Note: This postscript is the result of an unexpected message from a Ms. Kamali Chandler, a lady who hails from the Dominican Republic and whose family were friends with the Brauers when they lived there. In 1947, Herta and her husband were forced to flee the island nation leaving their children behind for a few years. Kamali explains the reason why.
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Many of the people I’ve written about left no diaries, journals, letters, or personal accounts that I’ve found, nor were they otherwise renowned so evidence of them might be found on Wikipedia, on the Internet, or in books or articles. Other than proof of their existence or possibly a random obituary or a certificate of a vital event in their lives, which give a sense of where they were at a specific point in time, the motivation for their movements may be unclear. Even where a paper trail of a person’s life exists, often there are unanswered questions. Thus, I’m often left to think about how or why people wound up where they did.
In the case of Herta Brauer, née Stadach (1904-1983) (Figure 1), a relative by marriage and subject of Post 122, the reason why she and she her family came to the Dominican Republic is evident. More is known about Herta Brauer because she was a preeminent figure in dance and ballet in the Dominican Republic and later in Mallorca, Spain.
As I previously discussed at length, the Dominican Republic was one of the few places in the world willing to accept Jews during World War II. In part, the Dominican Republic was willing to take in Jews to have the United States overlook the regime’s mass killing of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic’s northwestern frontier during the so-called “Parsley Massacre” in October 1937. Also, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), the island nation’s brutal dictator from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, was known to have been extremely racist so agreed to take in Jews to “whiten” the population.
Even though Herta and Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 2) were Jewish and had gotten married in March 1932 in Berlin, they received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI to remarry as Catholics when they were living in Rome. It’s possible that the Pope interceded on their behalf to obtain a visa for them to immigrate to the Dominican Republic, a predominantly Catholic country.
Regardless of how and why Herta Brauer arrived in the Dominican Republic, she managed to become very well established in the country by founding a ballet school there. Quoting what I wrote in Post 122:
“While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo [today: Santo Domingo], through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo (1915-1978), Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou (one of my informants), Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978, reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.
Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house, probably beginning in early 1943. Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while others apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.
It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.”
Given the roots and connections Herta established in the Dominican Republic including with the Trujillo family, I have long wondered why she and her husband suddenly departed for Puerto Rico in 1947. Absent a chronicle of her life, I assumed I would never learn the reason.
Like similar imponderables, the answer came via one of my readers. Towards the end of January, a lady of Dominican Republic descent, Kamali Chandler, contacted me from New York after she stumbled on Post 122. Following the discovery of my post, Kamali told her mother, Francis Brea, who was very elated. Kamali explained that her mother, also now residing in New York, often chats about and has fond memories of Till Brauer (1932-2001) and Oliver “Chichi” Brauer (b. 1942) (Figure 3), Herta and Hanns Brauer’s two sons. It turns out that Francis Brea was friends with the Brauers, and she recalls Hanns was affectionately known as “Le Monsieur.” Such firsthand accounts and memories of people I write about imbue them with a tangibility that my words alone cannot inspire.
But the story takes on a darker twist. Rafael Trujillo was interested in the Brauers, particularly Herta, for the purpose of opening a ballet school in the Dominican Republic. At some point, however, Trujillo’s interest in Herta became romantic, but his amorous intentions were not reciprocated. Trujillo had a reputation of killing women who rebuffed his advances, so feeling they were no longer safe in the Dominican Republic, Herta and Hanns Brauer fled to Puerto Rico. This must have happened quite suddenly because they left their two sons in the care of Kamali’s grandmother, Altagracio Garo, née Brea. (Figure 4) The youngest son, Oliver born in 1942, was the only Brauer born in the Dominican Republic. Francis Brea’s recollection is that the two boys lived with her family until Oliver was about seven years of age, so for roughly two years until 1949. (Figure 5) As an adult, the older son Till and his family (Figures 6-7) periodically returned to Santo Domingo to reconnect with Kamali’s family and her cousins. They spent summers at Kamali’s uncle’s home, Robinson Brea Garo.
To remind readers, the Brauers arrived in the Dominican Republic with Herta’s older daughter, Yutta Maria Münchow (1926-2001) (Figure 8), offspring of an earlier marriage. At the time of her mother’s sudden departure, Yutta was in nursing school so also stayed behind (Figures 9a-b) but would eventually leave the Dominican Republic.
In closing, the answer to seemingly trivial questions sometimes come from unexpected directions. What makes the explanation so intriguing is that it involves a brutal dictator who took a love interest in one of my relatives, placing her in harm’s way and altering the course of her life.