Note: Having been told of the existence of a photograph of Dr. Walter Lustig by Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of the book on Berlin’s Jewish Hospital that inexplicably survived the Nazi onslaught, in this postscript I describe how I managed to track down this image.
Regular followers may recall that while working on Post 110, I contacted Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis” to share some new information I had uncovered about the hospital’s wartime director, Dr. Walter Lustig. During our exchanges, Mr. Silver mentioned in passing that following the publication of his book in 2003, he’d attended a traveling exhibit in around 2007 on Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community. He recalled the exhibit was developed by students from the University of Potsdam who, while assembling materials, had uncovered a photograph of the elusive Dr. Walter Lustig, something Daniel Silver had been unable to find during his extensive research. He eventually obtained a copy of this image, although at the time I contacted him, he was unable to relocate it.
I write this postscript mostly as an example to readers who may find themselves in a similar predicament, wanting to obtain a photo or information about a widely known individual, such as Dr. Walter Lustig, that one has learned exists or instinctively thinks should exist. In my instance, I was armed only with information that a traveling exhibit had been put together by students from the University of Potsdam, located on the outskirts of Berlin, and set about trying to track down the image of Dr. Lustig I was told survives.
The obvious starting point was the University of Potsdam’s website to whom I sent two emails, followed up with phone calls by a friend and relative, respectively; in both instances I was advised to wait though nothing came of my patience. Next, through a contact form I found online for the still-in-existence Jüdisches-Krankenhaus, Jewish Hospital, I reached out to them hoping them might have a photo of Dr. Lustig. In this instance, I received the very gracious following reply:
“During the first half of the last century the hospital was still in the hands of the Jewish Community of Berlin. Only in the 1960s did the hospital become a foundation under civil law. Thus, we do not have any archival material from the time before. We suggest getting in touch with the Jewish Community of Berlin. They might still have documents in their archives from that time.”
The Jewish Hospital provided a link to the Jewish Community of Berlin, known in German as the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. I sent them an email in early February of this year, and as of this writing, have not received a reply.
Not yet quite willing to give up, I asked a different German cousin, a historian by training, if he could again try and contact the University of Potsdam, which I still believed was my best chance of tracking down the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig. I provided the background information, but before calling the university, my cousin did a Google query and stumbled upon a reference I’d failed to discover on my own that included a picture of the difficult-to-find Dr. Walter Lustig.
It turns out that as part of its Oral History Project, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum interviewed a Ms. Ruth Bileski Winterfield, a Forced Laborer during WWII who was compelled to work as a secretary for Dr. Lustig at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital from March 1943 onwards. Included as part of the documentary information related to Ruth Bileski, the St. Louis Holocaust Museum included a photo of Dr. Walter Lustig, whose provenance is the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum, New Synagogue Berlin Centrum Judaicum Foundation.
A little background explaining how Ruth Bileski wound up working for Dr. Lustig is relevant. As the “Aryanization” of Germany society ramped up during the Nazi era, among healthy Jews of employable age who chose to remain in Germany, increasing numbers of Jews were forced out of public employment and professions. As Daniel Silver notes, “Once unemployed, Jews were required to register with a special Jewish Labor Bureau and had to perform forced labor wherever they were assigned. By 1941, most able-bodied Jewish men and women, including teenagers, were at forced labor, primarily in the many war-related industrial plants in and around Berlin” (2003: 34)
While Ruth Bileski and her sister Eva were technically mischlinge, half-Jewish, under Nazi racial laws, they were treated as equivalent to full Jews, referred to as Geltungsjuden. Both were working at an I.G. Farben factory and were rounded up by the SS in the Fabrikaktion. To remind readers, the Fabrikaktion, literally “factory operation” or “factory raid,” took place in Berlin in February 1943 when Berlin Jews were picked up by the SS primarily at their places of work. Following their arrest Ruth and Eva were transferred to Rosenstrasse. Again, as a reminder, this was the site of what is called the Frauenprotest, literally “women’s protest” or “wives’ protest.” This is the name given to the successful demonstration in February and March 1943 by Aryan wives and relatives of detained Jewish spouses and part-Jewish children arrested in the Fabrikaktion, an action that eventually resulted in the interned Jews and half-Jews being released.
Upwards of 35,000 Berlin Jews were rounded up during the Fabrikaktion, most of whom were deported to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz and murdered there. The only ones who given a reprieve because of the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, a reprieve always intended by the Nazis to be temporary, were some 5-6,000 intermarried Jews and their offspring. Ruth and Eva Bileski were among this group.
During their detention at Rosenstrasse, a Gestapo officer came to the door one day looking for someone who could type. While Ruth Bileski had secretarial training, she chose to remain silent, but her sister Eva offered her up. She was taken out of the room and made to wait all day before being reincarcerated with no explanation. The following day the Gestapo repeated the process again looking for a typist; Ruth’s sister anew volunteered her against her wishes, but on this occasion, she was put to work typing lists of people who were being detained in the building. She typed for thirty-six straight hours before falling asleep at the typewriter. Following the completion of this odious task, she was questioned by a Gestapo office about her secretarial skills, and eventually offered up to Dr. Lustig as his secretary at the Jewish hospital. In no position to make demands, Ruth nonetheless told her jailers she would not go anywhere without her sister. To her surprise her sister was allowed to accompany her. (Silver 2003: 134-136) Like many Jews and half-Jews who were released following the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, Ruth and Eva Bileski survived the Nazi Holocaust. Readers interested in learning more about Ruth’s time at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital should listen or peruse the script of the oral interview the St. Louis Holocaust Museum conducted.
Not having obtained permission from either the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum or the St. Louis Holocaust Museum to use Dr. Walter Lustig’s image in this Blog post, I provide the link here so readers can view the photograph for themselves. As readers can observe, the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig shows him seated and dressed in a white laboratory coat. His distant cousin, Mr. Roger Lustig, whom I contacted while writing Post 110 thought no photos existed of Dr. Lustig because he was self-conscious of his short stature. Obviously, seated as he is, it is difficult to make out his height which may explain why he allowed this photo to be taken.
As a brief aside and conclusion, in Post 107, I mentioned that Ms. Kathy York née Powell’s grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, when Dr. Walter Lustig was the Director. Kathy thought letters from her grandmother’s experiences there might exist, but recent contact with one of her cousins who retains many of her family’s ancestral documents regrettably has not yet turned up these missives.
REFERENCE
Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
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.
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 3rd and 8th centuries A.D. Royal persecutions of Jews from the 11th 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 20th 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 18th and 19th centuries, is attributed. A second wave occurred during the first half of the 19th 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 19th 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 17th century, most converts were poor, by the middle of the 18th 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 20th 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 7th 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 12th 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.
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.”
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 13th 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 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, London, England, an Anglican church. (Figure 8)
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 2nd 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 5th 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.
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 25th 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 27th 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 17th of February 1900. (Figures 12a-b)
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 11th 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 3rd 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.
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)
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)
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.
