to work labor camp E230 in Görlitz at the Fliegerhorst (airfield)
Görlitz, Germany [today: Zgorzelec, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
23rd September 1941
Krankenhaus im Lager (in hospital)
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
29th October 1941
Assigned to work labor camp E29) in Wawrowitz, Kreis Troppau at the Zuckerfabrik (sugar factory)
Wawrowitz, district Troppau [today: Vávrovice, Opava District, Czech Republic]
WO 416/412/223
16th December 1941
Assigned to work labor camp E358 in Oppahof-Stettin, Kreis Troppau
Oppahof-Stettin, Kreis Troppau [today: Štítina, Opava District, Czech Republic]
WO 416/412/223
18th June 1942
Assigned to work labor camp E453 in Stramberg, Kreis Neutitschein (Neu Titschein)
Stramberg, Kreis Neutitschein (Neu Titschein) [today: Štramberk, Nový Jičín District, Czech Republic]
WO 416/412/223
2nd October 1942
Placed in solitary confinement for 5 days for neglecting work and disturbing work operations
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223;
During this punishment Heinz got sick and was hospitalized
6th October 1942
Krankenhaus im Lager (in hospital)
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
19th November 1942
Assigned to work labor camp E412 in Krappitz, Germany at the Papierfabrikenwerke (paper mill)
Krappitz, Germany [today: Krapkowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
15th January 1943
Assigned to work labor camp E479 in Tarnowitz, Germany
Escapes from work labor camp E479 in Tarnowitz, Germany, catches a train in nearby Beuthen, Germany, which he takes to Danzig, Germany
Tarnowitz, Germany [today: Tarnowskie Góry, Poland]; and Beuthen, Germany [today: Bytom, Poland]; and Danzig, Germany [today: Gdańsk, Poland]
Heinz walks away from the work labor camp in Tarnowitz, walks to nearby Beuthen to catch a train to Danzig, where he is eventually recaptured by Rairway Police and returned to Stalag VIIIB in Lamsdorf (book by Cyril Rofe entitled “Against the Wind”)
8th February 1943
Placed in solitary confinement for 7 days for his escape from work labor camp E479 in Tarnowitz
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
2nd March 1943
Assigned to work labor camp E456 in Oppeln, Kalkau-Wiessen, Germany at the Landesstrassenbauamt (State Highway Department)
Oppeln, Germany [today: Opole, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
6th May 1943
Krankenhaus im Lager (in hospital)
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
9th June 1943
Assigned to work labor camp E494 in Gleiwitz, Germany at the Firma Braukmann
Gleiwitz, Germany [Gliwice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
13th July 1943 to 21st July 1943
Escapes from work labor camp E494 in Gleiwitz, Germany
Gleiwitz, Germany [Gliwice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
21st July 1943
Recaptured after 8 days on the lam; serves six days of solitary confinement
Location unknown
WO 416/412/223
13th August 1943
Returned to Stalag VIIIB
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
15th September 1943
Entry whose meaning is unclear; Heinz may have escaped yet again and been recaptured or escaped for good
WO 416/412/223
16th November 1943
Henry Lowenstein’s name appears on a “List of British Prisoners of War on the Estate of Count Mihaly Andrassy, Szigetvár, Hungary”
Szigetvár, Hungary
WO 224/95 & WO 392/10
6th December 1943
“Transferred” from Stalag VIIIB to Stalag 344 in Lamsdorf, Germany (In late 1943, Stalag VIIIB was redesignated as Stalag 344)
Lamsdorf, Germany [today: Łambinowice, Poland]
WO 416/412/223
I surmise this entry is an administrative one made on the Personalkarte of all POWs
28th July 1944
Using an alias “Henry Goff” born on the 8th of March 1905 in Manchester, England, he is transferred from Stalag XVIIA in Kaisersteinbruch, Austria to Stalag XVIIB in Gneixendorf, Austria
Kaisersteinbruch, Austria; Gneixendorf, Austria
WO 416/141/191 & WO 392/20
Post-WWII
Changes his name from Heinz Löwenstein to “Hanoch Avneri”
Israel
Personal correspondence
10th August 1979
Death
Haifa, Israel
Burial Certificate from Haveri Kadisha
20th August 1979
Burial
Haifa, Israel
Burial Certificate from Haveri Kadisha
REFERENCES
Borrie, John. Despite Captivity: A Doctor’s Life as Prisoner of War. Whitcoulls, 1975.
Lidbetter, H. Martin. Friends Ambulance Unit, 1939-1943: Experiences in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Egypt, Greece and Germany. 1st ed., Hyperion Books, 1993.
Rofe, Cyril. Against the Wind. 1st ed., Hodder & Stoughton, 1956.
Venetsanakos, Georgia (2015, July 15). Battle of Kalamata 1941. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/battleofkalamata/posts/seventy-years-ago-the-surviving-pows-are-making-their-way-through-transit-camps-/1600718310191993/
Note: This post deals with a Black Nubian child who was “gifted” to Peter Albrecht’s great-great-great-grandfather Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht von Preußen (1809-1872) during the latter’s “Oriental Journey” in 1843. Because this post allows me to examine so many different historical and ancestral topics, I thought I would present it to readers.
In anticipation of an upcoming trip my wife and I are planning to Egypt to visit the pyramids and other archaeological remains there, I’ve been reading a 2003 book by Dr. Zahi Hawass, entitled “Secrets from the Sand.” Dr. Zawass is an eminent Egyptian archaeologist, Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs. (Figure 1)
Among the many things I learned in reading this book is that the world-famous bust of Nefertiti which is on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin and which I once saw in person, was discovered in 1912 in Amarna, Egypt by the German-Jewish archaeologist Dr. Ludwig Borchardt. The surname caught my attention because my pediatrician was named Dr. Lilo Borchardt, so naturally I wondered whether they might have been related. I investigated this, discovered there is a remote ancestral connection between the two, and found the interconnection intriguing enough to mention to my friend Peter Albrecht von Preußen, whom I’ve talked about multiple times in recent posts. It was then that Peter told me the more absorbing tale I’m about to relate to readers about a Black Nubian child named “Sabac el Cher” who was “gifted” in 1843 to his great-great-great-grandfather, Friedrich Heinrich Albrecht von Preußen (FHA) (1809-1872) (Figure 2), during a trip the prince took to areas that are part of the Middle East.
While the young child was never a slave, nonetheless, the story harkens back to the colonial era, and what was considered appropriate at the time. Clearly the subject of this post is tangential to my own family history but is engrossing enough for me to share this unusual bit of history with readers.
Given the rather extensive details I’m about to provide, it is worth telling readers at the outset the sources of the information. Beginning on the 4th of July and lasting through the 31st of October 2023, as part of its Black History Month celebration, the “Stiftung Preussische Schlösser & Gärten In Berlin-Brandenburg,” the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg, is drawing attention to the history and achievements of Black people. This includes an exhibition on four Blacks who came to Prussia via the enslavement trade and had a connection to the Prussian Royal family or are depicted in paintings in Prussian palaces. To reiterate, Sabac el Cher is known principally because he appeared in several paintings that were displayed in Prussian palaces but did not arrive through enslavement, though this may be a distinction without a difference. Some of the details provided below are drawn from the Foundation of Prussian Palaces’ blog and exhibit catalog.
There is a brief entry in Wikipedia about August Sabac el Cher with limited details. August’s son, Gustav Albrecht Sabac el-Cher, who became a successful military bandmaster, was the subject of a Stern Plus magazine account and some of the particulars presented below are drawn from this write-up; many of the specifics in the article were drawn from a book by Gorch Pieken and Cornelia Kruse entitled “Preußisches Liebesglück: Eine deutsche Familie aus Afrika,” as well as an interview with one of August Sabac el Cher’s descendants. Additionally, I was able to locate several documents on ancestry.com that fill in a few holes. But, by far the source of most information on August Sabac el Cher and his descendants is drawn from the oral history handed down to Peter Albrecht (Figure 3) from his ancestors that he has graciously shared with me.
With the above as a backdrop, let me tell readers what is known about Sabac el Cher, or August Albrecht Sabac el Cher as he was named by FHA following his arrival in Prussia and subsequent baptism. Sabac el Cher is believed to have been born in 1836 in Kurdufan, today’s Sudan. (Figure 4) His given name is unknown. A high Egyptian official, Vizier Mehmet Ali, “gifted him” to Prince Albrecht of Prussia in February 1843 while the prince was on his “Oriental Journey.” The child was purportedly seven years old at the time. Prince Albrecht named the boy Sabac el Cher, which sounds in Arabic something like “Good morning,” among the few words Prince Albrecht knew. Sabac el Cher accompanied the prince on his journey which took him through areas that are today part of Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey.
The history of how Sabac el Cher is believed to have fallen into the hands of Vizier Mehmet Ali is intriguingly indirectly related to Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and Syria between 1798 and 1801; this campaign was instigated to defend French trade interests and to establish scientific enterprise in the region. As a trivial aside, on the scientific front this is the expedition that led to the discovery of the renowned Rosetta Stone, which we all learned about in grade school.
When the French withdrew from Egypt in 1801, tensions between the Ottoman and the local Mamluk beys (governors) once again increased. At the time, a Muhammad Ali Pasha, born in 1769 in Macedonia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, was stationed there. He had fought bravely in the Battle of Abukir (1799) on behalf of the Ottoman sultan against the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. Following the French withdrawal and the vacuum left behind, between 1801 and 1805, Muhammad Ali used the Albanian troops at his disposal to take advantage of the conflict between the Mamluk, English, and Ottoman forces to consolidate power. In 1805, at the behest of the Ottomans, he initiated a series of mass executions.
He then built on the popular anti-Ottoman and Mamluk sentiment and gained the support of the Egyptian elite to force the Ottoman authorities to appoint him governor of Egypt, which was still under their control. Having compelled the sultan in Istanbul to acknowledge his regional authority, Muhammad Ali then proceeded to do away with his local rivals. In 1811, he permanently eliminated the Mamluk threat to his power by inviting them to a celebration at the Cairo Citadel where he had them all assassinated. Muhammad Ali ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1849 and is known as “the Founder of Modern Egypt.”
It appears that in 1821 Muhammad Ali successfully invaded the region of Darfur to wrest control of the area for the Ottoman Empire or to quell local unrest. His occupational forces captured around 20,000 Sudanese soldiers who they marched back to Cairo intending to turn them into slaves for his military; only 3,000 of them survived, the remainder having perished from starvation, thirst, illness, and exhaustion.
Local unrest in the Sudan apparently continued. According to oral accounts, Sabac el Cher was the son of a Bedouin sheik in Nubia (Figure 5), today part of central Sudan, who was killed in battle with Egyptian troops. When Sabac was examined by a royal court doctor upon his arrival in Prussia in 1843, the doctor determined he was about seven years old so “decided” his date of birth was 1836. It is likely his father went to war against the Egyptian occupational forces around this time. Following his father’s death, possibly also his mother’s, the Egyptians took Sabac to Cairo. As the son of a tribal chief, Sabac was likely treated with privilege by the conquering Egyptians, and purportedly enrolled in the royal cadet school in Cairo.
Sabac el Cher appears to have been “gifted” to FHA during an audience he had with the Vizier Mehmet Ali in 1843 in Khan Yunis, a city in today’s southern Gaza Strip. (Figure 6) How Sabac arrived there is unknown. According to Pieken and Kruse, “It was by no means uncommon in Egypt at that time to give black children to European travelers of rank as a gesture of hospitality.” In those days, slave markets in the Middle East were rather common and it was not unusual for Europeans to purchase domestic servants in these bazaars.
Accompanying FHA on his 1843 “Oriental Journey” was a gifted 22-year-old painter named Johannes Rabe (1821-1894) (Johannes Rabe (Maler) – Wikipedia). Several of his works from this trip depict Sabac el Cher, including one of him in Damascus (Figures 7a-b), a second of Sabac el Cher seated atop a camel (Figure 8), and another of him in Khan Yunis. The one in Khan Yunis shows FHA’s tent camp outside the city, and in the foreground can be seen a young Sabac lighting FHA’s very long pipe. (Figure 9)
I surmise that FHA picked up the habit of smoking this very long-stemmed Turkish tobacco pipe, known as a “chibouk,” on his trip to the Middle East. The stem of the chibouk generally ranges between 4 and 5 ft., much longer than the Western churchwarden pipes. In a painting Johannes Rabe rendered at the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais in Berlin after FHA’s return to Prussia, a young Sabac can again be seen tending to FHA’s chibouk. (Figure 10)
The first written mention of Sabac el Cher was recorded by Georg Erbkam in his “Diary of my Egyptian Journey, 1842-1843.” Erbkam was an architect and part of a research expedition commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who happens to have been FHA’s older brother. On the 7th of April 1843 the two groups met up while traveling in Egypt, and Erbkam noted the following: “Two servants [Mr. Amandus Strömer (Fourier) (see below) and Mr. Deubner (Butler)] and a cook [Mr. Hauptner] of the prince also followed; as well as a little black Nubian boy whom the prince had received as a gift from a governor above.” Rabe’s painting outside Khan Yunis suggests FHA’s entourage consisted of more than three other people besides the prince and Sabac, though most were probably local porters, helpers, camel drivers, and interpreters. (see Figure 9)
I will apologize in advance for what I’m about to discuss, but for serious researchers the ensuing may be mildly interesting. I should preface what I’m about to say by telling readers that I would never have learned about the following if not for Peter Albrecht’s help. Unbeknownst to me the Kingdom of Prussia, the largest of the states that eventually coalesced into Germany in 1871, used to publish an annual guide, “Das Handbuch über den Königlich Preußischen Hof und Staat,” “The Handbook on the Royal Prussian Court and State.”
For most people of plebian origins like me, one might never have cause to look at such a handbook. However, if one happens to be interested in the staff of such-and-such members of the royalty in former times, such as FHA, the guide can be useful. It identifies by name a royal individual’s court marshall, secretary, doctor, stable master, steward, cook, sommelier or wine steward, gardener, butler, nanny, etc. (Figure 12) So, in the case of the 1844 handbook, the name of FHA’s so-called “Hof-Fourier” was given, a man by the name of “[Amandus] Strömer.” (Figure 13) “Hof” means “Royal Court,” while a “Fourier” at the Prussian courts managed the accommodations of houseguests staying at the castle or when the royal traveled would secure overnight quarters and food for the lord. Accompanying FHA on his Oriental Journey we know was his Hof-Fourier [Amandus] Strömer. He is likely one of the figures that Johannes Rabe painted during the Middle Eastern trip, as is possibly his cook “Hauptner” seen serving FHA wine in the painting of the tent camp at Khan Yunis.
August Albrecht Sabac el Cher’s name never appears in the aforementioned “Handbook on the Royal Prussian Court and State” as an employee of FHA because he was supposedly not a member of Prussia’s upper or lower nobility and/or a member of the Prussian military, the only people who could officially be listed in the Handbook. More on this below.
I hasten to emphasize the above is likely to be of limited interest to most genealogists, but one never knows.
Peter surmises that upon FHA’s return to Prussia following his Oriental Journey he likely immediately had Sabac el Cher baptized into the Lutheran Church of which he was a member; this would have been administered by a Mr. Heym, Schlossprediger zu Camenz, Castle Preacher from Kamenz. Among Lutherans, newborns in the 1800s were typically baptized within two weeks after birth; obviously, in the case of Sabac el Cher the first opportunity to do so would have been upon his arrival in Prussia in 1843. It was at this time that Sabac el Cher was given his formal name, “August Albrecht Sabac el Cher.”
This information would normally have been recorded in the so-called Court Books of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais in Berlin. (Figure 14) The Court Books recorded all births, baptisms, confirmations, weddings, deaths, etc. at the Royal Court, along with the names of the individuals involved; even the deaths of beloved family pets were recorded. Separate service books (Dienstbucher) or accounting ledgers would only have recorded the reason for an expense, such as a baptism. All these books were apparently moved to the von Preußen estate in Schloss Kamenz [Kamieniec Ząbkowicki Palace] in Silesia in the 1930s, then disappeared at the end of World War II when they were either destroyed or removed by the invading Soviet Army.
Contrary to Peter Albrecht’s understanding from his family’s oral accounts that Sabac el Cher was baptized soon after his arrival in Prussia in 1843, probably no later than September 1843, a summary page found on MyHeritage drawn from one of two rolls of microfilm (i.e., 70276 or 70277) at the LDS Genealogical Library in Salt Lake City claims he was christened on the 22nd of April 1852. (Figure 15) These films are not available on-line, so August’s baptism date has yet to be confirmed.
Thomas Röbke, author of the Stern Plus article about August Sabac el Cher’s son, claims the first mention of “Sabac el chel,” as his name is recorded, in on the 28th of May 1851 in the service books of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais; he is identified as a “lakai,” a lackey. More on this below. Peter Albrecht is dubious the service books are the source of this temporal information since their existence cannot be confirmed. Moreover, this detailed type of information would have been recorded in Court Books rather than the accounting ledgers.
FHA had three children with his first wife Princess Marianne of the Netherlands, and, according to Peter Albrecht, Sabac el Cher was treated as a full-fledged member of the family in the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais and lived together with his adopted siblings. Following FHA’s divorce from Marianne in 1848, he purchased Schloß Albrechtsberg in Dresden and moved there permanently with August. (Figure 16) August also maintained a residence in Berlin at the Albrecht-Palais, as FHA had to travel there frequently.
August Sabac el Cher’s medal bar with his seven decorations survives. (Figure 17) I asked an acquaintance, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who helped me enormously when I was researching Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, my eminent ancestor from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], for help in identifying them. Besides being a family physician, Dr. Wahl is a phalerist, a person who studies medals and awards. According to Tilo, the medal bar consists of the following decorations:
Interested readers can click on the hyperlinks to learn more about August’s decorations. I will briefly recap what Dr. Wahl concluded from the awards August was given. These decorations confirm that August Sabac el Cher took part as a non-combatant and likely as FHA’s attendant in the German Revolutions of 1848-49; the Second Schleswig War of 1864 against Denmark; the 1866 Austro-Prussian War; and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. August was also awarded an Iron Cross in 1870, but, unfortunately, his name does not appear on the surviving list of recipients. August was present when Wilhelm I was crowned the King of Prussia in 1861 and was given a medal for this; Wilhelm I incidentally went on to become the first German Emperor when Germany became a country in 1871 and ruled from 1871 until his death in 1888. And, finally, the medal in the second position, the Roten Adlermedaille, was a merit decoration given to lower ranking servants.
Thomas Röbke notes the following about Sabac el Cher: “. . .his alleged ‘exoticism’ also plays an important role and fits into a courtly tradition: ‘As in many places in Europe, it had become fashionable in German princely houses since the 17th century to surround oneself with ‘dark-skinned’ pages or lackeys,’ according to Pieken and Kruse. ‘Precious, colourful and extravagantly dressed,’ they are proudly presented as ‘chamber carrots.’ Incidentally, the courtly pallor, the ideal beauty of the time, is to be particularly emphasized by the contrast.”
Peter Albrecht makes an additional point. Since there was officially no slavery in Prussia, there were very few Blacks there compared to the United States. For this reason, Sabac el Cher would have been an “attraction” in a military tattoo (i.e., a military tattoo is a performance of music or display of armed forces in general), particularly when he marched in his native Egyptian military attire.
Thomas Röbke makes numerous mentions of Sabac el Cher as a “lackey,” which has obvious pejorative connotations. Interestingly, in official documents, such as in his 1867 marriage certificate, August self-identifies as a lackey. Peter Albrecht is convinced that August led a “double life.” To the outside world, he presented himself as nothing more than a low-level servant, while in his private life in the Prussian Court he would have been considered a cherished member of FHA’s family who accompanied FHA as an attendant on his numerous military forays. According to Peter, he would have been protected and enjoyed considerable status at the court and received a salary.
There is evidence to support the fact that FHA officially adopted August as his son which, if true, would have elevated him to the rank of an aristocrat. The proof of this comes from the marriage register church book from the Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) in Berlin where August Albrecht Sabac el Cher married Anna Marie Jung (Figure 18) on the 24th of November 1867. This was a Protestant Church in East Berlin that opened in August 1739 and was destroyed in November 1943. The church books survive and line number 216, column 5 from the book of 1867 states that FHA gave his permission as father of the groom for August to marry (Figures 19a-b); the marriage register confirms that August was then living at Wilhelm Straße 102, which is the address of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais. Only family members and their guests were allowed to live and stay at the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais.
There would have been implications if in fact FHA formally adopted August as one of his sons. First, as previously mentioned, August would have been elevated in status to the rank of an aristocrat. As an aristocrat, August could then theoretically have been named in the “Handbook on the Royal Prussian Court and State” as an employee of FHA. Because August’s name never appears in the Handbook this may have been FHA’s effort to avoid ruffling the feathers of members of the nobility who would have been “offended” by August’s exalted status.
FHA himself was in a tenuous position because after he and Marianne divorced, he remarried a person of “lower nobility,” and was in a so-called “morganatic marriage.” This is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which in the context of royalty or other inherited title prevents the principal’s position or privileges being passed to the spouse, or any children born of the marriage. In FHA’s case, this would have been moot since he had three children born of a royal marriage who would presumably have had precedence in terms of inheriting royal privileges. To further confuse readers, technically, as an aristocrat, August’s marriage to Anna would also have been a morganatic marriage since she was not an aristocrat.
August and Anna went on to have three children, Gustav (b. 1868), Elise (b. 1869) (Figure 20), and Gertrud (b. 1875), the last of whom died as a young child in 1880. According to Peter Albrecht, FHA is said to have had great affection for August and his grandchildren. Gustav (Figure 21) enjoyed great success as a military bandmaster and conductor.
August received his naturalization certificate on the 25th of October 1882 (Figures 22a-b), issued by the Royal Prussian Police at the headquarters of the Berlin Police, less than three years before his death on the 21st of September 1885 (Figure 23a-b), supposedly from stomach cancer. This certificate officially made August a Prussian and German citizen at the same time and served as a birth certificate allowing him to receive his military pension.
Black History Month – Schwarze Menschen Am Preussischen Hof. 4 July-31 Oct. 2023, Stiftung Preussische Schlösser Und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin-Brandenburg.
Erbkam, Georg Gustav: Tagebuch meiner egyptischen Reise. Teil 3. Ägypten, 1844-1845.
Hawass, Zahi. Secrets from the Sand: My Search for Egypt’s Past. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2003.
Readers may have noticed that Post 134 has been removed from my blog. An astute follower pointed out inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Suse Vogel’s account of her chance encounter with the son of the notorious Nazi architect of the Holocaust, Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in Prague in 1942. Unless Suse Vogel was spoofed for reasons unknown by a vengeful pretender claiming to be Reinhard’s son, which I personally doubt, at its core I think Suse’s improbable run in with Heider Heydrich took place at some point and place in time, just not accurately recalled in all its details. Consequently, I cannot ignore all the mistakes in Suse’s recollection of the event. I should remind readers that Suse’s typed letter is undated providing no frame of reference for when it was written, making it impossible to know whether her imprecise memory of the event was captured shortly after it took place or years later. Thus, in the interest of accuracy, I’ve removed the post.
Among the inconsistencies noted are the following:
Suse Vogel writes that Reinhard was murdered in 1941, when his actual assassination was in 1942.
Suse inaccurately refers to Reinhard’s son as “Reinhard.”
I have been unable to independently verify that Heider Heydrich ever set out to be a policeman or apprenticed as one in Hamburg. He received his engineering degree from the University of Hamburg and appears to have worked for the now insolvent aircraft manufacturer Fairchild Dornier in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany in this capacity.
I can find no evidence that Heider ever lived in Wiesbaden as Suse’s letter indicates. I find Heider Heydrich listed in Munich Address Directories from 1960, 1966, and 1968 showing he was an engineer.
Heider is known to have been born in 1934, and according to Suse’s account, her encounter with him is purported to have taken place when he was 28, thus in 1962. However, the mention of the serial killer Jürgen Bartsch in 1962 cannot be accurate because Jürgen was not arrested until 1966.
Until or if I can reconcile the historical and temporal errors, I have withdrawn Post 134 from my blog.
Note: In this post I provide a short historical overview and visual sketch of Schloss Kamenz [Kamieniec Ząbkowicki Palace], the estate in Silesia where my third cousin’s father, Dr. Hans Vogel, worked for the von Preußen family during the Nazi Era. I also briefly touch on geopolitical factors that make it improbable the family will ever be able to reclaim the castle.
The von Preußen and Bruck families are not related in any but an “Adam and Evish” sort of way though both have affiliations with Silesia, now mostly located in Poland. The filament of a familial connection passes through my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel whose father Dr. Hans Vogel (Figure 1) was employed by Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen (1874-1940) (Figure 2) and his second cousin Waldemar von Preußen (1889-1945) (Figure 3) following Friedrich’s death in 1940. While employed by the von Preußen family, Dr. Vogel was tasked with archiving the vast collection of art and historical treasures stored at the castle in Kamenz. (Figure 4) Not only did the family employ Hans, but they also provided a measure of protection for his Jewish wife Suse and mischling half-Jewish daughter Agnes during the Nazi Era. For this reason, to this day the family is held in high esteem by the Stiedas.
After a series of blog posts dealing with Reinhard Heydrich, one of the evilest characters in a Nazi panoply full of them, I need to step away from this emotionally draining subject to tackle a lighthearted topic. Ergo, this pictorial essay and a brief history on Schloss Kamenz [Kamieniec Ząbkowicki Palace] that Peter Albrecht von Preußen’s ancestors once owned in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland].
One side comment before I proceed. Peter Albrecht has been exceptionally gracious and helpful in tracking down and sending me an enormous amount of illustrative and research matter, related not only to his von Preußen ancestors but also to my Bruck family. For example, as it relates to my antecedents, Peter uncovered two wills archived in Opole, Poland that I ordered that may possibly be related to my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), the first-generation owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor [today: Raciborz, Poland]. Though I’ve had them translated and interpreted by my fourth cousin, they are challenging in the extreme to make sense of because they are handwritten in Fraktur calligraphy and never give a precise date of birth of the testator, a man named Samuel Bruck but likely not my ancestor. That said, Peter has uncovered other materials that are definitively related to “my” Samuel Bruck, and, though somewhat dry, will form the basis of a future blog post as I discuss recent intriguing findings about him.
As I proceed to give readers a pictorial sketch of Schloss Kamenz [Kamieniec Ząbkowicki Palace], let me start by providing an historical overview of the castle. The first owner was Princess Marianne of the Netherlands (1810-1883) (Figure 5) who in 1838 commissioned the most prominent German architect of the time, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, to design the structure. Noted for his neo-Classical and neo-Gothic buildings, most famously found in and around Berlin, Schinkel created a monumental palace in the form of a medieval castle.
Aware that he was dying of stomach cancer and having no surviving siblings and no children of his own, FH sold castle Kamenz along with the nearby “castle” in Seitenberg [today: Stronie Śląskie, Poland] (Figure 10), and all its belongings to his second cousin, Waldemar von Preußen (1889-1945), nephew of Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 11) Upon FH’s death, Prince Waldemar transferred the cash to FH’s trust to be divided equally in five parts to FH’s nephew, Friedrich Karl Erich Albrecht (EA) von Preußen (1901-1976) (Figure 12), and four nieces, the daughters of FH’s youngest brother, Friedrich Wilhelm (FW) von Preußen (1880-1925). (Figure 13)
Prince Waldemar fled castle Kamenz as the Red Army was approaching in 1945, dying in Tutzing, Bavaria on May 2nd, six days before the official end of World War II in Europe. Obviously, the castle was abandoned along with all the artworks and belongings. Relocated Poles looted the castle and Russians burned and pillaged it. According to Peter Albrecht, however, Polish citizens report that 14 to 17 railroad cargo trains worth of movables were taken by the Russians and shipped to an unknown destination. The marble used for exterior construction was salvaged to construct the Congress Hall at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw.
Following Prince Waldemar’s death, rights to the castle that he obviously no longer had physical control over passed to his younger brother, Sigismund von Preußen (1896-1978) (Figure 14), then in turn to his son Alfred Friedrich Ernst Heinrich Conrad von Preußen (1924–2013), “Uncle Alfred” (Figure 15) as he is known to Peter Albrecht. Shortly before Prince Alfred’s death in 2013, he transferred all rights to the estate to Peter including the contents of the 14 to 17 railroad cargo trains, should they materialize.
A brief word on an intriguing aside. Schloss Kamenz or Kamieniec Ząbkowicki Palace, as it is currently known, is situated within Poland. In a minor way, it figured into the negotiations leading to the eventual reunification of Germany in 1989. The “Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany,” or the “Two Plus Four Agreement,” is the international agreement that allowed for the reunification of Germany in the 1990s. The reference to “Two Plus Four” means that the agreement was negotiated between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Germany Democratic Republic (GDR), along with the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II, namely, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This treaty replaced the Potsdam Agreement, and involved the Four Powers renouncing all rights they held in Germany, allowing Germany to become fully sovereign the following year.
As I discussed in Post 132, the “provisional border” between Poland and Germany following World War II was known as the Oder-Neisse line. This partition meant that most of Germany’s former eastern provinces, including East Prussia and most of Silesia as well as the eastern parts of Brandenburg and Pomerania, including Danzig, were awarded to Poland and the Soviet Union. (Figure 16) The German populations of these areas either fled, as in the case of Peter Albrecht’s ancestors, or were expelled. The GDR accepted the border in 1950, but the Federal Republic of Germany always demurred considering it as provisional, pending a finalized peace settlement. However, as a condition of the Final Settlement, East and West Germany agreed to the existing border with Poland, with the renunciation and exclusion of any other territorial claims, in other words Germany’s former eastern provinces.
The biggest issue for the Soviet Union at the time the “Two Plus Four Agreement” was being negotiated was Germany’s former territory of East Prussia, which today includes the Kaliningrad Oblast, the westernmost part of Russia. The other indirect issue for the Soviets was Poland which was regarded as a satellite state in the Soviet sphere of influence but was never part of the Soviet Union. Because the Oder-Neisse line was ultimately upheld as the border between the reunified Germany and Poland, any possibility that Peter’s family could make clams on Schloss Kamenz was obviated.
This was true at least until Poland joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. Peter’s family could now potentially make a claim for return of the castle. However, because of the exorbitant cost for the reconstruction of the castle, estimated at well north of $300 million, they have not yet done so. To date, the EU has already provided the city of Kamieniec Ząbkowicki €750,000 (more than $800,000) to restore the mausoleum and €5 million ($5,362,000) to fix the roof and the small copper clad spires atop the four corner towers. If the Polish government were to return the castle, they would do so in “as is” condition and the family would be compelled to reimburse the EU for all the work done to date.
The possibility exists, nonetheless, that Peter could make a claim for any of the castle’s goods secreted in the Soviet Union should they ever resurface.
Much of the information on castle Kamenz presented below is derived from personal communication with Peter. While there are multiple features that are part of the castle or grace the gardens surrounding Schloss Kamenz, I will discuss only two, the boiler house and the mausoleum. As previously mentioned, Nicholas Albrecht received the castle from his mother in 1873 upon his marriage, and in 1883 he started to build a large steam boiler house. (Figure 17) The conversion from coal to steam heat took place at this time, although the castle still had no sanitary installations.
Upon the arrival of relocated Poles to the area of Schloss Kamenz the bodies in the mausoleum were disinterred and defiled, and reportedly hung from trees. (Figure 22) Before they could be set ablaze, however, some virtuous Polish citizen calmed the rioters and reburied the bodies, carefully marking their locations on a map. Before this concerned citizen died, he gave his map to the President of the local historical society, and in 2017, the City of Kamenz and the Catholic Church of Poland exhumed the graves and held a funeral service at the reconsecrated mausoleum. (Figures 23-24)
According to what Peter reports, the European Union has provided funding for the eventual restoration of Castle Kamenz to its full glory. To date only the mausoleum and part of the main hall of the castle proper have been renovated. (Figures 25-32)
In closing, I understand if readers are overwhelmed by the von Preußen family tree. My personal interest is trying to understand how the Bruck’s Hotel in Ratibor [today: Racibórz. Poland] owned by three generations of my family, obtained a “franchise” to use the “Prinz von Preußen” surname. This entails nailing down exactly when the building that eventually became the Bruck’s Hotel was built, whether its construction preceded or coincided with my family’s acquisition of the establishment, and, if it preceded it, when exactly my family purchased it. I’m uncertain whether historic documents survive to answer these questions. And, finally, because of our collaboration, Peter (Figure 33) has now found some not-so-distant ancestors that hail from Ratibor, suggesting our families may have had business dealings long ago. So, while this post may be of limited interest to many readers, I am pursuing it to better understand my family’s deep-seated connection to Ratibor and Silesia.
Note: In this second part of Post 133, I highlight an extraordinary photograph sent to me by a reader, Peter Albrecht von Preußen, featuring high-level Nazis taken at his family’s von Preußen estate in Silesia in around 1936 or 1937 in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland]. The picture allows me to explore two issues, namely, support for the National Socialists among the aristocracy and noblemen and the so-called “Gay Nazis myth.” The von Preußens were distinguished members of the royal House of Hohenzollern, the family from which Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, came from.
In part I of Post 133, I introduced readers to Mr. Peter Albrecht von Preußen (Figure 1), a German living in the United States who is a descendant of the royal German House of Hohenzollern. Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who abdicated the throne in 1918 following Germany’s defeat in World War I, hails from this family. In fact Kaiser Wilhelm II is Peter’s second cousin three times removed. (Figure 2)
Even more distantly, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom is Peter’s second cousin five times removed. (Figure 3) As a further bit of trivia, Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, and together they had nine children. Their offspring married into royal and noble families across the European continent, earning Victoria the moniker “the grandmother of Europe” and spreading hemophilia in European royalty. Enough about sovereign relationships.
As I mentioned in part I of this post, Peter first contacted me on the 7th of March, sharing with me a unique group photo taken in 1936 or 1937 (Figure 4) at his family’s castle in Kamenz, Germany [today: Kamieniec Ząbkowicki, Poland]. (Figure 5) What makes this photo so unusual is that it shows the notorious Reinhard Heydrich (Figure 6), principal architect of the Holocaust, known as “The Butcher of Prague” and other frightful epithets, along with other high-ranking Nazis visiting the von Preußen estate in Silesia; seated in the front row of this photos is Peter’s great-great-uncle, Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen (Figure 7), the prince who protected my half-Jewish third cousin Agnes Stieda and her family during World War II.
As I explained in part I, Friedrich Heinrich was openly homosexual. Several of the high-ranking Nazis who visited Kamenz on the day the photo was taken were also bisexual or arguably bisexual. More on this below.
Beyond discussing the high-level Nazis who visited Castle Kamenz, the photo allows me to explore two topics of broader interest, namely, the question of support or resistance among the nobles and aristocrats to National Socialism and the issue of gays in the ranks of the National Socialists. As a lead-in, I would note that if I was exploring these subjects as an academic endeavor rather than simply providing context for my ancestral research, I would take a much more rigorous intellectual approach. For my purposes, however, I simply want to provide some basic background.
Before I discuss the senior Nazis photographed at Castle Kamenz, let me first attempt to answer a question I initially asked Peter after he sent me the picture, namely, what occasioned the visit by the Nazis to the von Preußen estate.
Readers will recall that in the first part of Post 133, I discussed the relationship that Prinz Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen had with members of the “Organization Consul” during the 1920s. The Consul was a right-wing organization opposed to the harsh terms imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty and dedicated to regime change by violent means. It was formed by members of the disbanded Freikorps group Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and operated in the Weimar Republic between 1920 and 1922, when it was banned. Following the ban, Prince Friedrich Heinrich, also opposed to the “repressive measures” of the Versailles Treaty, allowed its former adherents to conduct live fire exercises at Kamenz. Many supporters of the banned Organization Consul went on to join the National Socialist Party.
While never a member of the Nazi Party, Friedrich Heinrich’s relationship with future Nazi party elite no doubt stems from the friendships he established during the 1920s. Given his sexuality, it makes sense that he would have associated with other gays. Regardless of his sexual and political leanings, however, it seems highly unlikely that Friedrich Heinrich would have been in any position to reject an overture by Reinhard Heydrich to visit Castle Kamenz for a few days. It’s safe to assume that Reinhard Heydrich and his entourage invited themselves to the von Preußen estate.
Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884-1954) (Figure 8) was the last sovereign duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha until 1918 when the Prussian monarchy and Germany’s 22 constituent monarchies were abolished following the German Empire’s defeat in World War I. Apropos of what I mentioned earlier about Queen Victoria, Charles Edward was a male-line grandson of her and Prince Albert. Though he spent his childhood years in the United Kingdom he was sent to Germany in his mid-teens. His support for his adopted country during World War I led to him being viewed with increased hostility in the United Kingdom, where he was eventually stripped of his British titles. After this, he drifted towards far-right politics, and later became involved in the Nazi regime. After World War II, he was fined by a Denazification court and lost ownership of land in what later became East Germany.
Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) (Figure 10) was talked about in part I of Post 133, so I refer readers to my earlier discussion for more details. I will only add the following quote from Wikipedia about Heydrich’s assassination because it explains why Kurt Daluege, another visitor at Castle Kamenz in 1936 or 1937, succeeded Heydrich as the Deputy/Acting Protector of Bohemia and Moravia: “Heydrich was mortally wounded in Prague on 27 May 1942 as a result of Operation Anthropoid. He was ambushed by a team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill the Reich-Protector; the team was trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich died from his injuries a week later. Nazi intelligence falsely linked the Czech and Slovak soldiers and resistance partisans to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Both villages were razed; the men and boys aged 14 and above were shot and most of the women and children were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.”
Kurt Daluege (1897-1946) (Figure 11) was chief of the national uniformed Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Daluege directed the German measures of retribution for Heydrich’s assassination, including the Lidice massacre. Wikipedia notes other war crimes of which Daluege was guilty: “During the war in 1941, he attended a mass shooting of 4,435 Jews by Police Battalion 307 near Brest-Litowsk and a mass shooting of Jews in Minsk. Furthermore, in October 1941 Daluege signed deportation orders for Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, to Riga and Minsk. On 7 July 1942, he attended a conference led by Himmler which discussed the ‘enlargement’ of Operation Reinhard, the secretive Nazi plan to mass-murder Polish Jews in the General Government district of occupied Poland, and other matters involving SS and police policies in the east.” After the end of World War II, he was extradited to Czechoslovakia, tried, convicted, and executed in 1946.
Gottfried Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1901-1949) (Figure 12) was a grandson of the 19th century Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, well-known to readers. He was a member of the Nazi Party and in 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag as a Nazi member. In 1935 he became chairman of the regional council (Regierungspräsident) for Stettin [today: Szczecin, Poland], and later also for Potsdam. By 1942, presumably disillusioned by the course of the war and Germany’s worsening prospects, he reached out to other members of the German aristocracy who were working against the Nazi regime with the aim of beginning negotiations with the Allies; some of these aristocrats were involved in the 20th of July 1944 Plot to assassinate Hitler. Despite being aware of these plans and having connections to the plotters, after the failed attempt, von Bismarck merely lost his position in the Reichstag and was expelled from the SS but was not tortured. His powerful connections and name recognition saved him, though he was nonetheless incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. In September 1949 Bismarck and his wife were killed in a car accident near Bremen in the American Occupation Zone.
The presence of the aristocrats and Nazi Party members including Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen at Prinz Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen’s Silesian estate in 1936 or 1937 attests to an ongoing relationship between former members of the monarchy and the National Socialists.
In layman’s terms, below I will attempt to succinctly explain what may initially have attracted noblemen and monarchists to National Socialism and some events that took place during the 1930s when Hitler consolidated power often at the expense of the aristocrats. To understand the extent of their resistance to the Nazi regime in this period, I asked my fourth cousin, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch (Figure 13), for some background on this question, so some of the following discussion is a synopsis of what he explained.
The National Socialists were adherents of the so-called Völkisch movement, a German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through to the Nazi era and beyond. The principal belief of ethno-nationalists is that nations are defined based on a shared heritage, such as common language, common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry. Individuals who don’t share this common heritage are deemed to be second-class citizens. Völkisch nationalists generally considered Jews to be from a different Volk (“race” or “folk”) than Germans and deemed them to be inferior. This was the central tenet which led to the Holocaust. Many noblemen also adhered to Völkisch nationalism, thus drew common cause with the National Socialists in this regard. Other aristocrats and monarchists, however, kept a critical distance from National Socialism, viewing Hitler as an “upstart” and the Sturmabteilung (SA, literally “Storm Detachment” or Stormtroopers) as “uneducated thugs.”
Very quickly after his ascension to power in 1933, Hitler eliminated critics within his administration from the noble classes and the Wehrmacht, the German Army. During the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934, Hitler had Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, who had been an early ally but whom he saw as a growing threat, executed by the SS during the “Night of the Long Knives.” In the Blomberg-Fritsch affair of 1938, Hitler succeeded, in the context of partly contrived stories, in deposing Werner von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and Werner von Blomberg, Minister of War, who had dared to object to his aggressive foreign policy. Then, during the September Conspiracy in 1938, the so-called “Valkyrie Conspiracy,” Hitler faced the first attempt by Germans to bring down his regime; headed by the Chief of the German General Staff at the time, Franz Halder, it was supported by many senior army generals. Halder lost his nerve and the coup attempt was ultimately undermined because of the Munich Agreement when France and Great Britain accepted Hitler’s word that signing away the Sudetenland was Hitler’s “last” territorial ambition, and they called the agreement “Peace in our Time.”
The attitude of the Hohenzollerns was one of opportunism. By nurturing the hope that the monarchy would be restored, the Nazis hoped to enlist the support of Germany’s last Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Figure 14) Support for the Nazis among the Hohenzollerns and the constituent monarchies was a mixed bag, so to speak. So, for example in the case of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s eldest son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, who had initially promoted the rise of the Nazis later promised in July 1941 to make himself available to the resistance, only to reverse course again shortly thereafter. More clearly aligned against the Nazis, by contrast, was the House of Wittelsbach from Bavaria, notably Crown Prince Rupprecht.
As World War II ground on and Germany’s fortunes changed and their atrocities came to light, an increasing number of initially enthusiastic and moderately supportive grandees distanced themselves from National Socialism and became opponents of the regime. Aristocrats often played a leading role within resistance circles, and military officers from noble families also played a central role in a series of specific attempts to assassinate Hitler. This was particularly in evidence during the 20th of July Plot.
One curious side note. Peter Albrecht shared with me a series of news articles he discovered related to a purported “purge of princes” by Hitler in 1939, including from his royal House of Hohenzollern. The story was printed in London’s “Daily Herald” (Figures 15a-b); New York’s “Daily News” (Figures 16a-b); and the “Cleveland Plain Dealer” (Figure 17) on the 14th of November 1939. As it turns out, several weeks prior, Peter’s great-grandfather, Joachim Albrecht von Preußen (b. 27 September 1876-d. 24 October 1939) (Figure 18) had passed away of natural causes. Since Joachim Albrecht had been friends with the head of Germany’s Foreign Office, the story was shared with correspondents in London. While no foul play was ever suspected, the foreign press, intentionally or unintentionally, mischaracterized Joachim’s death as part of a “monarchist putsch” by Hitler, possibly for propaganda purposes. Regardless, contrary to what western papers reported at the time, there was no monarchist purge in 1939.
The above is all I will say about aristocratic support for and opposition to National Socialism. Next, I want to move on to a discussion of the question of homosexuality within the ranks of the Nazi Party.
There is a widespread and pervasive myth claiming that homosexuals were prevalent and prominent as a group within the Nazi Party, a falsity referred to as the “Gay Nazis myth.” As the German cultural historian Andreas Pretzel has written in his article “Schwule Nazis (Homosexual Nazis),” “The legend of the homosexual Nazi has been used for decades after the Nazi era to deny or marginalize the extent and intensity of homosexual persecution, as well as to deny the memory of, discredit or prevent the memory of persecuted homosexual men.”
The impression that homosexuality was ubiquitous in Nazi organizations was created by antifascist leftists, including the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The clause in the German Criminal Code that criminalized homosexuality was adopted in 1871 and was referred to as Paragraph 175. While both the SPD and the KPD were supporters of repealing this provision, both parties opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against opponents. For example, in what is referred to as the Röhm affair of 1931 and 1932, anti-Nazis including the SPD, publicly disclosed Ernst Röhm’s homosexuality in an apparent bid to delay the Nazi seizure of power when supporters of the democratic Weimar Republic justifiably sensed their time was running out.
According to a footnote in the Wikipedia entry on “Gay Nazis myth,” there are three events which firmly established the stereotype that homosexuality was a characteristic of the Nazi system: (1) the just mentioned Röhm scandal of 1931 and 1932; (2) the Reichstag fire in 1933 when the parliament building was destroyed and a clique of homosexual stormtroopers was blamed; and (3) the previously discussed Night of the Long Knives or the Röhm Putsch in 1934 when a large number of leaders of the SA, many allegedly gay chieftains promoted by Röhm, were liquidated for political reasons. While leftists have largely been blamed for spreading the idea that homosexuals were prominent in the Nazi Party, it benefited Hitler to exaggerate the extent of homosexuality within the SA to justify his 1934 purge. Thus, it can be argued that the avowedly homophobic Nazis themselves contributed to the notion that gays were widespread in their ranks.
According to Andreas Pretzel, “What role homosexuality actually played in the Nazi movement, however, is largely unanswered, because important sources, such as those on the murdered homosexual SA leaders, are missing, because they were destroyed after the murder campaigns of the summer of 1934. Therefore, there have been various attempts to explain the significance of homosexuality for the Nazi movement through gender-historical perspectives and to find explanations as to why the avowedly homophobic Nazi movement attracted homosexuals, tolerated them for a while and even allowed some to rise to leadership and executive positions.” What is clear though is that while some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence they were overrepresented.
In closing, let me return to the high-level Nazis that visited Castle Kamenz and Friedrich Heinrich von Preußen in 1936 or 1937. Friedrich Heinrich is clearly known to have been gay. His Wikipedia entry confirms this, as does a 1959 article in Der Spiegel magazine entitled “Die Insel der Wachteln” speaking of the time Friedrich spent on Italy’s Isle of Capri where gays often congregated. By contrast, the Wikipedia entries for the other attendees make no mention of their sexuality, and in fact state all were married with children. This is not surprising given that the Nazi movement was admittedly homophobic; it’s likely gays would have stayed “in the closet” and been married to mask their sexual proclivities.
According to Peter Albrecht, however, both Karl Daluege and Gottfried Graf Bismarck-Schönhausen were bisexual, and Reinhard Heydrich was also arguably bisexual. The source of this information is one of Peter’s friends, Warren Allen Smith, who wrote a book entitled “Who’s Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalist, Rationalists and Non-theists”; while researching this book Mr. Smith came across information confirming these Nazis’ sexuality. Fundamentally, however, the war crimes these individuals committed is not a reflection of their sexuality, merely evidence they were inherently evil.
REFERENCES
Anti-monarchist purge by Gestapo rumored. (1939, November 14). Cleveland Plain Dealer.
“Die Insel der Wachteln” (1959 May 5). Der Spiegel, (19/1959).
Name ex-Kaiser in bomb plot: Report royalist, army purge. (1939, November 14). Daily News.
New purge of princes. (1939, November 14). Daily Herald.
Pretzel, Andreas (2014). Schwule Nazis: Narrative und Desiderate. In Michael Schwartz (Ed.) Homosexuelle im Nationalsozialismus (pp. 69-76). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Smith, Warren Allen. Who’s Who in Hell: A Handbook and International Directory for Humanists, Freethinkers, Naturalist, Rationalists and Non-theists. Barricade Books, 2000.
