Dr. Franz Müller Archives - bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 199: VISITING THE VILLA PRIMAVERA IN FIESOLE, ITALY, MY AUNT AND UNCLE’S HOME BETWEEN 1936 AND 1938: THE FOURTH TIME WAS THE CHARM

Notes: In this post, I describe how after three previous unsuccessful attempts over 12 years, my wife and I were invited to visit the villa in Fiesole, a Tuscan hill town above Florence, where my aunt and uncle settled between 1936 and 1938. This invitation was made possible entirely thanks to our good Italian friend, Giuditta Melli, whom we fatefully met at a bus stop in 2014. Given that Florence and Fiesole were briefly havens for German Jews who fled after Hitler came to power in 1933, it is so fitting that a Jewish family now owns the floors once occupied by my ancestors.

POST 35: FATE OF SOME JEWISH GUESTS WHO STAYED AT THE VILLA PRIMAVERA (FIESOLE, ITALY), 1937-1938

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

POST 68, POSTSCRIPT: DR. JULIUS BRUCK, ENGINEER OF MODERN ENDOSCOPY-TRACKING SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS

POST 189: CEREMONY FOR THE RESTITUTION OF THREE PAINTINGS LOOTED FROM MY FATHER’S COUSIN FÉDOR LOWENSTEIN DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR: SEPTEMBER 16, 2025

Fiesole is a historic hilltop town in Tuscany, Italy known for its Etruscan and Roman ruins. (Figure 1) This is a place with stunning views overlooking Florence. It was a favored destination of many German Jewish intellectuals after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. My aunt Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942) and uncle, Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 2), came here in early 1936. I have no doubt they would have stayed for the remainder of their lives save for the forced displacement of non-Italian Jews by Mussolini in 1938.

Figure 1. Roman amphitheater in Fiesole in 2014

Figure 2. My aunt Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942) and uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole in 1938

As I wrote in 2018 in Post 21, shortly after Hitler and Mussolini’s visit to Florence on May 9, 1938, greeted by huge crowds, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists” on July 14, 1938. Basically, this Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race to which Jews did not belong. Between September 2, 1938, and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy.

An emigration log I obtained from the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole, the Municipal Archives of Fiesole, confirms my aunt and uncle departed Florence on September 16, 1938 (Figure 3), corresponding with the period in which these racial laws were enacted. Upon their departure from Fiesole, my aunt and uncle left in favor of Fayence, France, where my uncle’s daughter from an earlier marriage lived on a fruit farm owned by her brother-in-law.

Figure 3. Fiesole Emigration Register showing my aunt and uncle departed Fiesole on the 16th of September 1938

Let me review what I wrote in Post 21 about three previous visits to Fiesole, respectively, in 2014, 2015, and 2016, unsuccessfully attempting to visit the Villa Primavera.

My wife and I first stopped and stayed in Fiesole in 2014 during our 13-week trip that year visiting places across Europe associated with my Jewish family’s diaspora. While we failed to access the Villa Primavera that year, we met an Italian lady under circumstances I can only characterize as fated. Let me explain.

When traveling in Europe, we typically rent a car to more easily access the many small out of the way places we visit. Such was the case in 2014 when we stayed in Fiesole above Florence. Because traffic and parking in Florence are challenging, on the day we encountered the Italian lady we would eventually befriend, we decided instead to take the bus to access the downtown tourist attractions. After a day of touring, my wife and I were trying to ascertain where the bus headed towards Fiesole departed. Spotting our confusion, a friendly stranger, Giuditta Melli, confirmed we were in the right place. She was headed home on the same bus and engaged us in conversation. Obviously, a regular on the bus, she knew all the other riders. She pointed out her villa before getting off the bus.

Prior to separating, Giuditta invited us to visit the pottery shop where she then worked. (Figure 4) The memories of that day are vivid. When we stopped by two days later, Giuditta spotted us from inside the shop and came rushing out to welcome us. She gave us a tour of the workshop, and while Ann was separately speaking with Giuditta, I was watching Romano, the master potter, at work. The next thing I knew Giuditta was standing in front of me with tears running down her face. I couldn’t imagine what had caused her distress. It turns out my wife had told Giuditta the purpose of our 13-week trip in Europe and had explained that my Jewish aunt murdered in Auschwitz and my uncle had once lived in the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, which as it turns out is only five minutes by car from Giuditta’s home. The source of Giuditta’s anguish was the fact that her Jewish great uncle Carlo Melli (Figure 5) who owned the villa where she now lives was also murdered in the Holocaust, deported to Buchenwald from the concentration camp at Fossoli near Modena, Italy in 1942. My aunt was also arrested in 1942 by the Vichy French in the small town of Fayence, France and deported to Auschwitz via the assembly point of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris. Our common histories provided an immediate bond.

Figure 4. In 2014, our friend Giuditta Melli standing alongside Romano, the master potter, in the pottery shop where she then worked

Figure 5. Giuditta’s great uncle Carlo Melli (left) and grandfather with Giuditta’s mother in Livorno

The Villa Primavera (Figures 6-7) is located on the street known as Via del Salviatino (Figure 8), which transects and straddles both Fiesole and Florence. (Figure 9) When initially in search of the house, this caused some confusion as Via del Salviatino 14, the former address of the villa, has identically numbered homes on this same avenue only a short distance apart in Fiesole and Florence.

Figure 6. Historic postcard of the Villa Primavera

Figure 7. My father’s photo of the Villa Primavera taken in 1938

Figure 8. Via del Salviatino, the street along which the Villa Primavera is located

Figure 9. The Via del Salviatino transects Fiesole and Firenze (Florence)

At the time my aunt and uncle lived there, the villa was owned by a Dr. Gino Frascani, an obstetrician/gynecologist, a truly remarkable man who will in the next month be recognized for his civic contributions. He used family money to build a hospital clinic on the Florence portion of Via del Salviatino, the “Istituto di Cura del Salviatino” (Figure 10), located just down the road from the Villa Primavera, where he even maintained beds in the common infirmary for “charity.” The Istituto still stands today, regrettably no longer as a hospital, but rather as exclusive condominiums. Dr. Frascani owned multiple properties at the time, and while the Frascani family still owns properties along Via del Salviatino, I later learned they no longer own the Villa Primavera.

Figure 10. Historic postcard of the Dr. Gino Frascani’s “Istituto di Cura del Salviatino”

Having realized we’d located Via del Salviatino 14 in Florence rather than Fiesole, we quickly found the correct address. As I explained in Post 21, at the entrance to the driveway with house numbers 12, 14, and 14a, was one mailbox with the name “R. Frascani.” Logically, we concluded this was a descendant of Dr. Frascani who resided in the Villa Primavera, erroneously so. Only later did we learn that R. Frascani, “R.”for Ranieri, lives in Via del Salviatino 12, ergo not in the Villa Primavera. We drove up the dirt road to Frascani’s residence, which we discovered was a bed-and-breakfast, and rang the bell. No one answered but, as luck would have it, one of Ranieri’s friends passed by as we were seeking entry and phoned him. Since Ranieri speaks no English, we quickly agreed I would contact him by email upon my return stateside. Regardless, it would be another year before we met in person and got answers to some of my questions.

This initial contact established the basis for our subsequent visit to Fiesole in 2015, when we met Ranieri and his mother, Ms. Maria Agata Frascani, née Mannelli, respectively, Dr. Gino Frascani’s grandson and daughter-in-law. In 2015, Giuditta invited us to stay in her villa. She arranged and served as translator for our meet up. During this get-together Ranieri confirmed the villa he lives in is not the Villa Primavera. Sometime during the 1940s, houses along Via del Salviatino were renumbered and the Villa Primavera reassigned the number “16.” While the back of the Villa Primavera is visible from his home, the family no longer owns it, as previously noted. Unfortunately, neither Ranieri nor his mother could gain us access to their former property.

While we failed for the second year running to tour the villa, Ms. Frascani took us to her home. (Figure 11) There she showed us an invaluable historical treasure, a thick album with photos, articles, and personal documents related to the construction and opening of Dr. Frascani’s “Istituto di Cura Chirurgica del Salviatino” in 1908-09. (Figure 12) It’s my great hope this is eventually donated to the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole.

Figure 11. Name plate on Dr. Gino Frascani’s house at Via del Salviatino 18 in Fiesole, where his daughter-in-law, Ms. Maria Agatha Frascani, now lives

Figure 12. Album of photos, documents, letters, etc. collected by Dr. Gino Frascani related to the construction of his “Istituto di Cura del Salviatino” in 1908-09

Let me tell readers what I was able to learn from the roughly two-and-a-half-year period between 1936 and 1938 that my aunt and uncle lived at the Villa Primavera. My aunt ran the large home as a bed-and-breakfast in partnership with a Jewish lady of Austrian extraction, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi (Figures 13-14), whom she may have known from Berlin or met in Fiesole, perhaps through Dr. Frascani.

Figure 13. Lucia von Jacobi in 1936 or 1937

Figure 14. Lucia von Jacobi with my uncle, Dr. Franz Müller at the Villa Primavera

Ms. Lucia Nadetti, a retired archivist at the Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole, with whom I’m still in touch and consider a friend, took an avid interest in my research when we first met in 2014. (Figure 15) She scoured the archives and uncovered documentary evidence related to the period that the villa was run as a guest house, most significantly, so-called “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” “Stay of Foreigners in Italy” forms. Italy required completion of these forms during the Fascist era, which lasted from 1922 to 1943.

Figure 15. In 2014, Ms. Lucia Nadetti, former archivist at the “Archivio Comunale Di Fiesole”

The mandatory forms were submitted to the local Municipio, City Hall, to document personal details, accommodation, length of stay, and the purpose of the visit. A local resident, my uncle in the case of guests staying at the Villa Primavera, would have to appear at the Municipio and certify that the foreigner was indeed lodging there. While highly intrusive in terms of the personal information collected, from a genealogical standpoint the details are unparalleled. Guests were required to provide the names of both parents, including the mother’s maiden name, plus their date and place of birth. Based on a separate historic register listing all visitors to the Villa Primavera, the “Soggiorno” forms exist only for those guests who stayed at the villa between 1937 and 1938; those that have survived are very instructive. In Post 35, I discussed the names and fates, where I could determine them, of the villa’s many lodgers.

Let me turn now to our subsequent unsuccessful attempt in 2016 to visit the Villa Primavera.

Like the Fiesole archivist Lucia Nadetti who’d taken a personal interest in my quest for documentary evidence of my ancestors’ passage through Fiesole, our friend Giuditta Melli continued to seek out additional information about the Villa Primavera. Following our visit to Fiesole in 2015, Giudutta announced she’d stumbled upon a full-length book about Lucia von Jacobi, my aunt Suzanne’s partner in managing the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast. It had been written by a German professor, Dr. Irene Below (Figure 16), from Werther, Germany, whom Giuditta immediately contacted. Giudutta related an extraordinary story based on her conversation with Dr. Below.

Figure 16. In October 2016, Dr. Irene Below at Parco di Monte Ceceri, Florence

As I described in Post 21: “Dr. Below was surprised to hear from Giuditta and curious to learn of her interest in people Irene had studied and knew about. Dr. Below related a fascinating tale. She came to Firenze in 1964 as a student intending to write about the history of art. While researching this topic, however, she came across magazines and diaries of an unknown person who turned out to be Lucia von Jacobi, a woman with very famous friends (e.g., Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Gustaf Gründgens, etc.), and decided instead to write about her. Then, amazingly, in 1966, Dr. Below walked into an antiquarian shop in Firenze and discovered the bulk of Ms. Jacobi’s personal papers, which she soon purchased with her parents’ financial assistance.”

As an additional footnote, Irene’s acquisition of Lucia von Jacobi’s papers was timely. In November 1966, Florence experienced the worst floods in living memory, reaching unheard of heights of 6.7 meters, 22 feet!! The antiquarian shop from which Dr. Below purchased Lucia von Jacobi’s papers was destroyed and everything swept away, a fate that would no doubt have befallen Lucia’s records had Irene not purchased them.

According to the papers that Irene Below was able to retrieve from the antiquarian shop, Lucia spent three months in Palestine in 1938, likely shortly after Mussolini’s embrace of the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists” on July 14, 1938. Following Ms. Jacobi’s return from Palestine, she was constantly being watched and her mail monitored by the local Questura, that’s to say, the police in the province of Florence. Afraid of being arrested, Lucia escaped to Switzerland in October 1938, forced to leave all her possessions behind. Dr. Below surmises her belongings remained in the Villa Primavera until Dr. Frascani’s heirs sold the home, whereupon they were donated or sold to the antiquarian shop where Irene discovered them.

After contacting Irene Below following our 2015 visit, Giuditta invited all of us to gather at her house in 2016 with the idea of meeting and together visiting the Villa Primavera. In anticipation of this get-together, I wrote letters to the various residents including my father’s 1938 photos taken there, asking whether it would be possible to visit. This is a strategy I’ve employed with mixed results over the years. Regrettably, I received nary a single response. While I even asked Lucia Nadetti to intercede, she too was unable to get us an invitation. I realized after our 2016 trip to Fiesole that I was unlikely to see the grounds nor the interior of the Villa Primavera. While I can be very persistent, one must also know when to “give up the ghost.” So, I did.

My wife and I have continued to remain in contact with Giuditta Melli. In May 2023, she told me about a meeting she’d recently had with Daniel Ratthei, an author from Cottbus, Germany, that included the grandchildren of a woman named Lina Friederike Prinz, née Meyer who, like my aunt and uncle, lived in Fiesole-Florence between 1935 and 1939.

Daniel Ratthei is researching and writing about a German professor named Arno Fritz Kurt Schirokauer (1899-1954), born in Cottbus, where Daniel hails from. According to Daniel, the Schirokauer and Prinz families knew each other well, as probably did most German emigrants in Fiesole. Among the places where the divorced Lina Prinz lived with her children, Rolf and Renate (Figure 17), was none other than the Villa Primavera!

Figure 17. Renate and Rolf Prinz as children in either Florence or Fiesole in 1937; Rolf’s two children, Jane and Peter Prince (their surname was anglicized) from New Zealand, met Giuditta and Daniel Ratthei in Florence-Fiesole in 2023

The Schirokauers did not stay at the Villa Primavera but were lodging in another pension in Fiesole called “Il Poderino”; the villas are close to one another. Interestingly, Il Poderino is a guest house that Lucia von Jacobi first ran with a Carlotta Münz until the two had a falling out, and Lucia opened the Villa Primavera with my aunt.

In any case, in writing the current post, I turned to Google to refresh my memory about Arno Schirokauer. In doing so, I realized or reminded myself of something I’d forgotten, namely, that Arno was best known for his biography about Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864).

While not a household name to most readers, Lassalle was familiar to me for reasons I will explain. He was an extremely well-known German jurist, philosopher, and socialist activist. He is best known as an initiator of the social democratic movement in Germany who in 1863 founded the General German Workers’ Association, the first independent German workers’ party. However, what makes him memorable to me is that he is buried in the Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu, the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany).

Coincidentally, this historic necropolis-museum is where some of my Bruck relatives are interred, mostly notably, Julius Bruck (1840-1902), inventor of the stomatoscope, whom I discussed in Post 68 and Post 68, Postscript. I have visited the necropolis on three previous occasions and am very good friends with the Branch Manager of the museum, Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska.

Also, in conjunction with a translation that my English cousin, Helen Winter, née Renshaw, is currently undertaking of a diary written by another Bruck ancestor from Breslau (Wrocław), Bertha Jacobson, née Bruck (1873-1957), Lassalle’s name is mentioned. For this reason, on the 160th anniversary of Ferdinand Lassalle’s death in 2024, when the Old Jewish Cemetery held a ceremony attended by many government officials, Renata sent me a photo of Lassalle’s grave. (Figure 18)

Figure 18. Ferdinand Lassalle’s headstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland, the same necropolis where a few of my distinguished Bruck ancestors are also interred

I don’t expect readers to fully appreciate this, and I don’t mean to talk down to readers, but one of the silent pleasures I derive from my blog is occasionally stumbling on unexpected connections. Consider for a moment, I was discussing Florence, Italy, and in the next instance, I’ve transitioned to discussing Ferdinand Lassalle buried in Wrocław, Poland because of his biographer’s (Arno Schirokauer) connection to Cottbus, Germany and brief association with Florence and Fiesole. Add to this, the incidental connection to Lina Prinz who stayed at the Villa Primavera when my aunt and uncle lived there. Making these connections reminds me of the old TV game show, “Concentration.”

I apologize to readers because I have seriously digressed which I regret to inform you will continue for a bit longer. My wife and I recently returned from a 13-day trip to Paris and Florence-Fiesole. Our journey to Paris was related to the three Fédor Löwenstein paintings I retrieved in September 2025 discussed in Post 189, which I’ve agreed to loan to two or three French museums for exhibitions over the next few years. The first of these is ongoing now at the musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, mahJ, at which I was asked to participate in a round table discussion.

Knowing we would be in Paris and curious to meet Daniel Ratthei in Florence and reunite with Giuditta after ten years, my wife and I decided to fly there. I retained an unrealistic hope that Giuditta and/or Lucia might facilitate our entry into the Villa Primavera. While Daniel was unable to meet us in Florence on account of previous commitments, Giuditta found an unlikely connection that after 12 years allowed us to finally tour the Villa Primavera. Learning this left me giddy with excitement!

Let me explain. Giuditta is currently in the process of selling her villa. In chatting with her realtor, Giuditta let on she’d been trying for years to gain access to the Villa Primavera. During this exchange, Giuditta’s realtor told her that she knows Ms. Barbara Anzilotti (Figure 19), the owner of the top floor, and offered to put her in touch. Barbara is the person who reached out to her neighbors who own the bottom two levels, Elad and Vered Tzur, the Jewish couple who graciously invited us to visit. (Figure 20) I find it noteworthy that the Villa Primavera is again occupied by a Jewish family.

Figure 19. Me standing between Ms. Barbara Anzilotti and Giuditta in front of the backside of the Villa Primavera

Figure 20. Inside their home, current owners of the Villa Primavera, Vered and Elad Tzur holding their youngest child, Shimon, alongside me

Our visit took place on February 24, 2026. We learned that at the time my aunt and uncle lived in the Villa Primavera, the top floor owned by Barbara did not exist; it was added by the previous owner, then sold as a separate unit. The previous owner also completely redesigned the bottom floors of the house. Elad and Vered, who emigrated from Israel, have only owned the house for about a year, and live there with their five children.

My father only stayed at the Villa Primavera twice, both times in 1938, and his pictures exclusively show the exterior of the home. Comparing my father’s photos with the current layout of the exterior, shows it is remarkably unchanged. Vered and I enthusiastically got into re-creating my father’s pictures from the same vantage point he’d taken them. (Figures 21a-b; 22a-b; 23a-b; 24) This was great fun!

Figure 21a. My father standing on the steps in front of the Villa Primavera in September 1938

Figure 21b. Me on August 24, 2026, standing on the steps in the same place as my father stood in 1938

Figure 22a. My father seated in front of the Villa Primavera in May 1938; note the planter on the house wall on the left side of the picture

Figure 22b. Me seated with my father’s pictures in hand at the same place he sat in May 1938; note the planter on the wall

Figure 23a. My father seated at an outdoor table in front of the Villa Primavera in May 1938 with his sister (opposite him) and two of his cousins; note the vertical pole behind his sister’s head

Figure 23b. Me on February 24, 2026, in front of the Villa Primavera with my hand on the vertical pole seen in Figure 23a

Figure 24. Me standing between my wife Ann and Giuditta in front of the Villa Primavera in February 2026

To again walk in my aunt, uncle, and father’s footsteps was special. How they would feel about my genealogical endeavors is unanswerable, particularly as it relates to my father since the only family he ever spoke about ruefully was his beloved sister Suzanne. However, given that the Villa Primavera is a place associated with his sister and a place my father visited, I imagine he would be intrigued that I visited the home.

Recall from above that using the surviving “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” forms, in Post 35 I detailed the fates of the villa’s guests. One of those guests was a woman named Maria Donath, née Czamska (I’ve come across various spelling of her maiden name, including “Czamsky”, “Camsky”). (Figure 25) She was married to Ludwig Donath who was known for character roles in films, TV, and on stage. (Figure 26)

Figure 25. One of the Villa Primavera’s guests, Maria Donath’s 1940 “Declaration of Intention” to become an American citizen

Figure 26. Another of the Villa Primavera’s guests, Ludwig Donath, Maria Donath’s husband’s 1940 “Declaration of Intention” to become an American citizen

I was recently contacted by Mr. Alexander Schilling, Head of production of Heidelberger Schlossfestspiele. This is a theatre festival in Germany, and the best-known and most-attended open-air theater plays in the Northern Baden Region. Alex explained that for an upcoming exhibition about the history of the Heidelberger Schlossfestspiele, founded in 1926, he is researching biographies of cast members from the 1920s who fled Germany after 1933 on account of political or racial persecution. And Maria Czamska-Donath was one of those members.

In Post 35, I wrote that Maria died in Vienna in 1974, erroneously as it happens. Alex asked for the source of this information, and, while dubious I could retrace my steps, I rediscovered I’d found it in ancestry.com’s link to Find A Grave. Maria’s married name “Donath” is apparently common even today in Vienna and it seems I mistook the Maria Donath in the Vienna Friedhof for Maria Czamska. Based on information Alex obtained from more reliable sources, Maria apparently died on the 13^th of August 1967 in Munich. I am always grateful when readers take the time to research and correct misinformation I’ve inadvertently introduced into my post.

In closing, I want again to acknowledge and thank our good friend Giuditta Melli for persisting in finding a way to help us enter the Villa Primavera in Fiesole. Thanks to a chance encounter at a bus stop in 2014 this would never have happened. Given my family’s association with the Villa Primavera, a brief period of calm before the cataclysmic events of the Holocaust ensnared my family, I’m eternally grateful to Giuditta as well as Elad and Vered for having made this visit possible. Fiesole is a special place, a place my aunt and uncle certainly embraced and where they would permanently have settled had circumstances turned out differently.

POST 191: “WITH ‘IFS’ ONE COULD PUT PARIS IN A BOTTLE”: FATE OF AN INN ONCE OWNED BY DR. JONAS BRUCK IN ŻYTNA, POLAND

Note: In this post, I discuss among other things my recent visit to the small town of Żytna, Poland (German: Zyttna) where an inn once owned by my great-great-granduncle Dr. Jonas Bruck at one time stood. During my recent trip, I had the opportunity to meet some locals who are researching and writing about the history of Żytna and elsewhere in Silesia, including documenting its former Jewish inhabitants.

POST 145: PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS ABOUT MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDUNCLE, DR. JONAS BRUCK (1813-1883)

POST 145, POSTSCRIPT-OLD PHOTOS OF MY GREAT-GREAT-GRAND-UNCLE DR. JONAS BRUCK’S INN IN ŻYTNA, POLAND

POST 188: WALKING IN MY FATHER AND UNCLE’S FOOTSTEPS, VISITING A HOUSE IN RIESENGEBIRGE (KARKONOSZE, POLAND) THEY STAYED IN 90 YEARS AGO

In contemplating a title for the current post, I was reminded of a French proverb my mother used to say to me as a child. The phrase “If Paris were small, we’d put it in a bottle” is an English translation of a well-known French proverb, “Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille” (literally: “With ‘ifs’ one could put Paris in a bottle”). The meaning of the phrase is that it is pointless to speculate about unrealistic or impossible hypothetical situations because “ifs” do not change reality.

Nevertheless, we’re all guilty of senseless conjectures. In my case, I’ve often wondered why my aunt Suzanne and uncle Dr. Franz Müller did not escape to America after Hitler came to power in 1933 and they left Berlin. This would have been a viable option at the time since my uncle and aunt had contacts in America and the financial means to support themselves. Instead, my aunt and uncle went to Fiesole above Florence, then in 1938, after they were forced to leave Italy, they went to the small town of Fayence, France where my uncle’s daughter and son-in-law lived. In August 1942, my aunt Suzanne along with her stepdaughter’s brother-in-law were arrested there by the Vichy French collaborators and deported to and murdered in Auschwitz.

Given the widespread destruction wrought in Europe by the cataclysmic events of the Second World War, including areas of Germany and Poland where much of my Jewish family was concentrated, I’ve often pondered what happened to some of the places associated with my family. While by no means equating the murder of family with the destruction of places connected to them, it was part of the systematic dismantling of the fabric of the community in which they lived and interacted with their neighbors.

The hotel in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, owned by my family for roughly 75 years, I know survived the war only to see post-war Communist authorities tear it down to “harvest” bricks to reconstruct Warsaw. (Figure 1) And the building in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) where my father lived and had his dental clinic was bombed and destroyed during the war by passing Russian bombers after German partisans shot at the planes. (Figure 2)

Figure 1. The Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland) which was dismantled by the Communist authorities following the Second World War

Figure 2. In October 1934, the building in Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) where my father lived and had his dental clinic that was ultimately destroyed by Russian bombers

Readers can thus imagine my interest when I discover a place still exists where I have proof in the form of photos that one of my relatives visited, lived, or worked, such as the home I recently wrote about in Post 188 in Kiesewald (today: Michałowice, Poland). The house in Michałowice is just the second place in Poland I’ve visited where I have photos of my father standing in the same place 90 or more years ago. The first was in Petershagen (today: Zelichowo, Poland), just outside Tiegenhof, where my father had his dental practice between April 1932 and April 1937. I wrote about that visit in Post 7. (Figures 3-4)

Figure 3. My father, second from the left, in May 1932 in Petershagen (today: Zelichowo, Poland) sitting in front of the Club Ruschau where he used to recreate

Figure 4. Me in May 2012 holding the door handle seen in Figure 3 of the still-existing building that was part of the Club Ruschau

For the most part, however, the sites in Europe connected to my Jewish family did not survive the war. The current post is about another location that I learned and wrote about in 2023. It was once owned by one of my esteemed ancestors, Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883). (Figure 5) It was an inn located in the small town of Żytna, Poland about 170km (~105 miles) southeast of Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland), where Jonas was an eminent dentist.

Figure 5. My great-great-granduncle Dr. Jonas Bruck (1813-1883)

In Post 145, I discussed primary source documents found and sent to me by a reader, a teacher/historian Mr. Jan Krajczok from Rybnik, Poland, located a mere 17.5km (~11 miles) east of Żytna. Originally uncertain whether the reference in the records to a Jonas Bruck related to my great-great-granduncle, I asked my German friend Peter Hanke for help translating the relevant land registers. As I explained in Post 145, Peter was able to confirm the involvement by the “dentist Dr. Jonas Bruck” in the ownership of the inn in Żytna. Based on Peter’s translation, it is clear my ancestor owned the inn from roughly 1846 to 1859. This was a most unexpected finding. Because of the distance between Breslau and Żytna and because the establishment was an inn, I assume it was an investment property, not a second home.

Jan is a subscriber to my blog and we have periodically corresponded regarding questions mostly related to the history of Silesia. Knowing I would be visiting Racibórz this past August, I asked Jan whether we could meet and perhaps visit the place in Żytna where the inn owned by Jonas once stood. Its precise location is known because contemporary postcards survive; I discussed and illustrated these in Post 145, Postscript.

Jan was most pleased to give my wife and me a tour, and this turned into a highly entertaining get-together. Jan picked us up in Racibórz, and took us to the home of Iwona Witt, née Hadam (Figure 6) and her husband Aurel Witt, residents of Żytna, a town of only about 600 people. Iwona is currently in the final throes of writing a book about the history of her village. Having grown up in the area and knowing most of the locals has given her unprecedented access to people’s homes and their collective memories and stories. Despite Iwona’s local connections, some residents have refused to even let her inside their homes or talk to her about what must be ugly wartime history. Readers can only imagine how difficult it would be for an outsider like me with no facility in Polish to draw out any of the stories Iwona is writing about.

Figure 6. In August 2025 in Żytna, Poland with Jan Krajczok (left) and Iwona

Postcards of the inn once owned by Jonas Bruck along with a beer mug (Figures 7-8) believed to have come from the inn’s restaurant, some illustrated in Post 145, Postscript, were given to Iwona by old time residents along with other local memorabilia. Iwona took us to the site where the inn formerly stood (Figure 9) and explained the circumstances that ultimately led to the inn’s destruction. As the Russians were encircling the area in the final days of the war, the skirmish line between the Russian and German troops was along the main road in front of the inn. (Figure 10) Believing they were being shot at from the upper floors of the inn, the Russians used flamethrowers to fend off the German soldiers and set the structure aflame. While the fire was apparently doused before the inn was destroyed, it was not salvageable and was eventually torn down during the 1950s. Thus, the inn was dismantled long after Dr. Jonas Bruck had sold it.

Figure 7. A beer mug believed to have come from the inn in Żytna owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck

Figure 8. A postcard showing two images of the former inn in Żytna once owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck

Figure 9. Modern home situated atop where the inn owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck once stood; the road marks the skirmish line that separated the German and Russian forces during the final days of the Second World War

Figure 10. Iwona Witt pointing out the orientation of the former inn

While the inn did not endure, other contemporary structures such as a building and church tower across the street from the inn have survived. (Figure 11) They can be seen on a historic picture Iwona shared with me during our visit. (Figure 12) The structure to the left of the two women standing in Figure 12 is the inn formerly owned by my great-great-granduncle.

Figure 11. The surviving church tower and building in the foreground on the left that existed in former times

Figure 12. Historic picture of two women standing to the right of the inn once owned by Dr. Jonas Bruck; in the background the church tower seen in Figure 11 is clearly visible

Apropos of the French proverb and its relevance to unrealistic hypotheticals, there are nonetheless occasions when places connected to my family have survived. As mentioned, I’ve visited two of them in Poland, but am aware of another in Fiesole, Italy where, as mentioned above, my aunt and uncle lived after they decamped from Berlin in 1935. It was called the Villa Primavera (Figure 13-14b), and my aunt ran it with another Jewish woman as a bed-and-breakfast until 1938. I’ve tried on three occasions to visit the villa, to no avail. Being the generally persistent sort, I intend to give it another try in February 2026.

Figure 13. A photo of the still existing Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy taken in May 1938; my aunt and another Jewish lady ran it as a bed-and-breakfast

Figure 14a. Barbara Lisy, a contemporary artist, painting the Villa Primavera

Figure 14b. Barbara Lisy’s painting of the Villa Primavera

In conclusion, I would remind readers that many places in Poland associated with one’s Jewish ancestors, particularly places that are today largely devoid of Jews, have locals who are interested in researching and rediscovering their town’s Jewish history. Such is the case with Iwona who was thrilled to learn of the Jewish connection to her hometown in the personage of my ancestor Jonas Bruck. It is also true of another friend from Rybnik, Małgorzata Płoszaj (Figure 15), who has written two books about its former Jewish inhabitants. And it is also true in my father’s birthplace of Racibórz where yet another friend, Magda Wawoczny, who is enrolled in the Jewish Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, is researching and writing extensively about the town’s former Jewish families and history. It behooves readers to seek out these local contacts to develop a more rounded view of available resources and historical events.

Figure 15. Małgorzata Płoszaj and Magda Wawoczny, two of my Polish friends, at the release of Malgosia’s second book about the Jews of her hometown of Rybnik

POST 165: MORE ABOUT ERNST MOMBERT, DEPORTED FROM FRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ WITH MY AUNT SUZANNE MÜLLER, NÉE BRUCK

Note: In this post, I examine newly acquired documents obtained from France’s Ministère des Armées related to a man named Ernst Mombert arrested and deported from France to Auschwitz with my aunt Suzanne Müller, née Bruck in August-September 1942.

POST 23: MY AUNT SUSANNE’S FINAL JOURNEY

POST 119: THE FRENCH CONNECTION, ERNST & FRANZ MOMBERT

As I write this post, I’m reminded of what the mother of one of my former girlfriends told her when she was working on her doctorate, “you’re learning more and more about less and less.” Such is the case of a man related by marriage to my family who I introduced in earlier posts, Ernst Mombert (“Ernest” in France); he was arrested in Fayence, France in August 1942, along with my father’s beloved sister, Suzanne Müller, née Bruck. (Figure 1) Their fates were already known to me.

Figure 1. My aunt Suzanne Müller, née Bruck (1904-1942), murdered in Auschwitz

However, recently I’ve learned more about Ernst thanks to a French student from Toulon, France, Julia Saintgermain. (Figure 2) In commemoration of the 80^th anniversary in 2022 of the mass deportations of Jews from the Var department of France, where both Toulon and Fayence are situated, as a school project Julia and her schoolmates researched some Jewish victims of this extradition. Julia selected Ernst and Suzanne and came across my blog in the process. Julia contacted me and eventually supplemented what I’d uncovered. I will discuss these recent discoveries. What I learned about Ernst in small part informs me about my aunt’s final weeks, so it is materially relevant.

Figure 2. Julia Saintgermain, the French student who researched some of the Jews deported in August-September 1942 from the Var region of France, including Ernst Mombert and my aunt Suzanne

A little context. My aunt Suzanne (1904-1942) was married to an older gentleman, my uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 3), who was 33 years her senior; he had two children from a previous marriage, Peter Müller-Munk and Karin Margit Müller-Munk. Because of Franz’s and Suzanne’s age difference, her “stepchildren” were roughly the same age as her. Franz’s daughter Margit was married to Franz Mombert (“Francois” in French), Ernst’s brother, and the two co-owned a fruit farm in Fayence, France. After my aunt and uncle were forced to leave Fiesole, Italy, outside Florence, in September 1938, after earlier fleeing Berlin, Germany in late 1935 or early 1936, they took refuge at Ernst and Franz’s farm in Fayence, France.

Figure 3. My aunt Suzanne with her husband Dr. Franz Müller in Fiesole, Italy in 1938

While researching Ernst Mombert, Julia stumbled on Posts 22 & 23 where I introduced him to readers. She initially asked whether I knew how he’d wound up in the various detention camps in France he is documented to have been incarcerated in during the war (more on this below). As I discussed in Post 119, I’d only been aware he’d been briefly detained in a place called “Le Camp de La Rode” near Toulon, so was unable to answer her question though I was equally intrigued.

Julia obtained a file on Ernest Mombert from France’s “Ministère des Armées” in November 2022, which she graciously shared. (Figure 4) In this post I’ll discuss several new things I learned from this dossier. I would reiterate two points I’ve made in previous posts. First, the assistance of readers and people whom I refer to as “my boots on the ground,” particularly native German and French speakers, has often given me access to documentary evidence I would likely never have found on my own. Second, I find it illuminating that extensive files often exist on Jews murdered during the Holocaust, as though documenting their deaths was more important than celebrating their lives and accomplishments. I acknowledge there may have been pragmatic reasons for post-mortem documentation, such as resolving estate issues.

Figure 4. Cover of “Ernest Mombert” dossier from the “Ministère Des Anciens Combattants Et Victimes De Guerre,” Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War

The Ministère’s file includes documents from their archives of the so-called “Ministère Des Anciens Combattants Et Victimes De Guerre,” Ministry of Veterans and Victims of War. I’ll discuss some of these records beginning with the most recent and working my way backwards.

In Post 23, I talked about my aunt and Ernst’s arrest in Fayence in August 1942 by the Vichy (Figure 5), and the overarching geopolitical environment surrounding the timing. In that earlier post, I also highlighted the last three “postcards” (Figures 6a-c) my aunt ever sent following her arrest; the postmarks and dates on the cards provide clues as to the exact date of her and Ernst’s seizure and the route by which they were ultimately deported to and murdered in Auschwitz. Because her first card was dated the 26^th of August 1942 from a place near Fayence called Draguignan, 19 miles to the southwest, I assumed she’d been taken prisoner several days prior. It turns out that according to the dossier, this is the precise date Ernst and Suzanne were detained and began their final journey. My aunt clearly wasted no time communicating with her husband following her arrest.

Figure 5. Letter dated the 23rd of December 1945 from Ernst Mombert’s brother, Francois, to the French authorities providing details on his brother and my aunt’s arrest and requesting information on their whereabouts

Figure 6a. My aunt Suzanne’s first card sent from Draguignan on the 26th of August 1939 following her arrest the same day

Figure 6b. My aunt Suzanne’s second card sent from “Les Milles,” postmarked the 29th of September 1939 following her arrest on the 26th of September

Figure 6c. The last communication from my aunt Suzanne following her arrest by the Vichy French postmarked from Avignon the 2nd of September 1939

On one page in the report dated the 13^th of August 1946 (Figure 7), the following telling sentences are written: “Arreté 26/8/42 par la gendarmerie de Fayence comme Israelite. Étranger, deporté de Drancy le 7/9/1942, depuis sans nouvelles.” Translated: “Arrested the 26^th of August 1942 by the Fayence constables as a Jew. Foreigner, deported to Drancy on the 7^th of September 1942, no news since.” This page along with one or two others in the dossier from the Ministère des Armées confirm the date that Ernst Mombert and my aunt Suzanne were arrested in Fayence. This passage begs dissection.

Figure 7. Page in Ernst Mombert’s file from the French “Ministère des Armées” dated the 13th of August 1946 with the passage that has been parsed

First some historical background. Nazi Germany captured France during WWII following the abbreviated Battle of France that lasted from only May 10, 1940, until June 25, 1940. The occupation of France by Nazi Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country. The remainder of Metropolitan France was the rump state of Vichy France headed by Marshal Philippe Petain. Fayence was in this so-called unoccupied “free zone” (zone libre). Vichy France adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany which entailed helping the German authorities deport Jews to killing centers, explaining why Franz and my aunt were arrested by the Fayence constables rather than their Nazi overlords. In November 1942 Germany and their Italian allies finally occupied Vichy France, the zone libre.

A 2017 article I came across by Paul Webster, entitled “The Vichy Policy on Jewish Deportation,” speaks to this tragic French collaboration:

“Even some pro-German states took a stand. Fascist Hungary resisted Nazi demands to hand over Jews until the country was invaded in 1944. Italy had anti-Semitic laws, but nevertheless defended French Jews in south-eastern France, which was occupied by the Italian army, and thus saved thousands of lives.

The last example is the most relevant to the tragic French experience, whose consequences are yet to be resolved. More than 60 years after a collaborationist French government helped deport 75,721 Jewish refugees and French citizens to Nazi death camps, the national conscience has still not come to terms with the betrayal of a community persecuted by French anti-Semitic laws.”

As a half-French, half-German Jew, this last paragraph explains my highly ambivalent attitude towards the French, namely, their unwillingness to acknowledge and apologize for their complicity in the persecution and murder of Jews during and immediately following WWII.

In the file, Ernst is characterized as “étranger,” foreigner. (see Figure 7) While clearly a Jewish refugee from Germany, by the time of his deportation, he had owned land and been a farmer in Fayence since 1933. (Figure 8) Like my father, Ernst was characterized as “apatride,” stateless (see Figure 7), so thereby not afforded the protection that long-term residency should have bestowed.

Figure 8. Archival record from the “Archives Départementales du Var” in Draguignan, France placing Ernst Mombert’s acquisition of his fruit farm in Fayence on the 1st of December 1933

Another page in the dossier from the Ministère des Armées dated the 20^th of July 1946 uses the words “NON RENTRE” (Figure 9) as regards Ernst Mombert’s whereabouts at the time. Translated as “not returned,” this is a highly charged expression, as I learned. It was a transparent effort by French authorities to avoid culpability for the fate of deportees, most of whom had been transported by the French using their railway system to the German collection center of Drancy outside Paris, a known transit point to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There can be no doubt the French knew most deportees had been murdered and would never return.

Figure 9. Page in Ernest Mombert’s file from the French “Ministère des Armées” dated the 20th of July 1946 using the words “NON RENTRE,” not returned

This leads me to a brief discussion in a historical fiction book by Anne Berest my wife Ann is currently reading, entitled “The Postcard,” that coincidentally speaks to this very point regarding the French government. Quoting:

“‘After the war, Myriam wanted to file an official record for each member of her family.’

‘What kind of record?’

‘Death certificates.’

‘Oh. Yes. . .of course.’

‘It was extremely complicated. It took almost two years of dealing with endless bureaucratic red tape for Myriam to file a record. And bear in mind: at the time, the French government still wouldn’t officially use the terms “killed in concentration camp” or “deported.” The term they used was “not returned.” Do you understand what that meant? The symbolism?’

‘Yes. The French government was saying to the Jews, your families weren’t murdered because of our actions. They just. . .haven’t come back.’” (2021:255)

As Anne Berest implies, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

The fact Ernst Mombert never came back is reflected on several pages in the dossier, including a document dated the 30^th of October 1946, titled “Acte De Disparition,” Deed of Disappearance, or the date he went missing. (Figure 10)

Figure 10. Page in Ernst Mombert’s file from the French “Ministère des Armées” with his “Acte De Disparition,” Deed of Disappearance, dated the 30th of October 1946 declaring he was deported on the 7th of September 1942

In the case of four of Anne Berest’s “not returned” relatives, it took until October 26, 1948, for them to be officially declared “missing.” The next phase of her ordeal then began with her fight for official death certificates, which only a judgment by a civil court could render in the absence of bodies. When the judgment was eventually handed down on July 15, 1949, seven years after her relatives died, stunningly, the official place of death of her relatives was Drancy, as it would also have been for Ernst and Suzanne. In other words, the French government didn’t recognize that they died at Auschwitz. Thus, the deported went from “not returned,” to “missing,” to “deceased on French soil.” (2021: 255-56) The official death dates were the date the deportation convoys left Drancy. In the case of Ernst and Suzanne, who were aboard the same convoy, their death dates would have been recorded as the 7^th of September 1942 when the transport left Drancy.

In Anne’s case, the Ministère Des Anciens Combattants Et Victimes De Guerre even requested the trial court prosecutor to specify the place of death as Auschwitz, but they rejected this request. Additionally, the court prosecutor refused to say at the time that the Jews had been deported because of race, but rather said it was for political reasons. It took Anne until 1996, after vigorous lobbying, that official recognition of “death by deportation” was granted and the death certificates were amended. (2021: 256)

In the case of Ernst’s certificate of death, his death judgment was rendered by the Draguignan civil court on the 17^th of July 1947, but there is no mention of “death by deportation” since the judgment was made well before 1996. (Figure 11) My aunt’s death certificate was similarly issued by the Draguignan civil court more than two years later, on the 21^st of September 1949. (Figure 12) The certificate states she was deported to Poland, but again no mention of “death by deportation.”

Figure 11. Handwritten page in Ernst Mombert’s French “Ministère des Armées” file from the civil court in Draguignan declaring Ernst died

Figure 12. My aunt Suzanne was officially declared dead by the civil court in Draguignan on the 21st of September 1949

TRANSCRIPTION OF ERNST MOMBERT’S DECLARATION OF DEATH (see Figure 11)

en marge à gauche est écrit :

“transcription du jugement, déclaration du décès de Mombert Ernest”

sur la page est écrit :

“Mairie de Fayence, arrondissement de Draguignan”

“Le 7 décembre 1947, 10 heures, nous, maire de la commune de Fayence avons procédé à la transcription du jugement déclaratif du décès ci-après.

d’un jugement rendu par le tribunal de première instance de Draguignan établi le 17 juillet 1947.

Il a été extrait ce qui suit :

Par ces motifs, le tribunal sévit de première instance de Draguignan, après en avoir délibéré en jugement conformément à la loi

Déclare le décès de Mombert Ernest apatride d’origine allemande né à Frisbourg en Brisgau (Allemagne) le 9 juillet 1911 du mariage de Paul Mombert et de Gieser Cornelie, domicilié en dernier lieu à Fayence (Var)

déporté le 7 septembre 1942

ordonne la transcription du présent jugement sur les registres courants de l’état civil de la commune de Fayence (Var) et du lieu de naissance de Mombert Ernest

Dit que mention en sera faite pour être en besoin sera ainsi jugée et prononcé à Draguignan en audience publique tenue au Palais de Justice de ladite ville le 17 juillet 1947

par messieurs Basque président, Beleret juge doyen, madame Parivet Thierrot juge en présence

de monsieur Clagnier juge suppléant occupant le siège du ministère public

assistés de monsieur Mailhare greffier

Enregistré à Draguignan le 22 juillet 1947

folio 29, case 290 pratis

le receveur Jeanne Cairrail et de cette transcription nous vous dressons la présente note que nous avons signée à la requête de monsieur le procureur de la République suivant note du 4 courant

approuvons la rature de 55 mots rayés nuls”

TRANSLATION

In the margin on the left is written:

“Transcription of the judgment, declaration of the death of Mombert Ernest”

On the page is written:

“Fayence City Town Hall, Draguignan district”

“On December 7, 1947, 10 a.m., we, the mayor of the municipality of Fayence, proceeded to the transcription of the declaratory judgment of death below.

Of a judgment rendered by the Draguignan Court of First Instance established on July 17, 1947.

The following has been extracted:

For these reasons, the court is in the first instance of Draguignan, after having deliberated in judgment in accordance with the law.

Declares the death of stateless Mombert Ernest of German origin born in Frieburg in Brisgau (Germany) on July 9, 1911 from the marriage of Paul Mombert and Gieser Cornelie, last domiciled in Fayence (Var).

Deported on September 7, 1942.

Orders the transcription of this judgment on the current registers of the civil status of the municipality of Fayence (Var) and the place of birth of Mombert Ernest.

Said that mention will be made to be in need will thus be tried and pronounced in Draguignan in a public hearing held at the Palace of Justice of said city on July 17, 1947.

By gentlemen Basque president, Beleret judge dean, Mrs. Parivet Thierrot judge in presence.

Of Mr. Clagnier substitute judge occupying the seat of the public prosecutor’s office.

Assisted by Mr. Mailhare clerk.

Registered in Draguignan on July 22, 1947.

Folio 29, case 290 practices.”

The receiver Jeanne Cairrail and from this transcript we give you this note that we signed at the request of the Public Prosecutor following note of 4 current.

Let’s approve the erasure of 55 null crossed out words.

Let me turn to another topic referred to in the Ministère’s document file, namely, the places and dates in France where Ernst Mombert was interned (Figure 13):

Figure 13. Page in Ernst Mombert’s file from the French “Ministère des Armées” listing the places and dates Ernst Mombert was interned between 1939 and 1942

LES MILLES (4 September 1939-25 October 1940)

GURS (26 October 1940-15 May 1941)

FAYENCE (26 August 1942-7 September 1942)

DRANCY (7 September 1942 deported to Poland)

These are the internments Julia Saintgermain first asked me whether I knew anything about. As I mentioned above, prior to obtaining the dossier documenting the above internments, the only place where I’d found a fleeting reference that Ernst had been held was “Le Camp de la Rode” near Toulon. I found this in a publication by André Fontaine entitled “Quelques Camps du Sud-Est 1939-1940.” Because I can find no mention of this as an internment camp, I think it may simply have been a collection or transit point.

I suspect Ernst was detained here very, very briefly, possibly only from the 4^th of September 1939 until around the 16^th of September 1939. Let me explain my reasoning by providing some context.

Let me review what I discussed in Post 119. WWII began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. The next day, France decreed a national mobilization. Internment sites for nationals of the German Reich (i.e., German, Austrian, and Czech emigrants) were planned and requisitioned in every French departement. By the 3^rd of September, the French Minister of the Interior sent a telegram to each prefecture concerning the “concentration of foreigners from the German empire.” Immediately notifications about the planned roundups were circulated and posters put up in the town halls. All male nationals of the German Reich between 17 and 50 were required to report for incarceration. Male nationals from the department of Var were initially detained in La Rode near Toulon. This city is on the French Riviera located 74 miles southwest of Fayence.

Now according to the Ministère’s dossier Ernst was detained in Les Milles as of the 4^th of September 1939. André Fontaine very specifically places Ernst in Toulon at La Rode, so sometime around the 4^th of September Ernst turned himself into the French authorities there. Why then is Ernst shown as incarcerated in Les Milles on that precise date? If, as I theorize, La Rode was never more than a collection or transit point, technically a “subcamp” of Les Milles, the place of Ernst’s initial incarceration may simply have been recorded as Les Milles.

André Fontaine remarks the following on the transfer of the German Reich nationals to Les Milles from Toulon: “On September 16, 1939, the departure from Toulon was announced: a truck took the luggage at 6pm and the train left at 9pm. The arrival was only the next morning in Aix-en-Provence [Editor’s Note: location of Les Milles], after 15 hours of train to cover 90 km [Editor’s Note: 55 miles].” On these grounds, I surmise Ernst was among the detainees transferred from Toulon to Aix-en-Provence on the 16^th of September 1939.

Based on when nationals of the German Reich were required to report for internment, sometime around the 4^th of September 1939, and when detainees were transported from La Rode to Les Milles, the 16^th of September 1939, circumscribes Ernst’s detention dates in La Rode, so I think.

From the dossier, we learn that Ernst was incarcerated for over a year in Les Milles (Figures 14-15) until the 25^th of October 1940. According to the timeline provided, Ernst’s next internment was in Gurs, a large concentration camp in southwestern France, located 385 miles west of Aix-en-Provence. Ernst’s internment there started the day after it ended in Les Milles, the 26^th of October 1940. It seems highly unlikely the distance between the two places could have been covered in one day. The reason for Ernst’s transfer from one camp to the other is unknown, though it took place many months after the Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis on the 22^nd of June 1940. Had the Nazis intended to deport the Jews to Drancy from Gurs, as they later did, they could just as easily have done so from Les Milles, as they also later did.

Figure 14. Camp Les Milles where Ernst Mombert and my aunt Suzanne were interned on their way to Drancy and Auschwitz

Figure 15. Camp Les Milles where Ernst Mombert and my aunt Suzanne were interned on their way to Drancy and Auschwitz

According to the dossier, Ernst’s internment at Gurs ended on the 15^th of May 1941. Whether Ernst was released or escaped from there is unknown though clearly he returned to his farm in Fayence, where the file claims he was last interned from the 26^th of August 1942 until the 7^th of September 1942. These latter dates are in error. The last three “postcards” written by my aunt following her and Ernst’s arrest on the 26^th of August 1942 confirm this. Her cards were dated and/or postmarked, respectively, from Draguignan on the 26^th of August, from Les Milles in Aix-en-Provence on the 29^th of August, and from Avignon on the 2^nd of September. For whatever bureaucratic reason, Ernst’s stops on his way to Drancy, outside Paris, were all recorded as part of his incarceration in Fayence.

Ernst Mombert was incarcerated twice in Les Milles in Aix-en-Provence, the first time supposedly beginning on the 4^th of September 1939 until the 25^th of October 1940, then briefly a second time simultaneously with my aunt around the 29^th of August 1942. I can only imagine how Kafkaesque it must have seemed to Ernst to be returned to a concentration camp he thought he’d escaped from.

Except for the period between the 15^th of May 1941 and the 26^th of August 1942, Ernst was almost continuously incarcerated in France from September 1939 until he was deported to Auschwitz in September 1942. First, following Germany’s invasion of Poland on the 1^st of September 1939, as a German Jew refugee living in France, he was incredulously perceived and incarcerated as a possible quisling. Then, after Germany conquered France, he was interned as a Jew which led to his untimely death in September 1942. (Figure 16) Though my aunt’s route to Auschwitz followed a different pathway, her fate was identical. (Figures 17)

Figure 16. Commemorative plaque at Camp Les Milles bearing the names of deportees killed, including “Ernst Mombert”

Figure 17. Commemorative plaque at Camp Les Milles bearing the names of deportees killed, including my aunt “Suzanne Muller née Bruch,” with the surname misspelled

REFERENCES

Berest, A. (2021). The Postcard. Europa Editions.

Fontaine, André. Quelques camps du Sud-Est, 1939-1940 [réfugiés allemands], Recherches régionales. Centre de documentation des Alpes-Maritimes, 1988, 29e année, n° 3, p. 179-206.

(https://criminocorpus.org/en/tools/bibliography/bibliography-copy/ouvrages/97683/)

Webster, Paul. “The Vichy Policy on Jewish Deportation,” BBC, February 12, 2011.

BBC – History – World Wars: The Vichy Policy on Jewish Deportation

POST 161: FATE OR COINCIDENCE? THE FLEA MARKET FIND OF FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHS

Note: In this post, I briefly consider the philosophical question whether the chance discovery of family photographs of my father’s first cousin Fedor Löwenstein found in a Paris flea market was fated or coincidental. The circumstances under which the event occurred was so improbable that a small part of me wonders if it was not predestined.

POST 35: FATE OF SOME JEWISH GUESTS WHO STAYED AT THE VILLA PRIMAVERA (FIESOLE, ITALY), 1937-1938

POST 105: FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN ‘S NAZI-CONFISCATED ART: RESTITUTION DENIED

POST 160: UPDATE ON COMPENSATION CLAIM AGAINST THE FRENCH MINISTRY OF CULTURE INVOLVING NAZI-CONFISCATED FAMILY ART

In several earlier posts, I’ve mentioned my friend Ms. Madeleine Isenberg (Figure 1) who volunteers at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles assisting members doing ancestral research. Madeleine once wrote an article for a periodical entitled “Avotaynu” detailing one of her research endeavors. She quoted her English uncle who claimed there is no such thing as coincidence, it’s all “beshert,” a Hebrew word for predestination or fate. My father Dr. Otto Bruck would have agreed with him.

Figure 1. Madeleine Isenberg and me in 2016

While I claim no adherence to this notion, I’ve come across several instances while doing ancestral research that make me think there may be an element of fate at work. Or, could it be as Branch Rickey, the brainy former General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, once said that “Luck is the residue of design?” That’s to say, by planning and knowing where opportunities lurk, perhaps one is more apt to find oneself in a place where a coincidental find may be made. I don’t pretend to know the answer.

Buried in Post 21, published in February 2018, I recounted the story of a similar coincidental or fated event related to my family. Before moving to the subject of this post, I’ll review that earlier incident as it may have been overlooked by readers. Interestingly, it involves two elements of chance.

I estimate my uncle Dr. Franz Müller and aunt Susanne Müller, née Bruck, arrived in Florence, Italy in the early part of 1936, following their emigration from Germany to escape Nazi authoritarianism. Thanks to a friend my uncle knew in the Tuscan hill town of Fiesole, above Florence [Italian: Firenze] by the name of Dr. Gino Frascani, he and my aunt leased one of his villas, the Villa Primavera. (Figure 2) Eventually, in collaboration with an Austrian Jewish woman, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi (Figure 3), who’d also emigrated from Austria via Germany, my aunt Susanne and Lucia turned the Villa Primavera into a bed-and-breakfast. In Post 35, I discussed some of the guests who stayed there between 1937 and 1938 and their eventual fates.

Figure 2. Photograph of the Villa Primavera in 1938 taken by my father

Figure 3. Ms. Lucia von Jacobi in 1936-1937

In connection with my ancestral research, my wife Ann and I visited Fiesole and Florence in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Prior to our initial visit in 2014, I contacted the then-town archivist, Ms. Lucia Nadetti (Figure 4), at the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” and arranged to review pertinent documents. I’ve detailed the results of those archival investigations in Post 21, so refer readers to that post.

Figure 4. My friend Ms. Lucia Nadetti, the former archivist at the Municipal Historic Archive in Fiesole in 2014

Curious whether my uncle and aunt had purchased the Villa Primavera when they arrived in Fiesole, Ms. Nadetti directed us to the “Conservatoria Dei Registri Immobiliari” in nearby Firenze (Florence) to check ownership records. Here, we learned the descendants of the former obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Gino Frascani currently own two houses along Via Del Salviatino, the street where the Villa Primavera is located. However, the family no longer owns the villa though my uncle never purchased it.

The visit to the “Conservatoria,” however, resulted in the first of the two chance events mentioned above. In 2014, my wife and I were staying at a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Fiesole, but rather than deal with Florence’s traffic to get to the Conservatoria, we took the bus. While trying to ascertain where to catch the return bus at the end of the day, an English-speaking Italian woman, Ms. Giuditta Melli (Figure 5), noticed our confusion and confirmed we were in the right place. Giuditta was headed on the same bus, so we exchanged pleasantries on the ride, and she invited us to visit the ceramic shop near the Conservatoria where she teaches. Two days later we dropped by and mentioned our reason for visiting Fiesole. Giuditta was literally moved to tears because she’d recently learned that her great-uncle was Jewish and had been deported to Buchenwald from Firenze by the Italian Fascists and murdered there; the house where Giuditta currently lives was once owned by this great-uncle. It should be noted that Giuditta is very familiar with the Villa Primavera as it’s located a stone’s throw from her home. Regardless, as we prepared to leave, we exchanged emails and promised to stay in touch. This has turned into an exceptionally warm and productive friendship, one that led to the discovery of the second chance event.

Figure 5. My good friend, Ms. Giuditta Melli, in 2024 who my wife and I first met at a bus stop in Florence in 2014

Following our visit to Fiesole in 2015, my wife and I had not anticipated returning in 2016. However, Giuditta made a surprising discovery while doing a casual online search of Lucia von Jacobi, the Austrian lady with whom my aunt ran the Pension Villa Primavera. As a result our plans changed. She learned of a professor, Dr. Irene Below (Figure 6), from Werther, Germany, who’d written a full-length book about Ms. Jacobi. Giuditta immediately contacted her, explained her interest in Lucia, told her of my aunt and uncle, and mentioned she was in touch and assisting me. Dr. Below was surprised to learn of Giuditta’s interest in people she’d studied and knew about, including my aunt and uncle. Consequently, Giuditta invited Irene and my wife and me for a get-together at her home in 2016.

Figure 6. Dr. Irene Below at Parco di Monte Ceceri in Florence, Italy in 2016

Dr. Below explained how she came to write a book about Lucia von Jacobi. She arrived in Firenze in 1964 as a student intending to write about the history of art. While researching this topic, however, she happened upon magazines and diaries of an unknown person who turned out to be Ms. von Jacobi, a woman with very famous friends (e.g., Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann, Gustaf Gründgens, etc.), and decided instead to write about her. Then, as fate would have it, in 1966, Dr. Below walked into an antiquarian shop in Firenze (Figure 7) and discovered the bulk of Ms. Jacobi’s personal papers, which she soon purchased with her parents’ financial assistance. For those unaware of events in Firenze in 1966, great floods along the Arno in November resulted in countless treasures being swept away and destroyed; if not for Dr. Below’s fortuitous discovery, the same would likely have happened to Ms. Jacobi’s papers.

Figure 7. The antiquarian shop in Florence where Dr. Below discovered Lucia von Jacobi’s personal papers

Readers may rightly wonder how or why Lucia’s personal papers wound up in an antiquarian shop in Florence. A little bit of historical context is necessary to explain how this likely happened. In May 1938, Hitler paid his second visit to Italy since becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and the first since the two countries signed the Axis agreement in 1936. Over the course of seven days, Hitler and his extensive entourage were treated to a massive display of fascist spectacle in three cities: Rome, Naples and Florence. Hitler’s tour of Florence took place on May 9, 1938.

Soon after on July 14, 1938, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.” This Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race to which Jews did not belong. Between September 2, 1938, and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy. Ms. Jacobi had just returned to Firenze from Palestine, but after passage of the racial laws, she escaped in October 1938 to Switzerland, forced to leave all her possessions behind. As a related aside, this corresponds with the same time that my aunt and uncle emigrated from Italy to France. Dr. Below surmises that Lucia’s personal papers remained in the Villa Primavera until Dr. Frascani’s descendants sold the house, after which they were sold to an antique dealer.

As to belongings among Lucia’s personal papers that relate to my aunt and uncle, there were several relevant items. Dr. Below discovered a photograph of Ms. Jacobi with my Uncle Franz seated on the same chairs as a photo I possess showing my aunt and uncle. (Figures 8-9) Another picture shows my aunt and uncle in their Sunday best. (Figure 10) Irene also found a card written by my Aunt Susanne to Lucia on July 31, 1938, from Champoluc in the Aosta Valley of Italy, where my aunt and uncle had gone on vacation. Most interesting is the surviving second page of a letter my Aunt Susanne wrote to Lucia when Lucia traveled to Palestine for three months in the latter half of 1938.

Figure 8. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller and Lucia von Jacobi at the Villa Primavera sometime between 1936 and 1938 seated at the same table and on the same chairs as my aunt and uncle as seen in Figure 9

Figure 9. My aunt and uncle at the Villa Primavera in 1938 seated at the same table and on the same chairs as seen in Figure 8

Figure 10. Photo of my aunt and uncle discovered by Dr. Irene Below in 1966 at an antiquarian shop in Florence

Thus, a chance encounter with an Italian lady Giuditta Melli on the streets of Florence in 2014 led to learning about Dr. Below who in 1966 walked into an antiquarian shop in Florence where she happened upon Lucia von Jacobi’s personal papers, the Austrian lady with whom my Aunt Susanne co-managed the Pension Villa Primavera in Fiesole between 1936 and 1938. Dr. Below then wrote a book about Lucia von Jacobi that my dear friend Giuditta stumbled upon. Included in this stash of papers are several items related to my family. Is this coincidence or predestination? I’ll let readers decide.

This brings me to a discussion of another more recent chance discovery. This involves a cache of photographs portraying my father’s first cousin, Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946), that were found in a Paris flea market by a man named Nicolas Neumann (Figure 11) from Somogy Éditions d’Art; this is a French art book publishing house founded in 1937. Readers will recall that Fedor Löwenstein is my father’s first cousin who was most recently discussed in Post 160 and is the subject of my restitution and repatriation claim involving the French Ministry of Culture. Readers are invited to peruse my earlier post. However, let me review a few salient facts.

Figure 11. Nicolas Neumann from Somogy Editions who purchased documents and photos at a Paris flea market ca. 2015 belonging to Doris Halphen, Fedor Löwenstein’s onetime girlfriend

As mentioned in Post 160, I originally filed my claim for restitution and repatriation of Fedor Löwenstein’s artworks in October 2014. This was filed with the French Ministry of Culture’s (Premier Ministre) Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victims de spoliations antisemites (CIVS), Commission for the restitution of property and compensation for victims of anti-Semitic spoliation. In May 2015 I traveled to Paris to discuss my claim with the CIVS and met staff members Mme. Muriel de Bastier and her intern Mlle. Eleonore Claret. (Figure 12)

Figure 12. In May 2015, me with Mme. Muriel de Bastier and her intern Eleonore Claret, CIVS staff

Several months later, Eleonore sent me photos of Fedor Löwenstein (Figure 13) from an exhibit on spoliated art that took place at the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (“National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture”) in 2015. The origin of these photos was not explained so I sent an email to the Centre Pompidou requesting copies of the images and an explanation as to their source; I never heard back from them. I eventually ascertained the photos of Fedor Löwenstein that had been part of the 2015 museum exhibit at the Centre Pompidou originated from Nicolas Neumann’s find at the Paris flea market.

Figure 13. A page of photos showing Fedor Löwenstein originating from Nicolas Neumann’s find at a Paris flea market

Mr. Neumann determined the documents he’d found probably belonged to Fedor’s onetime girlfriend, Doris Halphen. (Figure 14) Mr. Neumann loaned the documents and photos he had purchased for the 2015 exhibit to the Centre Pompidou. Nicolas is friends with the retired Director of the Kandinsky Library, M. Didier Schulmann, who convinced him to donate the materials in February 2017 to the Kandinsky Library which is part of the Centre Pompidou.

Figure 14. Photograph from Doris Halphen’s album showing her with Fedor Löwenstein in Mirmande in the Drôme

The eclectic body of documentation is referred to as the “Corposano Archive Fund-Doris Halphen.” The archival collection comprises three significant groups. The first, the most substantial, is composed of documentation from the Corposano dance studio; the second is about Fedor Löwenstein; and the last is made up of biographical photographs and family albums.

The Kandinsky Library provides the following description about Doris Halphen, the Studio Corposano, and Fedor Löwenstein:

“Doris Halphen was born in Prague and co-founded the Corposano studio with her Finnish collaborator Marianne Pontan in 1932 in Paris. They taught a very innovative dance method at the time: the Hallerau-Laxenberg method. (Figures 15-18) The documents in the collection, mostly photographs, are both portraits of dancers in the studio and advertising items. Press articles and dance magazines provide an overview of the context of dance in the 1930s and 1940s and an understanding of the Hallerau-Laxenberg method and its principles.

Figure 15. Dancers from the Corposano Studio in Mirmande in the Drôme dancing the Hallerau-Laxenberg method

Figure 16. Dancers from the Corposano Studio in Mirmande in the Drôme

Figure 17. Doris Halphen, Fedor Löwenstein’s onetime girlfriend, dancing at Mirmande

Figure 18. Doris Halphen, Fedor Löwenstein’s onetime girlfriend, dancing at Mirmande

A second part of the collection consists of documentation on Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946). Born in Munich on April 13, 1901, he studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Berlin, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, where Oskar Kokoschka taught from 1919 to 1924. He joined France in 1923 and settled in Paris, attracted by the artistic influence of the capital. A lover of Doris Halphen, the painter’s Jewish and Czechoslovak condition forced him to leave Paris at the beginning of the war and take refuge in Mirmande in the Drôme. (Figure 19) The couple separated shortly afterwards, and Fedor Löwenstein lived a tumultuous passion with the artist Marcelle Rivier until October-November 1943.”

Figure 19. Postcard of Mirmande in Drôme in southern France, where Fedor Löwenstein went into hiding during part of WWII

The collection includes unidentified biographical photographs of Doris Halphen that were probably taken at the beginning of the twentieth century in Prague. Additionally, there are two photographic albums that retrace the memories of two summers in Mirmande in the Drôme, including one from 1938. Fedor Löwenstein and Doris Halphen are the recurring characters.

My April 2024 visit to Paris to attend a CIVS committee meeting where my compensation claim was being discussed provided a perfect opportunity to visit the Kandinsky Library where the Doris Halphen collection is archived. Appointments must be scheduled in advance. With the grateful assistance of Mme. Florence Saragoza, who originally helped me file my claim in 2014, I was able to make last-minute arrangements to examine and photograph the collection.

Fortunately, Mme. Muriel de Bastier, whom I first met in 2015 and who still works at the CIVS, accompanied my wife and me to the Kandinsky Library; I say fortunately because the line to enter the Centre Pompidou extended for blocks, and I otherwise would never have been able to view the Doris Halphen Collection before the museum closed. Muriel graciously also arranged for us to meet M. Didier Schulmann, the former Director of the Kandinsky Library, who gave me an extremely useful orientation to the collection. (Figure 20)

Figure 20. From left to right: Didier Schulmann, former Director of the Kandinsky Library, me, and Muriel de Bastier at the Centre Pompidou in April 2024

During my all-too brief visit, I concentrated on photographing the album with pictures of Fedor Löwenstein and Doris Halphen. (Figure 21-23) Among the images unlikely to have been recognized by any other researcher were two of Fedor with his sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein (1902-1986) that were taken in Mirmande. (Figures 24-25) Unlike Fedor who died in 1946 before I was born, I met Hansi in Nice, France on multiple occasions as a child.

Figure 23. Fedor Löwenstein and Doris Halphen in Mirmande

Figure 24. One of two photographs of Fedor Löwenstein with his sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein in Mirmande

Figure 25. Second of two photographs of Fedor Löwenstein with his sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein, seated next to him, in Mirmande

An out-of-place picture I discovered in the collection was of the famous African American, Paul Robeson (1898-1976). He was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances. Among the few pictures in Doris Halphen’s collection that is captioned it reads “Robeson at Wo-Chula.” (Figures 26a-b) I think this picture was taken in Chowula, Ghana, but the circumstances for its inclusion in Doris’ album is a complete mystery.

Figure 26a. Photo from Doris Halphen’s album of Paul Robeson at Wo-Chula, believed to be in Ghana

Figure 26b. Caption on picture of “Robeson at Wo-Chula”

I’ve never met nor communicated with Nicolas Neumann so am in the dark regarding the precise circumstances under which he found Doris Halphen’s collection. Regardless, I imagine he’s one of the few people who would have realized the significance of what he’d found and had connections with the Kandinsky Library to ensure the materials wound up in an archive where they would be properly cared for. From a personal standpoint, what is gratifying is that I was able to track down a previously unknown to me cache of Fedor Löwenstein photographs. The more existential question is that Nicolas Neimann even found Doris Halphen’s surviving papers and photographs. Again, I ask whether this was fated or coincidental?

REFERENCES

Isenberg, Madeleine. (2012). The Rotter Relic. AVOTAYNU, Volume XXVIII (Issue 4, Winter 2012), pp. 27-31.

Studio Corposano – Doris Halphen. Circa 1900-1950, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Kandinsky Library – Documentation and Research Centre of the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre for Industrial Creation, Call number: COR 1 – 4.

Studio Corposano – Doris Halphen, 1900-1950 | Funds and sub-funds | Union Catalogue of France (CCFr) (bnf.fr)

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.

POST 79: DR. OTTO BRUCK’S PATH TO THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION

Note: Beginning with this post, I shift to the timing and chain of events that led to my father’s enlistment in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938, followed in an upcoming post by a discussion of my father’s time in this French military unit.

Post 71: A Day in The Life of My Father, Dr. Otto Bruck—22^nd of August 1930

Figure 1. My father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, daughter of Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein, in Zoppot, Free City of Danzig [today: Sopot, Poland] on the 8th of March 1929

Figure 2. My father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, daughter of Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein, in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland]

My father received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31^st of May 1930. Soon thereafter, he moved to the Free City of Danzig, Freie Stadt Danzig in German, where he apprenticed with a Dr. Fritz Bertram. I think his relocation to Danzig may have been related to the fact that he was very close to his aunt and uncle, Rudolf Löwenstein and Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck, and two of their three children, Jeanne (Figures 1-2) and Heinz Löwenstein, who all lived there. In Post 71, I described the tragic circumstances of Rudolf Löwenstein’s death in a plane crash in then-Czechoslovakia on the 22^nd of August 1930, when my father resided with him and his family.

By April 1932, my father had gained enough technical expertise to strike out independently, and open his own dental practice in the nearby town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]. While this was undoubtedly a signature achievement in my father’s life, slightly more than eight months later, on the 30^th of January 1933, Hitler was appointed Germany’s Chancellor by the President Paul von Hindenburg, and then became Führer in 1934. An October 1934 picture of the office building in Tiegenhof where my father lived and had his practice was festooned with Nazi flags (Figure 3), clearly demonstrating the predictable impact of political developments in Germany on the Free City of Danzig and the looming danger. By April 1937, my father was devoid of clients, so he shuttered his practice. Judging from the dates on his photos, he appears to have stayed in Tiegenhof until fall of that year.

Figure 3. Office building at Markstrasse 8 in Tiegenhof in 1934 where my father had his dental practice and living quarters, festooned with Nazi flags

I think my father then briefly went to Berlin to “lose” himself in the relative anonymity of a larger city. His adored sister Susanne and her husband, Dr. Franz Müller, had already fled Berlin in favor of Italy by March 1936. However, his older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, who would ride out the entire war in Berlin hidden by friends and family, was still practicing dentistry in Berlin in 1937 under the auspices of a non-Jewish dentist when this was still feasible. Perhaps, my father stayed briefly with his brother, but, regardless, by March 1938, his dated pictures place him in Vienna, Austria between the 5^th and 9^th of March. (Figure 4) His ultimate destination though was Fiesole, Italy, where his sister and brother-in-law were then living. His entered Italy on the 10^th of March 1938 but arrived in Fiesole only on the 26^th of March (Figure 5), spending the intervening period skiing in the Dolomites.

Figure 4. Series of photos my father took between the 5th and 9th of March 1938 in Vienna, Austria, after he’d fled Germany that month

Figure 5. Page from the registration log archived at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my father’s arrival in Italy on the 10th of March 1938 and in Fiesole on the 26th of March for a planned two-month stay

During Italy’s Fascist era, all out-of-town visitors were required to appear with their hosts at the Municipio, City Hall, provide their names, show their identity papers, indicate their anticipated length of stay, and complete what was called a “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy.” The surviving records for Fiesole are today kept at a branch of the Municipio called the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive.” (Figure 6) These registration logs and forms, while highly intrusive, are enormously informative for doing genealogical research, uncovering names of visitors, and establishing timelines for these guests. (Figure 7)

Figure 6. My friend, Ms. Lucia Nadetti (left), Director of Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” with another friend, Ms. Giuditta Melli, in June 2015 at the Municipal Archive

Figure 7. My wife, Ann Finan, researching historic records at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale” in June 2014

While 1938 was hardly a serene time, by June or July, my father nonetheless decided to tour parts of Italy and adjoining Switzerland, including Florence, Rome (Figure 8), Pompeii (Figure 9), Naples, Sorrento, the Island of Ischia, and Ascona; his travels lasted until September. By the 15^th of September 1938, he was back in Fiesole according to a surviving immigration register on file at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale.” This record indicates an anticipated two-week visit, though it’s not clear how long my dad actually stayed. (Figure 10)

Figure 8. My father’s August 1938 photo of the Colosseum in Rome

Figure 9. My father’s August 1938 photo of the “Dancing Faunus Statue of Pompeii”

Figure 10. Page from the registration log archived at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my father’s return to Fiesole on the 15th of September 1938 for a planned two week stay

Let me briefly digress and provide some historical context for what was happening in Italy at the time. On the 9^th of May 1938, Adolph Hitler had visited Florence escorted by Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, and toured some historic sites. Soon after, on July 14, 1938, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.” Basically, this Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race of which Jews were no part. Between September 2, 1938 and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy.

It quickly became apparent to my father, his sister, her husband, and my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, also living in Fiesole, that remaining in Italy was no longer possible. Again, according to records on file at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” my aunt and uncle are deleted from the population records of the city, in Italian “Data dalle quale decorre la cancellazione dal Registro di popolazione,” beginning on the 16^th of September 1938. (Figures 11-12) Thus, my father’s arrival and registration in Fiesole the day before was likely timed to help his relatives pack up and leave, though he may have stayed longer.

Figure 11. Emigration record from Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my aunt and uncle, Susanne and Franz Müller, were deleted from the population records of Fiesole on the 16th of September 1938

Figure 12. My aunt and uncle, Susanne and Franz Müller, standing by the entrance to the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, where they lived, perhaps around the time they permanently moved to France in September 1938

The next stop along my family’s odyssey was Fayence, France, roughly 42 miles west of Nice, France; Fayence is one of the “perched villages” overlooking the plain between the southern Alps and the Esterel massif. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller’s daughter by his first marriage, Margit Mombert née Müller, lived there with her husband, brother-in-law, and mother-in-law on a fruit farm the family owned. I discussed this in Post 22 so refer readers to that publication. I place my aunt, uncle and grandmother’s arrival in Fayence towards the end of September 1938. While the collaborationist government of Vichy France would not be established in the southern part of metropolitan France until July of 1940, my ancestors’ recent displacements and the reach of the Nazis would have made them extremely nervous. Clearly, in the case of my father, riding out the impending storm in France or elsewhere in Europe was not a viable option at the age of only 31.

Coincidentally, by 1938, but likely years before, his widowed aunt Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck and her two children, discussed above, with whom my father had lived in Danzig between 1930 and 1932, had relocated to Nice, France. (Figure 13) Hedwig’s daughter, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein (1902-1986), was close to my father throughout his life. Realizing the danger he was in, she advised him to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, which is precisely what my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, did.

Figure 13. In March 1946, my father’s widowed aunt Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck with her three grown children, Hansi, Heinz and Fedor (seated), after she’d immigrated to Nice, France

In one of my father’s surviving post-WWII letters, dated the 7^th of January 1946, he requested a Carte d’identité, an identify card, from the Department of Alpes-Maritimes in southeast France, where Nice is located. In this letter, my father provides some dates that help establish where he was at various times before and during the war. According to this correspondence, by October 21, 1938, my father had arrived in Paris, France, where he applied for admittance to the French Foreign Legion, to which he was conscripted on the 9^th of November 1938 for a five-year hitch. So far, I’ve been unable to determine my father’s whereabouts between September 16, 1938, when he was in Fiesole, Italy, and October 21, 1938, when he arrived in Paris.

The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831. The Legion is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. My father was given a French nom de guerre, an alias, “Marcel Berger.” (Figures 14a-b) From the French Foreign Legion, I was able to obtain my father’s “Livret Matricule,” military file, which states that Marcel Berger was born on the 6^th of January 1907 in Strasbourg in the French Department of Bas-Rhin, and that his profession was “Chirurgien dentist,” dental surgeon. (Figure 15) While my father’s profession is correctly indicated, he was in fact born on the 16^th of April 1907 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. My father’s fluency in French would have afforded him a measure of protection had he been taken prisoner.

Figure 14a. Front side of my father’s dog tag from the French Foreign Legion with his “nom de guerre,” “Marcel Berger”

Figure 14b. Back side of my father’s dog tag from the French Foreign Legion indicating he was supposedly born in Strasbourg, France on the 6th of January 1907

Figure 15. The cover page of my father’s “Livret Matricule,” military file, from the French Foreign Legion showing, among other things, his “nom de guerre,” “Marcel Berger,” and his enlistment date, the 9th of November 1938

Readers may think the title of this post somewhat odd, as though to imply that my father’s enlistment in the French Foreign Legion was somehow preordained. While my father was very much inclined to believe in kismet, fate, I am a strong believer that you control your own destiny. That said, realistically, without an exit visa to a “sanctuary” country a Jewish person’s options would have been extremely limited in the lead-up to WWII, so my father was fortunate the French Foreign Legion was open to him and that he was unmarried and had no children to look after.

In the following post, I will provide substantially more background on the history of the French Foreign Legion during WWII to account for the Legion’s “conflicted” role at the time and explain how my father was able to travel to France in 1941 “across enemy lines” to visit his beloved sister Susanne one final time.

POST 35: FATE OF SOME JEWISH GUESTS WHO STAYED AT THE VILLA PRIMAVERA (FIESOLE, ITALY), 1937-1938

UPDATED MAY 18, 2021

(UPDATES IN RED)

“I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger.” (David Berger in his last letter, Vilna 1941, quoted from www.yadvashem.org brochure)

NOTE: This post examines the fate of some of the Jewish residents and guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy, between roughly March 1937 and September 1938, the period during which my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck co-managed the property as a bed-and-breakfast with a Jewish emigrant formerly from Austria and Germany, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi. Investigating what became of the guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera during this time wound up upending my preconceived notion that the boarders were all Jewish emigrés permanently fleeing Germany.

Surviving historic records archived at the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” in Fiesole, place my aunt Susanne and my uncle Dr. Franz Müller’s arrival there in about March 1936, and their departure in mid-September 1938. Beginning approximately a year after their arrival, that’s to say, in March 1937, and continuing until they left for France in mid-September 1938, registration logs from the Villa Primavera record numerous guests. I was surprised at the large number of visitors who stayed there, mostly Jewish, and just assumed my aunt and uncle hosted them as they tried to escape Europe and Nazi persecution. While I eventually came across a reference indicating my aunt and Ms. Jacobi had run the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast, explaining the multiple boarders, this did not initially alter my view that the Jewish guests had already permanently fled Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland, never to return.

Figure 1. “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” (Stay of Foreigners in Italy) form for my great-aunt Franziska Bruck

To remind readers, during Italy’s Fascist era, all out-of-town visitors to Fiesole and elsewhere were required to appear with their hosts at the Municipio, or City Hall, provide their names and those of their parents, declare their occupation, state when and where they were born, show their identity papers, give their passport numbers, divulge their anticipated length of stay, and complete what was called a “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy.” (Figure 1) As readers will rightly conclude, collecting this information represented a vast invasion of privacy, although forensic genealogists can glean an enormous amount of useful ancestral data. While virtually all the Soggiorno forms state the reason for the guest’s visit as “turismo,” tourism, I concluded this was a “cover” for their real purpose, planning their escape to America or elsewhere. There can be little doubt in examining the Soggiorno forms that most guests were educated and accomplished people of means, likely with good personal and professional contacts elsewhere in the world who could sponsor them and help them obtain travel visas. That said, this did not ensure that Jews were able to obtain such outside help or even intended to leave Europe.

Figure 2. My aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck, murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942

Figure 3. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck, suicide victim of the Holocaust in January 1942

Figure 4. My first cousin twice-removed, Auguste “Gusti” Schueck, murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in May 1943

With the Soggiorno forms and Fiesole registration ledgers in hand, using ancestry.com, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem Holocaust victims’ databases, as well as general Internet queries, I set out to try and determine the fate of as many of the guests of the Villa Primavera as possible. With respect to my own family, I already knew what had happened to them, in particular that my beloved aunt Susanne (Figure 2) and my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 3) had both died in the Holocaust; similarly, I already knew that one of my first cousins twice-removed, Auguste “Gusti” Schueck (Figure 4), had died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia on May 28, 1943. But, I was very curious whether other individuals who had passed through the Villa Primavera suffered a similar fate or managed to find sanctuary elsewhere. The findings upended my preconceived notion that the guests at the Villa Primavera were on a one-way journey out of Europe at the time they stayed in Fiesole.

Below is a table, alphabetically-arranged, of the Jewish residents and boarders who stayed at the Villa Primavera between March 1937 and September 1938, with comments as to their destiny, where discovered. Below the table, I highlight a few individuals, discussing some interesting things I’ve learned about them, including pictures, where found.

NAME (NATIONALITY)	DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH	DATE & PLACE OF DEATH	COMMENT

Argudinsky née Fleischer, Elisabetta (UNKNOWN)	11/24/1873 Reichenbach, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Bachrach née Bachmann, Elvire (SWISS)	9/15/1872 Karstein	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Baerwald née Lewino, Charlotte Victoria (GERMAN)	8/6/1870 Mainz, Germany	3/16/1966 St. Gallen, Switzerland	Destiny: Immigrated to America, died in Switzerland (Figure 5)
Berend, Eduard (GERMAN)	12/5/1883 Hannover, Germany	1973 Marbach, Germany	Destiny: Left Germany in 1939, returned after WWII
Bergmann née Neufeld, Amalie (GERMAN)	4/16/1881 Posen, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Brieger née Elias, Else (GERMAN)	2/19/1888 Posen, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Bruck née Berliner, Else (GERMAN)(Figure 6)	3/3/1873 Ratibor, Germany	2/16/1957 New York, NY	Destiny: Immigrated to America
Bruck, Eva (GERMAN) (Figure 7)	8/19/1906 Barcelona, Spain	8/15/1977 Ainring, Germany	Destiny: Immigrated to Spain, died in Germany (Figure 8)
Bruck, Franziska (GERMAN)	12/29/1866 Ratibor, Germany	1/2/1942 Berlin, Germany	Destiny: Suicide victim of the Holocaust
Bruck, Otto (GERMAN) (Figure 42)	4/16/1907 Ratibor, Germany	9/13/1994 New York, NY	Destiny: Immigrated to America
Cohn née Pollack, Caroline (GERMAN)	Unknown	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Cypres, Jacques (BELGIAN)	10/29/1904 Antwerp, Belgium	Unknown	Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 9)
Donath, Ludwig (GERMAN)	3/6/1900 Vienna, Austria	9/29/1967 New York, NY	Destiny: Immigrated to America
Donath née Camsky, Maria Josefa (GERMAN)	8/20/1902 Vienna, Austria	4/21/1975 Vienna, Austria	Destiny: Immigrated to America, returned to Austria after her husband’s death
Elias, Dr. Carl Ludwig (GERMAN)	9/19/1891 Berlin, Germany	1942 Auschwitz, Poland	Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz
Fleischner née Schoenfeld, Gabriele Ann Sophie (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 10a &b)	10/12/1895 Vienna, Austria	9/22/58 Massachusetts	Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Gabriele Anna Fleischner-Lawrence
Fleischner, Dr. Konrad George (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 11a& b)	10/12/1891 Vienna, Austria	9/1963 Massachusetts	Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Conrad Lawrence
Goldenring, Eva (GERMAN)	10/29/1906 Berlin, Germany	12/1969 Wilmington, DE	Destiny: Left Germany for France & Spain; eventually immigrated to America
Goldenring, Fritz (GERMAN)	9/11/1902	12/15/1943 Shanghai, China	Destiny: Left for Shanghai where he died in the Shanghai Ghetto
Goldenring née Hirsch, Helene (GERMAN)	3/25/1880 Ratibor, Germany	1/12/1968 Newark, NJ	Destiny: Left for Chile & eventually immigrated to America
Grödel, Emilie (GERMAN)	Unknown	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Hayoth HAYDT, Dr. Eugen (GERMAN)	4/19/1906 Metz, France	Unknown 1/17/1973 Sydney, Australia	Destiny: Unknown Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”; Died as Alvin Eugene Werner Haydt or A.E.W Haydt
Hayoth HAYDT née Winternitz, Lilly (GERMAN)	8/12/1908 Vienna, Austria	Unknown 2/4/1997 Sydney	Destiny: Unknown Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”
Heilbronner, Dr. Paul Milton (GERMAN) (Figures 12 & b)	11/22/1904 Munich, Germany	4/6/1980 Santa Barbara, CA	Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Paul Milton Laporte
Heilbronner née Wimpfheimer, Sofie (GERMAN) (Figures 13a & b)	3/18/1876 Augsburg, Germany	3/26/1965 Los Angeles, CA	Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Sofie Broner
Herz, Dr. Phil. Emanuel Emil (GERMAN)	4/5/1877 Essen, Germany	7/8/1971 Rochester, NY	Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 14)
Herz née Berl, Gabriele (GERMAN)	4/26/1886 Vienna, Austria	1957 Rochester, NY	Destiny: Immigrated to America
Hirschfeldt née Wolff, Katharina (GERMAN)	4/16/1866 Berlin, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Jacobi née Goldberg, Lucia von (GERMAN)	9/8/1887 Vienna, Austria	4/24/1956 Locarno, Switzerland	Destiny: Fled to Switzerland where she died after WWII
Kleinmann née Lewensohn, Gretchen (GERMAN)	12/31/1894 Hamburg, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Kleinmann, Dr. Phil & Med. Hans (GERMAN)	9/28/1895 Berlin, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Kleinmann née Luvic, Sophie (GERMAN)	11/27/1863 Memel, East Prussia	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Kuhnemund née Goldschmidt, Helene Ida (GERMAN)	3/15/1901 Berlin, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Leven née Levÿ, Johanna (GERMAN)	6/25/1866 Koenigshoeven, Germany	7/2/1942 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia	Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto
Leyser née Schueck, Auguste (GERMAN)	1/26/1872 Ratibor, Germany	10/5/1943 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia	Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto
Locker, Dine Martha (POLISH)	Unknown	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Maass, Margarete (GERMAN)	2/16/1880 Friedberg, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Unknown
Matthias, Julius (GERMAN)	5/15/1857 Hamburg, Germany	5/16/1942 Hamburg, Germany	Destiny: Died in Germany during WWII
Müller, Dr. Franz (GERMAN) (Figure 15)	12/31/1871 Berlin, Germany	10/1/1945 Fayence, France	Destiny: Left for Italy & France, where he died
Müller née Bruck, Susanne (GERMAN) (Figure 42)	4/20/1904 Ratibor, Germany	~9/7/1942 Auschwitz, Poland	Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz
Nienburg née Niess, Emmy (GERMAN)	8/16/1885 Berlin, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII
Oppler née Pinoff, Gertrude (GERMAN)	1/13/1876 Görlitz, Germany	3/9/1952 Frankfurt, Germany	Destiny: Died in Germany after WWII; (granddaughter of Marcus Braun, subject of Post 14)
Rosendorff, Friederike Elfriede (GERMAN)	11/28/1872 Berlin, Germany	Unknown	Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII
Sakheim née Plotkin, Anuta (PALESTINIAN)(Figure 16)	2/15/1896 Lodz, Poland	8/1939 Tel Aviv, Palestine	Destiny: Suicide
Schoop, Paul (SWISS)	7/31/1907 Zurich, Switzerland	1/1/1976 Van Nuys, CA	Destiny: Immigrated to America
Steinfeld née Blum, Jenny (GERMAN)	10/24/1865 Deutsch Eylau, West Prussia	8/27/1942 Berlin, Germany	Destiny: Suicide victim of the Holocaust

Figure 5. Report of Charlotte Victoria Baerwald’s Death in Switzerland in March 1966

Figure 6. My grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner in 1925

Figure 7. Eva Bruck in Barcelona in May 1950

Figure 8. Eva Bruck’s Death Certificate from Ainring, Germany, August 1977

Figure 9. Manifest of Alien Passengers showing Belgian Jew Jacques Cypres’s arrival from Porto, Portugal to NYC in July 1941

Figure 10a. Gabriele Fleischner’s 1940 Naturalization Record

Figure 11a. Konrad Fleischner’s 1940 Naturalization Record

Figure 12a. Paul Heilbronner’s 1939 Naturalization Record

Figure 13a. Sofie Heilbronner’s 1944 Naturalization Record

Figure 14. Emanuel Emil Herz’s 1938 Swiss Emigration form

Figure 15. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller on his 70th birthday in December 1941 in Fayence, France

Figure 16. Anuta Sakheim who committed suicide in Palestine in August 1939

Figure 17. My aunt Susanne & her husband Dr. Franz Müller in 1938 at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy

Figure 18. Lucia von Jacobi in 1936-37, at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy

In the case of several people associated with the Villa Primavera, including my aunt and uncle (Figure 17), Lucia von Jacobi (Figure 18), and Charlotte Baerwald, their intent had been to stay in Fiesole “per sempre,” forever. In the case of most guests, however, their anticipated length of stay typically varied between a few weeks and two months.

Eduard Berend

Eduard Berend (Figure 19) was an eminent editor of the works of Jean Paul (1763-1825), a German Romantic writer. After fighting in WWI, Berend pursued an academic career, but on account of anti-Semitism, he was rejected as a teacher at three German universities. In 1927, the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, eventually commissioned him with the historic-critical edition of the works of Jean Paul. By 1938, he had completed 20 of the 32 planned volumes, works that established Jean Paul as one of the most important writers of German classicism, alongside Goethe and Schiller. Still, he was dismissed by the Prussian Academy in 1938. Soon thereafter he was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, and was only released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately.

Prior to WWII, Eduard Berend had developed an unlikely friendship with a Heinrich Meyer, a Goethe scholar at the Rice Institute in Houston with Nazi sympathies. Desperate, Berend turned to Meyer for help in December 1938. In spite of Henrich Meyer’s Nazi leanings, which landed him in prison in Texas in 1943 and ultimately got him fired, Meyer secured an affidavit for Berend to leave Germany for Switzerland where he even supported Berend financially. After the war, Berend continued his work on Jean Paul. He went back to Germany in 1957, and by the time of his death in 1973, had completed twenty-eight volumes.

Figure 20. The “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” 1937 form for Eduard Berend showing his 1934 passport number

Figure 21. Eduard Berend’s 1939 Passport

The passport on which Eduard Berend traveled to Switzerland in 1939 was different than the one on which he traveled to Fiesole in May 1937, comparing the number on the Soggiorno form (Figure 20) with that on his 1939 passport, found on the Internet. (Figure 21)

Franziska Bruck

I was able to procure a copy of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s death certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin. (Figure 22) The certificate states the gruesome way in which she killed herself on January 2, 1942, “selbstmord durch erhängen,” suicide by hanging, no doubt after being told to report to an old-age transport for deportation. (Figure 23)

Figure 23. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s Stolperstein in Wilmersdorf, Berlin

In previous posts, I’ve explained to readers that beginning in 1937-38, all German Jewish men had to be called “Israel,” and all German Jewish women had to be called “Sarah”; these names were added to official birth, marriage and death certificates. Readers will note that on my great-aunt’s death certificate, the name “Sara” has been added.

My great-aunt Franziska spent two months at the Villa Primavera between September and November 1937. I’ve often wondered what her fate might have been had she not returned to Berlin. I can only surmise that like many Jews, she was either in denial as to what might happen upon her return, or her options for leaving Germany were limited.

Ludwig & Maria Donath

Figure 24a. Ludwig Donath’s 1940 Naturalization Record

Figure 25a. Maria Donath nee Camsky’s 1940 Naturalization Record

Figure 25b. Maria Donath nee Camsky in 1940

Figure 26. Character actor Ludwig Donath

Ludwig Donath (Figures 24a & b) and his wife, Maria Donath née Camsky (Figures 25a & b), were among the last German Jewish guests at the Villa Primavera, staying for no more than a month in July-August 1938. Ludwig Donath was a famous character actor (Figures 26 & 27) who’d had a distinguished career on the stages of Vienna and Berlin, before leaving Nazi Germany in 1933. He and his wife arrived in Hollywood via Switzerland and England, departing from Liverpool for New York in February 1940. Donath appeared in many American films, with at least 84 credits to his name, and was often typecast as a Nazi in films from 1942. (Figure 28) He was briefly blacklisted in the 1950’s for alleged left-wing connections, but resumed steady television work in 1957 for the remainder of his life.

Figure 27. Character actor Ludwig Donath

Figure 28. Character actor Ludwig Donath in the role of Adolf Hitler

Carl Ludwig Elias

Carl Ludwig Elias was born in 1891 to a distinguished art critic, Dr. Julius Elias, who was instrumental in promoting French Impressionism in Germany. Likely because of his father’s connections with the art world, an oil portrait of “Carl Ludwig Elias 7 ¼” by Lovis Corinth was painted in 1899. (Figure 29) Carl Ludwig was a lawyer in Berlin and immigrated to Norway when the Nazis came to power. Nonetheless, after the Nazis invaded Norway in December 1940, he was captured and deported with 500 other Jews from Denmark to Auschwitz in 1942, where he was murdered.

Helene Goldenring

Helene Goldenring visited the Villa Primavera on two occasions, for about a month between May-June 1937, and, again, between December 1937 and January 1938 for two months. Both of her children, Eva and Fritz Goldenring, who’ve been discussed in earlier posts, were also guests on separate occasions. Helene’s name appears in a Berlin phone directory as late as 1940 (Figure 30), indicating she returned to Germany after her sojourns in Fiesole. At some point, she seems to have joined her brother, Dr. Robert Hirsch, in Chile, before eventually immigrating to America in 1947 after his death, where she reunited with her only surviving child, Eva. (Figure 31)

Figure 31. Helene Goldenring and her daughter Eva after they reunited in America, Easter 1960

Eugen & Lillian Haydt

In May 2021, I was contacted by Ms. Tamara Precek, a most delightful Czech lady who has resided in Barcelona, Spain for the past 20 years. She is researching the Winternitz families that lived in Prague around 1850, of whom Lillian Haydt née Winternitz is descended. Tamara asked me to send her the “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” forms for Eugen (Figure 43) and Lillian (Figure 44), suspecting I had misread their surnames. Indeed, I had mistaken HAYDT as “Hayoth.”

Figure 43. The “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” form for Eugen Haydt

Figure 44. The “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” form for Lillian Haydt née Winternitz

Tamara has recently been able to learn what happened to them after their brief stay at the Villa Primavera. They managed to immigrate to Australia, arriving there on the 6^th of February 1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND.” Dr. Eugen Haydt changed his named to Albin (Alvin) Eugene Werner (Warner) Haydt (A.E.W. Haydt) but was still generally known as Eugene Haydt. He was a tradesman, and died on the 17^th of January 1973; his wife may have worked with him, and passed away on the 4^th of February 1997. They appear not to have had any children.

Ms. Precek even found a picture of the apartment building where they resided in Sydney. (Figure 45)

Figure 45. Apartment building in Sydney where Eugen and Lillian Haydt lived after they immigrated to Australia in 1939

Lucia von Jacobi

Ms. Jacobi co-managed the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast with my aunt Susanne. She fled Fiesole in 1938 in favor of Switzerland, leaving everything behind, including her personal papers, which were miraculously found in Florence and saved by a German researcher in 1964, Dr. Irene Below (see Blog Post 21 for the full story).

Johanna Leven

Johanna Leven stayed at the Villa Primavera for the first two months of 1938, but clearly returned to Germany after her stay. She was eventually deported from Mönchengladbach, Germany to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in then-Czechoslovakia, where she perished in 1942. (Figure 32)

Julius Matthias

Julius Matthias was among the oldest guest to have stayed at the Villa Primavera, being almost 80 when he visted there between March and April 1937. After his days in Fiesole, he returned to Hamburg, Germany, where he died on May 16, 1942, seemingly of natural causes (i.e., senility, broncho-pneumonia). His death certificate (Figure 33) states he was a non-practicing Jew, although this fact would not have prevented him from being deported to a concentration camp. His death certificate assigned him the name “Israel” to identify him as a Jew.

Paul Schoop

Paul Schoop was born in 1907 in Zurich, Switzerland, one of four accomplished offspring (with Max Schoop (b. 1902); Trudi Schoop (b. 1903); Hedwig “Hedi” Schoop (b. 1906)) of a prominent family. Paul’s father, Maximilian Schoop, was the editor of Neue Zurcher Zeitung and president of Dolder Hotels. Paul (Figure 34) came to America in September 1939, and eventually joined his three siblings in Van Nuys, California. He was an accomplished composer, concert pianist and conductor, first in Europe and later in America. Paul’s brother-in-law was Frederick Maurice Holländer (Figures 35a & b), the famed composer and torch song writer, who’d once been married to one of Paul’s sister, Hedi Schoop. (Figures 36a & b)

Figure 35a. Paul Schoop’s famous brother-in-law, Friedrich Maurice Holländer’s 1935 Naturalization Form

Figure 35b. Friedrich Maurice Holländer in 1935

Figure 36a. Paul Schoop’s sister, Hedwig “Hedi” Holländer nee Schoop’s 1935 Naturalization Form

Figure 36b. Poor quality photo of Hedwig “Hedi” Holländer nee Schoop in 1935

I surmise the reason the Schoop children came to America is because of greater economic and professional opportunities rather than on account of Nazi persecution.

Jenny Steinfeld

Jenny Steinfeld’s tale is a poignant one. Her name appears with that of her son, Paul Steinfeld, on an April 1937 manifest of boat passengers bound from Bremen, Germany to New York. (Figure 37) A scant five months later, between September and November 1937, she is a guest at the Villa Primavera, clearly having come back from America. Jenny eventually returns to Berlin, and on August 27, 1942 commits suicide there, yet another victim of Nazi persecution. (Figure 38) As with my great-aunt Franziska, who too returned to Berlin from Fiesole, one wonders why Jenny walked back into the maws of death.

Figure 38. Page from the Memorial Book for Jewish Victims of Nazi Persecution for Jenny Steinfeld

This post deals only in passing with my immediate and extended Bruck family. For this reason, it involved considerably more forensic research, as most of the guests at the Villa Primavera were previously unknown to me. Still, learning more about these people was important to me. In some small way, as the Holocaust victim David Berger wrote in 1941, I hope I have honored and recognized a few other Jewish victims of Nazi persecution so they are not forgotten.

SIDEBAR

Figure 40. My first cousin once-removed, Kay Lutze, with Anja Holländer in Amsterdam, Netherlands in October 2017

Regular readers will know the enjoyment I derive making connections between people and events related to my family. One of my German first cousins, once-removed, Kay Lutze, is friends with an Anja Holländer, living in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Figure 39) Anja is related to Frederick Maurice Holländer, the brother-in-law of Paul Schoop, who stayed at the Villa Primavera. In assembling this involved Blog post, I recollected this fact and also that Anja claims a relationship to my Bruck family. I asked Kay whether he knew the relationship, and he could only tell me that the mother of a Holländer named LUDWIG HEINRICH HOLLÄNDER was a Bruck. Curious about this, I researched this man on ancestry.com, and, indeed, discovered various historic documents that confirm the distant relationship of the Holländer family to my Bruck family. Ludwig’s mother was HELENE HOLLÄNDER née BRUCK (1812-1876), who I think is my great-great-great-great-aunt; Helene was married to a BENJAMIN HOLLÄNDER (1809-1884). I discovered his death certificate (Figures 40a & b), along with that of their son Ludwig (1833-1897). (Figures 41a & b)

Figure 40a. Benjamin Holländer’s Death Certificate (1809-12 May 1884) identifying his wife as Helene Bruck (misspelled as “Boch”)

Figure 40b. Translation of Benjamin Holländer’s Death Certificate

Figure 41a. Ludwig Heinrich Holländer Death Certificate (4 Feb 1833-12 March 1897) identifying his mother as Helene Bruck

Figure 41b. Translation of Ludwig Heinrich Holländer’s Death Certificate

As we speak, I am trying to learn how Anja is related to Friedrick and Helene Holländer née Bruck. Watch this space!

Figure 42. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, and his sister, Susanne Müller née Bruck, at the Villa Primavera in 1937 or 1938

POST 23: MY AUNT SUSANNE’S FINAL JOURNEY

Note: This is the last in the series of articles discussing my Aunt Susanne Müller, née Bruck, spanning from 1936, when she left Berlin with her husband Dr. Franz Müller, to the moment she was arrested in Fayence by the Vichy French in August 1942. It describes the final two-and-a-half to three weeks of her life and that of Ernst Mombert, her step-daughter’s brother-in-law. Surviving documents in my father’s personal papers, along with records publicly available, allow me to track the precise route my Aunt Susanne and Ernst took to their deaths in Auschwitz.

My Aunt Susanne and her step-daughter’s brother-in-law, Ernst Mombert, were arrested by the Vichy French in Fayence, France, probably around the third week of August 1942. Their arrests were the result of the implementation of the so-called “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” On January 20, 1942, Nazi officials had convened in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss the implementation of the Final Solution, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to Poland and murdered. Following the Wannsee Conference, the deportation of Jews throughout Nazi-occupied areas to extermination camps increased in momentum. In France, the deportations, which had begun in March 1942, reached their peak in the summer of 1942, overlapping with the arrest of my relatives. Involvement of French authorities intensified during this period.

Arrests of individual Jews in the occupied zone of France had begun around 1940, and general round up in 1941. By March 1941, the Vichy State created the Commissariat General aux Questions juives (“Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs”), which managed the seizure of Jewish assets and organized anti-Jewish propaganda. Around this same time, the German began compiling registers of Jews living in the occupied zone. The Second Statut des Juifs of June 2, 1941 systematized registrations across all of France, including the unoccupied parts of France controlled by the Vichy government where Fayence was located. Because Jews in the unoccupied zone were not required to wear the yellow star-of-David badge, these records would provide the basis for future rounds-ups and deportations. No doubt, my relatives’ names were on these registers.

In Post 22, I told readers seven members of my family once lived at the fruit farm in Fayence, although only two were ever arrested by the French collaborators. It remains unclear why the other five were never seized. While I’m disinclined for various reasons to credit local French authorities for having played a role in protecting my family during WWII, supposedly 75% of the roughly 330,000 Jews in metropolitan France in 1939 survived the Holocaust, which is one of the highest survival rates in Europe. This story, however, is about Aunt Susanne and Ernst Mombert, my relatives who did not survive.

Figure 1-From Fayence, my aunt and Ernst Mombert were taken to Draguignan, Aix-en-Provence and Avignon, before being transported to Drancy, outside Paris

Figure 2-A headstone with the Star of David in the American Cemetery in Draguignan

Soon after my Aunt Susanne was arrested, she and Ernst Mombert were transported approximately 20 miles to the nearby town of Draguignan. (Figures 1 & 2) Whether they were taken there by train or other conveyance is unknown. The priority that the Nazis and their henchmen placed on the extermination of Jews following the Wannsee Conference suggests arrested Jews were brought to major transit centers in a matter of weeks for deportation to concentration camps. Susanne and Ernst wrote an undated postal card to the Mombert family in Fayence from Draguignan, postmarked August 26, 1942, that survives in my father’s personal papers; their stay in Draguignan was brief, only half-an-hour. (Figure 3) An acquaintance from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles tells me Jewish detainees were encouraged to write postal cards so Nazis could identify and root out surviving family members.

Figure 3-Postal card mailed by my aunt and Ernst from Draguignan

My dear ones, We have just arrived in Draguignan and will leave in half-an-hour for aux Milles. Once again, I remind you to ask David to come for the pump, at any price, even if you must pick him up by car. Vegetables, be careful with the string-beans, water every other day—cabbage twice weekly. Cucumbers every other day—pick the corn—chase the birds, as directed by Marius. Tomatoes water once a week. Special attention: Carrots! bugs on cabbage. Take care of the old and the young. Don’t worry. Before sending the certificates, wait until our address has arrived. Love to all, Susanne, Ernst

Figure 4-Camp des Milles Detention Camp in Aix-en-Provence, now a museum, where my aunt and Ernst were briefly interned in August 1942

Figure 5-The holding area inside the former tile factory at Camp des Milles in Aix-en-Provence where Jewish internees were held during WWII

From Draguignan, Susanne and Ernst were then transported approximately 76 miles to the notorious French detention center at Camp des Milles in Aix-en-Provence, a place that is today a museum. (Figure 4) While it was never an extermination camp, unlike Auschwitz where Susanne and Ernst were murdered, it is extremely foreboding because it survives virtually intact and gives one a real sense of what awaited the Jewish internees. (Figure 5) Susanne and Ernst wrote a second postal card from here, dated August 24, 1942, postmarked five days later. (Figure 6)

Figure 6-The postal card mailed by my aunt and Ernst from Camp des Milles

August 24, 1942 Dearest Peterle, How are you? Did the doctor come? Take care of yourself and don’t lose courage—me, I am well—I have met some acquaintances from Hyères, a woman doctor from Berlin who knows you—well, we will see what happens to us. Ernst has also met some people he knows—we talk quite often. Mummi, how are you? And Margit and the rest of the family? Don’t work too hard—for the five of you there will be enough from the property. Go to Sénégnier and explain our situation to him. My thanks to all of you as well as to our friends for their kindness. My love to all of you. Thousand kisses, Papstein! Susanne

Next, Susanne and Ernst were taken 56 miles to Avignon, whose bridge is the subject of a children’s well-known French nursery rhyme, Sur le pont d’Avignon, although most certainly this was not on their minds. The last words my Uncle Franz and the Mombert family heard from Susanne and Ernst came from the third and final postal card mailed from there. The card is dated September 2, 1942 and postmarked the same day. (Figures 7 & 8)

Figure 7-The last words ever written by my aunt to my Uncle Franz following her arrest in August 1942, sent from Avignon

September 2, 1942

Dearest Franzl, Up to now, the trip has not been too bad. I stayed together with some very nice ladies. We are well fed, too well for my taste. I am so sad that I cannot send you anything (chocolates, sardines, cookies). All these things come from the Quakers and from the Union of the Israelites of France. . . but what does it mean to us? In any case, I have decided to hold on to be reunited with all of you. Do not lose your patience and courage. They have loaded all and everyone in wagon trains—old people, children, the sick, etc. Kisses, embraces for all of you and good wishes. Susanne

P.S. Maybe I will be able to send you something else.

Figure 8-Dr. Franz Müller in Fayence, after my aunt’s arrest, sadness seeping from every pore

In this last postal card, my Aunt Susanne mentions the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF), along with the Quakers, as the providers of charitable donations. The Germans created the UGIF on November 29, 1941 to more closely control the Jewish community. Through this organization, the Germans were thus able to learn where local Jews lived. Many of the leaders of the UGIF were themselves ultimately deported to concentration camps.

Figure 9-Cattle car on railroad siding at Camp des Milles seen today

In this final postal card, my Aunt Susanne also mentions that by the time Jewish detainees had arrived in Avignon, they had been loaded into cattle cars, likely in Camp des Milles. The Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français (SNCF), the state-owned railroad system of France, was an active participant in the transport of Jewish detainees to the extermination camps, and evidence of their complicity can be seen even today in railroad sidings at Camp des Milles. (Figure 9)

My relatives never again wrote words that have been handed down to the present. The three postal cards, all written in French, selflessly remind the surviving family to carefully water and tend to the fruits and vegetables on the farm on which their survival clearly depended. The mundane nature of Susanne and Ernst’s final words is a poignant reminder of how ordinary Jews were trying to lead normal lives when their everyday existence was so tragically interrupted by the Nazis.

Figure 10a-Serge Klarsfeld’s report containing names of Jewish deportees aboard Convoy 29 from Drancy to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Figure 10b-Page from Serge Klarsfeld’s report with my Aunt Susanne & Ernst Mombert’s names

From Avignon, my relatives were taken more than 430 miles to Drancy, a suburb outside Paris, which was an assembly point for Jews being deported to concentration camps. My Aunt Susanne and Ernst Mombert are known to have survived until at least September 7, 1942. Both of their names appear, coincidentally on the same page (Figures 10a & 10b), on a list of 1000 Jewish prisoner deported from Drancy, a suburb of Paris, destined for Auschwitz, aboard Convoy 29, which departed Drancy at 8:55am and arrived in Auschwitz two days later. (Figures 11a & 11b) My aunt, correctly identified as a German national, is incorrectly shown having been born in “Ratisbonne” rather than Ratibor, Germany.

Figure 11a-Route that Convoy 29, holding my Aunt Susanne & Ernst Mombert, took between Drancy and Auschwitz from September 7 to September 9, 1942 (SOURCE: Yad Vashem)

Figure 11b-Stops that Convoy 29 made between Drancy and Auschwitz from September 7 to September 9, 1942

Figure 12-Cattle car at Auschwitz-Birkenau of the type that transported Jews to their death

Serge Klarsfeld, a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust to enable the prosecution of war criminals, compiled the lists using surviving German documents. The nationality of only 893 deportees was recorded from Convoy 29, possibly because some arrived from the unoccupied zone only a few hours before the convoy was slated to leave for Auschwitz. The German record of deportees was divided into seven sub-lists, and while both Susanne and Ernst originated from the unoccupied zone, they were likely identified as coming from Camp des Milles. The convoy contained 435 women and 565 men. Upon arrival in Auschwitz (Figure 12), except for 59 men and 52 women, the remaining deportees were immediately gassed to death. (Figures 13 & 14) According to my father, his sister always carried a poison pill in a locket, and I choose to believe she took her own life before the convoy arrived in Auschwitz.

Figure 13-Expended Zyklon B canisters once containing pellets used to gas Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Figure 14-Crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau

It is impossible to pinpoint the actual date my relatives were arrested in Fayence. Cancellation dates on the postal cards and Susanne and Ernst’s arrival in Drancy no later than September 7^th suggest it cannot have taken more than three weeks before they were murdered, no later than September 9^th. The ultimate irony is that my aunt moved to Fayence, almost 1000 miles away from where she was born in Ratibor, Germany, only to be hauled back and murdered less than 70 miles from her hometown. Stolpersteins, the small, brass memorials commemorating individual victims of Nazism, have been placed, respectively, at the last residences in Berlin and Giessen, Germany where my Aunt Susanne and Ernst Mombert and his family lived. (Figures 15 & 16)

Figure 15-Stolperstein for my Aunt Susanne located in front of her last residence in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Kastanienallee 39

Figure 16-Stolpersteins for four Mombert family members, including Ernst Mombert, in front of their last residence in Giessen, Germany

POST 22: MY AUNT SUSANNE, NÉE BRUCK, & HER HUSBAND DR. FRANZ MÜLLER, THE FAYENCE YEARS

Note: This post is the next chapter in my Aunt Susanne and Uncle Franz’s story, following their departure from Fiesole, Italy around September 16, 1938. Their exodus came on the heels of enactment of racial laws by Fascist Italy beginning in 1938 enforcing discrimination mainly against Italian and foreign Jews. The final destination, at least in the case of my Uncle Franz, was Fayence, France, 230 miles almost due west as the crow flies across the Ligurian Sea. Why my aunt and uncle fled here was a decision shrouded in mystery, but one I eventually worked out with the assistance of an American researcher studying Dr. Franz Müller’s renowned son, Peter Müller-Munk.

Figure 1-View of the countryside surrounding Fayence across the tiled rooftops

Fayence is located in France’s Var region. (Figure 1) It’s a charming small town of medieval origin that was once fortified and is considered one of a series of “perched villages” that overlooks the plain between the southern Alps and what’s called the Esterel massif, which borders the Mediterranean Sea between Cannes and Saint-Raphaël. Fayence is slightly more than 40 miles west-southwest of the beautiful seaside town of Nice, along France’s Côte d’Azur. Nice is where my parents met in 1946, and a place I spent some enjoyable summers with my maternal grandmother. I’ve been told my grandmother even took me on an outing to Fayence as a child, though I have no recollection of this. But, like Fiesole, Italy, Fayence is a place I associate with my aunt and uncle.

Following my aunt and uncle’s departure from Fiesole, likely in the company of my grandmother and my father, I presume they traveled by train through Nice on their way to Fayence. Since my father had an aunt and cousins who lived in Nice, they may even have spent a few days there along the way. Unlike Fiesole, La Mairie or L’Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Fayence does not appear to have maintained immigration or emigration logs during this period, so it’s impossible to pinpoint my relatives’ arrival there. Suffice it to say, by early October 1938, they were likely in place.

Figure 2-Ms. Jewel Stern, art historian, who has spent many years researching Dr. Franz Müller’s son, Peter Müller-Munk

I learned why my aunt, uncle, and grandmother settled in Fayence because of my family tree on ancestry.com. One day, I was contacted via my tree by a woman from Coral Gables, Florida, Ms. Jewel Stern (Figure 2), wanting to speak with me about my uncle. Ms. Stern was trying to learn all she could about Dr. Franz Müller’s renowned son, Peter Müller-Munk. She explained that not only did my uncle have a son by his first marriage, but he also had a daughter, Karin Margit Müller-Munk, a fact I was unaware of. She was married to a man named Franz (“Francois” in France) Hermann Mombert, who with his brother Ernst owned the fruit farm in Fayence where my family sought refuge in 1938. Margit’s brother came to America in 1926 and went on to become a world-renowned silversmith and industrial designer in Pittsburgh, thus, he was known to me unlike his sister, who died relatively young and anonymously in Fayence. Ironically, through Ms. Stern I learned a lot about my own extended family.

Figure 3-My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, in his French Foreign Legion uniform in December 1941 in Constantine, Algeria

Among my father’s pictures are two sets of photographs from Fayence, the first taken between September and November of 1941, the second precisely on March 2, 1947. Some context is necessary. With few other options available to my father after leaving Fiesole, Italy, barely a month later, on October 21, 1938, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in Paris. He was stationed in Saïda and Ouargla, Algeria (Figure 3), as a member of the “1ère Batterie Saharienne Porteé de Légion.” Because of his Jewish origins, my father, like all other Jewish enlistees at the time, was given an alias; during his time as a legionnaire, he was known as “Marcel Berger.” (Figures 4a & 4b) Because my father spoke fluent French he easily passed as a Frenchman.

Figure 4a-My father’s French Foreign Legion dog tag using his pseudonym,”Marcel Berger”

Figure 4b-Reverse of father’s French Foreign Legion dog tag showing “Marcel Berger” was born in Strasbourg, France on December 6, 1907

Figure 5-Taken in November 1941 in Fayence, one of my father’s last pictures of his sister Susanne

Between September and November of 1941, my father visited the south of France while on leave from the French Foreign Legion (FFL). It was during this time that he last saw his sister Susanne (Figure 5) and took photos in Fayence. (Figures 6 & 7) What imbues this visit with historic interest is the fact that as a soldier in the FFL, he was able to travel, likely under his pseudonym, across “enemy” lines from Algeria to France. One must assume such travel was possible only because the FFL was ostensibly allied with Vichy France—a regime that, until November 1942, was most powerful in the unoccupied, southern “free zone” centered on the commune of Vichy. In theory, Vichy France also represented the French Colonial Empire, of which Algeria was a part, so this may explain how my father was able to travel between Africa and France in the middle of WWII.

Figure 6-My father’s October 1941 photograph showing Rue de la Bonnefont headed up to the left

Figure 7-My photograph taken at the same intersection in Fayence as Figure 6 in July 2014

Figure 8-My father’s French Foreign Legion regiment on deployment in Amguid, Algeria

As an aside, the Vichy Government, which had enacted anti-Semitic laws in the 1930’s and 1940’s, would occasionally send one of their envoys to liaise with FFL military units based in North Africa, ostensibly to root out Jews; during these visits some commanders, perhaps because of their antipathy and disdain for the Vichy Government, sent their foreign regiments on random deployments deep into the Sahara. (Figure 8) Regardless of the reason, this likely saved Jewish lives, including my father’s life.

The second set of pictures from Fayence was taken on March 2, 1947. (Figures 9 & 10) My father and one of his first cousins visited the Mombert family with whom my grandmother was still living to celebrate her 74^th birthday the next day. At the time, my father worked as a dentist in Nice, an intriguing story that will be the subject of a future Blog post. The two sets of pictures from Fayence, along with letters and documents I’ve located, indicate seven members of my family once lived there. These included my Aunt Susanne, my Uncle Franz, my grandmother “Mummi,” as she was known, Francois and Margit Mombert, along with Francois’s brother Ernst and their mother, Nellie Mombert. Their vital data is summarized in the table at the end of this post.

Figure 9-My grandmother and father in Fayence on March 2, 1947, a day before my grandmother’s 74th birthday

Figure 10-On March 2, 1947 in Fayence seated left to right: Cornelia “Nellie” Mombert, my grandmother, and Hansi Goff (Jeanne Loewenstein); Francois Mombert (standing)

Figure 11-Peter Müller-Munk’s iconic industrial design of the Texaco gas pump

Ms. Stern spent over 20 years studying and collecting the works of Peter Müller-Munk and learning about him and his family; her goal, which came to fruition in 2015, was to develop a special exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh on Peter’s amazing works. (Figure 11) To learn about Peter’s father, Ms. Stern enlisted one of her Parisian friends to travel to Fayence, visit L’Hôtel de Ville, find Dr. Franz Müller’s final resting place and that of his daughter (Figures 12, 13 & 14), obtain copies of their death certificates, take pictures of the fruit farm where my aunt and uncle had lived, and more. Ms. Stern graciously shared all this information with me, and, in turn, I rounded out my uncle and aunt’s story by providing pictures, documents, and history about their lives in Berlin and Fiesole. It was mutually beneficial.

Figure 12-The Cimitiere Ancien where Dr. Franz Müller & his daughter Margit Mombert are buried

Figure 13-The eroding tombstone of Dr. Franz Müller & his daughter Margit Mombert

Figure 14-The barely legible names of Dr. Franz Müller & his daughter on their tombstone

In 2014, my wife and I retraced the steps taken by Ms. Stern’s friend and visited Fayence. Additionally, Ms. Stern told us of an elderly local woman who had once worked for Francois Mombert beginning in 1941 when she was 15, so we planned through our contact at L’Hôtel de Ville (Figure 15), Mme. Claudine Clary (Figure 16), to interview this Mme. Marie-Rose Siri. Immediately upon our arrival in Fayence, we spoke with Mme. Clary, who, among other things, explained where my uncle and his daughter are buried and told us their graves will soon be evacuated if their tombs are not restored and maintenance fees paid. (Figure 17)

Figure 16-Director of Fayence’s L’Hôtel de Ville, Mme. Claudine Clary

Figure 17-Posted sign on the tombstone of Dr. Franz Müller & his daughter saying their graves will be evacuated

Our visit with Mme. Siri and her daughter, Martine Siri (Figure 18), had been pre-arranged. My fluency in French meant I could converse directly with Mme. Siri. I was particularly curious about one picture taken in Fayence (Figure 19), showing my aunt and uncle eating lunch with his daughter and son-in-law, Margit and Francois Mombert. A young lady is serving them, and I was curious whether Mme. Siri recognized herself, but unfortunately not. As a young girl, Mme. Siri did household chores and helped harvest and package fruit for eventual sale in Cannes; the farm produced apricots, peaches, apples, and later artichokes and strawberries. Mme. Siri recalled that Ernst Mombert, who had severe “strabisme,” or crossed eyes, was nonetheless able to work in the orchards.

Figure 18-Mme. Marie-Rose Siri, right, with her daughter Martine in 2014

Figure 19-Margit Mombert, Dr. Franz Müller, my Aunt Susanne & Francois Mombert being served lunch in Fayence

Mme. Siri fondly recalled Francois. She remembered collecting mushrooms with my Aunt Susanne, and my aunt’s ability to discern edible fungi. Poignantly, Mme. Siri told the story of when my Aunt Susanne was arrested by the Vichy in late August 1942; she was in hiding at the time, and the officials left word that if she did not present herself to the authorities, they would instead arrest one of the elderly members of the family. This is not something my aunt would ever have countenanced so she turned herself in.

Mme. Siri mentioned something intriguing, specifically, that Francois Mombert and possibly also his wife were part of the French Resistance. When the French collaborators came to the fruit farm along Chemin Banegon in late August 1942, they only arrested my Aunt Susanne and Ernst Mombert even though the three elderly members of the family were certainly present. Why all the Jews at the farm were not seized then is unclear.

While Mme. Siri’s memories of my family’s years in Fayence are few, what she was able to recall brought them to life, if only dimly.

Figure 20-Street on which the Mombert house was located

Before leaving Mme. Siri, she and her daughter explained how to get to the nearby house once located along Chemin Banegon (Figure 20) where the former Mombert homestead is located. I was very interested in seeing the place. In doing family history, chutzpah is sometimes required. Showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of a stranger’s house situated in a rural setting in a foreign country is an example. To say we startled the current owner, Mme. Monique Graux, would be a mild understatement. Fortunately, Mme. Graux was intrigued by the nature of our unplanned visit, and, entirely because of my wife’s warm and sympathetic countenance, invited us in and showed us around her home, inside and out. (Figures 21 & 22)

Figure 21-Me kneeling by Mme. Graux, current owner of the house where my family once lived in Fayence

Figure 22-The former Mombert farmhouse located on a renamed street called Chemin du Fraisse

Mme. Graux claimed she and her husband purchased the house along Chemin Banegon around 1960 from a gentleman named M. Lebreton, who’d owned it for only two-and-a-half years and bought it from Francois Mombert. Mme. Graux never met Francois Mombert nor his wife, so could tell us nothing about them. She explained the house dates from 1740 and was historically used to tan animal hides. Given that Margit Mombert died in Fayence on March 22, 1959, sale of the house before her death strikes me as a bit improbable. Curious as to when Mme. Graux and her husband purchased the farmhouse, I asked Mme. Clary about obtaining a copy of l’acte de propriété, the deed of ownership; the notary company informed her I could not get it because I am not related to the current owner.

Figure 23-M. Alain Rebuffel (left) standing alongside me in his winery

Near our hotel was a winery where we wanted to do a tasting. As Americans traveling abroad, we typically stand out, so it intrigues the French when they hear someone obviously American speak their language with only a hint of an accent. Such was the case when we visited this winery, and the owner engaged me in conversation. The reason for our visit to Fayence came out, and the owner, M. Alain Rebuffel (Figure 23), remembered his grandfather talking about knowing my family; he recalled his grandfather was more kindly disposed towards Jews than his grandmother, who wanted nothing to do with them. Interestingly, Mme. Clary told us her father similarly remembered my family.

Figure 24-M. Roger Faye (left), custodian of the Cimitiere Ancien

M. Rebuffel suggested we speak with his uncle, M. Roger Faye (Figure 24), who is the custodian at the cemetery where Dr. Franz Müller and his daughter are interred and lives in the adjacent house. Upon our visit to the cemetery, we examined and photographed the now crumbling tomb of my uncle and his daughter. Then, we called on M. Faye, who mentioned that several years earlier he had evacuated a tomb belonging to a member of the Mombert family, whose name he could not remember. I ultimately worked this out when I discovered an on-line biography about Francois and Ernst’s father, Paul Karl Mombert. He was a professor at the University of Giessen in Germany, who like my Uncle Franz, was fired in 1933. He was imprisoned by the Nazis, but eventually released; he died from cancer shortly thereafter, on December 1, 1938, in Stuttgart, Germany, and his ashes were sent to Fayence. There is no doubt that the Mombert tomb evacuated in Fayence was that of Paul Mombert.

Figure 25-Real estate register page showing Ernst Mombert purchased property in Fayence in December 1933 & that land was transferred to his surviving brother in 1947

Following my return to the States in 2014, I contacted the Archives Départementales du Var in Draguignan, France to inquire about Fayence real estate records and determine precisely when Ernst and Francois Mombert purchased the property along Chemin Banegon. Fortunately, the historic records have survived and place acquisition of the farm in December 1933. (Figure 25)

Figure 26-Real estate register page for Francois Mombert

As mentioned above, Ernst Mombert was arrested along with my Aunt Susanne by the Vichy collaborators in August 1942, and neither survived. The real estate records reveal a minor, but interesting historical fact. They indicate that on September 6, 1947, exclusive ownership of the farm was transferred to Francois Mombert (compare Figure 26 to Figure 25), that’s to say, almost five years to the day after Ernst Mombert was deported to Auschwitz. In the case of my Aunt Susanne, deported to Auschwitz the same day as Ernst, it took the Comune de Fayence seven years, until 1949, to officially declare her dead. (Figure 27) The wheels of bureaucracy grind slow.

Figure 27-My Aunt Susanne’s Declaration of Death issued by the Comune de Fayence in 1949

Figure 28-Francois Mombert & Karin Margit Müller-Munk’s Marriage Certificate dated December 4, 1934

Ms. Stern learned much about Peter Müller-Munk from the personal papers of his aunt, Marie Munk, one of the first female lawyers in Germany. Marie became a judge in 1930, but, like many Jews, was dismissed from her judicial position in 1933. She eventually came to the United States, obtained her law degree here, and had a notable career as a women’s rights activist. Marie Munk’s papers are archived at Smith College, and in one letter, the date of her niece’s marriage to Francois Mombert on December 4, 1934 is mentioned. Unknown initially when and where they’d been married, it took Ms. Stern and me a long time to track this down. On a second visit to Fayence in 2015, in passing, I mentioned this date to Mme. Clary who immediately checked her office records and located Francois and Margit’s marriage certificate. (Figure 28) Interestingly, after Margit’s death in 1959, Francois Mombert continued to correspond with Marie.

The next Blog post will be the final chapter about my Aunt Susanne’s abbreviated life.

Below readers will find the vital events of the seven family members I’ve determined lived in Fayence.

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE

Else Bruck, née Berliner	Birth	March 3, 1873	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
	Death	February 16, 1957	Manhattan, New York
Cornelia “Nellie” Mombert, née Gieser	Birth	1880
	Death	1963	Freiburg, Germany
Ernst Mombert	Birth	July 9, 1911	Freiburg, Germany
	Death	~ September 1942	Auschwitz-Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland
Franz (“Francois”) Hermann Mombert	Birth	February 21, 1909	Freiburg, Germany
	Marriage	December 4, 1934	Fayence, France
	Death	January 29, 1988	Locarno, Switzerland
Karin Margit Mombert, née Müller-Munk	Birth	September 23, 1908	Berlin, Germany
	Death	March 22, 1959	Fayence, France
Franz Robert Müller	Birth	December 31, 1871	Berlin, Germany
	Marriage	April 18, 1931	Berlin, Germany
	Death	October 1, 1945	Fayence, France
Susanne Müller, née Bruck	Birth	April 20, 1904	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
	Death	~ September 1942	Auschwitz-Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland