richardbrook@bruckfamilyblog.com, Author at bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 114: EDWARD HANS LINDENBERGER, A DISTANT COUSIN: MIGHT HE HAVE SURVIVED BUCHENWALD?

Note: In this post, I consider the possibility, absent absolute evidence to the contrary, that a distant cousin I just learned about who was interned in Buchenwald might have survived his confinement in this notorious concentration camp.

Figure 1. Edward Lindenberger’s original signature from the “Häftlings-Personal-Bogen”, the prisoner personnel sheet he was compelled to sign upon his arrival at KL Mittelbau, a subcamp of concentration camp Buchenwald

I most assuredly consider my distant cousin Edward Hans Lindenberger’s life to have mattered. (Figure 1) Within this context, I review the limited evidence of his existence in terms of whether he might have survived his ordeal in the Konzentrationslager (KL), concentration camp, Buchenwald. His case serves as an illustration of a question relatives of internees likely asked themselves in the aftermath of WWII, namely, whether their loved ones might somehow have outlasted detention in Nazi internment camps. Too often this question is rhetorical because, as we know, the odds of survival once Jews were in the maws of the Nazis were infinitesimal. Yet, in the absence of irrefutable confirmation of Edward’s fate, I assess what I have been able to uncover about him and consider the remote possibility he might have lived.

Briefly, let me provide readers with an orientation on how I learned about Edward Lindenberger and how we are related. In Post 113, I discussed my great-granduncle Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) and his wife Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) who together had 14 or 15 children. As mentioned, Oskar Bruck had eight siblings, children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 2) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 3), whose fates I’ve been trying to determine. The vital information on the nine children is presented in a table at the end of this post. For reference, Edward Lindenberger would have been one of Samuel and Charlotte Bruck’s great-grandsons.

Figure 2. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)

Figure 3. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

One of Oskar Bruck’s younger sisters, the eighth-born child of Samuel and Charlotte, was Helena Bruck (1845-1910). She was married to Edward Strauss (1842-1920) with whom she had three children. The youngest of these was Else Strauss (b. 1884) who married Moritz Lindenberger (b. 1877), and these were the parents of Edward Lindenberger, their only child and the subject of this post. I discovered these distant relatives on ancestry.

Ancestry.com includes documents for Moritz (Figure 4), Else (Figure 5), and Edward Lindenberger (Figure 6) entitled “Kraków, Poland, ID Card Applications for Jews During World War II, 1940-1941 (USHMM).” The page for Edward Lindenberger contains a link to another document, “Germany, Concentration Camp Records, 1937-1945” showing he was interned in a Konzentrationslager referred to as “KL Mittelbau,” a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp. (Figures 7a-b) Knowing that Edward’s parents had also filed for IDs as Jews living in Kraków, Poland at the same time as Edward established the fact they too had been there as late as 1941 and had probably been swept up in a deportation to a concentration camp like their son.

Figure 4. Cover sheet for Moritz Lindenberger’s “Kraków, Poland, ID Card Application for Jews During World War II, 1940-1941 (USHMM)”

Figure 5. Cover sheet for Else Lindenberger’s “Kraków, Poland, ID Card Application for Jews During World War II, 1940-1941 (USHMM)”

Figure 6. Cover sheet for Edward Lindenberger’s “Kraków, Poland, ID Card Application for Jews During World War II, 1940-1941 (USHMM)”

Figure 7a. Cover sheet for Edward Lindenberger’s “Germany, Concentration Camp Record”

Figure 7b. One page of Edward Lindenberger’s “Germany, Concentration Camp Record,” the same page found in his file at the Arolsen Archives (see Figure 15a)

I checked in the Yad Vashem Shoah Victims’ Database and, sure enough, all three of their names show up. (Figure 8) The source of the data in Yad Vashem is the aforementioned database entitled “Card file of Jews in Krakow with German identity card (‘Kennkarte’) nos. 12301-12600, with personal details and photographs, 03/1941.” (Figure 9) Based on this, it would appear pictures of Edward and his parents possibly exist. Oddly, their fates are unspecified and the transport and concentration camp where they were shipped is not identified. I assume they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau since it was the internment camp closest to Krakow.

Figure 8. Page from Yad Vashem with Moritz, Else, and Edward Lindenberger’s names showing their fate as “not stated”

Figure 9. The page with Moritz, Else, & Edward Lindenberger’s names from the “Card file of Jews in Krakow with German identity card (‘Kennkarte’) nos. 12301-12600, with personal details and photographs, 03/1941”

Suspecting the page of Edward Lindenberger’s internment in a Konzentrationslager might be from the Arolsen Archives, I also checked Edward’s name in this database. Surprisingly, here I discovered a complete 10-page file on him (Figure 10), including one page I had found in ancestry.com, that provides important clues. His date and place of birth are given as the 27^th of July 1925 in Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland]. (Figure 11) The latest date in the file suggests he was still alive as late as the 27^th of January 1945. His occupation was “mechaniker,” a mechanic. His parents’ names and father’s occupation are given, “Kaufmann. Mauricius L.” and “Alzbieta L. geb. Strausz.” The file confirms he was assigned to KL Mittelbau, which was established in late summer of 1943 as a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. (more on this below)

Figure 10. Cover page of Edward Lindenberger’s KL Mittelbau file from the Arolsen Archives, giving his name, data and place of birth, his detainee number “114883,” and the name of the four documents attached to his file

Figure 11. 1893 map of Silesia showing town of Bielitz where Edward Lindenberger was born

The file shows four documents attached: Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card); Effektenkarte (Effects Card); Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card); and Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet) (Häftlings-Personal-Karte_AroA.pdf (arolsen-archives.org) Uncertain as to the significance of these documents, I started researching them. Briefly, here’s what I learned.

The Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card) (Figures 12a-b) was created for all concentration camp prisoners. At first glance, the cards seem diverse, having been printed in different colors, having been filled out by prisoner scribes by hand, usually in pencil, or typewriter, and on some of them having a photograph of the prisoner attached. In certain instances, the cards are entirely filled in, while on others personal descriptions in the right-hand column are missing. Despite the diversity, all cards are the same document regardless of age, nationality, and category of detention, and were completed for both male and female prisoners.

Figure 12a. Side 1 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card)”

Figure 12b. Side 2 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Häftlings-Personal-Karte (Detainee Personnel Card)”

The Effektenkarte (Effects Card) (Figures 13a-b) came in different colors, though all versions had the same meaning. These cards were used to manage the personal belongings prisoners had to turn over when they arrived at a concentration camp. According to the Arolsen Archives, the cards could be filled out very differently. On pre-war cards, more items were ticked or numbered than on cards from 1939 onwards. By 1944 and 1945, most cards were completely empty as the prisoners were transferred to camps with no personal belongings. It’s unknown exactly when Edward Lindenberger arrived in Buchenwald and/or whether he was transferred there from another camp, but his Effektenkarte shows no personal effects. Apparently, different stamps provided information on the disposition of the objects. As the war progressed, Nazi decrees and regulations increasingly allowed belongings to be confiscated and reused for other purposes.

Figure 13a. Side 1 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Effektenkarte (Effects Card)”

Figure 13b. Side 2 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Effektenkarte (Effects Card)”

The Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card) (Figures 14a-b) implausibly appears to record the incoming mail received and outgoing mail sent by concentration camp prisoners. I can find no specific information about this record, but in the case of Edward Lindenberger, predictably, there is no incoming or outgoing mail. Perhaps, like the Effektenkarte, this card was more relevant in the pre-war period?

Figure 14a. Side 1 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card)”

Figure 14b. Side 2 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Postkontr.-Karte (Post Control Card)”

The Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet) (Häftlings-Personal-Karte_AroA.pdf (arolsen-archives.org) (Figures 15a-b) is the most informative record. The form was designed in such a way that it could be printed inexpensively and in large numbers and be used in different concentration camps. The Detainee Personnel Sheets, also referred to as prisoner personnel sheets, were intended only for male prisoners, with no separate form for females; the names of spouses were almost always added by hand.

Figure 15a. Side 1 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet)” (see Figure 7b.)

Figure 15b. Side 2 of Edward Lindenberger’s “Häftlings-Personal-Bogen (Detainee Personnel Sheet)”

The prisoner personnel sheet was one of the central documents used to administer prisoners in the concentration camps. Upon arrival, all relevant information about a prisoner was recorded, including personal data, previous periods and reasons of imprisonment, and sentences or transfers to other camps. In the early years, registration was done by the Gestapo, which used the interrogations to harass and abuse the internees. Soon, so-called Funktionshäftlinge, prisoner functionaries or “kapos,” as Germans commonly called them, took over the interrogations.

Regarding this system, “. . .the prisoner functionary system minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners to maintain the favor of their SS overseers. If they neglected their duties, they would be demoted to ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious, and racial prisoners; such criminal convicts were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.” (Wikipedia)

On Edward’s personnel form, above the printed word Konzentrationslager, is handwritten “Pol. Jude,” signifying Polish Jew. Obviously, he was Polish and was interned because he was Jewish. The Nazis assigned each concentration camp inmate to a category, making it clear why he or she had been arrested. Assignment to a detention group, like nationality, led to a hierarchy in the camp, since the groups were subject to different rules, among these the amount of food or the hardship of the work. Therefore, prisoner category and nationality had an impact on one’s chances of survival.

All concentration camp prisoners were assigned a number upon arrival at a camp. Numbers were more important than names, and prisoners had to report to roll calls using them. Multiple numbers could be assigned within a camp, for example, after discharges, transfers, or death of prisoners. Prisoners transferring from another camp were almost always given new numbers.

As mentioned above, as the number of new arrivals in camps increased the Gestapo could no longer handle the registration. Consequently, the SS assigned prisoner functionaries to carry out administrative tasks or supervise forced labor. The prisoner clerk’s number recording the information was noted on the form.

The prisoner personnel sheet has a special meaning for many relatives today, especially of deceased prisoners. The signature is often the last personal sign they have of their relative. (see Figure 1) A “newcomer” to the camps had to confirm with his signature that the information he gave was true; false statements were threatened with the most severe penalties. This seems like an oxymoron since internment in a concentration camp was tantamount to a death sentence.

On the back of the prisoner personnel sheets, after the personal data and the history of imprisonment, are items that determined the lives of the concentration camp inmates: punishments and (re)transfers to other camps. However, in most cases, the prisoner personnel sheets were not updated which is why these fields are almost always empty.

Having given readers a general overview of the individual documents attached to Edward Lindenberger’s file, let me turn now to the Buchenwald subcamp to which he was assigned. This may provide clues as to whether Edward might have survived.

The Konzentrationslager where Edward Lindenberger was interned was KL Mittelbau, also referred to as Mittelbau-Dora, Dora-Mittelbau, and Nordhausen-Dora. (Figure 16) It was a Nazi concentration camp located in Nordhausen in the German state of Thuringia. (Figure 17) It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald.

Figure 16. Map showing location of Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp in relation to Buchenwald and other German camps

Figure 17. German state of Thuringia where Dora-Mittelbau camp was located

To better understand the role that Mittelbau-Dora came to play in the Nazis’ war effort, a brief discussion of some historic events is useful. In early summer of 1943, the Germans began mass production of the A4 ballistic rocket, later and better known as the V-2, the “V” standing for Vergeltung or retribution. Among other places, it was mass produced at the Heeresanstalt Peenemunde on the Baltic Island of Usedom. On the 18^th of August 1943, a bombing raid by the Royal Air Force seriously damaged the facilities and effectively ended the construction of V-2s there.

On the 22^nd of August 1943 with Hitler seeking to move facilities to areas less threatened by Allied bombers he ordered SS leader Heinrich Himmler to use concentration camo workers in the production of the A4/V-2 rocket. One of the sites selected was at the mountain known as Kohnstein, near Nordhausen in Thuringia, not far from Buchenwald. Since 1936, the Germans had been building an underground fuel depot there for the Wehrmacht, which was almost ready by late summer 1943.

By the 28^th of August 1943, thus within ten days after the British raid on Peenemünde, inmates from Buchenwald began to arrive at the Kohnstein. Over the ensuing months, almost daily transports from Buchenwald brought thousands more prisoners. During the first months, most of the work done was heavy construction and transport.

Mittelbau-Dora exemplifies the history of the concentration camp forced labor and the subterranean relocation of armaments production during WWII. The inmates at Mittelbau-Dora, most of them from the Soviet Union, Poland, and France, were treated brutally and inhumanely, working 14-hour days, and being denied access to basic hygiene, beds, and adequate rations. There were no sanitary facilities except for barrels that served as latrines. Inmates, died from hunger, thirst, cold, and overwork. Since there were initially no huts, the prisoners were housed inside the tunnels in four-level beds. Only in January 1944, when production of the A4/V-2 began, were the first prisoners moved to the new above-ground camp on the south side of the Kohnstein though many continued to sleep in tunnels until May 1944.

Estimates are that one in three of the roughly 60,000 prisoners who were sent to Mittelbau-Dora between August 1943 and March 1945 died; the precise number of people killed is impossible to determine. By the end of 1943, the Dora work squads are known to have had the highest death rate in the entire concentration camp system.

Towards the end of 1944, as the Red Army approached Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen concentration camps (Figure 18), the SS began to evacuate the inmates from there, many winding up in Mittelbau. It seems reasonable to assume that Edward and his family were initially deported to Auschwitz since the distance there from Kraków, Poland, where the family lived, was only slightly more than 40 miles. Edward’s parents were already elderly by 1942 or whenever they were deported so likely were immediately killed. Edward, on the other hand, would only have been in his late teens so would have been considered useful to the Nazis as a slave laborer. It’s possible Edward was among those evacuated from Auschwitz to Mittelbau towards the beginning of 1945, as his Häftlings-Personal-Karte dates his arrival there as the 17^th of January 1945. Likely any who survived the transit would have been weak or sick. References suggest that between January and March 1945, around 6,000 inmates died. We have no way of knowing whether Edward was among this number.

Figure 18. Map of the concentration camps in occupied Poland including Auschwitz-Birkenau and Gross-Rosen; Edward was likely transferred from Auschwitz to Mittelbau-Dora

With the advance of US troops towards the Harz in early April 1945, just under nine miles north of Kohnstein, the SS decided to evacuate most of the Mittelbau camps. Thousands of inmates were forced to board box cars in great haste and with considerable brutality, while others were forced to walk; they were being headed northeast towards Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps. (Figure 19) Those unable to keep up with the death marches were summarily shot. The worst atrocity, known as the Gardelegen massacre, resulted in more than 1,000 prisoners being murdered in a barn that was set on fire; those who were not burned to death were shot by the SS as they tried to escape. Again, no reliable statistics exist on the number of deaths on these transports, but estimates put the number of prisoners killed at around 8,000. On the 11^th of April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners who’d been left behind at Mittelbau-Dora.

Figure 19. Map showing the location of Dora-Mittelbau in relation to Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück concentration camps where prisoners were transported or marched in early April 1945

The British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen on the 15^th of April. Many of the “kapos” there had accompanied the internees from Mittelbau, and after liberation the inmates turned on their former overseers and killed about 170 of them on that day.

So, returning to the question I asked at the outset of whether Edward Lindenberger could have survived the brutal and inhumane conditions in Buchenwald, the answer is we don’t know given the absence of accurate record-keeping in the final days of the war. However, given the chaotic conditions that prevailed towards the end of WWII, the callous and barbaric manner in which prisoners were treated, the weakened and sickened state surviving internees would have been in, and the final paroxysm of atrocities the Nazis perpetrated as they were cornered, the answer is that he likely did not reach his 20^th birthday.

VITAL STATISTICS FOR SAMUEL & CHARLOTTE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA

Samuel Bruck (self)	Birth	11 March 1808		Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
	Marriage (to Charlotte Marle)	18 January 1831	Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
	Death	3 July 1863	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
Charlotte Marle (wife)	Birth	2 October 1809	Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
	Marriage (to Samuel Bruck)	18 January 1831	Pless, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Pszczyna, Poland]
	Death	17 August 1861	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
Oskar Bruck (son)	Birth	9 October 1831	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Oskar Bruck (son)	Death	6 April 1892	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Rosel Bruck (daughter)	Birth	9 June 1833	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Rosel Bruck (daughter)	Death	Unknown
Fedor Bruck (son)	Birth	8 October 1834	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Fedor Bruck (son)	Death	3 October 1892	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
Jenny Bruck (daughter)	Birth	12 December 1835	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Jenny Bruck (daughter)	Death	25 April 1902	Paris, France	Paris, France death register listing
Emilie Bruck (daughter)	Birth	10 September 1837	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Emilie Bruck (daughter)	Death	1908	Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
Julius Bruck (son)	Birth	9 August 1841	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Julius Bruck (son)	Death	28 February 1919	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Hermine Bruck (daughter)	Birth	16 February 1843	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Hermine Bruck (daughter)	Death	Unknown
Helena Rosalie Bruck (daughter)	Birth	11 August 1845	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Helena Rosalie Bruck (daughter)	Death	20 June 1910	Bielitz, Poland [today: Bielsko-Biała, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Samuel Bruck & Charlotte Marle)
Wilhelm Bruck (son)	Birth	23 February 1849	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Wilhelm Bruck (son)	Death	15 February 1907	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate

POST 113: CHIUNE SUGIHARA, JAPANESE IMPERIAL CONSUL IN LITHUANIA DURING WWII, “RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS”

Note: In this brief post, I discuss how while researching the fate of my great-granduncle’s 14 or 15 children I learned about a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, who saved the lives of upwards of 6,000 Polish and Lithuanian Jews following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of WWII.

Figure 1. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 2. My great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Figure 3. Entrance to the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 1) and his wife Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 2), were the second-generation owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. (Figure 3) Fedor Bruck and his eight known siblings, born between 1831 and 1849, were the children of Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861) (Figure 5), seven of them believed to have lived into adulthood.

Figure 4. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863)

Figure 5. My great-great-grandmother Charlotte Bruck née Marle (1809-1861)

The oldest child was Oskar Bruck (1831-1892) married to Mathilde Bruck née Preiss (1839-1922) with whom she had, by my last count, 14 or 15 children born between 1859 and 1877. The sources of this information are two family trees (Figure 6); the Jewish birth register listings from the Church of Latter-day Saints Microfilm No. 1184449 for Ratibor, where most of the children are known to have been born; and ancestral information on MyHeritage. (The names of the children, their birth and death dates, and the sources of the data are summarized on a table at the end of this post). Aware that several of their children were born during the Kulturkampf, the conflict from 1872 to 1878 between the government of Prussia and the Roman Catholic Church, I even asked Paul Newerla, my historian friend from Racibórz, to check the civil birth records at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) for their children born during this period, to no avail.

Figure 6. The Oskar Bruck-Mathilde Preiss family page from the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, 1725-1994,” archived at the Leo Baeck Institute showing the names and some vital data on 12 “kinder” (children) out of 14 or 15 thought to have existed

Realizing that any of Oskar and Mathilde’s surviving great-grandchildren would be my third cousins, I recently tried to determine whether any of their children have living descendants to whom I would be related by blood. Surprisingly, after having conducted a thorough search, I have been unable to find a single living third cousin (i.e., my generation), second cousin once removed (i.e., previous generation), or third cousin once removed (younger generation) descended from any of those 14 or 15 children. I did not include any of Oskar and Mathilde’s children’s spouses where the divorced or surviving spouse remarried and had children who would not be blood relatives. I have tentatively been able to track one of their children, Dr. Erich Bruck (b. 1865) to, of all places, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, and am currently scrounging more information to hopefully bring an intriguing future post to regular readers. The youngest daughter Emma Naumann née Bruck (1877-1942) and her husband Ernst Naumann (1877-1942) were both murdered in Theresienstadt, but otherwise all their other children are believed to have died of natural causes.

What is surprising to me given the enormous collection of family photos I own or that have been shared with me by different branches of my family is that I have not a single photo of my great-granduncle or great-grandaunt nor any of their children. I’m hoping that a reader of this post may recognize an ancestral connection and contact me so I may learn more about this offshoot of my family.

Continuing. As often happens when I embark on searches of remote ancestors is that I make unexpected discoveries, such as the one which forms the basis for this brief Blog post. And truth be told this fortuitous finding is much more significant than unearthing another distant cousin. As an aside, I would never pretend that my ancestors are any more interesting or accomplished than those of readers. In writing about my predecessors, I am more interested in describing the too often tragic social and historic context in which they led their lives to see what lessons and modern-day parallels can be drawn. As Shakespeare wrote in “The Tempest,” “what’s past is prologue.” In other words, history sets the context for the present.

As mentioned above, the table below summarizes the birth and death dates, where known, of Oskar and Mathilde’s children. One of their daughters, Charlotte Bruck (1866-1909) married a man named Rudolf Falk (1857-1912) with whom she had one daughter, Käthe Falk. This is the only one of Oskar and Mathilde’s descendants I’ll directly discuss, one of their granddaughters.

Through the documents I found on ancestry.com, Käthe Falk had already caught my attention. Her first husband was Wilhelm Sinasohn (b. 1880-d. unknown), and her second husband was Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn (1888-1967); I assumed her husbands were related to one another. A January 1925 notation in the upper righthand corner of Käthe and Wilhelm’s 1911 marriage certificate (Figures 7a-c) indicates they were divorced on the 29^th of November 1924; Käthe got remarried on the 11^th of February 1926 (Figures 8a-c) to Erhard Sinasohn, who I would later learn was her first husband’s cousin. Inasmuch as I can determine, Käthe had two sons, Robert Nast and Werner Rudolf Nast (in America, Warren Roger Nast) with her first husband, and none by her second; Nast was the maiden name of their paternal grandmother.

Figure 7a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 7b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate containing a notation in the upper righthand corner stating their divorce became final on the 29th of November 1924

Figure 7c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Wilhelm Sinasohn’s 1911 marriage certificate

Figure 8a. Cover page of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8b. Page 1 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

Figure 8c. Page 2 of Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s 1926 marriage certificate

A continuing search on ancestry.com yielded an astonishing document for both Käthe (Figure 9) and her husband (Figure 10), simply a cover sheet entitled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940”; the page showed both were Luxembourgers, and that each had been issued a visa dated the 31^st of July 1940 signed by a Japanese consul. Having never heard of Chiune Sugihara, I scurried to learn about him.

Figure 9. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe Sinasohn titled “in the Lithuania, Jews Saved by Passports from the Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 1940” showing she was a Luxembourger and was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Figure 10. Page from ancestry.com for Käthe’s husband, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, showing he too was issued a Visa dated the 31st of July 1940 by Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara (Figure 11), I would find out, was a Japanese diplomat who during WWII helped Jews living in Lithuania leave, including Jews who had made their way there after the war began. Let me provide some brief historic context. WWII began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. This caused hundreds of thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens to flee eastward ahead of the advancing German troops; many displaced persons found at least temporary safety in Lithuania. Once there, however, their options for escape were limited and required diplomatic visas to cross international borders. One route involved traveling through Asia, but it required a combination of permits issued by acquiescent foreign envoys trying to address the refugee crisis. However, it required declaring a final destination, with the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao being suggested.

One diplomat willing to help Jews was the Japanese Imperial Consul Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. Absent any clear instructions from his government, Sugihara took it upon himself to issue 10-day transit visas to Japan to hundreds of Jewish refugees supposedly possessing destination visas for Curaçao. By the time he received a reply from his own government, he’d already issued 1800 visas. The Foreign Ministry in Japan told him then that individuals to whom he’d issued these visas were really headed to Canada and the United States but had arrived in Japan without money or final destination visas.

Sugihara acknowledged to his superiors he’d issued visas to people who’d not completed all the necessary arrangements for destination visas but explained that Japan was the only transit country available for people going in the direction of the United States and Canada, and that Japanese visas were required to leave the Soviet Union. Despite orders from his government to desist, Sugihara continued issuing visas, even going so far as to sign his name on blank stamped sheets, hoping the rest could be filled in; he was apparently still passing out the visas as he boarded the train for Berlin where he’d been reassigned. At the end of August 1940, the Soviets shuttered all diplomatic consulates, including the Japanese mission, but by then, Sugihara had managed to save thousands of Jews in just a few weeks. For his humanitarian efforts in 1984 Yad Vashem awarded him the title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Many of the Jews who managed to escape through Lithuania were either Jewish residents from there or Jews from Poland. Sugihara is estimated to have helped more than 6,000 Jewish refugees escape to Japanese territory. And among those to whom Sugihara issued visas are the granddaughter of Oskar and Mathilde Bruck and her husband. Among the pertinent documents I found on ancestry.com was a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” for the “SS President Taft” with Käthe and Erhard Sinasohn’s names showing they arrived with one of her sons, Werner Rudolf Nast, in San Francisco from Kobe, Japan on the 8^th of February 1941 (Figures 12a-b), slightly more than six months after receiving their visas signed by Chiune Sugihara. Coincidentally, following their escape from Europe and their arrival in the United States, Käthe and Erhard settled in Forest Hills, Queens, the neighborhood adjacent Kew Gardens, Queens, where I was raised.

Figure 12a. Page 1 of the passenger manifest bearing Käthe Falk and Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn’s names, as well as the name of Werner Rudolf Nast, her second son, showing they departed Kobe, Japan on January 25, 1941

Figure 12b. Page 2 of the passenger manifest with Käthe Falk, Erhard Friedrich Sinasohn, and Werner Rudolf Nast’s names showing they arrived in San Francisco on February 8, 1941 and were met by Robert Nast, Käthe’s first son with Wilhelm Sinasohn-Nast

One final fitting note about this valorous Japanese diplomat. On his tombstone is engraved his first name, “Chiune,” the Japanese word which just so happens to translate into “a thousand new lives.”

VITAL STATISTICS FOR OSKAR & MATHILDE BRUCK AND THEIR CHILDREN

NAME (relationship)	VITAL EVENT	DATE	PLACE	SOURCE OF DATA

Oskar Bruck (self)	Birth	8 October 1831	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	6 April 1892	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Mathilde Preiss (wife)	Birth	20 October 1839	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Marriage	29 October 1858	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	FHL Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (marriages)
	Death	23 February 1922	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin XI, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Richard Bruck (son)	Birth	17 August 1859	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Richard Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Georg Bruck (son)	Birth	21 July 1860	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Georg Bruck (son)	Death	2 April 1937	Berlin, Germany	Berlin, Germany death certificate
Carl Bruck (son)	Birth	10 May 1862	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Carl Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	17 July 1863	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Birth	28 September 1864	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Franz Samuel Bruck (son)	Death	19 February 1924	Berlin, Germany	Landesarchiv Berlin, Standesamt Charlottenburg I, Sterberegister, 1921-1931
Erich Bruck (son)	Birth	31 August 1865	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Erich Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown	Argentina ??
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Birth	18 September 1866	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Charlotte Bruck (daughter)	Death	7 December 1909	Berlin, Germany	Charlottenburg I, Berlin, Germany death certificate
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	19 October 1868	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Margaretha Bruck (daughter)	Death	18 February 1900	Frankfurt am Main, Germany	Frankfurt, Germany death certificate
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Birth	9 June 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Gertrud Bruck (daughter)	Death	26 July 1871	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)-notation of death on birth register
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Birth	4 July 1870	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Anna Bruck (daughter)	Death	8 September 1895	Neustadt, Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Prudnik, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Martin Bruck (son)	Birth	22 July 1873	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
Martin Bruck (son)	Death	Unknown
Marie Bruck (daughter)	Birth	29 June 1874	Plania, Kreiss Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Family History Library (FHL) Ratibor Microfilm 1184449 (births)
	Death	20 February 1913	Leipzig, Germany	Borchardt-Pincus-Peiser Family Website (MyHeritage)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Birth	5 November 1876	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]	Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Bertha Bruck (daughter)	Death	July 1949	Santiago, Chile	MyHeritage Family Tree
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	20 October 1877	Berlin, Germany	Standesamt Berlin VI, Berlin, Germany birth certificate
Emma Bruck (daughter)	Death	15 October 1942	Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czech Republic	Theresienstadt death certificate (holocaust.cz)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Birth	Unknown		Pinkus Family Collection (family tree for Oskar Bruck & Mathilde Preiss)
Selma Bruck (daughter)	Death	Unknown

POST 112: WOLFRAM E. VON PANNWITZ’S BEQUEST TO THE HEBREW IMMIGRANT AID SOCIETY

Note: Inspired by a reader of my Blog, this post builds on a previous one about my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s friend, German baron Wolfram von Pannwitz, who upon his death, bequeathed his $500,000 fortune in equal parts to the Catholic Church and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). In this post, I explore some additional questions surrounding Wolfram.

Paraphrasing one of my English teachers, quoting a long-forgotten to me author, “the basis for a short story can be found on any street corner in the world.” This Blog post, short story if you will, is an example. The inspiration for this tale is a reader of my Blog, John Thiesen from Newton, Kansas, who stumbled on Post 84 where I discussed my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s (Theodore Brook in America (Figure 1)) friend, Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, a German Baron.

Figure 1. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), Theodore Brook in America, in September 1981

While Mr. Thiesen and I are unrelated, and I would have had no reason to know of his family, John contacted me because his grandfather John Kroeker and Wolfram E. von Pannwitz came to America at the same time aboard a ship named the “Marine Marlin” departing from Bremen, Germany on the 8^th of July 1947, making landfall in New York City on the 17^th of July; my uncle Fedor also travelled on this ship at the same time, so would likely have met John Kroeker. Naturally, I already knew my uncle had met Wolfram in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany, that they had traveled together to America, and had remained friends throughout the remainder of their lives. (Figure 2) I was completely unaware that Wolfram, and possibly my uncle, had befriended John Kroeker on their voyage to America.

Figure 2. Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, far right, at my aunt and uncle’s wedding on March 4, 1958, in New York City

Upon contacting me, John Thiesen told me a little about his grandfather as the basis for trying to understand why he had suddenly moved to Providence, Rhode Island from Kansas in about 1953. He thought that perhaps his grandfather’s acquaintance with Wolfram von Pannwitz might have had something to do with this and hoped I might know. John explained that upon his arrival in America his grandfather moved to Kansas; he apparently suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and for whatever reason seemed unable to fit in there. So, he eventually relocated to Rhode Island though he had no friends or family there that Mr. Thiesen is aware of. His grandfather’s address book is in John’s possession, and amazingly includes Wolfram von Pannwitz’s name and Providence address, seemingly written in Wolfram’s own hand (Figure 3); more on this below. The question John asked me is whether von Pannwitz was still in Providence in 1953? As a related aside, given the likelihood that my uncle Fedor met John Kroeker aboard the Marlin Marlin on his trip across the Atlantic, I wondered whether my uncle’s name appears in his address book? It does not, according to John Thiesen.

Figure 3. Page from John Kroeker’s address book with Wolfram E. von Pannwitz’s Providence, Rhode Island address, seemingly written in his own hand. The address is care of (c/o) of Dr. Alexander Dorner, from whom Wolfram likely rented a room (Photo courtesy of John Thiesen)

A brief digression. In the 1947 Marine Marlin passenger manifest, John Kroeker’s nationality is given as “Stateless,” unlike Wolfram and my Uncle Fedor who are identified as German. (Figures 4-6) John Kröker, as his name is spelled on his 1894 Hamburg, Germany birth certificate (Figures 7a-b), is shown on this document to have been “evangelisch,” Protestant, though his grandson tells me he was a Mennonite. This is logical as the Mennonite church is a branch of the Protestant church having emerged from the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century. What is puzzling to me is why John Kroeker was Stateless. In the case of my own father who as a Jew was Stateless upon his arrival in America because the Nazis revoked the German nationality of all Jews, John Thiesen says that his grandfather was Stateless because he was a citizen/subject of the Russian Empire. Why or how he wound up in Russia remains unexplained.

Figure 4. Listing for John Kroeker in the “Alien Passenger Manifest” for the “Marine Marlin” showing he departed Bremen, Germany on July 8, 1947, and arrived in New York City on July 17, 1947, and indicating that he was “Stateless”

Figure 5. “Alien Passenger Manifest” for Wolfram E. von Pannwitz showing he traveled aboard the “Marine Marlin” at the same time as John Kroeker and that he was a German national

Figure 6. “Alien Passenger Manifest” for my uncle Fedor Bruck showing he too traveled aboard the “Marine Marlin” at the same time as John Kroeker and his friend Wolfram E. von Pannwitz and that he was also a German national

Figure 7a. Cover page for John Kröker’s birth certificate indicating he was born on the 3rd of May 1894 in Hamburg, Germany

Figure 7b. John Kröker’s birth certificate indicating he was born on the 3rd of May 1894 in Hamburg, Germany and that he was born a Protestant (“evangelisch”)

Anyway, faced with John’s question as to where Wolfram lived in 1953, I started investigating this.

From almost immediately upon his arrival in America, available documents in ancestry.com find Wolfram associated with Providence, Rhode Island. Beyond the fact that his residence in John Kroeker’s undated address book places him on 10 Cooke Street in Providence, apparently boarding in the home of a Dr. Alexander Dorner, the “Rhode Island, U.S., Indexes to Naturalization Records, 1890-1992” for “Wolfram Von Pannwitz” shows this same address for him on the 15^th of October 1947. (Figures 8a-b) Incidentally, this record is more aptly referred to as a “Declaration of Intention” to become an American citizen once the five-year waiting period was over. Presumably, Wolfram lived in Providence, R.I. after his arrival in New York on the 17^th of July 1947.

Figure 8a. Cover page for the “Rhode Island, U.S., Indexes to Naturalization Records, 1890-1992” for “Wolfram Von Pannwitz”

Figure 8b. The “Rhode Island, U.S., Indexes to Naturalization Records, 1890-1992” for Wolfram giving his full name as “Wolfram Ernst Hans Wilhelm Eberhard von Pannwitz,” and his date and place of residence (i.e., 10 Cooke Street, Providence, R.I.) on the 15th of October 1947

As an aside, Wolfram’s October 1947 “Rhode Island Index to Naturalization,” as well as his 1889 birth certificate, gives his full name; like that of many aristocrats it was very lengthy, “Wolfram Ernst Hans Wilhelm Eberhard von Pannwitz.”

Absent any contemporary phone directories and address book listings for Wolfram von Pannwitz following his arrival in America, either for Providence or New York City, and the yet unavailable 1950 census, there is no clear evidence for how long Wolfram resided in Providence. However, when Wolfram departed New York City for Germany via Southampton, England on the 19^th of February 1953 aboard the “Queen Elizabeth” his address was given as the Hotel Seville on East 29^th Street (Figures 9a-b), his permanent residence throughout his life in New York City. (Figure 10)

Figure 9a. Cover page for list of passengers departing New York City aboard the Queen Elizabeth on the 19th of February 1953

Figure 9b. Wolfram von Pannwitz’s name on the passenger manifest showing him departing New York City on the 19th of February 1953, providing the date and place he became a naturalized U.S. citizen, the 8th of December 1952 in New York City, and his place of residence, the Hotel Seville

Figure 10. The Hotel Seville where Wolfram E. von Pannwitz rented modest accommodations for $23 a week

This same February 1953 passenger manifest shows Wolfram was naturalized in New York City on the 8^th of December 1952, logically, slightly more than five years after his arrival in America. The distance between Providence and New York City is only about 180 miles, so it is possible Wolfram was naturalized in New York City while still residing in Providence. Still, it is safe to conclude that by early 1953 Wolfram was permanently living in Manhattan at the Hotel Seville. The question of how long or whether his residency in Providence may have overlapped with John Kroeker’s is another unknown.

Let me move now to the question of why Wolfram may have taken up residency in Providence. Aware of Wolfram’s more permanent inhabitance there, I did a Google search of “Mr. von Pannwitz + Providence, Rhode Island.” Completely unexpectedly, I stumbled upon an article I’d previously overlooked when researching Wolfram written by Ms. Geraldine S. Foster, a past president of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association (RIJHA), entitled “Strands of history: HIAS and Rhode Island.” Embedded in this article is the explanation of why Wolfram von Pannwitz, upon his death, bequeathed half of his sizeable estate to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). (Figure 11)

Figure 11. Contemporary newspaper account from a 1966 New York daily discussing Wolfram E. von Pannwitz’s $500,000 bequest, split equally between Cardinal Spellman and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

Quoting from Ms. Foster’s article:

“Almost since its founding, HIAS has not turned away non-Jews who needed its help. An undated new article in RIJHA archives tells us that in 1946, a Providence couple approached a Jewish organization, Rhode Island Refugee Service (later part of Jewish Family and Children’s Service), to ask for help in processing immigration papers for Wolfram von Pannewitz [sic], described as an anti-Nazi German Protestant and an aristocrat.

The couple had signed the proper forms, but then found they urgently needed a second affidavit. They also needed a conduit for the money to pay for von Pannewitz’ [sic] passage.

The R.I. agency, an affiliate of HIAS, helped them find someone to provide the affidavit and fulfill their other needs. We do not know how large a role HIAS played in von Pannewitz’ [sic] rescue. What we do know is that in 1966, he left his entire fortune of $500,000, in equal parts, to Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman and HIAS.”

According to the Museum of Family History, HIAS is described as follows: “HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, is America’s oldest international migration and refugee resettlement agency. Dedicated to assisting persecuted and oppressed people worldwide and delivering them to countries of safe haven. HIAS has rescued more than 4.5 million people since 1881. Growing from organizations founded in the 1870s and 1880s to assist Jewish migrants arriving in America, HIAS is responsible for the rescue and resettlement into the United States of noted academics, artists, athletes, entertainers, scientists, mayors, governors, and members of the United States Congress, as well as everyday people. Its operational goals are based on Jewish religious teachings.”

As the above article states, it’s unclear how large a role HIAS played in bringing Wolfram to America, but we do know from a contemporary document that the cost of his passage aboard the Marine Marlin was $134 plus $8 fee. (Figures 12a-b) Possibly, obtaining a second affidavit may have been as important as paying for the trip?

Figure 12a. Cover page of “Passenger List of Displaced Persons” showing Wolfram von Pannwitz departed Bremen, Germany aboard the Marine Marlin on the 8th of July 1947

Figure 12b. “Passenger List of Displaced Persons” showing the cost of Wolfram von Pannwitz’ passage to the United States was $134 plus an $8 fee, costs presumably paid for by HIAS

Which brings us to the final question of why, upon landing in America, did Wolfram decide to settle in Providence, Rhode Island? From the above article, we know a Providence couple approached the Rhode Island Refugee Service asking for their help in processing Wolfram’s immigration papers. Was this the Dr. Alexander Dorner and his wife with whom Wolfram boarded when he lived in Providence? This seems likely. As I discussed in Post 84, Wolfram’s wife died young in Germany, and he was estranged from his German family because they had cheated him out of his inheritance. It appears Wolfram had no family in America and lived a rather reclusive and modest lifestyle, accruing a large fortune through stock investments. Possibly, moving to Providence upon his arrival here may initially have been his best option until he settled in, which he did most admirably.

REFERENCE

Foster, Geraldine S. “Strands of history: HIAS and Rhode Island. Jewish Rhode Island, November 8, 2018,

https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/strands-of-history-hias-and-rhode-island,9401

POST 111: TRACES OF MY GREAT-UNCLE ROBERT SAMUEL BRUCK

“And somewhere between the time you arrive

And the time you go

May lie a reason you were alive

That you’ll never know”

“In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone”

Words from “For a Dancer” by Jackson Browne

Note: This post is about my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck, one of the younger brothers of my grandfather Felix Bruck; he died at sixteen years of age. Not surprisingly, little is known about him, though mention on one family tree suggests he suffered from a mental disability.

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

My paternal grandfather, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) (Figure 1), whom I never knew, had seven siblings. These were the eight children of my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924). (Figure 3) Because my father almost never spoke about his family, I was able to figure out all the names only after scrolling through one of the Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS) Jewish Microfilms (LDS Microfilm Roll 1184449) for the town where all were born, Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Here I found the birth register listings for my grandfather and only six of his seven siblings. I knew of the seventh because my father used to refer to her somewhat derisively in French as “la Communiste,” because she was a high-ranking member of East Germany’s post-WWII Communist government. In time I came to learn her name was Elisabeth “Elsbeth” Bruck. (Figure 4)

Figure 1. My grandfather Felix Bruck (1864-1927)

Figure 2. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 3. My great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Figure 4. My great-aunt Elisabeth “Elsbeth” Bruck (1874-1970) in Berlin on March 15, 1967

Because of events surrounding what is called the Kulturkampf, vital records such as births, marriages, and deaths, that used to be maintained and recorded by the various religious denominations, came to be registered as civil events. The Kulturkampf was a conflict that took place from 1872 to 1878 (dates vary) between the government of the Kingdom of Prussia led by Otto von Bismarck and the Roman Catholic Church led by Pope Pius IX. The main issues were clerical control of education and ecclesiastical appointments. Because of the Kulturkampf Elsbeth Bruck’s birth which occurred in 1874 was entered into the civil records and found at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”) rather than among the Jewish vital records. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. My great-aunt Elisabeth “Elsbeth” Bruck 1874 birth certificate found among Ratibor’s civil records at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”

Regardless, after discovering the names of my grandfather’s siblings, naturally, I became curious what had happened to them. I quickly learned that in addition to my grandfather, five of his siblings had survived to adulthood, and been productive or accomplished members of society. The two siblings whose fate I was initially unable to uncover were Elise Bruck (born 1868) and Robert Samuel Bruck (born 1871). (Figure 6) Then, as I discussed in Post 44, I uncovered a family tree in the “Pinkus Family Collection,” archived and available online through the Leo Baeck Institute, that provided the death dates for these two ancestors. (Figure 7) Elise Bruck died at less than four years of age of unknown causes, while Robert Samuel Bruck died in Braunschweig, Germany, otherwise known as Brunswick, Germany, in 1887, also for untold reasons.

Figure 6. Birth register listing for my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck from LDS Microfilm 1184449, recording Jewish births in Ratibor, indicating he was born there on the 1st of September 1871

Figure 7. Page from the Pinkus Family Collection showing Fedor and Friederike Bruck’s eight children, including birth and death dates for my great-aunt Elise and my great-uncle Robert

Figure 8. My friend Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” in May 2020 with his grandson Tom

Following publication of Post 44, my friend Peter Hanke (Figure 8) offered to help me learn more about Robert Samuel Bruck. I affectionately dub Peter the “Wizard of Wolfsburg” because of his genealogical prowess and the fact he once worked at the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. In reading Post 44, Peter noticed that Robert had passed away in Braunschweig (Brunswick), which just so happens to be only 20 miles southwest of Wolfsburg near where he lives. (Figure 9) By contrast, Braunschweig is 444 miles west-northwest of Ratibor, (Figure 10) where Robert was born. It is a persistent mystery why Robert died so far from home. Naturally, I accepted Peter’s gracious offer to learn what might have happened to Robert; given that he was a teenager when he prematurely died, I thought he might have suffered an accident while serving as an apprentice in some unknown specialty.

Figure 9. Map showing the distance from Wolfsburg, Germany, near where Peter Hanke lives, to Braunschweig (Brunswick), where my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck died in 1887

Figure 10. Map showing the distance from Braunschweig, Germany to Ratibor where my great-uncle Robert Samuel Bruck was born in 1871

Peter submitted an inquiry to the Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, the State Archive in Wolfenbüttel, eight miles south of Braunschweig (Brunswick), which forwarded the request to the Stadtarchiv Braunschweig, the City Archive in Braunschweig. Ultimately, despite Peter’s efforts, the archive was unable to uncover any evidence that Robert either lived or died in Braunschweig. Thus, without Robert’s death certificate his cause of death remains a mystery.

Naturally, I assumed this would be the last I would learn of my distant ancestor. And this is mostly true. However, among the personal papers from my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), given to me by Dr, Tilo Wahl, which I discussed in Post 99, is another family tree. Amazingly, in capitalized letters is written “ROBERT IDIOT.” (Figure 11) Setting aside the obviously inappropriately crass and vulgar reference to a person with a disability, it strongly implies Robert suffered a mental or possibly physical impairment that dramatically shortened his life. What this may have been remains unknown. Also, why he wound up in Braunschweig can only be guessed at, but possibly he was sent to a sanatorium there for medical treatment of a chronic illness.

Figure 11. Family tree found among Dr. Walter Bruck’s personal papers mentioning Robert Bruck

Given the many accomplished and interesting characters that populate my family tree, I feel compelled at times to remember the less fortunate ones who were unable to lead normal lives or achieve greatness. Which naturally gives rise to questions of one’s mortality or the reason we’re born. So perhaps this post says more about me than it does about Robert Samuel Bruck?

BIRTH & DEATH DATES FOR FEDOR & FRIEDERIKE BRUCK’S EIGHT CHILDREN

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
Felix Bruck	Birth	28 March 1864	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Felix Bruck	Death	23 June 1927	Berlin, Germany
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck	Death	1965	Stockholm, Sweden
Franziska Bruck	Birth	29 December 1866	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Franziska Bruck	Death	2 January 1942	Berlin, Germany
Elise Bruck	Birth	20 August 1868	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elise Bruck	Death	19 June 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck	Birth	22 March 1870	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck	Death	15 January 1949	Nice, France
Robert Samuel Bruck	Birth	1 December 1871	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Robert Samuel Bruck	Death	30 December 1887	Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany
Wilhelm Bruck	Birth	24 October 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Wilhelm Bruck	Death	29 April 1952	Barcelona, Spain
Elsbeth Bruck	Birth	17 November 1874	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elsbeth Bruck	Death	20 February 1970	Berlin, Germany

POST 110: DR. WALTER LUSTIG, DIRECTOR OF BERLIN’S “KRANKENHAUS DER JÜDISCHEN GEMEINDE” (HOSPITAL OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY) THAT SURVIVED THE NAZIS

Note: The Blog post is about Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital that inexplicably outlasted the Nazis, and its wartime Director, Dr. Walter Lustig, born in Ratibor, Germany, the same town where my father was born.

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HARRY POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

This post has to do with my family only insofar as Dr. Walter Lustig, the man at the center of this story, was born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his family were born. From around 1942 until shortly after WWII ended in April 1945 Dr. Lustig was the Director of Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, a Jewish institution that miraculously withstood the Nazi onslaught.

This assault on German Jews left only between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews alive in Germany by the end of the war, compared to 500,000 Jews living there towards the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. By the time WWII started in 1939 two-thirds of these Jews had emigrated, though there still remained roughly 167,000 Jews in Germany in 1941, most of whom would be murdered.

Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is 265 years old. It was originally built in 1756 on Oranienburger Strasse near the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. Then, during Berlin’s mid-nineteenth century economic expansion that was due in large measure to its entrepreneurial Jewish population, the Jewish community built the city’s first general hospital, one of the largest of its kind, on Auguststrasse; it was built primarily to serve the needs of the Jewish population. As the years passed, even this structure proved inadequate, so in 1913, the current hospital along Iranischestrasse opened on the site it occupies today (Figure 1); there were seven principal buildings, together with ancillary structures. Presently, the hospital is located in the Wedding locality in the borough of “Berlin-Mitte” (Figure 2), which prior to 2001 was a separate borough in the northwestern part of Berlin.

Figure 1. The main building of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community) that opened in 1914 along Iranischestrasse

Figure 2. Map of Berlin’s 12 existing Boroughs and the neighborhoods in each, with Berlin-Mitte circled including the neighborhood of “Wedding” where Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is situated today

I have briefly mentioned Berlin’s Jewish Hospital in connection with three previous Blog posts. In Posts 48 and 49, I related the story of how one of my distant relatives, Dr. Ernst Neisser, was taken there on the morning of October 1, 1942, following his attempted suicide after being told to report to an “old age transport,” a euphemism for deportation to a concentration camp; fortunately, he survived only three days until October 4^th before succumbing to his trauma. I say “fortunately” because the fear among Jews who attempted suicide is they would be resuscitated only to then be shipped to a concentration camp and gassed there.

According to a Jerusalem Post article by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, published on June 23, 2007, entitled “A hospital with history,” numerous Berlin Jews, like Dr. Ernst Neisser, who attempted suicide with gas or sleeping pills in the face of deportations ended up in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital for treatment, the only hospital that would still treat Jews during the Nazi era. According to this article, upwards of 7,000 Berlin Jews killed themselves before the Nazi dictatorship fell. Although Jews committed suicide in all sorts of ways, by far the most common method involved the ingestion of a poison such as potassium cyanide or an overdose of an opiate or sedative, usually Veronal.

Then, in Post 107, I mentioned an English lady named Kathy York, whose grandmother Maria Wundsch née Pauly (Figure 3), a distant relative of mine, worked at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital during WWII when Dr. Lustig was the Director there. Kathy tells me letters written about her grandmother’s fraught time working at the hospital exist, but these have yet to surface.

Figure 3. Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly with her husband Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch as a young married couple; Maria Wundsch, a full Jew, worked at Berlin’s during the war and likely survived because she was in a mixed marriage (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

I previously also told readers about Daniel B. Silver’s book about the hospital, entitled, “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I have relied heavily on this book in describing Dr. Lustig’s tenure as Director of the hospital and the hospital’s situation during the war. It is not my intention here to thoroughly review what interested followers can easily read for themselves, but rather to bring to light a few findings and connections I made on my own that add a little to the story. This said, some background about Dr. Walter Lustig and his wartime administration of the hospital are warranted.

After fierce street-to-street fighting against entrenched remnants of Hitler’s SS, on April 24, 1945, Russian soldiers had finally succeeded in wresting control from the Nazis of a stretch of Iranischestrasse that included the battle-scarred buildings of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community). There they found hundreds of people including doctors, nurses, patients, workmen, and others who claimed to be Jewish. The Russians did not initially give credence to their assertions believing Joseph Goebbels’ 1943 declaration, chief propagandist for the Nazi party, that Berlin was “Judenrein,” or “Judenfrei,” meaning “cleansed (or free) of Jews,” according to National Socialist terminology applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Eventually the survivors convinced their Russian liberators they were Jews who had inexplicably outlasted the Nazis.

At the time of liberation, three of the hospital’s seven main buildings were no longer a part of the hospital. In late 1942, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, had expropriated the nurses’ residence, the Schwesterheim, as well as buildings that had housed the gynecology and infectious disease departments, for use as a military hospital, the Lazarett. Then, in 1944, the Gestapo appropriated and fenced off the hospital’s pathology laboratory and an adjacent gatehouse to use as a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees. By 1944, most of Berlin’s remaining Jews had already been deported so a single, smaller holding facility now sufficed.

According to Daniel B. Silver, several published sources report the hospital’s population at the time of liberation at around 800. However, Hilda Kahan, Dr. Lustig’s secretary throughout his tenure as Director of the Jewish Community Hospital, states in a videotaped interview that the number was closer 500. Regardless of the precise number, they represented a large proportion of Germany’s identifiable Jews as they were defined by the Nazis. Statistics a young Jewish woman was compelled to maintain for the Gestapo on a monthly basis indicate only 6,284 known Jews remained in Berlin on February 28, 1945. (Silver, 2003, p. 2)

Included in the final number of Jews found at the Hospital upon its liberation, according to Daniel Silver “. . .were patients and members of the medical, nursing, and support staff who had taken up residence in the hospital at various times, either because they had been bombed out or evicted as Jews from their former homes or because they were slave laborers assigned to work at the hospital. Also on hand were the remnants of groups of Jews who had been transferred to the hospital when the Nazis closed other Jewish institutions in Germany, such as orphanages and old age homes. Most of these unfortunates had been deported before the war ended, but some remained in April 1945. Among them were a handful of abandoned children who were suspected of being fully Jewish but whose ‘racial’ status had not been definitively determined. The Nazis had used the hospital as a kind of ghetto to which they consigned Jews who had nowhere else to live or whose status was ambiguous. These included Jews of foreign nationality and Jews who were being held there as potential bargaining chips in negotiating exchanges for German nationals captured in Palestine. The authorities also used the hospital to house Jews who had been brought to Berlin from other cities in Germany as part of a Nazi effort to separate them from their Aryan spouses. This was intended as a first step in overcoming the political and legal barriers to the deportation of Jewish men who lived in mixed marriages and whose Aryan spouses refused to divorce them despite Gestapo pressure to do so.” (2003, p. 8) As Winter further notes, “Most of the hospital population were half-Jews or spouses of Aryans. As such, they had been protected by Nazi rules that everyone knew could be changed at any time.” (2003, p. 12)

Also included among the “patients” were several Jews not receiving medical treatment who were protected from deportation by one or another prominent Nazi; this may have included Jews who had illicit affairs with well-placed Nazis, childhood friends of important Nazis who sought to protect them, Jews who had bribed high-ranking Nazis, or other cases whose reasons can only be guessed. A “lucky” group of survivors included Jews who had been incarcerated in the hospital’s auxiliary police ward, the so-called Polizeistation. These were Jews who fell ill while already in the hands of the police, Gestapo, or SS who for unknown reasons the Nazis sought to restore to health before killing them. Unbelievable!

My family’s remote association to Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital and its miraculous survival through WWII, in addition to the hospital’s wartime Director’s connection to Ratibor, the same town in Upper Silesia where my father was born, drew my interest in writing this Blog post. Hoping I might be able to add a little to what has already been written and is known about Dr. Walter Lustig, I contacted Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 4), my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz who now researches and writes about the history of the town and Silesia and asked whether he could track down a copy of Dr. Walter Lustig’s birth certificate at the archive. Paul graciously agreed to help. He not only was able to locate Dr. Lustig’s birth certificate, but the Racibórz archives also provided a legal document related to Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, Bernhard Lustig, dated the 22^nd of March 1939. I will discuss this in further detail below.

Figure 4. With my friend Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and Silesian historian, standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk, located in middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

First, let me tell readers a little about Walter Lustig. He was born as Walter Simon Lustig on the 10^th of August 1891 in Ratibor, the son of the merchant Bernhard Lustig and his wife Regina Lustig née Besser. He graduated from the local gymnasium in March 1910 and enrolled at the University of Breslau in October of the same year. He studied medicine, specializing in surgery, and received his medical degree and license in the spring of 1915. He was drafted during WWI and served as a military doctor. During his wartime stint, he obtained a Ph.D., also in medicine. His military service was performed in Breslau, where he treated casualties from the eastern front. After the war he worked in public administration while maintaining a private medical practice; he spent most of his career as a medical administrator. He wrote prolifically on medical subjects.

Clearly driven to advance professionally, in 1927 he relocated to Berlin. His move there coincided with two changes that had far-reaching consequences. He married a non-Jewish physician, Dr. Annemarie Preuss, and took a job with the Berlin police department where he became acquainted with Fritz Wöhrn and Rolf Günther who eventually became Adolf Eichmann’s key aides in overseeing the hospital. It was Adolf Eichmann’s department in the Reichssicherbeitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Security Main Office, that had formal jurisdiction over the Jewish hospital.

According to Daniel Silver, Lustig “. . .advanced within the police hierarchy until in 1929 he was appointed to the position of director of the Police Presidium’s medical affairs department. He held the prestigious bureaucratic titles of Oberregierungsrat (chief administrative counselor) and Obermedizinalrat (chief medical counselor).” (2003, p. 24-25) The police department had broad administrative responsibilities that extended beyond criminal matters, and included overseeing health matters in schools, institutions, and group care facilities, and conducting occupational training for medical personnel; suffice it to say, this brought Lustig into contact with many senior government officials and leaders in the medical community.

In October 1933, Lustig lost his job because of the issuance of the Nazis’ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”). This law initially exempted veterans of WWI such as Lustig but because he had been stationed in Breslau and not on the eastern front, the exemption did not apply to him, and he lost his position. At some time, between 1933 and 1935 Lustig was employed by the health department of the Berlin Jewish Gemeinde, or community (more on this below). According to Daniel Silver, when exactly Lustig was employed by the Gemeinde, and what his exact duties were are unknown, though he apparently became active in matters relating to the Jewish hospital around this time. Regardless, Lustig proved as adept at rising in the official Jewish bureaucracy at the Gemeinde as he had rising through the ranks of the Berlin police department.

Without overwhelming readers with the tangled structure of the Jewish community, it is still worth reviewing the hospital’s situation following the events of Kristallnacht that took place on the 9-10 November 1938 to provide context for Dr. Lustig’s powerful administrative position during the war. In a structure that prevailed before the Nazis came to power and still exists today, every religious denomination was organized into a Gemeinde, depending on context, roughly translated as community, municipality, congregation, or parish. Prior to the Nazis seizing power in 1933, the Gemeinde in smaller cities resisted the formation of a central Jewish organization fearing it would be dominated by the Berlin Gemende. Eventually the reality of the Nazi takeover overtook regional concerns, and a central organization called the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, or Central Representation of German Jews, was formed. It was renamed after 1935 to “Jews in Germany,” a significant distinction meant to signal that Jews were no longer to be considered Germans.

As the remaining German Jews became more concentrated in Berlin over time, the distinction between the Berlin Gemeinde and the Reichsvertretung became blurrier with many officials holding parallel positions in both organizations. After Kristallnacht, the Reichsvertretung was dissolved by the Nazis, only to be resurrected when the Nazis realized this organization facilitated emigration, which at the time the Nazis were encouraging. Consequently, a new Jewish central organization was organized, substituting the word Reichsvereinigung (central organization) for Reichsvertretung (central representation). Membership in this organization was compulsory for every Jew, which was created to better discriminate against and control the Jewish population. It was under tight Gestapo supervision.

Daniel Silver summarizes the hospital’s situation by 1941: “So it was that by 1941 the hospital functioned under the organization umbrella of the Reichsvereiningung, although, through the Gemeinde health department, it still maintained a formal relationship to the Berlin Gemeinde. The most important aspect of the new arrangements that began in 1938 was that, through the Reichsvereiningung, the hospital was placed under the direct supervision of Department IV B 4 of the RSHA. Originally this had been the department in charge of ‘Jewish emigration and evacuation.’ By 1941 it had become the department for ‘Jewish affairs and evacuation,’ emigration having been largely abandoned as a Nazi objective. Its head was Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Final Solution.” (2003, p. 40)

Measures taken against Jewish professionals which began in 1933 with passage of the Nuremberg racial laws that pushed Jewish doctors out of jobs in non-Jewish clinics had a profound effect on the makeup of the Jewish hospital’s professional staff as it stood in 1941. Things came to a head with the decree of July 25, 1938, when all Jewish physicians, of which there were about 3,000 at the time in the Reich, were stripped of their medical licenses. By September, a limit of 700 Jewish physicians, referred to by the degrading title of Krankenbehandler, or “carer for the sick,” were restricted to treating Jewish patients or working in Jewish institutions.

Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of this provision was Walter Lustig. While many of Lustig’s contemporaries had by 1938 decided to emigrate, he consciously decided not to do so. Whether this was hubris or his marriage to an Aryan that he thought afforded him some protection or his previous relationship with Nazis during his days in the Berlin police department, Lustig benefited from others’ departures to rise in the Jewish hierarchy. Daniel Silver describes it as follows: “When his boss in the Gemeinde/Reichsvereinigung health department, Erich Seligmann, left Germany for the United States in 1939, Lustig took over his position. In July 1939, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt (Jewish chronicle) described him as the person who henceforth would be responsible for health matters within the Reichsvereinigung. In that capacity, he played a key role in filling vacancies that opened up at the hospital because of the emigration of members of the medical staff. At some point in 1940 or 1941 (exactly when is unclear), he was appointed as the Gesundheitsdesernent, or chief of the health department (of the Gemeinde), and thus became a member of the governing board of the Reichsvereinigung.” (2003, p. 43)

Eventually in around October 1942, Walter Lustig became the hospital’s director after the previous director Dr. Schoenfeld and his wife killed themselves; they had been among 100 Gemeinde and Reichsvereinigung officials handpicked in the second major deportation of communal officials, a selection Lustig was compelled to participate in after initially demurring. From 1942 onward, he was repeatedly forced to aid in the selection of hospital staff for deportation, and according to Daniel Silver was “. . .arguably the most powerful figure of German Jewry and the absolute master of the hospital.”

Again, quoting Daniel Silver, “For many, Lustig’s name evokes predominantly negative feelings. According to one source, ‘The name Walter Lustig awakens even today vigorous aversion among Jewish witnesses of the events.’ Yet even his detractors give grudging credit to his talents and to his accomplishment in keeping the hospital open through the final years of the Nazi regime. His contemporaries describe him in wildly differing terms—turncoat and Gestapo collaborator; savior of the hospital; the man who sent hundreds of Jews to their death; the man who saved hundreds of Jews from the camps; a protector of children; a lecher.” (2003, p. 26) Further complicating how Lustig is viewed in hindsight is the criticism that he was unsympathetic to the plight of his fellow Jews and that he was a Jewish anti-Semite, and that his mistresses may have influenced the people he selected for deportation. More on his purported anti-Semitism below.

At the time Mr. Winter published his book in 2003, he stated there were no known pictures of Walter Lustig. (2003, p. 26) While writing this Blog post, I was able to establish email contact with Daniel Winter, who formerly served as the general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Service. He mentioned that following the publication of his book students from the University of Potsdam, outside Berlin, found a picture of Walter Lustig while developing a traveling exhibit about Berlin’s Jewish Hospital. Unable to locate his copy of this image, I have separately contacted the University of Potsdam hoping they might find and send me one. I’m optimistic about sharing it with readers in the future.

Figure 5. Mr. Roger Lustig, expert on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, whose father Ernst Lustig was a distant cousin of Dr. Walter Lustig, the wartime Director of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital

Relatedly, about ten years ago, I attended a talk sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society given by a Mr. Roger Lustig (Figure 5), who specializes in research on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, and is a top expert on general German Jewish research. This talk was given just before my planned 13-week trip to Europe to follow in the footsteps of my Jewish family’s diaspora. I contacted Roger asking whether he might be able to refer me to someone in Racibórz who could help me. Because Roger also has ancestors from there, he was happy to assist. Over the years, we’ve periodically stayed in touch. Naturally assuming that Roger might in some way be related to Walter Lustig because of the common surname and their respective connections to Ratibor, while writing this Blog post, I asked him whether he might have Walter’s photograph. He was unable to help explaining that because Dr. Lustig was a short man, about 5’2”, he was self-conscious about being photographed. This comports with how informants described Lustig to Daniel Silver, namely, that he was small. (2003, p. 26) Others added that he was a “small, delicate person” and that he had “cold stabbing eyes—terrible eyes.” Another informant reported that Lustig was very Germanic in appearance, a man who “‘looked like a major from the First World War,’ with spectacles and a big moustache.” (2003, p. 26)

Roger Lustig pointed out something interesting to me during our recent exchange that speaks to whether Walter was anti-Semite. While writing his book, Silver coincidentally interviewed Roger Lustig’s father, Ernst Lustig, who addressed this question (i.e., Ernst Lustig’s great-great-grandfather was the brother of Walter Lustig’s great-grandfather (2003, p. 176)): “The characterization of Lustig as a Jewish anti-Semite is at odds with the reaction of his distant cousin Ernst Lustig. In a brief and anguished commentary on the judgment in the Wöhrn trial, Ernst Lustig expresses surprise and shock at the unfavorable way Walter Lustig is described. ‘What is difficult for me to comprehend,’ he writes, ‘is how this man could develop such a horrible attitude toward Jews when he himself was a flawless Jew.’ He remembers his cousin as a man who maintained friendly relations with his Jewish relatives, a man whom he knew as ‘Uncle Walter,’ and a man who once provided Ernst’s father with a genealogical sketch of the family that descended from Dr. Lustig’s great-grandfather Abraham, who had lived in the town of Adamowitz. This seems out of character with the picture of Walter Lustig as a man who took no interest in his Jewish roots, although it is true that the time in question, 1937-38, was already after the date when Walter Lustig decided to throw his lot in with the Jewish community to which the Nazis in any event had irrevocably assigned him.” (2003, p. 215)

It is difficult to reconcile the differing judgements of Walter Lustig. On the one hand, there is the man who selected colleagues and fellow employees for deportation, while on the other was a man who occasionally came to the rescue of assistants who’d been arrested by the Nazis. Then, in March 1943, the Gestapo showed up with trucks in front of the administrative building prepared to deport the entire establishment, patients, doctors, nurses, and all other employees; it was only Lustig’s call to Adolf Eichmann that forced the Gestapo to stand down, though it resulted in fully half of Lustig’s workmates being arrested. As Silver asks, “Did Lustig originate this Faustian bargain, offering up fully half of the total number of his professional colleagues and employees as the price for saving the hospital, and thereby himself and his job? Or was this decision imposed on him in circumstances over he which he had no control whatsoever? It is unlikely that anyone will ever know.” (2003, p. 143)

It is worth noting that while the RSHA and the Gestapo were technically part of the same organization and under the authority of the same leader, SS Führer Heinrich Himmler, the German bureaucracy was teeming with internal rivalries and tensions (2003, p. 141), a situation which may partially explain why the Jewish hospital survived the war. For all of Lustig’s purported influence with the Gestapo, he was unable to save his own father from being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. (2003, p. 173 & p. 221)

Longtime followers of my Blog may recall the postscript to Post 13 about the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. In that post, I explained the role a Polish gentleman named Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński played in photographing all the headstones of the graves before the cemetery was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era. At a time when purchasing film and processing black-and-white negatives cost a lot, Kazimierz photographed, developed, created a portfolio with a site plan, and donated all his work to the Muzeum Raciborzu to be archived. After learning about these images, I arranged to photograph all the images in 2015. Recalling these and the accompanying Excel database, I scrolled through them and discovered they include a photo of Walter Lustig’s mother’s headstone, Regina Lustig née Besser. (Figure 6) As mentioned above, Walter’s father, Bernhard Lustig, was deported to Theresienstadt where he died, so obviously no picture of his gravestone exists.

Figure 6. The headstone of Dr. Walter Lustig’s mother, Regina Lustig née Besser (1866-1914), interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz (photo courtesy of Kazimierz Świetliński)

Walter’s birth certificate, which my dear friend Mr. Paul Newerla was able to obtain from the Racibórz archives confirmed Walter’s date of birth, the 10^th of August 1891, and his parentage. (Figures 7a-b) As I mentioned above, while Paul was searching for Walter Lustig’s birth certificate, the archives stumbled upon a legal document related to Bernhard Lustig dated the 22^nd of March 1939. (Figures 8a-g) At the time Bernhard was 82 years of age indicating he’d been born in 1857; I would later learn he was born on the 6^th of February 1857. Because he was in frail health at the time, Bernhard Lustig had requested that a Mr. Arthur “Israel” Stein be appointed as his guardian, which the courts granted. Despite his failing health, four years later the Nazis deported him to Theresienstadt, where he perished. One can only imagine the cruel circumstances under which Bernhard died.

Figure 7a. Copy of Walter Simon Lustig’s Ratibor birth certificate, Certificate No. 391, showing he was born on the 10th of August 1891 to Bernhard Lustig and Regina Besser née Besser, and that he was given the added name “Israel” on the 1st of January 1939

Figure 7b. Transcription & translation of Walter Lustig’s birth certificate

Figure 8a. Page 1 of a legal document dated the 22nd of March 1939 regarding Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, the merchant Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8b. Page 2 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8c. Page 3 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8d. Page 4 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8e. Page 5 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8f. Transcription of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

Figure 8g. Translation of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

Interestingly, the legal document Bernhard submitted to the court also requested that he be allowed to submit a corrected declaration of value for assets he’d mistakenly overvalued; this resulted in overpayment of the “Jewish expiation tax,” for which he sought reimbursement. It seems unlikely the courts ever acted upon this request.

From 1945 to the present, most people have expressed incredulity that the Nazis permitted an identifiable Jewish institution to continue to exist in Berlin, a city Goebbels had declared in 1943 “cleansed of Jews.” Mr. Silver offers possible explanations: 1) the Nazis saw the hospital as playing a useful role in the large-scale deportations during a time when all other Jewish organizations and institutions had been eliminated (2003, p. 62); 2) earlier in the war, before the large-scale deportation of most Jews, it is possible the Nazis allowed the hospital to survive to provide for the treatment of Jews who could spread epidemics to the general Aryan population (2003, p. 235-6); 3) for bureaucratic convenience, that’s to say, as a place in which the Gestapo could establish a kind of ghetto (2003, p. 237); and 4) for reasons of ambition, Adolf Eichmann may have stage-managed the transfer of the land and buildings the hospital occupied to a small powerless agency, the Academy of Youth Medicine, which he could easily control and thereby preserve the hospital and the site he coveted. (2003, p. 238)

Let me end this lengthy post by briefly discussing what is known about Walter Lustig’s fate. Following the war, the hospital fell into the Soviet-administered zone of Berlin. By then, Lustig had been appointed by the occupation-controlled local government as the director of health services for the Wedding district and had turned over the administration of the hospital to his aide Ehrich Zwilsky. Incredibly, Lustig had remained head of the Reichsvereinigung and had even petitioned the Soviet authorities to have it converted to the new Jewish Gemeinde, with himself as the head. His ambition clearly clouded his judgement; a more prudent course might have compelled him to flee, given the overall negative verdict by many who worked with him and thought he was a turncoat and Gestapo collaborator. Regardless, in June 1945, according to Ruth Bileski, a young Jewish woman sent in 1943 as a forced laborer to work in Lustig’s office, he was taken away accompanied by two uniformed Soviet officers, never to be seen again. Some claim he may have stage-managed his own disappearance to avoid being tried, although the likelier outcome is that he was killed by the Soviets.

REFERENCES

Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy. “A hospital with history.” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2007, https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Siegel-Itzkovich%2c+Judy.+%e2%80%9cA+hospital+with+history&d=4898311699633967&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=KvOBC3e8wZezfu1SQux0Q8WOOLP6t1uU

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

POST 109 (PART 2): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”), YEARS 1942-1944

Note: In the second part of Post 109, I discuss the broader historic context in which Johanna and Renate Bruck, wife and daughter of my esteemed ancestor, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), recorded the daily happenings in their lives between January 1942 and December 1944. Regrettably, their “Tagebuch” does not encompass the final few months of the war in Berlin through the surrender of the city on May 2, 1945. Thus, the circumstances of any hardships Johanna and Renate may have suffered in this period at the hands of the Russians and the Allies are unknown to us. Like in years 1940 and 1941, Johanna and Renate’s lives are replete with social engagements (getting together with friends; attending movies, plays, and operas; dining out; shopping; clothes fittings; etc.), distractions (tap, tennis, violin lessons), Renate’s amorous liaisons, and, most remarkably, multiple trips. With a few notable exceptions, the war passes almost unnoticed. I do not dwell on Johanna and Renate’s personal lives except where it adds nuance and texture to their accounts or provides some temporal context. From a story-telling perspective, I explore developments in the war and other happenings that while not explicitly discussed in the diary must have weighed on Johanna and Renate’s minds.

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

POST 109 (PART 1): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”)—YEARS 1940-1941

As discussed in Post 109(1), in November and December 1941 Johanna Bruck transacted the exchange of her apartment in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] at Oranienstrasse 4, with one in Berlin occupied by a couple named the Günthers, located at Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Johanna physically relocated to Berlin in February 1942, followed several weeks later by Renate. Johanna used the intervening period to have the apartment completely refurbished and upgraded.

By September 1941 Johanna understood that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” had been or would be rejected. Given how prominent Dr. Walter Bruck (Figures 1-2) had been in Breslau during his lifetime and the certainty the Nazis knew he was “racially” Jewish and that his daughter was a mischling of the first degree may have been the impetus for Johanna to move her daughter to Berlin; after all, by 1938, Renate Bruck had already been expelled from the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, the private school for daughters from upper class families. Johanna must have felt the anonymity of a larger city afforded her daughter better protection.

Figure 1. Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch at the helm of her Adler automobile with her daughter Renate and husband, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck, in a pre-war photo reflective of their upper-class lifestyle

Figure 2. Dr. Walter Bruck with his wife and daughter

My cousin Thomas Koch discovered an interesting thing when he examined the Berlin Address Books following Johanna and Renate’s move to Berlin. Johanna is not listed in the 1942 directory, though this may simply have been a function that her move occurred after the directory went to press. However, more mystifying is that she is not listed in the 1943 Berlin Address Book. There are several possible explanations: (1) sloppiness on the part of the publisher in updating the 1943 Address Book; (2) Johanna and Renate lived at Xantener Straße 24 but under the name of another person because of Renate’s racial status as a mischling. This possibility seems unlikely because it would have made obtaining ration cards very difficult and would have been contradictory to the openly, social lifestyle Johanna and Renate led. (3) Johanna unintentionally forgot to register properly; or (4) Johanna and Renate temporarily lived outside Berlin, which was in fact the case for a period in 1943-1944, which I will discuss below.

On May 4, 1942, Johanna makes one of the few entries suggesting the war may have started to impact the everyday lives of ordinary Germans, when she remarks, “Food very scarce!!!” While the scarcity of food is rarely mentioned again, the arrival of “care” packages from friends and relatives outside of Berlin is carefully noted throughout the diary suggesting Johanna and Renate depended on these.

In Post 109(1), I mentioned to readers that upon Renate’s arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts. However, neither Johanna nor Renate ever takes her compulsory schooling seriously; numerous instances of Renate missing school are noted. According to Renate’s lifelong friend, Ina Schaesberg, Renate acquired a special skill in arts and crafts that enabled her to make “very pretty and practical things from felt that sold well and brought in money.”

Renate departed Breslau accompanied by her mother on March 19, 1942, though Renate makes a point of noting that two days prior she had visited Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, at his luthier shop to say her goodbyes. (Figure 3) There was already a clear fondness between the two of them. It seems likely Renate and Matthias met at his shop while she was taking violin lessons there. According to Bettina Mehne, Matthias’s daughter by his second marriage, lessons were given not by Matthias himself but by his good friend, a man named “Kulenkampf.”

Figure 3. Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, at his luthier shop in Berlin in a post-war photo

Regardless, immediately after Matthias’s arrival in Berlin in February 1943, he called Renate and they become inseparable until he was forced to enlist in the Wehrmacht towards the latter part of April 1943. Readers may recall from Post 108 that Matthias was found to have helped a Jewish detainee and friend, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, escape a Sammellager in Breslau, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, with his rucksack in hand. As punishment, the judge, a friend, forced him to join the army rather than let the Gestapo kill him as they had wanted to, figuring he would be killed anyway. Clearly, Matthias’s departure from Breslau, did not prevent the Wehrmacht from finding him there, so his relocation to Berlin was more likely related to his blossoming relationship with Renate than an attempt to avoid military conscription.

By around the 22^nd of April 1943, Matthias was forced to present himself in Paris for induction into the German Army, but not without first talking to Johanna about his future with Renate according to an entry before his departure. It took me a while to work out that Renate and her mother referred to Matthias as “boy” throughout much of the diary, possibly because of his youthful demeanor or for some other unknown reason. He was clearly Renate’s primary love interest (Figure 4), though a man named “Gerhard” (surname unknown) was also vying for her affection at the time, a man her twin daughters claim was a love interest for years after the war following her marriage and divorce from Matthias.

Figure 4. Renate Bruck and her first husband Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne in Berlin in 1947-48 following his release form British captivity

Before backtracking and telling readers about some historic events of WWII I would have expected to be discussed in the Tagebuch, let me briefly tell followers what happened to Matthias following his enlistment. Renate received news of Matthias’s capture on October 12, 1943. He was evidently assigned to the Italian theater-of-war. The Allies landed in Sicily in around July 1943, and by September 1943 had invaded the Italian mainland. Matthias was captured by the Americans in Italy, but quickly turned over to the British and interned as a prisoner of war near Nottingham, England. Renate received her first letter from him dated the 27^th of February 1944 about a month later, on the 26^th of March 1944. I want to emphatically emphasize that Matthias was not a Nazi but was forced as punishment to enlist in the Wehrmacht because of the courage he had shown trying to help a Jew escape an internment camp in Breslau.

On her 17^th birthday on the 16^th of June 1943, Renate received a diamond ring. While there is no reason to think this was connected to Matthias, who was by then in the German Army, the day after receiving his first letter in March 1944 following his British internment, Renate celebrated what Johanna referred to as Renate’s “engagement day.” Might Matthias have proposed in his letter? Possibly.

At the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces including Germany’s 6^th Army and its foreign allies surrendered in Stalingrad following a brutal battle that had lasted five months, one week, and three days. There is nary any mention of this development during the war in Johanna’s diary. Nor is there any mention of the “Rosenstrasse Protest” that took place in Berlin during February and March 1943, which fundamentally affected Renate and other mischlinge. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and mischlinge who had been arrested and targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany. What started out with dozens, then hundreds of women protesting, eventually turned into thousands of women demonstrating in icy winter weather over seven days, until 1,700 Berlin Jews herded together into the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse near Alexanderplatz were freed. The Rosenstrasse protest is considered a significant event in German history as it was the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. One can only imagine how much horror and misery might have been avoided had such protestations by Germans occurred much earlier. To my cousin Thomas Koch this is very personal since his grandmother and future mother were among the Rosenstrasse protestors, and his Jewish grandfather among those freed.

Let me turn now to an entry made by Renate on the 11^th of May 1943, in which she noted that she would not be accepted in the Reich Labor Service, the Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD. The Reich Labor Service was a major organization established in Nazi Germany to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarize the workforce, and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labor service, divided into separate sections for men and women. So called “half-breeds,” mischlinge, were not excluded from labor service. The mother of my cousin Thomas, like Renate also a mischling, was in the Reichsarbeitsdienst in 1940. Thus, it is a source of irritation to Thomas that Renate was somehow able to avoid the labor service. Were the conditions “tightened” for Renate through contacts Johanna had that “prevented” her from being accepted? Or was Renate’s non-acceptance intended to protect her from something or exclude her from something contrary to the rules? We may never know the answers to these questions.

Years ago, when I was still working with Thomas Koch trying to discover where Johanna and Renate Bruck had gone after they left Breslau, which we now know to have been in February-March 1942, Thomas shared with me an application that had been submitted by a woman named Ms. Edith Czeczatka to the Tracing Service of the German Red Cross in 1948. Ms. Czeczatka requested information on the whereabouts of Johanna and Renate and gave as their residential address in the town of Erfurt, Germany, Dammweg 9. (Figures 5a-b) I mentioned this in Post 83, even including a picture of the residential building where they lived. (Figure 6) Johanna and Renate’s association with Erfurt was a mystery until the discovery of their Tagebuch.

Figure 5a. 2019 letter to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch from the “Deutsches Rotes Kreuz Generalsekretariat Suchdienst,” the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service, responding to his request for information about Renate Bruck; this letter cites a 1948 request for information on Johanna and Renate from a former neighbor when they lived at Dammweg 9

Figure 5b. Translation of 2019 letter from the German Red Cross’s Tracing Service to my cousin Dr. Thomas Koch

Figure 6. The apartment building at Dammweg 9 in Erfurt, Germany where Johanna and Renate Bruck lived after Renate was employed by the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH as a draftswoman

An entry on the 22^nd of May 1943 explains why Renate accompanied by Johanna temporarily moved to Erfurt that year. That day, Renate was told to come for an interview at the employment office of “MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH”; she’d apparently applied for and been hired as a technical draftswoman beginning on June 1^st. More on this company below. The company had offices in both Berlin and Erfurt, but Renate was required to report to Erfurt beginning on the 17^th of June 1943 for training. Almost immediately, the girls that had been hired were given two months of paid vacation until the drawing rooms were readied. It is clear from the diary that Renate was permanently assigned to work in Erfurt.

Towards the beginning of September 1943, prior to moving to Erfurt, Johanna and Renate went to visit family and friends in Breslau, then spent a few days vacationing in Jannowitz, Silesia [today: Janowice Wielkie, Poland], before returning to Breslau, then leaving for Erfurt on September 12, 1943. For the period of her employment, Renate and her mother lived in Erfurt on weekdays, then returned to Berlin on weekends.

It appears that for at least a year until September 24, 1944, Johanna and Renate lived with a family called the “Hallers.” Then, on September 25, 1944, they moved within Erfurt into the house at Dammweg 9, previously mentioned, where the “Maulhardt” family also lived. Presumably, this was a boarding house the family owned.

Let me digress now and briefly discuss the MAKO Maschinen Co. GMBH that Renate worked for. MAKO was a company network owned by Max Kotzan, and the name was a combination of letters from his first and last name. The 1943 Berlin Address Book identified the various components of the business which included chemical-technical and metallurgical development; machine factories; and apparatus engineering and construction. Curious to get a better handle on what the company actually produced, I came upon an obscure reference which I found intriguing because it shed light on Germany’s efforts to develop solid fuel rockets, which might well have changed the trajectory of the war. Quoting briefly from a publication entitled “The V2 and the Russian and American Rocket Program” by Claus Reuter:

“More and more information is now surfacing telling of the launch of a ballistic missile powered by solid propellant near Arnstadt just before the war ended. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Arnstadt is a town in Thuringia, Germany, about 20 kilometers south of Erfurt. During the Second World War, it was the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, mainly for Poles and Russians.]. Many believe it was this missile which was to carry a nuclear payload. The missile was developed in the top-secret think-tank installation at the Skoda factory under the control of the SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler. . . .

. . . Most historians and experts say that because of the shortage of solid propellants the missile was never produced and that no nuclear program existed.

More and more eyewitness accounts surface telling us a different story, accounts which say the missile was launched successfully. Also, a photo surfaced showing a large missile being built at the MAKO factory in Rudesleben, Thuringia. It shows the Sonderrakete A-4 (Special Rocket A-4) for solid fuel. The launch took place nearby at one of the top-secret factories in Thuringia the Polte 2 plant. The plant was controlled by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler.

The MAKO plant specialized in the construction of pressure tanks and also produced equipment for the Luftwaffe, like drop tank, for the rocket program oxygen tanks for the V-1 and also mobile liquid oxygen transport tanks for the V-2 rocket batteries. The MAKO was owned by Maz Kotzan. Kotzan as a WWI flyer had close connections to Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet, both WWI pilots. The MAKO received the contracts from the RLM [EDITOR’S NOTE: Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Aviation, “Reichsluftfahrtministerium,” abbreviated RLM]. Behind the Polte 2 plant Kotzan had erected two aircraft hangers and a landing strip.

Here personalities like SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Kammler or Wernher von Braun arrived to visit some of the installations. In the MAKO and Polte 2 plants some of the top-secret developments were tested. It was here that the Americans found the top-secret radar-absorbing aircraft paint. The paint was immediately shipped to the U.S.”

I am obviously no rocket scientist, pardon the pun, so suffice it to say the advantage of a solid motor is that it can provide huge amounts of thrust, and is therefore used as a booster to make satellite launching rockets gain high initial velocity before using higher-efficient liquid motors to gain horizontal velocity above the densest part of the atmosphere. There seems little doubt that had the Nazis been able to master this technology and place fissile material atop a missile powered by solid fuel, at a minimum, the war would have dragged on and more misery and death occurred.

I will readily acknowledge to readers that I have veered quite a distance from Johanna and Renate’s diary, but this was primarily in the interest of drawing attention to the company for which Renate worked, which was obviously deeply involved in Germany’s arms development. There is virtually no mention in their diary of Johanna and Renate’s time in Erfurt, except for their continuing active social lives. However, it is safe to assume that part of their reticence to talk about Erfurt could be connected to statements of secrecy they were sworn to. Clearly, as a mischling Renate wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible, and it’s somewhat surprising the company even hired her given her status.

Evidently, by virtue of Renate’s amorous relationship with Matthias Mehne, her future first husband, she and Johanna had gotten to know Matthias’s parents, referred to as “Ma and Pa” in the diary and his sister “Lu,” short for Luzie. Matthias’s parents were Albert Eugen Mehne (b. 1883, Dresden) and Hedwig Gertrud Marie Göbel. Johanna and Renate regularly visited, received packages, and stayed in touch with them during Matthias’s wartime absence. While a reference I found states Albert Eugen Mehne moved to Gelsenkirchen, Germany around 1922 (Figure 7), which is about 500 miles due west of Breslau, Johanna and Renate always visited them in Breslau during the war, suggesting Matthias’s parents had returned there at some point.

Figure 7. Obscure reference from “Amati Auctions” mentioning that Renate’s future father-in-law, Eugen Mehne, worked in Gelsenkirchen, Germany after 1922

Surprisingly, Johanna and Renate traveled quite extensively during the years 1942 through 1944. While there were periodic disruptions and delays on account of the war, amazingly the trains continued to run on a predictable schedule though often with significant delays. Among the places they stayed besides Berlin, Breslau, and Erfurt were the widely scattered towns of Friedrichroda (small town and health resort in Thuringia), Babelsberg, Potsdam, Jannowitz, Neuendorf and Kantreck in Pomerania bordering the Baltic Sea, and Hamburg. They clearly knew people in many of these places, but others were seemingly vacation destinations.

Not surprisingly, the war had an impact on the lives of Johanna and Renate, although this fact is rarely manifested in the diary. However, on the night of February 16, 1944, the Allies launched a major bomb attack against Berlin, and the following day Johanna was notified by teletype that “our apartment had suffered greatly.” Then, on February 18^th, Johanna remarks “Our apartment—a field of rubble, quite terrible.” It does not become clear until an entry in the early part of May 1944 that Johanna and Renate’s apartment was still habitable.

It goes without saying there are dozens and dozens more entries in Johanna and Renate’s Tagebuch reflecting on the weather, taking umbrage in air raid shelters, Johanna being hospitalized, and much more. Readers should realize I’ve been very selective in the entries I’ve chosen to highlight to make this post engaging and more reflective of the wartime events that had to have impacted Johanna and Renate’s lives. My intent is merely to give followers a glimpse into the lives that my ancestors Johanna and Renate Bruck lived during WWII (Figure 8), and how surprisingly “normal” their existence seems to have been given the enormity of death and destruction that surrounded them.

Figure 8. Post-WWII photo of Renate and Johanna Bruck in England

REFERENCE

Reuter, Claus (2000). The V2, and the Russian and American Rocket Program. (2^nd ed.). Repentigny, Quebec (Canada): S.R. Research & Publishing.

POST 109 (PART 1): JOHANNA & RENATE BRUCK’S WARTIME TAGEBUCH (“DIARY”)—YEARS 1940-1941

Note: This is the first of a two-part story about the wartime “journal” or “diary” written by Johanna and Renate Bruck, the widow and daughter of my esteemed ancestor from Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland], Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), a second cousin twice removed. The German word “Tagebuch” strictly speaking translates as a diary or journal but in effect is more of a record or log of the extensive daily activities Johanna and Renate were engaged in between January 1940 and December 1944. What could have been an extremely absorbing account of the daily lives of an Aryan woman and her “mischling” daughter during WWII, within the context of global events and the impact of National Socialism on Jews, half-Jews, Germans, and others in Europe, instead turns into a mundane and drab account of their rather “ordinary” existences. The Tagebuch is often more remarkable for what it omits than what it says about the ongoing events of the tragic period in which it was written. It is difficult to make sense of many of the entries, which would in any case be of little or no interest to readers. For this reason I explain some of the war-related references and discuss a few specific people I’ve been able to identify.

Related Posts:

POST 54: “I DECIDE WHO IS A JEW”

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

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

POST 102: DR. WALTER BRUCK, HIS SECOND WIFE JOHANNA GRÄBSCH & HER FAMILY

POST 103: RENATE BRUCK: A TALE OF TWO GODMOTHERS

Regular followers of my Blog are aware of the multiple posts I have recently written about Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) and his extended family. This sequence of posts was prompted by a contact earlier this year from a Berlin doctor, Dr. Tilo Wahl, who in around 2013 purchased at auction the commemorative medals, personal effects, private papers, and photos that once belonged to Dr. Bruck. The seller of these items was Nicholas Newman, Dr. Bruck’s grandson, who sadly committed suicide in 2015 in London.

As Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, my friend affiliated with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, has been wont to tell me, there is no such thing as coincidence but rather as her uncle impressed upon her, its “beshert,” fate or predestination. Not only was it providential Dr. Wahl would stumble upon my Blog and contact me, but that he would also share copies of Dr. Bruck’s personal papers and photos. This was magnified when Nicholas Newman’s twin sisters from Sydney, Australia, similarly chanced upon my Blog while researching their deceased brother and contacted me.

Figure 1. Francesca and Michele Newman, my fourth cousins

Nicholas’s twin siblings, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 1), are the offspring of Renate Bruck’s third marriage. Since our initial encounter, we have developed a warm relationship and have had several Zoom calls. The twins have been able to fill in a few holes in my understanding of their mother and grandmother’s lives following their grandfather’s death in 1937, but most astoundingly, while examining their family memorabilia, they happened upon a so-called “Tagebuch,” written between January 1940 and December 1944 by their grandmother and mother, Johanna and Renate Bruck. (Figure 2) Technically a diary or journal, it can more accurately be characterized as a record or log of daily events the writers were engaged in.

Figure 2. The frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-year wartime “Tagebuch,” diary, covering the period from January 1940 through December 1944

Knowing the numerous questions I had about Dr. Bruck’s wife and daughter following his death, they offered to send me the original Tagebuch. While hesitant to risk losing this valuable document, I accepted their gracious offer and fortunately it arrived safely. The twins have since generously donated their mother and grandmother’s diary to the Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery), a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, where their great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather are interred. Since Dr. Walter Bruck is well-known to staff of the museum, they were thrilled beyond measure to receive this donation.

Briefly, let me explain to readers how I was able to learn the contents of the Tagebuch. For much longer than I have been in contact with Francesca and Michele Newman, I have known one of their cousins from the Berlin neighborhood of Köpenick, Dr. Frank Thomas Koch (Figure 3); as another instance of serendipity, Dr. Tilo Wahl is a practicing dentist in this same district of Berlin. In any case, whereas Thomas and I are fourth cousins, Thomas and the twins are third cousins, so a generation more closely related. Over the years, Thomas and I have collaborated in tracking Johanna and Renate Bruck to England following their emigration from Germany, without specifically uncovering the intermediate steps that led to them arriving there.

Figure 3. My fourth cousin, Frank Thomas Koch, in Berlin in 2015, who is a third cousin to Francesca and Michele Newman; Thomas transcribed & translated Johanna & Renate’s “Tagebuch”

Given Thomas’ interest in this branch of our family, upon learning of the existence of the Tagebuch, he offered to transcribe it. I sent Thomas a high-quality PDF of the journal, which he systematically transcribed over a roughly two-month period. Then, using the best of the known online translators, DeepL, he translated the log. But Thomas went beyond a cursory perusal of the “journal.” He provided some context for events taking place in Nazi Germany that ought to have been touched on by Johanna Bruck but were not. As one additional step, I put Thomas in touch with Renate Bruck’s lifelong still-living 95-year-old friend, Ina Schaesberg (Figure 4), who was able to recall specific people named in the Tagebuch and identify their role in Johanna and Renate’s lives. Since Ina speaks little English, Thomas was more effectively able to extract information about these people from her than I could. Finally, yet another source of information was Bettina Mehne (Figure 5), daughter of Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne, by Matthias’ second wife; Bettina was able to recognize the diminutive names of some of her ancestors.

Figure 4. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

Figure 5. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne

Briefly, let me give readers an impression of the Tagebuch. It is a five-year diary, of a type that still exists today, with some peculiarities. It covers the span from January 1, 1940, through December 24, 1944, although not chronologically. That’s to say, January 31, 1940, is not followed by February 1, 1940, but rather by January 1, 1941, then January 1, 1942, etc. While this may make sense, it prevents the reader from following the flow of events. Thus, Thomas, in transcribing and translating the diary, did so chronologically.

The diary has two authors, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s widow, Johanna Bruck née Gräbsch, and his daughter, Renate Bruck. (Figure 6) Most of the entries are recorded by Johanna, whose writing is Old German Script in vogue around the 1900’s (known as “die Kurrentschrift” or “Kurrent” for short in German); Renate’s handwriting is more typical of today’s German cursive.

Figure 6. Authors of the “Tagebuch,” Johanna & Renate Bruck, in England following WWII (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

The Tagebuch is written in a telegraphic style, meaning in a clipped way of writing that abbreviates words and packs as much information into the fewest number of words or characters. At times, this means that certain terms or turns of phrases are not well understood or are indecipherable.

Rarely is the Tagebuch introspective or self-analyzing. Comparatively intimate, confidential, or personal messages are rarely recorded. The diary does not give us a sense of the broader events going on in the war during the Nazi era. For Johanna and Renate life seems to go on as normal, notwithstanding the fact that as a half-Jew Renate was considered a mischling of the first degree.

The war, the aftermath of its destruction, hunger, and repression are rarely mentioned. If Renate as a mischling or her mother were ever under observation by the Nazis and their informants is never made clear. However, as the author James F. Tent asserts in his seminal book about German mischlinge, “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans,” the intensity of persecution, discrimination, and harassment of mischlinge in the Third Reich varied greatly. Tent reports that in certain areas and regions, there was little distinction between “Jews” and “Mischlinge” in terms of persecution, while in other parts of the Reich virtually nothing happened to them, and they were not treated as outsiders.

There were at least two areas where Renate’s status as a mischling affected her life. Until 1938, Renate attended the “Oberlyzeum von Zawadzky,” the Upper Lyceum in the Zawadskie district of Breslau, which was a private school for daughters from upper class families. After 1938, all “non-Aryan” girls were forced to leave. Following her expulsion from the Lyceum, until Renate relocated with her mother to Berlin in February-March of 1942, she attended the “Kloster-Schule der Ursulinen,” the Ursuline Convent School. Then, beginning in 1942 upon her arrival in Berlin, she attended the “Kunstgewerbeschule,” the School of Arts and Crafts.

The second area where Renate’s life was affected by her status as a mischling of the first degree was in her desire to be a fully recognized member of the “deutschen Volksgemeinschaft,” wanting “to belong” and not be an outsider; the Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning “people’s community” that originally became popular during WWI as Germans rallied in support of the war. It appealed to the idea of breaking down elitism, and uniting people across class divides to achieve a national purpose. During the Nazi era, the wanting “to belong” among children and young people was expressed, among other ways, in their membership in the Hitlerjugend (HJ), Hitler Youth, or the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), League of German Girls or Band of German Maidens. However, anyone who was “non-Aryan” could not become a member of the Hitler Youth or BDM.

Ina Schaesberg, Renate’s lifelong friend, relates an uncomfortable situation Renate put her in on account of her desire to belong to the BDM. So the story goes that Renate forced Ina to get her a BDM uniform so they could play together as “German Maidens” privately at home wearing their outfits. Jumping ahead to January 1942 which will be discussed in Part 2 of this post, Renate was denounced for this act by an informer that required Johanna to report to the police, although the incident appears to have had no serious consequences.

Johanna resolved to address the matter of Renate’s exclusion from the BDM. She makes the following entry on January 29, 1941. “I received first a call from Norbert Pohl about BDM application to Hess.” Let me attempt to put this in context for readers and tell readers about the players, acknowledging that I do not have a copy of Renate’s BDM application so can only surmise what it may have included.

Johanna Bruck seemingly appealed the issue of Renate’s application to join the BDM to a high, if not the highest, authority, namely to Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess (1874-1987). The quote above makes this evident. Hess had been the highest-ranking member after Hitler of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and Reich Minister without portfolio since 1933 when the Nazis seized power.

Johanna could have justified her request that Renate be accepted into the BDM in one of two ways. Purely hypothetically, Johanna could have argued that Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was not the biological father of Renate and that she was the daughter of an affair Johanna had had with an “Aryan.” It’s conceivable Johanna was aware of a similar argument that had been made in the case of the German field marshal general Erhard Milch (Figure 7) by his mother, distant relatives of both Renate and me.

Figure 7. Field Marshall Erhard Milch (far left) with Hitler and Hermann Göring (white uniform) (photograph by Heinrich Hoffmann, available at www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl, copyrighted by the State Treasury of Poland)

To remind readers, I wrote about Erhard Milch (1892-1972) in a post entitled “I Decide Who is a Jew” (Post 54), a saying widely attributed to Hermann Wilhelm Göring, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party between 1933 to 1945. Erhard Milch was a German field marshal general (Generalfeldmarschall) who oversaw the development of the German air force (Luftwaffe) as part of the re-armament of Nazi Germany following WWI. He was State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Aviation and Inspector General of the Air Force. During most of WWII, he oversaw all aircraft production and supply. In other words, Milch was important to the Nazis. Based on his mother’s disclosure that Erhard was not the son of her Jewish husband but supposedly born of an incestuous relationship with her uncle, an “Aryan,” he was declared a so-called “Honorary Aryan” (i.e., a person with Jewish roots who was appointed an honorary Aryan).

Thus, one way Johanna hypothetically could have argued that Renate be accepted into the BDM was by professing she was not the child of a Jew. Alternatively, Johanna could have argued that while Renate was regrettably a “mischling of the first degree,” her enthusiasm for the Nazis, their movement, and their ideals more than made up for this “flaw.” Which option Johanna chose is unknown to us. Probably her request was not supported by Hess or was delayed and put on the backburner. Regardless, several months after Johanna’s request, Hess flew to England in May 1941, ostensibly to make peace with the Allies. He was interned in England, and following Germany’s defeat, at Nuremberg he was sentenced to many years in prison as a Nazi and war criminal.

Who then was the Norbert Pohl who called Johanna Bruck on January 29, 1941? According to my cousin Thomas Koch, Norbert Pohl (1910-1968) was probably already a big shot in the SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads) at the time of Johanna’s BDM request. He was the chief judge of the SS at the Police Court VI in Krakow from July 1940 until March 1942. Johanna makes a remarkable entry on February 12, 1941, recording that she received a call from Frau Pohl, presumably the wife of the SS grandee Norbert Pohl, urging haste with the written request. On February 20^th, Johanna delivered the application to the Obergau, a division of the National Socialist state, specifically to the “Obergau 4, Obergaubehörde Niederschlesien der Nazipartei NSDAP,” which was headquartered in Breslau. Pohl may subsequently have forwarded Johanna’s letter and documentation to Rudolf Hess and kept her informed about developments.

Because of the clipped style in which the Tagebuch is written, we are left to wonder about some of the brief entries recorded by Johanna that may have been related to the application submission. For example, on February 28, 1941, so eight days after submitting the petition to the NSDAP, Johanna writes that she sent a letter to Mackensen. This is undoubtedly Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen (1949-1945), Generalfeldmarschall, Field Marshall General, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s military superior during WWI (Figure 8) and someone who stood up for him in 1933 after he was dismissed from his academic position. (Figure 9) Could the letter have had anything to do with Renate’s application to the NSDAP and a request for his support? It seems likely, but we may never know.

Figure 8. During WWI, Dr. Walter Bruck in the front seat with his first wife, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), who was Jewish, accompanied by his military superior, Field Marshall General Anton Ludwig Friedrich August Mackensen (1949-1945), and his wife (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

Figure 9. Transcription & translation of section from book entitled “Zwischen Kaiser und Führer: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen” by Theo Schwarzmüller detailing how and why Mackensen came to Dr. Walter Bruck’s defense following his dismissal from his teaching position in 1933 after the Nazis came to power

As it relates to the formal written request Johanna submitted for Renate to the Nazi authorities on February 20, 1941, Thomas figured out the German designation for this application was called “Gesuch über die Gleichstellung mit Deutschblütigen,” an “application for equality with German-blooded people.” The relevant literature indicates about 10,000 such applications were presented, but that only about 500 of them were ever approved. Of particular interest is that Hitler himself approved or denied these requests. Hitler’s allies were apparently more lenient in ratifying them.

What is clear from the journal and what we now know was an “application for equality with German-blooded people” submitted by Johanna is that she knew many people, including influential Nazis.

Unfortunately, the Tagebuch contains no mention as to what transpired after Renate’s application was submitted. However, based on an entry recorded on the 16^th of September 1941, apparently Johanna suspects that her “request” for Renate to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected.

Let me turn now to log entries having to do with the Nazi regime and wartime events that may be of interest to readers.

On January 30, 1940, Johanna mentions the hustle and bustle going on that week on account of “Führerwoche,” Führer Week, in honor of the seventh anniversary of Hitler becoming Chancellor of the Reich on January 30, 1933.

On February 23, 1940, schools other than Renate’s were closed on account of a so-called “coal vacation,” days schools were closed during severe winters to save coal and heating oil to be used in support of the war effort.

On February 25, 1940, Johanna records that “Klaus,” one of Renate’s friends, had his National Socialist youth initiation ceremony as school graduation ceremonies and initiation rituals into the Hitler Youth and BDM were referred to at the time.

May 1st was a National Holiday, “Tag der Arbeit,” Labor Day, interestingly appropriating a tradition from the Labor movement.

On June 2^nd, 1940, Johanna mentions listening to the radio, without specifically indicating that the broadcast presumably celebrated the Wehrmacht’s victory over France. Then, on June 25^th, there was a school vacation because of “the acceptance of the peace terms imposed on the French.”

Interestingly, on November 23^,1940, the day of Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in 1923, in Munich, the Führer delivered a radio broadcast.

In several places, Johanna merely records “Führer speech,” so we are left to peruse the history books to identify what major speech Hitler delivered on these dates. The first instance is on February 24, 1941, which corresponds with a celebration at the Münchener Hofbräuhaus on the announcement of the NSDAP platform when Hitler declared an intensification of submarine warfare.

On April 9, 1941, Johanna remarks on the “great political events in the Balkans,” which coincided with the Wehrmacht’s campaign against then-Yugoslavia and Greece, resulting in Salonika’s capture on that date.

On May 4, 1941, Johanna again merely records, “Führer speech.” This coincides with an address Hitler made before the German Reichstag, in which he invoked the alleged desire for peace on the part of Nazi Germany, which had always been thwarted and now led once again to the defeat of then-Yugoslavia and Greece in the Balkans.

On June 22, 1941, Johanna records that Adolf Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union. No further embellishment is provided. Then, on October 3^rd, there is another entry, “Führer speech.” This day it turns out marked the start of the Kriegswinter-Hilfswerks, War Winter Relief Fund, and Hitler’s declaration that the Soviet Union had already been defeated and would never rise again. Barely two weeks later, the German Wehrmacht, accustomed to victory, took its first major defeat during the Battle of Moscow.

Relatedly, jumping ahead to January 3, 1942, Johanna makes another clipped entry that requires explanation: “. . .sweater and jacket donated for the soldiers.” Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months of the Axis forces invasion of the Soviet Union on the 22^nd of June 1941. Hitler and his generals were convinced they would defeat the Soviet Union before the onset of winter 1941. Therefore, the German soldiers were ill-equipped for the severe winter when the Red Army counter-attacked during the Battle of Moscow, and they were largely without winter clothes. The donations of clothing from the German population were intended to compensate for this lack of winter equipment; Johanna was among the donors.

Let me turn now to some entries in the Tagebuch that give us insight into aspects of Johanna and Renate’s personal lives and their circle of friends and acquaintances. While of lesser interest than the terse war-related notes, they are still noteworthy.

According to a note recorded on the 24^th of March 1940, Johanna and Renate were members of the “Christengemeinschaft.” The “Christengemeinschaft, Movement for Religious Renewal” is a Christian church that is close to anthroposophy but is regarded as an independent cult community. It was founded in Switzerland in 1922 following the suggestions of Rudolf Steiner and had followers in Breslau. Today, there are 140 congregations in Germany though the church exists worldwide. From the point of view of the mainstream churches, it represents, among other things, a different understanding of baptism.

It was through the Christengemeinschaft that Johanna sought to have Renate accepted for confirmation classes. Judging from the somewhat vague notes in the Tagebuch, there were discussions and a dispute with Church Pastor Müller about this, but Johanna eventually prevailed seemingly with the help of other members of the congregation. In any case, Renate was eventually confirmed on the 17^th of March 1941.

Relatedly, on June 19, 1941, Johanna makes a point of mentioning the ban of eurythmy in schools, and the great joy it elicited; whether this was personal joy or more widespread elation is unclear. Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Marie von Sivers in the early 20^th century. Primarily a performance art, it was also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and – as part of anthroposophic medicine – for claimed therapeutic purposes. The ban of eurythmy was probably connected with the flight of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s Deputy, to England on May 10, 1941. With his departure, anthroposophy lost its most important promoter among the Nazi hierarchy. Ten days prior to the ban on eurythmy, the Christengemeinschaft to which Johanna and Renate belonged had been banned, and its priests and leading community members jailed. While Johanna makes mention of the eurythmy ban, she is silent on the ban of the church. What effect the ban had on Johanna and Renate is unknown, but, regardless, by this time Renate had already been confirmed.

A brief entry from July10, 1941, “letter to . . .Lettehaus” was explained to me by my cousin. “Letteverein” and “Lettehaus” were institutions founded in 1866 to “promote the gainful employment of women.” Johanna was faced with the problem that her daughter was basically barred from higher education and university studies in Nazi Germany for “racial” reasons. But even though higher education was not attainable for Renate, economic independence was a goal for Johanna, who had to remember she would not live forever and that her assets might not be transferable to Renate. Therefore, these institutions offered options. In clarifying this entry, Thomas explained that his mother, also a mischling of the first degree, availed herself of the Letteverein and Lettehaus.

As to Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, let me say a few words. As I have alluded to and discussed in earlier posts, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck was an eminent dentist. He was the personal dentist to the last German Kaiser’s family and other members of the nobility. Judging from the lavish social events he hosted and the lifestyle he led, it can be assumed he was well-to-do.

Figure 10. Aerial photograph of Dr. Bruck’s lavish home and location of his dental practice at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17, destroyed during WWII

According to Breslau address books of the time, during the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s Dr. Bruck and his family lived in a luxurious home at Reichspräsidentenplatz 17 (Figure 10), with the owner of record at the time being Walter Bruck. Following the death of Paul von Hindenburg, the German general and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934, Reichspräsidentenplatz was renamed by the Nazis to Hindenburgplatz. The renaming of the square was reflected in Breslau address books only in 1935. By 1937, however, his wife Johanna Bruck was now shown as the owner of record even though Walter continued to live at Hindenburgplatz 17. The change in ownership from Walter to Johanna Bruck was a measure to avoid expropriation of the estate by the Nazis as Walter was considered “Jewish,” whereas his wife was deemed to be “Aryan.” We know from elsewhere that Walter converted from Judaism in about 1917, around the time his mother died, and that, unlike his accomplished father and grandfather, respectively Dr. Julius Bruck and Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, he was not interred in Breslau’s Jewish Cemetery. Obviously, as far as the Nazis were concerned, Walter’s conversion from Judaism was of no consequence and he was still deemed Jewish. On multiple occasions, Johanna mentions that she and Renate visited her deceased husband’s grave, regrettably never mentioning which cemetery he was interred in. This is a mystery to be resolved.

Dr. Walter Bruck died in Breslau on the 31^st of March 1937, whether by his own hand or not is unknown. Following Walter’s death, Johanna is presumed to have sold the house around that time because when in 1939, the “racial” census takes place (Figure 11), the widow Johanna Bruck and her daughter Renate Bruck are no longer living at Hindenburgplatz 17, but at Oranienstrasse 4. (Figure 12) The latter house does not belong to Johanna but to a retired banker by the name of “E. Bucher.” Johanna and Renate apparently lived there in a large stately apartment, from which they sublet rooms. Apart from the income this generated, Johanna undoubtedly received a significant sum of money from the sale of the house at Hindenburgplatz 17 as well as an inheritance from her husband. At various points in the Tagebuch, Johanna bemoans the expenditure of money on certain things, but rarely do we get the impression that she is lacking for money, nor does her active social life or the multiple activities she and Renate are enrolled in suggest otherwise.

Figure 11. The 1939 German Minority Census listing Johanna and Renate Bruck, by which time they lived at Oranienstrasse 4

Figure 12. Table inside Oranienstrasse 4 with photograph of Dr. Walter Bruck

There are scores upon scores of names mentioned in the journal. An unusually large number of them are referred to as “Tante,” aunt, or “Onkel,” uncle, with most presumed to be close friends rather than blood relatives. Several, however, “Tante Leni,” “Tante Irene” or “Tante I.,” and “Onkel Willy” are known to the writer and are unquestionably Johanna and Renate’s kin. In some instances mention is made of celebrating this or that person’s birthday on a particular day or week; given my familiarity with the dates of birth of family members, I was able to work out how some of the people were referred to. Thus “Tante I.” was Johanna’s sister-in-law, Irene Elisabeth Gräbsch née Klar who was married to Johanna’s brother, Paul Karl Hermann Gräbsch. Tante Irene was often accompanied by her son “Ebi,” a cousin and frequent playmate of Renate’s. (Figure 13) “Tante Leni” was Johanna’s sister, Helene Emma Clara Steinberg née Gräbsch. (Figure 14) “Onkel Willy” was Willy Gräbsch, a merchant from Breslau, probably unmarried or widowed, whose relationship to Johanna is unclear.

Figure 13. Renate Bruck on her 10th birthday, the 16th of June 1936, with her first cousin Ebi Gräbsch, with whom she spent much time playing

Figure 14. Johanna’s sister, Helene Emma Clara Steinberg née Gräbsch

Personally intriguing is the mention made on March 30, 1940, that Renate went to visit “Tante Margarethe” to wish her a happy birthday. The quotation marks indicate that while she was not a relative, she was still referred to as an aunt. There is no doubt this is Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch. (Figure 15) She was born on March 30, 1872, in Breslau [Wrocław, Poland], and murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 22^nd of September 1942. (Figure 16) It is surprising that Johanna and Renate were in touch with Walter’s first wife, although, as this was certainly the case, it’s astonishing that Johanna made no mention in the diary when Margarethe was deported. Perhaps Johanna had already distanced herself from this Jewish “aunt” by then?

Figure 15. Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck’s first wife who was Jewish, Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch (1872-1942), and who was murdered in Theresienstadt

Figure 16. Margarethe Bruck née Skutsch’s death certificate from “Holocaust.CZ” showing she was murdered on the 22nd of September 1942 in the Theresienstadt Ghetto

Among the names mentioned are a coterie I surmise are people who provided professional services to Johanna, such as housecleaners, cooks, seamstresses, teachers, clergy, etc. This includes “Fräulein Anna,” Miss Anna. According to Ina Schaesberg, she was the cook in the Bruck household for many years, during Dr. Bruck’s lifetime and after his death. She was considered “Aryan.” According to the 1935 “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” Jews were forbidden to employ “Aryan maids” under the age of 45. However, since Anna exceeded this age limit, she could remain employed in the house of Walter Bruck even after 1935. Following the death of Walter in 1937, she continued to work for Johanna and even followed her to Berlin (more on this in Part 2 of the post).

Johanna’s and Renate’s beloved long-haired dachshund, “Resi,” is often mentioned, though it took me some time to figure out that this was a dog and not a person. (Figure 17)

Figure 17. Renate Bruck with Resi, her long-haired dachshund

Because Renate was an exceptionally cute young girl who blossomed into a very attractive young woman, she had droves of admirers whom she frequently saw and skillfully manipulated. The fate of most are unknown, but in at least two instances Johanna tells us precisely the dates they were killed while serving in the Wehrmacht. The death of “Hans Roth,” often mentioned in the diary, is noted on October 26, 1941, though he was killed on the 21^st of September 1941 on the Eastern Front as his death certificate confirms. (Figures 18a-b) Similarly, an even closer friend of Renate’s, “Christoph von Kospoth,” was killed-in-action on the 4^th of April 1944 near Dresden, Germany. (Figures 19a-b)

Figure 18a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Hans Ferdinand Roth’s (1921-1941) death certificate, one of Renate Bruck’s childhood friends

Figure 18b. Hans Ferdinand Roth’ death certificate showing he was killed on the Eastern Front in September 1941

Figure 19a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Christoph von Kospoth’s (1923-1944) death certificate, one of Renate’s many teenage admirers

Figure 19b. Christoph von Kospoth’s (1923-1944) death certificate showing he was killed in Croatia in 1944

Other names and deaths are recorded by Johanna, but I’ve been unable to match them with historic documents which might have been able to tell me more about them.

Many names in the Tagebuch include only forenames or surnames, so it’s impossible to precisely identify these individuals. However, in several instances, with surnames and professions given I was able with certainty to discover the identities or people. While these rarely add much to the narrative of Johanna’s and Renate’s lives, I will discuss a few only because I was able to learn something about them.

A name that frequently appears in Johanna’s entries is called “Hella Goossens.” She appears to have been a friend. This represents the sole instance where I was able to find a picture of someone named in Johanna’s and Renate’s diary who was not a family member. A vivacious looking woman born on the 21^st of May 1884 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia, a Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card shows she immigrated to Brazil in 1950 (Figure 20); she is identified as a domestic worker. Seemingly, she was joining her son, Herbert Goossens, who had immigrated there in 1939. (Figure 21)

Figure 20. The Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card for Hella Goossens, one of Johanna Bruck’s friends from Breslau, showing she immigrated to Brazil in 1950

Figure 21. The Rio de Janeiro Immigration Card for Hella Goossen’s son, Herbert Eugen Goossens, showing he immigrated to Brazil in 1939

As I alluded to earlier when talking about Johanna and Renate’s financial situation, both were involved in numerous extracurricular activities, particularly Renate. For her part, Johanna was taking Italian lessons with a Frau Koesel at the home of a Frau Conberti. Mrs. Conberti is listed in Breslau Address Books between 1934 and 1941 and shows she was an interpreter and language teacher. (Figures 22a-b) One is left to wonder whether Johanna was merely taking Italian for self-improvement, or envisioned emigrating to Italy? In the case of Renate, she was taking piano lessons, violin classes, tap classes, confirmation classes, and more. She would meet her future first husband, Matthias Mehne, in late 1941 in Breslau at his luthier shop, and immediately be “smitten” by him, but there is no indication they got involved romantically until they met again in Berlin in 1942.

Figure 22a. Cover page from ancestry.com of 1941 Breslau Address Book listing Maria Conberti as an interpreter and language teacher

Figure 22b. 1941 Breslau Address Book listing Johanna’s Italian language teacher, Maria Conberti

Readers may wonder, as I did, whether any of Johanna’s and Renate’s acquaintances and friends are directly or indirectly acknowledged as Jewish. In one instance the name “Grete Stomberg or Sternberg” is noted, who can be presumed to have been Jewish because her apartment was confiscated by the Nazis. Another named individual was “Ferdinand Abramczyk,” later identified through a Breslau Address Book as a Justizrat, a member of the Judicial Council, who’d had “Israel” added as his middle name by the Nazis to mark him as Jewish.

Johanna frequently mentions bouts of “biliary pain,” most frequently caused by obstruction of the common bile duct or the cystic duct by a gallstone. This would eventually lead to hospitalization.

There is one final topic I want to discuss before ending the rather lengthy first part of Post 109. As previously mentioned, it appears that by September of 1941, Johanna is aware that Renate’s application for her to be treated “as an equal to German-blooded people” has been or will be rejected. This may have been the impetus for Johanna to relocate to Berlin. However, rather than simply move there, Johanna sought to swap apartments with someone from Berlin. She hosted a couple, the Günthers, with whom she would eventually exchange apartments. In February-March 1942, Johanna and Renate would move to Xantener Straße 24, in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. More will be said on this in Part 2 of Post 109.

Among the more popular posts I have published in my Blog are veritable wartime diaries I have managed to get a hold of from various branches of my Jewish family. In all these instances, there is clearly an effort on the part of the author to write names in code or designate Jewish or “righteous” individuals by single letters or initials to conceal their identities. At no time do I detect a similar intent by Johanna or Renate.

Literally, with the hundreds of entries in Johanna’s and Renate’s Tagebuch, it is difficult to do justice to the diary. However, as I’ve indicated multiple times, the clipped style of writing associated with a telegraphic style makes it unlikely I would have been able to decipher the names of most of their acquaintances and friends nor the role they played in their lives. More importantly, it’s improbable this would have added much to the narrative since so many of the entries focused not on the political and current events of the time but rather on the social and amorous activities of the writers.

In closing I will quote from Ms. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska’s observations of Johanna and Renate’s diary. Renate is my friend and Branch Manager, Museum of Cemetery Art (Old Jewish Cemetery) which is a Branch of the City Museum of Wroclaw, the institute where the Tagebuch was donated. Sadly, Renata’s thoughts mirror my own: “I am amazed that in the era of mass deportations of Breslau and Silesian Jews from 1941 to 1944, there is nothing in the diary on this subject. On November 21, 1941, over a thousand people were arrested, held for four days at the Odertorbahnhof train station, then deported to Kaunas, Lithuania, and shot on November 29th. Among them were many famous and influential inhabitants of Breslau, including Willy Cohn and his family, author of the famous diary/journal entitled “Kein Recht. Nirgends” (“No Law. Nowhere.”), published in German and Polish. In the context of the war, the everyday life of Johanna and Renate seems quite banal and normal. It’s hard for me to believe it, because as early as 1942, mischlinge were also deported to the occupied part of Poland and East.”

REFERENCES

Schwarzmüller, Theo. Zwischen Kaiser und Führer: Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Paderborn, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995.

Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2003.

POST 108: RENATE BRUCK & MATTHIAS MEHNE’S “LONG-DISTANCE MARRIAGE”

Note: This post is about Renate Bruck, my third cousin once removed, and her long-distance marriage to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne. In my years of doing ancestral research, I have only ever once come across such an arrangement in the case of good friends of my father. Given the uncommonness of such marriage covenants, I became curious about them. I learned as with many social and cultural “protocols” involving the Nazis, there were very specific provisions in law that governed not only long-distance marriages, but also posthumous marriages (i.e., “marriages of convenience”), and even post-mortem divorces.

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

Figure 1. Renate Bruck’s lifelong best friend, Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau) as she looks today (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

The inspiration for this post came from my 95-year-old friend, Ms. Ina Gräfin von Schaesberg née Weinert (b. 19 March 1926, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]). (Figure 1) Ms. Schaesberg, whom I’ve mentioned to readers in previous posts, was best friends with my third cousin once removed, Renate Bruck (1926-2013), their entire lives. (Figure 2) Over the course of many email exchanges, Ina, with whom I’ve now become friends, mentioned in passing that she had attended Renate’s wedding to her first husband, Matthias Eugen Walter Mehne (1908-1991) (Figure 3), hereafter Matthias Mehne, in around 1943 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Ina emphasized that Matthias had not physically been present at his own wedding, so I became quite curious about this situation.

Figure 2. In a school play in around 1936 Renate Bruck in white dressed as a princess, and Ina Schaesberg garbed in black as her “prince” (photo courtesy of Ina Schaesberg)

Figure 3. Renate Bruck and her first husband, Matthias Mehne, in Berlin in around 1947 or 1948 (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

As I alluded to in the introduction to this post, I have only once previously come across such an arrangement involving two of my father’s very close and staunchly anti-Nazi friends, Peter and Lolo Lau. (Figure 4) In their instance, however, Peter’s brother, Rudi Lau, had been his stand-in when he got married to Lolo. While Peter would eventually be captured and held for several years as a prisoner-of-war in Virginia, at the time of his marriage he was still an active German soldier in the Wehrmacht stationed in then-Yugoslavia. Rudi Lau himself would never marry as he later died of injuries sustained during WWII.

Figure 4. My father’s lifelong friends Lolo & Peter Lau in Oberhausen, Germany in 2012 who were married in the Free State of Danzig in Peter’s absence while he was deployed in the Wehrmacht and his brother Rudi was his “stand-in”

To the best of Ms. Schaesberg’s recollection, in the case of Renate and Matthias’ marriage, Matthias had no stand-in.

As I began to contemplate the circumstances of Renate and Matthias’s marriage, I surmised that as Germany’s fortunes changed as the war progressed, it was not inconceivable that Matthias had been drafted in 1943 into the German Army even though he would have been 35 at the time.

Let me briefly digress. Anticipating what will be the subject of an upcoming Blog post, I am in possession of a copy of Renate and her mother Johanna Bruck’s five-year wartime Tagebuch, in essence a diary. (Figure 5) In early 1943, Renate and Johanna Bruck had relocated to Berlin from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], likely as a precautionary measure; since Renate was a mischling of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Race Laws (i.e., her father’s parents were Jewish making her half-Jewish), and in danger of being deported and murdered, the anonymity of a larger city may have afforded her more protection. Suffice it for now to say Renate’s diary entries make numerous mention of her future first husband Matthias during the months of March through April 1943, thereafter which he is rarely mentioned. As a brief aside, Renate and Matthias were both originally from Breslau and likely knew one another from there, but only became involved romantically after they separately moved to Berlin. Matthias was not Jewish so the reason why he moved to Berlin is unknown.

Figure 5. The frontispiece of Johanna and Renate Bruck’s 5-year wartime “Tagebuch,” diary, covering the period from January 1940 through December 1944

I already knew from the German newspaper article I had found among Renate’s father’s personal papers that Matthias was a prisoner-of-war in England in the latter stages of WWII. (Figures 6a-c) Curious as to how and when he was captured by the British, I turned to Ms. Bettina Mehne (Figure 7), Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage. I presented my theory to Bettina that Germany’s declining fortunes during the war caused them to draft older men. The actual story is more involved.

Figure 6a. Undated German newspaper article post-dating WWII about Renate Bruck’s first husband, Matthias Mehne mentioning he was a British POW

Figure 6b. Transcription of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

Figure 6c. Translation of newspaper article about Matthias Mehne

Figure 7. Matthias Mehne’s daughter by his second marriage, Bettina Mehne, who related the story behind her father’s forced deployment during WWII

I refer readers to Post 101 in which I discussed at length Matthias Mehne’s courage on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, and the role he played protecting a Jewish man named Alfons Lasker that night. The fearlessness Matthias showed that night extended throughout the war, and has, to this day, connected the Mehne and Lasker families. Alfons Lasker’s daughter, Ms. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was arrested in Breslau, shipped to Auschwitz, and miraculously survived. Anita, who is a world-renowned cellist, wrote a biography in 2000 entitled “Inherit the Truth,” detailing her wartime experiences. In this book she documents Matthias Mehne’s role in protecting her father on Kristallnacht, the passage of which is quoted in Post 101.

According to Bettina Mehne, there is one story Anita does not relate in her biography which explains why Matthias Mehne was forced to join the German Army. After Anita Lasker and her sister were arrested in Breslau and held there in a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees, they attempted to escape with Matthias Mehne’s rucksack in hand; why this came to be in their possession is not clear. After they were recaptured, the Nazis found Matthias’s name in the rucksack, and he too was arrested and brought before a judge. Already subject to weekly questioning by the Gestapo because Matthias and his father refused to fly the swastika outside their luthier business on various “flag days” and hang a photo of Hitler inside their shop, they wanted him sentenced to death. The judge, however, was a friend of Matthias from the riding stables, and instead forced him to join the army as punishment, telling the Gestapo to let the Italians do their dirty work and kill him. So Matthias was soon sent off to war, though he made prompt work of being captured by the Americans, thereafter which he was handed off to the British.

With the benefit of Bettina Mehne’s firsthand account, I now understand the circumstances that lead to her father’s incarceration as a prisoner-of-war. Given Matthias’s status as a POW, I was curious how his marriage could be arranged across enemy lines, so to speak. I turned to Ms. Regina Stein (Figure 8), a provenance researcher, who’d previously and graciously researched at no cost to me address information for Matthias for the years 1943-1990. Regina sent me an interesting article from German Wikipedia on so-called “Ferntrauungen,” long-distance marriages (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Eherecht_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg#Ferntrauung_im_Zweiten_Weltkrieg). Let me highlight some relevant information.

Figure 8. Dr. Regina Stein, provenance researcher in Berlin, who provided a source for background information on distance marriages, marriages of convenience, and post-mortem divorces in Nazi Germany post-1939

It is clear from this article that German marriages during WWII with an absent groom were not uncommon. Beginning in 1939, various special regulations were enacted by the German Reich. This made it possible for distance marriages, posthumous marriages (“marriages of convenience”), and even death divorces. Post-mortem marriages had already taken place in France during the First World War.

Beginning with the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws on the 15^th of September 1935, marriages between “Deutschblütigen,” German-blooded people, and Jews was prohibited, and “extramarital sexual intercourse” between Jews and other Germans barred. Different regulations applied to mischlinge, a pejorative term often applied to Jews meaning “hybrid, mongrel or half-breed.” From 1942 onward, however, their applications for marriage permits were no longer processed for the duration of the war. I’ll briefly return to this below, specifically as it relates to Matthias and Renate.

The possibility of a remote marriage existed according to “§§ 13 ff. der Dritten Verordnung zur Ausführung des Personenstandsgesetzes (Personenstandsverordnung der Wehrmacht) vom 4. November 1939,” (Third Ordinance for the Implementation of the Personal Status Act (Personal Status Ordinance of the Wehrmacht) of November 4, 1939. Such marriages were possible for Wehrmacht members (i.e., the Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945) who “took part in a war, a war-like enterprise or a special mission” and left their location, presumably were deployed. For such a remote marriage to take place, the Wehrmacht soldier had to declare his intent to the battalion commander who recorded it; had to provide an affidavit documenting “Aryan descent”; and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the High Command of the Armed forces, had to submit a marriage license to the bride’s registry office. According to Ina Schaesberg, Matthias Mehne and Renate Bruck‘s remote marriage took place in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1943 or 1944.

As I’ve discussed, we know that at the time of Matthias and Renate’s marriage, he was already a POW in England, likely in late 1943 or possibly early 1944. The German regulations accounted for such an eventuality. For POWs, the battalion commander to whom a Wehrmacht soldier declared his intent to marry was replaced by a steward appointed according to the agreement of the treatment of POWs or by the most senior captured officer of the highest rank. The marriage ceremony in the local registry office, as in Renate and Matthias‘ case, had to take place within two months, though this timeline changed at various times during the war.

Colloquially, the long-distance marraige was referred to as a “Stahlhelmtrauung,” a “steel helmet wedding,” or as a “Trauung mit dem Stahlhelm,” or “steel helmet wedding ceremony,” because a steel helmet was positioned in the place where the groom would otherwise have stood during the ceremony in the Standesamt, the registry office. The marriage took effect when the woman declared her intent to marry before the registrar, even if the groom had already died by this time. In the latter event, the marriage was deemed to have taken place on the day when the groom had declared his intent to marry. While the free copy of the marriage certificate sent to the Wehrmacht soldier did not indicate it had been a long-distance marriage, the marriage register in the registrar’s office showed the marriage had been concluded in the absence of the husband.

The possibility of long-distance marriage excluded those soldiers who had not written down their intent to marry, but in whom it could be proved that they had been willing to marry. However, it seems that on November 6, 1941, Adolf Hitler had signed a secret decree together with Hans Heinrich Lammers, the head of the Reich Chancellery, and Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the Wehrmacht High Command, in which the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick was empowered to “order the subsequent marriage of women to soldiers who have fallen or died in the field, if it can be proven that there was a serious intention to marry and there are no indications that the intention was given up before death.” For professional soldiers, the approval of the High Command of the Wehrmacht had to be obtained. It was only on the 15^th of June 1943 that the Reich Minister of the Interior notified the registry offices “confidentially” of Hitler’s decree and established guidelines for processing posthumous marriage applications.

In the case of such “Leichentrauung,” “funeral marriage,” or “Totenehe,” or “death marriage,” it was up to the woman alone to testify to the authorities of the last will of the dead person. The woman who entered such a marriage with a dead man did not become a wife through marriage, but rather a widow. As a war widow, she was eligible to obtain financial benefits and claim an inheritance, and any common children were not considered out-of-wedlock. Parents often objected since they were typically excluded from the inheritance, and claimed the bride was only concerned with obtaining economic advantages, sometimes justifiably. The possibility of abuse, such as legitimizing children conceived by men other than the deceased husband, was another issue. Because of well-founded concerns, in around 1944, the right to inheritance was limited to the children conceived by the fallen bridegroom. In total, there were about 25,000 such marriages with fallen soldiers.

In connection with the discussion about entering into marriage with a deceased, the Reich Ministry of Justice discussed whether a marriage that had had already been dissolved due to death could still be divorced. This is referred to as a “Totenscheidung,” “divorce from a deceased.” The impetus here was that supposed “hero widows” were free to lead “dishonorable, carefree lives” and get involved with other men following the deaths of their fallen bridegrooms. To address this concern, the Reich Ministry of Justice issued confidential guidelines which made “war adultery” punishable; the possibility of a “death divorce” was created for women who broke their marriage vows while their husbands were on the front lines or acted “offensively” following their husband’s deaths. Legal proceedings could be initiated, and, if “proven” the wife committed adultery, the divorce was effective retroactive from the day before the husband’s death. A wife culpably divorced lost the right of inheritance and the survivor’s pension.

Considering Renate and Matthias’s distance marriage, I became curious whether I could obtain a copy of their marriage certificate from the civil registry office in Wiesbaden where their marriage had supposedly taken place; I wanted to know whether the certificate made any mention of the distance marriage, and who might have been a witness to the ceremony besides Ina Schaesberg. I contacted the Rathaus, City Hall, but they responded I was not closely enough related to obtain the document in question.

As an aside, Germany has a period of “privacy” for vital records. Unless you are immediate family, you cannot access birth records until 110 years following the birth of the individual, marriage records for 80 years, and death records for 30 years. Assuming Renate and Matthias married in 1943, their marriage record will not publicly be available until 2023. Consequently, I asked Renate’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman (Figure 9), to inquire about their mother’s marriage license. The Wiesbaden Rathaus checked marriage records between 1941 and 1946 but regrettably could not find any trace of Renate and Matthias’s wedding certificate. What to make of this is unclear.

Figure 9. Renate Bruck’s twin daughters by her third marriage, Francesca and Michele Newman, my “movie star” cousins

One final point I would like to make about Renate and Matthias’ distance wedding. As previously mentioned, according to the Nuremberg Laws, Renate was a mischling of the first degree because she was half Jewish. By 1943, the presumed year of her marriage, the Nazi regulations prohibited marriages between German-blooded people and mischlinge. While Matthias could clearly prove he was of “Aryan descent,” is it possible Renate did not have to submit such documentation to the registry office? If so, this seems highly unusual given the Nazis penchant for strictly enforcing discriminatory measures against Jews and mischlinge. Without a copy of Renate and Matthias’ marriage certificate the question remains unanswered.

REFERENCE

Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita. Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust. Thomas Dunn Books, 2000.

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HAROLD POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

Note: In this post, I examine a previously unknown to me episode of English “enemy aliens” interned in the Australian Outback during WWII. The principal character of this post was born Harro Hans Carl Paul Wundsch, who following his release from detention and his return to England changed his name to Harold John Powell. He is a distant ancestor related by marriage through the Pauly branch of my family. Under the Nuremberg Laws Harro was considered a mischling of the second degree because one of his grandparents was Jewish; his mother, who has appeared in two earlier Blog posts, was half-Jewish. This publication allows me to bring together various strands of family history to make what I consider some fascinating connections that span several continents.

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 50: DR. ADOLF GUTTENTAG’S 1942 DIARY

Figure 1. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly as a young married couple (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

This story is inspired by a reader of my Blog, an English lady by the name of Katherine “Kathy” York née Powell, granddaughter of Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly (1891-1978) and Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972). (Figure 1) Kathy stumbled on my Blog when she found reference to her grandmother. Maria’s name has appeared in two previous Blog posts, Posts 48 and 50, and she is someone I hold in high regard because of her courage during WWII. There are several threads I will follow as I relate a story about Kathy’s father, born Harro Wundsch (1920-2006) (Figure 2), who changed his name to Harold Powell when he returned to England following his internment in Australia. He apparently selected the name Powell because it was easy to remember and sounded like “Pauly,” his mother’s maiden name. Maria Wundsch is the person that links much of the following story together.

Figure 2. Harro Wundsch, later Harold Powell (1920-2006), on his 85th birthday

Let me begin this account on the 22^nd of August 1942 in Berlin.

Figure 3. Helene & Adolf Guttentag, Christmas 1938, at their apartment on Kaiser Wilhelmstraße 9 in Stettin

In Post 50, I chronicled in his own words Dr. Adolf Guttentag’s (1868-1942) and his wife Helene Guttentag née Pauly’s (1873-1942) (Figure 3) final few months in Berlin before they committed suicide together on the 16^th of October 1942 after being told by the Nazis to report to an “old age transport,” effectively, a concentration camp. For context, Helene Pauly was my first cousin twice removed. Having seen many of their friends and family deported or commit suicide, there was no doubt what fate awaited them as the Nazis accelerated their pace of deportation of Jews to extermination camps in 1942. As detailed in Post 50, Dr. Guttentag decided to document those final months and reflect on his life. Beginning on the 22^nd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag recorded the following:

“. . . Rather large transports now occur at a rapid pace. A farewell letter to Otto and Dorothee [NOTE: his son and daughter-in-law], which I have deposited with Maria Wundsch, describes in two notebooks, the general development of my family. In addition, I have decided to start making diary-type entries which show how we are, i.e., how our health is, how we spend our time, what else is going on, what we must expect, and what our plans are.”

It is clear from this opening paragraph that Dr. Guttentag trusted Dr. Maria Wundsch to do what she could to ensure that his diary got into the hands of his son in America, Otto Guttentag (Figure 4), after he and his wife died. Maria is mentioned several times in Adolf’s diary, as is her husband, Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch, though he is never identified by name. Because Maria Wundsch’s father, Carl Pauly (1854-1918), was from a Jewish family, according to the Nuremberg Laws Maria was considered a mischling of the first degree (i.e., half-Jewish), though there is no evidence she was raised Jewish. Her husband was not Jewish, and this may have afforded her some level of “protection.” More on this later.

Figure 4. Dr. Otto Ernst Guttentag in April 1935 from his U.S. Naturalization Petition

On the 23^rd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag noted the following about Hans Helmut Wundsch:

“Maria Wundsch’s husband had sent us a number of papers concerning his fishery work. They are of zoological as well as economic importance. I have read them carefully because I had no idea what there is in the world outside of medicine. We have sent those papers to Mutti’s brother [NOTE: Helene Guttentag’s brother, Wilhelm Pauly] who, like another friend, is very much interested in the development and utilization of fish in the lakes of the Havel River in the province of Brandenburg. A few days from now Maria’s husband will inspect a lake there. As for us, we cannot initiate any such contacts because they would endanger others and ourselves.”

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch was a German fisheries scientist and professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin and director at the Prussian State Institute for Fisheries in Berlin-Friedrichshagen from 1925 until 1937; from 1947 to 1958, he was director at predecessor institutes to today’s Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB), Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch in 1956 at the “Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB),” Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries

It so happens that my uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 6), married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) (Figure 7) who was murdered in Auschwitz, was also a professor at Humboldt University at the same time as Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch. My uncle, who converted to Christianity on the 25^th of November 1901, nonetheless was fired from the university in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. Though Franz and Hans Helmut worked in different departments, Kathy and I surmise they may have known one another. According to Kathy, her grandfather lost his job at Humboldt University in 1937 for making jokes about Hitler to his students.

Figure 6. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) as a young professor at Humboldt University in Berlin

Figure 7. My aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) who was murdered in Auschwitz

On the 22^nd of September 1942, Dr. Guttentag again mentions Maria Wundsch giving us some slight insight into her religious convictions:

“Yesterday Maria Wundsch was here for almost the entire day in order to help Mutti [NOTE: Helene Guttentag] She is the only person who has been of help and assistance to Mutti in our many moves: 1. From Stettin to Hirschberg; 2. H(irschberg) move from No. 70 to No. 32; 3. From H. to Berlin-Kurfürstendamm; 4. from there to here; and 5. now for the evacuation. What a person! Other friends or relatives had failed us. Her convictions are strange, but one must respect her. Details of her religious point of view perhaps at some later time. Incomprehensible to me: even though she cannot adopt the Christian dogma, she nevertheless does not have to conform to certain rules of the Jewish religion, as for instance the total, 24-hour fasting on their highest holiday, Yom Kippur. So, she had come to discuss with Mutti how best to pack the modest number of authorized articles for the transport.”

It is clear from this entry that while other of Adolf and Helene Guttentag’s friends and family had largely abandoned them during the Nazi era, Maria Wundsch continued to stand by them, probably at great personal risk. Her religious views, though not altogether clear to me, seem to meld Christian and Jewish values.

Respectively, on the 1^st through the 3^rd of October, then again on the 10^th of October, Dr. Guttentag noted his brother-in-law Dr. Adolf Neisser’s (Figure 8) suicide attempt, eventual death, and memorial service:

Figure 8. Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942) towards the end of his life

October 1:

“Now fate has caught up with Uncle Ernst [Ernst Neisser]. Yesterday afternoon he was informed that he was to be ready tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. on; he would be picked up and evacuated, together with his relative, Miss. Lise Neisser (who has kept house for him). It is never divulged where they are going, probably somewhere in Bohemia. He had always been determined not to go; he wanted to end his life because of his more and more frequent and painful heart troubles that can only be interpreted as angina pectoris.”

October 2-3:

“Miss Neisser had already died last night, but Uncle Ernst had not. He was taken to the hospital (we may be taken only to the Jewish Hospital) and was still alive this morning. He had injected himself with 2% morphine and taken 5 tablets of Veronal. . . He died on October 3, 1942.”

October 10:

“Yesterday was the memorial service for Uncle Ernst. As Mutti reported it was very dignified through the music of a quartet, which at first . . .[sentence not finished]. We stayed together for a while: Susel and Hans [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser’s daughter and son-in-law], Uncle Willi [NOTE: Willy Pauly, Dr. Ernst Neisser’s brother-in-law], Maria Wundsch, Mutti and I. . . .(whom the family reached?).”

Adolf and Helene Guttentag too committed suicide barely two weeks later, on October 16^th.

In Post 48, I discussed the final days of Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942). As noted in Dr. Guttentag’s diary, Luise Neisser died immediately, but Ernst Neisser lingered in a coma for three or four days before succumbing to his trauma.

Because Luise died immediately her death was recorded in the Charlottenburg borough of Berlin (Figures 9a-b) where she lived with her cousin. Ernst Neisser, however, was taken to the Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, the only hospital in Berlin where Jews could be admitted and cured, if possible, during WWII, before once again being thrown into the maws of death. For the Nazis, it was not enough for Jews to die but they had to die on Nazi terms, in extermination camps. Regardless, Ernst Neisser denied the Nazis this satisfaction and he passed away on the 3^rd or 4^th of October 1942 at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, located in Wedding, a neighborhood in the borough of Berlin-Mitte. His death was therefore recorded here. (Figures 10a-b)

Figure 9a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Luise “Sara” Neisser’s death recorded in October 1942

Figure 9b. Luise “Sara” Neisser’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing her death in October and the death certificate number as 4325

Figure 10a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” with Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s death recorded in October 1942

Figure 10b. Richard Ernst “Israel” Neißer’s name circled in Landesarchiv Berlin civil register book, “Standesamt-Wedding Nr. 5 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942),” listing his death in October and the death certificate number illegible

So much for the lengthy background which partly covers material discussed in earlier posts.

Kathy York initially contacted me through my Blog on the 26^th of August 2021, and between this email and ensuing ones, several things she said grabbed my attention. The first was that, according to Kathy, throughout the war, her grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, where Dr. Ernst Neisser died. As a related aside, Maria studied for her PhD. in Berlin at the “Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University” from 1910 to 1914, and was awarded her PhD. in 1915. The title of her thesis “Der Mundwerkzeuge der Caraboidea,” that’s to say, the working mouthparts of caraboides, a group of ground beetles.

The concern among family of Jews who attempted suicide and didn’t immediately succumb was that they would be revived only later to be deported to a concentration camp. Dr. Guttentag’s diary entry recorded on the 1^st of October 1942 voices this concern:

“Since it has been 15 hours since he [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser] took the medicines, it can be assumed the result will be absolutely fatal, and any revival, which everybody fears, is impossible.”

The unanswerable question I have is whether Dr. Maria Wundsch, by dint of working at the Jewish Hospital where Dr. Neisser was a dying patient, made sure he was never revived following his suicide attempt since, clearly, they knew one another?

Kathy York assures me a letter exists among the family papers in which Maria Wundsch describes her time working at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, and her efforts trying to protect fellow Jews during WWII. If Kathy can locate this item of family memorabilia, I hope to discuss it in a future post.

Kathy theorizes that because her grandfather’s family included Prussian military men this may have saved her grandmother from the fate of some of her relatives. A much more controversial explanation may be that because Maria was married to a non-Jew, this may have contributed to her survival during the Holocaust.

The story of how the Jüdische Krankenhaus survived relatively unscathed during the entire war is compelling and fascinating. It has been the subject of a book by Daniel B. Silver, the former general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, entitled “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I refer any readers interested in the topic to this book.

Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Maria Wundsch had four children born between 1919 and 1929, Renate (1919-1997), Harro (1920-2006), Josef (1922-1989) (Figures 11-12), and Stefan (1929-1967). Not wanting the children to grow up under the Nazi regime, and likely also fearing their children’s status as mischlinge of the second degree (i.e., one-quarter Jewish) would endanger them, they sent the three oldest ones to the United Kingdom, respectively, in 1933, 1935, and 1937; the youngest one, Stefan, was sent to Switzerland but sent back to Germany at the outbreak of hostilities. This was a fateful decision. Harro Wundsch, Kathy York’s father, would see his father at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, then not again until 1958 (Figure 13), since his parents were stuck in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) following the war and were unable to emigrate. And, sadly, Stefan, the youngest of Hans Helmut and Maria Wundsch’s children, was never able to join his siblings in the United Kingdom, so grew up apart from them and died relatively young. Maria Wundsch was only able to rejoin her surviving children in England following her husband’s death in 1972 when she was allowed to emigrate from the GDR; Maria died on the 14^th of January 1978 and is buried in Leicester, England. (Figure 14)

Figure 11. Kathy York’s father, Harro Wundsch (left), with his older sister Renate (center), and younger brother Josef (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 12. Kathy’s grandfather and father, Hans and Harro Wundsch (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 13. From left to right, Kathy’s half-brother Thomas Waugh (1943-2015), her uncle Stefan Wundsch (1929-1967), and her grandfather Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972) in 1958 (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 14. Maria Wundsch née Pauly’s (1891-1978) headstone in Leicester, England (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Almost as an afterthought, Kathy mentioned that her father Harro Wundsch had been a “Dunera Boy.” This was the second thing that caught my attention during my conversations with Kathy. Having no idea what Dunera Boys were, I did a Google query, which I will briefly summarize for readers as it represented to me an entirely unknown episode of WWII history.

At the time Britain declared war on Germany on the 3^rd of September 1939, more than 70,000 Germans and Austrians living there became “enemy aliens.” According to tribunals established to determine the threat these people posed to Britain three classifications of aliens were decided on: “Class C” consisted of approximately 66,000 people who were deemed to pose the least danger and were exempt from internment or restrictions; “Class B” included about 6,600 people, and these people were carefully monitored by the police; and “Class A” was made up of 569 people classified and interned as enemy aliens.

By May 1940, with Germany advancing through Belgium and France and the increasing possibility that Britain would be invaded, the British Government reassessed the enemy alien population and incarcerated an additional 12,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians.

The dramatic increase in the number of detainees led to severe overcrowding causing the British Government to ship 7,500 internees to Australia and Canada between the 24^th of June and the 10^th of July 1940. Tragically, the transport bound for Canada, the Arandora Star, carrying more than 1,000 internees and 300 crew, was torpedoed and sunk, resulting in the death of 835 people.

The detainees bound for Australia left England on the 10^th of July 1940 aboard the Hired Military Transport (HMT) Dunera; they consisted of 2,542 internees, including Harro Wundsch. While the group included about 450 German and Italian prisoners of war and a few dozen fascist sympathizers, most of the deportees were anti-fascist and two-thirds were Jewish; it also included some survivors from the Arandora Star. Conditions and treatment of the deportees aboard the Dunera were appalling, so much so that that the British Government eventually agreed to pay £35,000 to the group.

Harro Wundsch would occasionally joke to his family that he was on the last convict ship to Australia without ever mentioning that it was the Dunera.

After a 57-day journey under ghastly conditions, on the 3^rd of September, the Dunera docked in Port Melbourne where 344 internees disembarked. The remainder of the detainees were taken to Sydney, arriving there on the 6^th of September. (Figure 15) From there they boarded trains bound for the central New South Wales town of Hay, in the Australian Outback. The Hay camp held most of the internees. As many of them consisted of Jewish inmates who’d been forced to leave successful careers in Germany, Austria, and England, the group included a high percentage of professionals, tradesmen, and artists. Remarkably, the internees established an unofficial university, library, and orchestra, and even minted a currency for use inside the camp.

Figure 15. The HMT Dunera at the Sydney Wharf with the train for Hay, New South Wales train (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Within weeks of the Dunera’s departure, the British Government altered their alien classification system once again. They acknowledged that under the revised system, most of the Dunera deportees would not have been interned. In early 1941, the British Home Office sent Major Julian Layton to Australia to investigate the situation and study possible repatriation; he recommended the internees be reclassified as “refugee aliens,” so that by the end of 1941 most of them had been released. About 900 of the original “Dunera Boys” remained in Australia, many joining the Australian army’s 8^th Employment Company. Those who stayed in Australia wound up making enormous contributions to the cultural, academic, and economic life of the country. (Figure 16)

Figure 16. The Dunera Boys reunion in Melbourne, Australia in 1963 (National Museum of Australia)

Harro Wundsch was among the group of Dunera Boys who decided to return to England. He arrived in the United Kingdom two days before his 21^st birthday and was allowed to enlist in the British Army. He had intended to join the Parachute Regiment but broke his ankle so wound up in the Royal Engineers. He was involved in the D-Day landings and spent some time in Japan. According to his wife’s niece, Harold Powell, as he was by then known, was enroute to Japan when the war in the Pacific ended. It turns out he was aboard the SS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the British Army on the 2^nd of September 1945, when Emperor Hirohito signed the peace treaty. Following the war, Harold Powell went on to obtain a degree in Civil Engineering.

The final thing Kathy mentioned that attracted my attention was that her grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law, Elisabeth “Lily” Kretschmer née Pauly and Fritz Kretschmer (Figures 17-18), escaped to the Shanghai Ghetto, living in the Jewish community there. (Figures 19a-b, 20-22) Unlike my father’s first cousin, Fritz Goldenring, subject of Post 25, who also escaped to Shanghai but perished there, Kathy’s great-aunt and -uncle survived and wound up in San Francisco after the war.

Figure 17. Elisabeth Kretschmer née Pauly (1889-1984) (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 18. Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer with Friedrich Seidel in Kleinmachnow, Berlin in 1939 soon before the Kretschmers emigrated to Shanghai (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 19a. Cover of “Emigranten Adressbuch,” Emigrants Address Book, for Shanghai containing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 19b. Page from “Emigranten Adressbuch” for Shanghai listing Fritz Kretschmer’s name and address (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 20. The Jewish Shanghai Ghetto (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 21. The house in the Shanghai Ghetto where Fritz & Elisabeth Kretschmer lived (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

Figure 22. The interpretive sign for the Shanghai Ghetto, euphemistically referred to as “The Designated Area for Stateless Refugees” (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

So, it can be no accident that Kathy discovered my family Blog, and we find that our family’s histories overlap across the European, Asian, Australian, and North American continents.

REFERENCES

National Museum of Australia. “Dunera Boys.” 2006, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/dunera-boys

Sherman, Suzan. “How a Jewish Hospital Survived the Holocaust.” The Forward, October 31, 2003, https://forward.com/articles/6972/how-a-jewish-hospital-survived-the-holocaust/

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

York, Katherine. “Harro Wundsch – Harry Powell.” Dunera News, No. 106, p. 12-15, July 2019.

POST 106: EVIDENCE OF CONVERSION FROM JUDAISM IN MY FAMILY

Note: In this post, I discuss the proof I have found for conversions from Judaism for German family members, some of which unavoidably consists of indirect evidence. This topic naturally involves touching on the political, economic, and social context under which such conversions took place.

POST 56: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND FAMILY BY THE PATERFAMILIAS, DR. JOSEF PAULY

There is a long history of Jewish conversion to Christianity, both voluntary and forced conversion. Forced conversions of Jews go back to Late Antiquity, the boundaries of which are a continuing matter of debate, but the period between roughly the 3^rd and 8^th centuries A.D. Royal persecutions of Jews from the 11^th century onward typically took the form of expulsions with exceptions. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity before and during the First Crusade (1096-1099) including in parts of what are today France, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

The mass conversion event which took place on the Iberian Peninsula in A.D. 1391 when tens of thousands of Spain’s Jews converted to Christianity because of pogroms is the one readers will be most familiar with. Practicing Jews who refused to convert were expelled by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in the Alhambra Decree of 1492, following the Christian Reconquest of Spain. The net effect of the Alhambra Decree and persecutions carried out in earlier periods is that over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. In adjoining Portugal, by contrast, where an edict for Jewish expulsions was also ordered four years later in A.D. 1496, most Jews were not allowed to leave but were forced to convert.

Though conversions continued over time across many other parts of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, forced conversions were apparently less common in the 20^th century and were later more often the result of Jews choosing to convert to integrate into secular society. In Germany, which is the focus of this Blog post as it relates to my family, conversions occurred in three main periods. The first began during the Mendelssohnian era, named after Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the “Jewish Enlightenment” of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is attributed. A second wave occurred during the first half of the 19^th century. And the third and longest period of conversions was a result of antisemitism and began roughly in 1880.

Conversion among German Jews was not an uncommon phenomenon in the 19^th century owing to the myriad restrictions and myths that confronted them, and stymied their hopes, ambitions, dreams, and careers. In a sense, conversion to Christianity was the easy way out. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the noted German poet, writer, and literary critic, who himself converted, was reputed to have said conversion was his “ticket of admission into European culture.” Across most of the German states that united to create “modern” Germany in 1871, dominated by the state of Prussia, Jews were often rewarded for renouncing Judaism by being given influential positions and financial incentives. Whereas, during the 17^th century, most converts were poor, by the middle of the 18^th century, the converts were richer. The departure of the wealthier converts deprived the Jewish community of part of its operating budget. In any event, it is estimated that by the 20^th century, close to one million Christians in Germany were of Jewish origin. According to Deborah Hertz’s book, “How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin,” the majority of converts were infants whose parents wanted to spare them “conflicts” as adults. She notes that 60 percent of converts between 1800 and 1874 were under five years of age.

Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions, was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws to be passed by the Third Reich, enacted on the 7^th of April 1933. The law initially exempted those who had worked in the civil service since August 1, 1914, those who were veterans of World War I, or those with a father or son killed in action in World War I. The Civil Service immediately impacted the education system because university professors, for example, were classified as civil servants.

With the seizure of power by the Nazis, the new government enacted laws that required all citizens to document their genealogy in full. The regime sought to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s foremost Jewish city. These records, the Judenkartei, the Jewish Register or File, begin in 1645. Work on creating this file had started before the Nazis even came to power under a private initiative which sought to uncover proof of the Jewish ancestry of university and college professors and judges. By 1932, this file had already collected 400,000 genealogical records of Jews in Germany. The constantly expanding file was taken over and expanded in 1933 by the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (RfS), renamed Reichssippenamt on the 12^th of November 1940, the Reich Office for Clan Research.

Readers who have accessed ancestral records for their German Jewish relatives may have noticed notations in the upper left- or right-hand corners or along the margins of vital documents. Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews had to add “Israel” (males) (Figure 1) or “Sara” (females) (Figure 2) as their middle name. Similarly, on passports, which allowed German Jews to leave Germany, when they still could, but not return, a large “J” was imprinted. (Figure 3) These and other measures instituted by the Nazis were intended to officially separate Jews from the German populace. While German Jews still converted after the Nazis seized power, as I will illustrate in the case of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, readers can easily surmise this was futile.

Figure 1. Birth certificate for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck showing he was born on the 17th of August 1895 in Leobschutz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland], with a notation added by the Nazis on the 31st of January 1939 in the upper righthand corner adding the middle name “Israel” to identify him as Jewish

Figure 2. Birth certificate for my second cousin once removed Susanne Dorothea Neisser showing she was born in Stettin, Germany [today: Szczecin, Poland] on the 30th of July 1899, with a notation dated the 10th of January 1939 adding “Sara” to her name to identify her as Jewish

Figure 3. 1939 passport for one of my distant relatives Fritz Hirsch with a big red “J” and “Israel” added to his name, both indicating he was Jewish (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

As I contemplated the question of conversion from Judaism among my immediate and extended ancestors, I began to wonder what evidence I could find in the ancestral records proving my relatives’ “alienation” from their Jewish roots. In my limited experience, finding such documents is not easy. In the case of some of my ancestors but not all of them, conversion was a “pragmatic” decision, as I’ve alluded to. Again, citing the poet Heinrich Heine, he declared that he was “merely baptized, not converted.” Quoting from a letter he once wrote:

“From my way of thinking you can well imagine that baptism is an indifferent affair. I do not regard it as important even symbolically, and I shall devote myself all the more to the emancipation of the unhappy members of our race. Still I hold it as a disgrace and a stain upon my honor that in order to obtain an office in Prussia—in beloved Prussia—I should allow myself to be baptized.”

Figure 4. My great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916)

In re-reading the memoirs of Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 4), husband of my great-great-aunt, who had likely been baptized Catholic as a child and whose recollections I discussed in Post 56, I wonder whether he may not have been implying the same sentiment when he wrote:

“I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, to an immanent [NOTE: (of God) permanently pervading or sustaining the universe] consciousness, to a moral world order, to the invisible God of the world as the Jewish religion has revealed it first, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.”

As I began to search through my files and recollect what evidence for conversion I had found for my ancestors, I initially concluded that most of the “proof” was indirect, such as in the case of my father which I discussed in Post 38. However, upon further consideration, I realize I have found considerably more direct validation than I initially thought. Beyond the obvious instances where the graves or burial records of my forefathers interred in existing and destroyed Jewish cemeteries survive, proving they did not convert, I found corroboration for several ancestors confirming they were baptized.

The earliest instance is the case of my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 5) On ancestry, I uncovered a record showing she was baptized in Dresden, Germany, 21 years after her birth, on the 13^th of April 1855. (Figure 6) This was undoubtedly in anticipation of her marriage to Leopold Julius Wolf von Koschembahr (Figure 7) later that year on the 26^th of September 1855 in Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, London, England, an Anglican church. (Figure 8)

Figure 5. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918) in 1904, the earliest of my ancestors for whom I could find evidence of conversion from Judaism

Figure 6. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s baptismal record showing she was born on the 9th of September 1834 in Leschnitz, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland] and was baptized on the 13th of April 1855 in Dresden, Germany

Figure 7. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s husband Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) in Halberstadt, Germany in approximately 1860

Figure 8. Cover page from ancestry.com proving my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer married her husband Leopold von Koschembahr on the 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clements Danes, Westminister, London, England, several months after she was baptized in Dresden

Initially, I thought Leopold von Koschembahr was also of Jewish origin because his grandson, Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (i.e., Gerhard’s father, Wilhelm Bruck, took his baroness wife’s surname) (Figure 9), departed Germany for the United States via Switzerland in 1938 with his 12 children. However, I learned from a New York Times article dated the 2^nd of October 1938 that Gerhard departed Germany NOT on account of his grandfather’s Jewish roots but because his great-grandmother, on his mother’s side, was non-Aryan. (Figure 10) This gives credence to the concern descendants of Jews whose ancestors had long ago converted or had never converted felt when the Nazis started tracing their ancestral origins. In the case of Leopold von Koschembahr, I found his baptismal record showing he was baptized on the 5^th of December 1829 (Figures 11a-b), proving he was not Jewish at birth. As readers can discern from this example, confirming or refuting the Jewish origins of one’s ancestors can be like solving a complex puzzle.

Figure 9. Amalie and Leopold von Koschembahr’s grandson, Gerhard Bruck-von Koschembahr (1885-1961), who I initially thought was a converted Jew

Figure 10. New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 confirming that Gerhard von Koschembahr left Germany because his great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Therese Graetzer (1809-1883), was non-Aryan

Figure 11a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

Figure 11b. Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

Moving on to other family members, let me briefly discuss the evidence for conversion for my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, my uncle by blood Dr. Fedor Bruck, my father Dr. Otto Bruck, and Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the great-grandfather of a fourth cousin.

The Centrum Judaicum Foundation is housed in the New Synagogue Berlin which was consecrated on the Jewish New Year in 1866, at which time it became the largest Jewish house of worship with its 3,200 seats. While the synagogue was spared major damage on “Kristallnacht,” it was severely damaged by Allied bombing during WWII. In 1958, the main room of the synagogue was demolished, so that today only the parts of the building closest to the street remain structurally intact.

Documents addressing the history of Jews in and around Berlin are archived there, including surviving records on conversions that took place in the city. In the case of my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck murdered in Auschwitz, the Centrum Judaicum has an index card on file indicating he converted on the 25^th of November 1901. This did not prevent him being dismissed from his position as Humboldt University professor when the Nazis came to power in 1933 in accordance with their Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

In the instance of my fourth cousin’s great-grandfather, Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the Centrum Judaicum could find nothing in their archives about him, so referred my cousin to the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin, the Protestant Central Archive in Berlin. In principle records of all Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are kept here, though many did not survive WWII. According to a letter sent to my cousin, Dr. Adalabert Bruck’s record survives indicating he converted on the 27^th of November 1890; however, his wife Anna Bruck née Flatow’s information survives only indirectly in the form of a 1930 document showing she supposedly converted on the 17^th of February 1900. (Figures 12a-b)

Figure 12a. Letter to my fourth cousin from the Protestant Central Archive confirming the conversion information they have in their archives on his ancestor, Dr. Adalbert Bruck and his wife, Anna Bruck née Flatow

Figure 12b. Translation of letter from the Protestant Central Archive

The conversion of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, who has been the subject of several Blog posts because of his incredible tale of survival in Berlin during the entirety of WWII thanks to family and “silent heroes,” adds another element to my uncle’s compelling story. The register documenting his conversion survives and indicates he was baptized in Berlin on the 11^th of June 1939 at the Messias Kapelle, a Lutheran Church. (Figures 13a-b, 14) Two godparents are named in the register, a “Herr Engelbert Helwig” and a “Herr Roderich von Roy.” Ancestry shows Englebert Helwig to have been a Holocaust survivor, and Roderich von Roy to have been born on the 3^rd of August 1895, exactly two weeks before my uncle. Did my uncle know these people beforehand, or were they just random parishioners who attended the Messias Kappelle selected to be his godparents? We may never know.

Figure 13a. Left page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s record showing he was baptized on the 11th of June 1939 in the Messias Kapelle

Figure 13b. Right page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s baptismal record

Figure 14. Entrance to the Messias Kapelle today

Lutheran is a denomination among the Protestant, in fact it is the oldest of the denominations to break away from Catholicism and is traced to the founder of the movement, Martin Luther of Germany. (Figure 15)

Figure 15. Visual depiction of the denominations of Christianity

Hoping to find a picture of the Messias Kapelle, I did a Google query and stumbled upon a fascinating article written by Christiane Jurik, Editor-in-Chief of Ariel Ministries, discussing the origins of the Messias Kapelle and its role in German Jewish baptisms. I quote:

“Historically, most baptized Jews in Germany joined the Lutheran Church. There, even those who were true believers in Yeshua were mostly met with indifference; sometimes with suspicion; or worst, with anti-Semitism. In order to avoid this treatment, some Jewish believers started looking for places of worship where they could stay among themselves. In 1901, the Berlin Society purchased a property in one of the most urban boroughs of the city, called Prenzlauer Berg. The ministry not only moved its headquarters to the building but soon started construction work of what became known as the Messias Kapelle (‘Messiah Chapel’). Three days before Christmas of 1902, the chapel opened its doors to the Jewish believers of Berlin.

While the goal of the Berlin Society had been to offer a haven for Jewish believers, its work was closely affiliated with the Lutheran Church. In fact, the chapel officially belonged to the union of Protestant churches that also included the Confessing Church, whose most famous member was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, in 1930, the Lutheran Church revoked its support of the work of the Berlin Society and withdrew its pastors from the chapel. From then on, the Messias Kapelle was run by laymen.

In 1935, the Lutheran Synod forbade the baptizing of Jewish people. One of the pastors in Berlin expressed the general sentiment: ‘I am convinced that the family who told me it would be a horrible thought for them that the hand that baptized a Jew would touch their child is not alone.’

Yet not everyone obeyed the new directives of the Synod. The Messias Kapelle at this point separated itself completely from any state-run institution and in turn became the most important place of Messianic baptism in Berlin. According to the baptismal records of the time, over 700 German Jews got baptized there in the years between 1933 and 1940.

On November 11, 1938, during the Kristallnacht, the Messias Kapelle and the seat of the Berlin Society were trashed by the Nazis. Still, it would take until January of 1941 for the ministry and the chapel to be officially closed permanently. Ten months later, the first deportation of Jewish people began in Berlin. Records prove that of the 700 Jewish believers who had been baptized in the Messias Kapelle after 1933, 86 were hauled off to the ghettos of Lodz, Riga, Minsk, and Warsaw. Only two of them survived the Holocaust. It is unknown what happened to the rest of the congregation.”

A few observations. Among the survivors baptized in the Messias Kapelle was my uncle who lived until 1982. Beyond the obvious interest in self-preservation for the 700 or so Jews who got baptized in the Messias Kapelle during the Nazi era, the fact they could be baptized here as late as 1939, worship among other Jewish converts, and be told about the Jewish Messiah may have had appeal. While it’s unclear whether the chapel has been deconsecrated, the author of the above quote tells us that a marketing and public relations firm now owns it and that the worship hall, altar, and a marble relief resembling a Temple survive. It’s sad this is not a recognized historic monument.

Growing up my father never spoke about religion and religion was never part of my upbringing. In fact, I was baptized as a Catholic by my grandparents at six years of age in Lyon, France, at the request of my parents almost as an afterthought, hoping it might protect me in the event of another Holocaust. However, as most readers will surmise, as a half-Jew, I would have been considered a mischlinge of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Laws. Not good enough to survive being murdered.

Aware my father had attended dental school in Berlin, I checked with the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin to ascertain whether they might have a record of my father’s conversion, but they do not. Knowing my father’s penchant for procrastinating, I have always suspected my father never placed a high priority on getting baptized and converting until it became an absolute necessity. And, in my opinion, that only became necessary after he moved to the town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free State of Danzig where he opened his dental practice in 1932. As I discussed in Post 38, the evidence for my father’s conversion comes in the form of a receipt for payment of quarterly church taxes to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof. (Figure 16)

Figure 16. Document found among my father’s papers initially thought to be a dental invoice later determined to be a receipt for payment in 1936 of Church Tax to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof

Figure 17. My second cousin twice removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), in his WWI military dress uniform

My second cousin twice-removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 17), subject of several recent Blog posts is thought to have converted in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Dr. Barbara Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska, professor of dentistry at the University of Wrocław, who has written about Dr. Bruck, cites a file from the University’s archives saying he converted in 1916 (i.e., University file: sygn. S99, s. 62, nr sprawy AU – 481/46/2001). As we speak, I am working with one of Dr. Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska’s colleagues to obtain verification of the date of Dr. Bruck’s baptism. Unlike his father and grandfather, who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Walter’s place of internment in Wrocław is unknown but was undoubtedly in a Christian cemetery that likely no longer exists.

As I mentioned above, in principle all surviving records of Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are archived at the Evangelische Zentralarchiv. For conversions that took place outside of Berlin, however, there is no central repository of this information that I am aware of. Thus, the only possibility of tracking down comparable information for one’s Jewish ancestors is to know the town and parish church where the baptism occurred, and then hope the registers have survived.

REFERENCES

Bruziewicz Mikłaszewska, Barbara. Outline of the history of university dentistry in Breslau/Wrocław. [Polish: Zarys dziejów uniwersyteckiej stomatologii we Wrocławiu]. 2010, University of Wrocław, PhD.

Hertz, Deborah. How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin. Yale University Press, 2009.

Jurik, Christiane. “In the Eye of the Storm: Messianic Believers in Nazi Germany.” Ariel Magazine, Winter 2019, www.ariel.org/magazine/a/in-the-eye-of-the-storm-messianic-believers-in-nazi-germany

Kirshner, Sheldon. “Historian Studies Phenomenon of Conversion in Germany.” Canadian Jewish News, 17 January 2008.