Note: In this post, I discuss the limited amount I know about my father’s 2 years and 224 days in the British Army as a member of the 338th Royal Pioneer Corps. (Figure 1) Like his five-years in the French Foreign Legion, his tour of duty in the British Army began in Algeria, though it ended in Italy. I also talk about his reason for enlisting in the English Army, and, as in previous posts, provide some historical context.
Between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945, there were two main laws pertaining to the loss of German citizenship. This not only affected Jews, but also Communists, Socialists, members of the Social Democratic party, conscientious objectors, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Quakers. The “Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Deprivation of the German Citizenship” of July 14, 1933, deprived some persons of their German citizenship individually. Their names were listed in the “Reichsgesetzblatt” (Reich Law Gazette), and with publication of the particular “Reichsgesetzblatt” they lost their German citizenship.
The main group of former German citizens, however, lost their citizenship with the “Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich” of November 25, 1941. This decree stripped Jews of their remaining rights, and stipulated that Jews living outside Germany were no longer German citizens. Deprived of their citizenship and their passports nullified, this effectively stranded in place Jews who had left Germany in the years before or shortly after the beginning of WWII.
I previously explained to readers that my father left Germany in March 1938 and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938. Enlistment in the Legion did not convey French citizenship unless one served at least three tours of duty or was seriously wounded during a military operation. Thus, the Nazi decree of November 25, 1941 stripping Jews living outside Germany of their citizenship effectively rendered Jews, including my father, “stateless.” While he was still a member of the Legion in November 1941 with two additional years of service to fulfill, my father no doubt began to consider what options might be available when his tour of duty ended.
My father’s five-year enlistment in the Legion ended on the 13th of November 1943 when he was demobilized in Colomb-Béchar, Algeria (Figure 2); two days later, on the 15th of November 1943, he joined the British Pioneer Corps in Algers, Algeria, and reported to Sétif, in northeastern Algeria. (Figure 3) The Pioneer Corps was apparently the only British military unit in which “enemy aliens” could serve (Figure 4); an enemy alien is a citizen of one country living in another country with which it is at war and technically viewed as suspect as a result. According to what my father told me, he switched to the English Army in the hope that after WWII was over, he would be admitted to England and could resume his dental career there. While my father never fully explained the circumstances, it seems a fellow soldier stole his identity and committed a misdeed for which my father was blamed making his entry into England impossible.
Thousands of German nationals joined the Pioneer Corps to assist Allied war efforts and the liberation of their home country. (Figure 5-6) Typically, they were Jews and political dissidents who’d fled. Unlike the French Foreign Legion, German refugees were not given anonymous names. Obviously, serving as a German national in the British forces was especially dangerous because, in case they were captured, there was a high probability of being executed, either for being a traitor or for being Jewish. Nonetheless, the number of German-born Jews joining the British forces was exceptionally high; by the end of the war, one in seven Jewish refugees from Germany had joined the British forces. Their knowledge of the German language and customs proved particularly useful; many served in the administration of the British occupation army in Germany and Austria following the war.
Among my father’s surviving papers is his “Certificate of Demobilization” (Figures 7a-b) from the English Army, translated into French, as my father was then living and working illegally as a dentist in Nice, France. The certificate indicates my father served in North Africa and Italy from the 19th of November 1943 until the 5th of May 1946, obviously as part of the occupation army after the war ended. He was awarded the Star of Italy (Figure 8) for his involvement in the military campaign there. At the time of his demobilization on the 30th of June 1946, either in Naples or Rome, my father was a private receiving the pay of a corporal. My father served a combined 2 years 224 days in the English Army. (Figures 9a-b, 10) Unlike with the French Foreign Legion, I was unsuccessful obtaining a copy of my father’s military dossier from the United Kingdom’s “Army Personnel Centre” in Glasgow. This is conjecture on my part, but possibly because my father enlisted in Algeria rather than the United Kingdom, the military dossiers for enlistees in North Africa are archived elsewhere. My primary interest in retrieving this file would be obtaining clues on why my father was unable to immigrate to England, an event that would have been transformative.
Note: In this post, I talk briefly about the origins of the French Foreign Legion’s romanticized reputation and its depiction in popular culture, followed by a presentation of a few of my father’s photos showing his time in the Legion in Algeria between November 1938 and November 1943.
My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, signed up for the French Foreign Legion on the 9th of November 1938 in Paris (Figure 1), and reported for duty in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria (Figure 2) on the 18th of November 1938. As discussed in the previous post, as a Jewish refugee in the lead-up to WWII without a visa to a safe haven, his options were limited, so he heeded the advice of one of his first cousins and enlisted in the Legion.
Before embarking on a presentation of some of my father’s visual images of his time in la Légion, I want to tell readers a little more about the Legion’s history to supplement what I discussed in the previous post, focusing primarily on the origins of the Legion’s romanticized reputation and its depiction in popular culture. There is no intent on my part to be comprehensive, so interested readers are encouraged to research the Legion’s history to obtain a more broad-based understanding.
The Legion was established on March 9, 1831 by King Louis-Philippe as a military unit to support France’s conquest of Algeria, which they had invaded the previous year. The Legion’s debut was inauspicious because of mismanagement in Algeria, nationally homogeneous battalions, resistance to military discipline among recruits, widespread desertion, and an unqualified officer corps. In 1835, the Legion was transferred into Spanish service to help Queen Regent María Cristina de Borbón put down a Carlist rebellion, though was resurrected in December 1835 by Louis-Philippe once he realized the continuing need for legionnaires in Algeria. The latter became known as the nouvelle légion (“new legion”), which staked out a reputation for military valor during the 1837 storming of Constantine, Algeria.
At the time, legionnaires were often used for labor rather than combat, a situation which began to change only with the arrival in 1840 of Thomas-Robert Bugeaud as commander in chief in Algeria. Recognizing the vulnerability of static legionnaire units in isolated locations that could be overwhelmed by Algerian resisters, Bugeaud instituted a counterinsurgency strategy that took the battle to the enemy and demanded incessant marching; the campaigns, while grueling, improved the Legion’s morale and performance. The Legion’s officers also then began to understand “. . .that leadership of foreign mercenaries requires finesse, appeals to the men’s sense of honor, and nonjudgmental, non-xenophobic attitudes.” Around this time, the Legion began to be more accepted as a full-fledged branch of the French army. The prior practice of nationally homogeneous military units was abandoned, discipline improved, and an ameliorated esprit de corps began to develop.
While historically the Legion had many cutthroats, political refugees, outlaws and others who required strict, often merciless, discipline, by the mid-19th century the Legion had established its reputation as a formidable fighting unit. French imperial expansion that took place between 1871 and 1914 corresponded with the Legion’s “golden age.” The corps, which numbered about 10,000 legionnaires at the time, participated in campaigns in southeastern Algeria and in the conquest of Morocco. The campaigns were then spear-headed by mule-mounted units, the old Montées, as I explained to readers in the previous post. These units became a permanent fixture of Legion operations in North Africa into the 1930’s. The “Batterie Saharienne Portée de Légion,” of which my father was a member, originated as a mule-mounted unit, though by the time he joined it was a motorized infantry company.
The Legion’s reputation as a band of romantic misfits began to capture the public’s imagination during the Legion’s golden age, augmented by what is referred to as the anonymat, the requirement to enlist under an assumed name. This anonymity allowed legionnaires to invent fabulist pasts, unconstrained by reality. What also appealed to many recruits was the possibility of starting life anew with a clean slate, in an environment of macho hardships and challenges.
Readers will recall from my previous post that the Legion had always had a large complement of Germans in its rank. Ironically, German propaganda contributed to the allure of the Legion by depicting it as a band of criminals commanded by sadistic NCOs which, counter-intuitively, seduced the naïve and innocent. Literary works, such as Ouida’s Under Two Flags (1867) and Percival Christopher Wren’s well-known Beau Geste (1924), further kindled the public’s idealized view of the Legion.
By 1933 the Legion numbered more than 30,000 soldiers that were based in Sidi Bel Abbès under the oversight of an inspector general. The Legion’s first inspector general was Paul Rollet who was responsible for creating many of the Legion’s current traditions. Among other things, he sought to secure the Legion’s place in the public’s imagination by reviving the uniform legionnaires had worn during the 19th century consisting of white uniforms and white kepis, and commissioning a glamorized history of the legion, Le Livre d’or de la Légion étrangère (“The Golden Book of the Foreign Legion”); he even had artistic battle scenes painted showing legionnaires in white kepis to reinforce his belief that they were members of an elite and exclusive military unit.
Rollet’s efforts were partly intended to counter what he perceived as an orchestrated attempt to vilify the Legion and thinly veiled attacks on France. Hollywood productions of novels about the Legion, including Under Two Flags (1936) and Beau Geste (1939), as well as the French film Le Grand Jeu (1934; “The Full Deck”) were also responsible for promoting the romanticism, adventure, and the opportunity for atonement through hardship; these possibilities were at the heart of the Legion’s appeal.
In the case of my father, the Legion offered a much simpler option, a lifeline. Still, there is a paradoxical intersection between the draw the Legion’s idealized view in popular culture may have had upon my father and the name he assumed upon his arrival in America in 1948, “Gary Otto Brook.” Recently, I asked my still-living mother why he adopted the name “Gary,” and she thought it was because he liked the actor Gary Cooper. This seems like a reasonable proposition, and the fact that Gary Cooper was one of the featured actors in Beau Geste, the 1939 movie about the French Foreign Legion, is not lost on me and does not seem coincidental.
With this rather lengthy prologue, let me turn now to a presentation and brief discussion of a few of my father’s photos of his time in the Legion.
Maxime Weygand (Figure 5) was a French military commander in World War I and World War II. Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then signed the armistice with and partially collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime before being arrested by the Germans for not fully collaborating with them.
The Commissione Italiana d’Armistizio con la Francia (“Italian Armistice Commission with France”) or CIAF (Figure 19) was a temporary civil and military body charged with implementing the Franco-Italian armistice of 24th June 1940 and coordinating it with the Franco-German armistice of 22nd June. It had broad authority over the military, economic, diplomatic and financial relations between France and Italy until the Italo-German occupation of France on the 11th November 1942. It liaised with the German Armistice Commission, which I discussed in Post 80, which likely accounts for their presence in Ouargla, Algeria.
Note: In this post, I discuss the five years my father was deployed in the French Foreign Legion in Algeria between November 1938 and November 1943. This installment provides an opportunity to discuss some of the Legion’s history, explore the “conflicted” role the Legion played during WWII and, by extension, explain how my father was able to travel from North Africa to France in 1941 during the war, seemingly across “enemy” lines.
My father voluntarily enlisted in la Légion étrangère, the French Foreign Legion, in Paris on the 9th of November 1938, for a required five-year stint. The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army that was founded in 1831 and was initially stationed only in Algeria, the largest country in Africa. During the 19th Century, the French Foreign Legion was primarily used to protect and expand the French colonial empire throughout the world. It is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces; enlistees serve under the command of French Officers. Given the limited options available to people of Jewish extraction in the lead up to WWII, my father heeded the advice of one of his first cousins and decided to enlist in la Légion. (Figure 1)
Sidi Bel Abbès, located in northwestern Algeria less than 50 miles from the Mediterranean, was the headquarters of the Foreign Legion until 1962. Named for the tomb of the marabout (saint) Sīdī Bel ʿAbbāss, it was established as a French military outpost in 1843; from this time on the city was closely associated with the French Foreign Legion. The city was the location of the Legion’s basic training camp and the headquarters of its 1st Foreign Regiment. After Algerian independence in 1962, all French troops and legionnaires were evacuated from Sidi Bel Abbès and transferred to Aubagne, France.
As nearly as I can tell from my father’s “Livret Matricule,” military file (Figures 2a-d), he reported to the 1st Foreign Regiment, 1erRégiment étranger (1er RE), to which he’d been assigned in Sidi Bel Abbès on the 18th of November 1938. He was incorporated into the Dépôt commun des régiments étrangers (D.C.R.E.), the Communal Depot of the Foreign Regiments (D.C.R.E.), which was administratively dependent on the 1st Foreign Infantry Regiment. For reasons that will become clearer, I’m uncertain whether upon enlistment my father was originally issued dog tags under his birth name, Otto Bruck, or under his nom de guerre, “Marcel Berger.” Among my father’s remaining personal effects, I have French Foreign Legion D.C.R.E. dog tags under both names. (Figures 3a-b; 4a-4b)
According to the history of the 1st Foreign Regiment, the Dépôt commun des régiments étrangers (D.C.R.E.), the Communal Depot of the Foreign Regiments, was created on the 1st of October 1933 in Sidi Bel Abbès. The Depot was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Azan, whom, interestingly, my father once photographed. (Figure 5) According to my father’s military dossier, upon his arrival in Algeria, he was initially assigned to the D.C.R.E.’s Compagnie de Passage No. 3, a logistics operation company, on the 19th of November 1938; then, to the D.C.R.E.’s Compagnie d’Instruction No. 2, a training company, on the 4th of December 1938; and, subsequently, to the D.C.R.E.’s Compagnie de Passage No. 1, a different logistics operation company, on the 2nd of April 1939.
A word about the role of a “Compagnie de Passage.” This group seemingly provided logistical support for soldiers in those rare moments of relaxation during the war related to housing, library services, general information, reading or writing rooms, barber shops, sports venues, cinemas, etc. It was also used to perform banking operations for the soldiers, such as withdrawing money to pay for their purchases. My father’s specific job(s) during these assignments is unknown to me.
On the 1st of October 1939, my father was transferred to the Compagnie Automobile de Transport du Territoire des Oasis (C.A.T.T.O.), the Saharan transport unit of the Legion. C.A.T.T.O. was merged into the Batterie Saharienne Portée de Légion (B.S.P.L.), Saharan Battery Legion Range, on the 29th of June 1939, the date the B.S.P.L. was created in Ouargla, Algeria; my father was assigned to the 1st B.S.P.L. on the 1st of November 1940 (Figure 6), which may correspond with his relocation to Ouargla from Sidi Bel Abbès, though I’m uncertain when this took place.
A word about the French Military term “Portée” as in “Batterie Saharienne Portée de Légion.” Technically, the term translates into English as “mobile,” although that’s inaccurate; the old Montées, the mule-mounted units from which the Portees originated, were also considered highly mobile. Therefore, the term Portée is supposed to mean “motorized” to distinguish the modern vehicle-mounted motorized infantry companies from the old Montées, the mule-mounted ones. (see “French Legion Mounted Companies“)
So far, I’ve related dry details on the military units to which my father was assigned, their presumed function, and when these assignments took place. Let me turn now to the Legion’s history during WWII for context. Initially, I was narrowly focused on trying to specifically understand how my father was able to travel from Algeria to mainland France for a two to three month stay between September and November 1941 to visit friends and family living there. (Figures 7-8) This visit in the middle of the war seemingly involved travel across “enemy” lines, and on the face of it was baffling. In looking into this, I stumbled upon a fascinating article by Edward L. Bimberg, entitled “World War II: A Tale of the French Foreign Legion,” that originally appeared in the September 1997 issue of “World War II” magazine. Below I summarize some of this author’s findings.
According to Mr. Bimberg, the Legion had always had a large complement of Germans in its rank. In the late 1930’s, intelligence officers at the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion in Sidi Bel Abbès, however, were puzzled by an even greater number of Germans pouring in, despite the Nazis’ widespread campaign to discourage them from enlisting. In this period, the German press was violently attacking the Legion, and the Nazi government demanded that recruiting be stopped. Still the Germans kept coming until half the privates and 80 percent of the non-commissioned officers in the legion were German. Eventually, it became clear that this influx had been orchestrated by German intelligence, the Abwehr. The goal was to destroy the Legion from within, which the German legionnaires nearly succeeded in doing.
According to my father, the Legion attracted its share of unsavory types, such as ex-convicts, criminals, murderers, pederasts, etc. More importantly, however, the French Foreign Legion had always attracted the dispossessed, such as Spanish Republicans who’d fought on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939); Jews, such as my father, escaping Nazi persecution; then, later Czechs and Poles who’d fled as the German Army began its march across Europe. Obviously, these refugees did not mix well with the new Germans in the Legion; the German non-commissioned officers terrorized the non-Germans resulting in frequent fights and courts-martial. The French officers could not trust their own non-commissioned officers, and morale in the Legion plummeted, almost to the point of disbanding the entire corps.
WWII is generally said to have begun with the German invasion of Poland on the 1st of September 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom. With the declaration of war, the situation in France became critical, but the questionable loyalty of the Germans in the Legion made shipping them to fight in Europe too risky. Instead, four more foreign regiments were raised in France and trained by veteran Legion officers from North Africa. These newly created regiments garrisoned the Maginot Line, the line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany. These legionnaires remained inactive during the so-called “phony war,” the period of comparative inaction at the beginning of World War II between the German invasion of Poland (September 1939) and that of Norway (April 1940).
Despite the general reluctance of sending entire Legion units to France, the French authorities decided something had to be done with the loyal elements of the Legion marking time in North Africa but anxious to fight. So, in early 1940, volunteers were called for, and two battalions of 1,000 men assembled, one in Fez, Morocco, and the other in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria; the volunteers were carefully vetted. The remaining German legionnaires of unquestioned loyalty were given non-German names and false identity papers to protect them in case they were captured by the Germans. Possibly, my father acquired his alias, Marcel Berger, at this time.
The two battalions were joined into the 13th Demi-Brigade (13e Demi-Brigade de la Légion Étrangère) and put under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel Magrin-Verneret, a WWI veteran apparently typical of military eccentrics who often turned up in the Foreign Legion. When the 13th Demi-Brigade arrived in France, these desert-trained veterans were surprisingly issued a new type of uniform and skis, trained to fight in the Arctic, and outfitted as mountain troops with heavy parkas, boots, and snow capes. They were initially bound for Finland, but after the capitulation of the Finns to the Russians when the latter were still in league with the Germans, thus before the brigade could be deployed there, the war in Finland ended.
Instead, the 13th Demi-Brigade was shipped to Norway to capture the northern port of Narvik from the Germans to prevent ore shipments from neutral Sweden needed by the Nazi regime. After bitter fighting, the legionnaires captured control of Narvik on the 28th of May 1940. For the next few days, they pursued the retreating Germans through the snow-covered mountains toward the Swedish border; their aim was to capture General Edouard Dietl, who’d led the German garrison at Narvik, and his remaining troops and force them into Swedish internment. Regrettably, when the 13th Demi-Brigade was only 10 miles from the Swedish border, they were ordered to return to France where they were needed in defense of France. The “phony war” was over with the German invasion of the Low Countries a few weeks earlier.
Edward Bimberg picks up the narrative: “The 13th Demi-Brigade returned to France from Norway, sailing into the harbor at Brest on June 13, almost at the same time the Germans were marching into Paris. Colonel Magrin-Verneret was ordered to form a line as part of a proposed last-ditch Breton Redoubt, but it was no use. The Germans had broken through.
While on a forward reconnaissance mission to determine what could be done to delay the enemy, Magrin-Verneret and some of his officers became separated from the main body of the 13th Demi-Brigade, and when they returned to Brest they could not find any trace of the unit. The reconnaissance party assumed that the main body had been over-run, and the colonel determined that he and his companions should try to get to England, where the British planned to fight on. Every boat seemed to have been taken over by fleeing British and French troops, but the Legion officers finally found a launch that took them to Southampton. Miraculously, most of the 13th Demi-Brigade had already found a way to get there.”
The point of relating the above history to readers is to explain why from this point forward the French Foreign Legion was so sharply divided during WWII. On June 18, 1940, the French General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the new Free French movement, was now also a refugee in England. Magrin-Verneret immediately offered the services of the 13th Demi-Brigade to de Gaulle, and soon they were training at Trentham Park near Stoke-on-Trent.
On June 25, 1940, the Franco-Italian armistice went into effect, which ended the brief Italian invasion of France during WWII. This followed by a few days the Franco-German armistice of June 22, 1940, which divided France into two zones: one under German military occupation and one left nominally under full French sovereignty, referred to as “Vichy France.” These armistice agreements meant war was over for now for the French Army, which was reorganized into the Armistice Army. That’s also why in, November 1940, a major reorganization took place within the Legion. Not coincidentally, as mentioned above, my father was reassigned to the 1st B.S.P.L. on the 1st of November 1940 in Ouargla, Algeria.
With the implementation of the armistice agreements on June 25, 1940, the men of the 13th Demi-Brigade were given a choice, fight on with de Gaulle, or return to North Africa, which was now under the control of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain’s newly formed Vichy government. The 1st Battalion, strongly influenced by Captain Dimitri Amilakvari, a 16-year Legion veteran who’d fought valiantly to capture a key hill in the battle of Narvik, elected to stay with de Gaulle. The 2nd Battalion went back to Morocco and was disbanded.
Edward Bimberg resumes the story: “The French Foreign Legion, like the rest of the French empire, was now sharply divided. The 13th Demi-Brigade had given its allegiance to the Free French, while the rest of the Legion, scattered throughout North Africa, Syria and Indochina, remained under the thumb of the Vichy government, which meant being under the sharp watch of the German Armistice Commission.
The Germans demanded that the men that had been planted in the Legion be returned to the Reich, and the Legion was not sorry to see them go. But the Commission had other, not so welcome demands. They had lists of refugee Jews, Germans, Poles, Czechs, Italians, and others they wanted back, to send to concentration camps.
There were many men in the French army in North Africa, particularly in the Legion, who had no sympathy for the Vichy government and hated the Germans. Besides, the Legion had a reputation for taking care of its own. Its intelligence system usually discovered the Armistice Commission’s visits well in advance and knew the names of the legionnaires on the lists. The wanted legionnaires were given new names, new papers and new identity discs. When the Germans came too close, the refugees would be transferred to far-off Saharan outposts where the Commission seldom took the trouble to visit.”
Edward Bimberg’s story provides some context about my father’s time in the French Foreign Legion. Obviously, after the Franco-German armistice went into effect in June 1940, Algeria, where my father was stationed, was under the control of the Vichy government. According to Bimberg, while many of the Legion’s officers and men in North Africa would have liked to join de Gaulle’s forces, they were hesitant to desert; also, the surrounding mountains and desert prevented them from reaching the Free French in large numbers, so they were forced to bide their time. Still, because the Legion looked after their own, they probably gave my father a new identity after the establishment of the German Armistice Commission. Some of my father’s pictures, which I will feature in my next Blog post, were taken in remote outposts in the Saharan desert, places I presume he and fellow at-risk legionnaires were sent to put them outside the Commission’s reach. My father’s two to three-month trip to mainland France between September and November 1941 was clearly possible because the Legion units in North Africa were under the control of the Vichy government, so technically his travel did not involve crossing enemy lines. Additionally, his lengthy stay may have been orchestrated to distance him from planned visits by the German Armistice Commission.
The 13th Demi-Brigade, which rallied to Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces following France’s capitulation to Germany in June 1940, was incorporated into the British Eighth Army as the 1st Free French Legion. It spearheaded the Gaullist conquest of French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, where it actually fought against Legion units loyal to the collaborationist Vichy government. The Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942 reunited the fractured branches of the Legion. Still, political rancor was slow to dissipate on account of confrontation between the opposing units in Syria. The feuding between the pro-Gaullist and ex-Vichy legion units continued in Italy, where the Legion participated in the breakthrough at Monte Cassino in 1944. By this time, my father was no longer a member of the French Foreign Legion, having by then enlisted in the British Army, a subject of a future Blog installment.
The reuniting of the legion units in November 1942 explains why my father was able to fight against the Germans in the Battle of Tunisia between February and April 1943, likely the only combat action he ever saw. (Figure 9)
Stumbling upon Mr. Bimberg’s article on the history of the French Foreign Legion during WWII was instrumental in helping me understand why my father was in certain places during his five years in the Legion. The story also explains why the Legion’s morale was so low: “The Vichy Legion in North Africa was not only constantly harassed by the German Armistice Commission but was short of weapons, gasoline and sometimes even food and tobacco. Legion strength fell to less than 10,000 men, and the German authorities continually urged the Vichy authorities to disband it altogether. Morale was at rock bottom, and the rate of desertions and suicides was rising.” Given the Legion’s tenuous position, I can imagine the situation for Jewish men like my father must have been nerve-wracking, even with French aliases.
The following post will be a photo essay of images from my father’s years in the French Foreign Legion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bimberg, Edward L. “World War II: A Tale of the French Foreign Legion.” World War II, September 1997.
Note: In this post I recreate what may have happened on one day of my father’s life, the 22nd of August 1930, when he was a dental apprentice in the Free State of Danzig in the practice of Dr. Fritz Bertram.
Growing up, my father infrequently spoke of the roughly seven years between 1930 and 1937 when he lived in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] (Figure 1) and Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free State of Danzig. No doubt my father would have characterized these years as the halcyon days of his life because he led a charmed life, albeit briefly. He took multiple pictures, which survive, of his time in the Żuławy region, the alluvial delta area of the Vistula River in the northern part of what is today Poland, so I can often precisely pinpoint where he was and what he was doing on specific dates. But I want to focus on one day in 1930, the 22nd of August, a Friday, no pictures of which exist, which was the day of a tragic family happening. To relate this tale, and it may be nothing more than a fictional, imagined account, I must begin in the present.
In earlier posts, I’ve introduced Mr. Peter Hanke, a gentleman I became acquainted with through an online forum, “forum.danzig.de.” Peter has tracked down historic documents I would have been unlikely to find on my own and been particularly helpful solving mysteries on the fate of some of my father’s family, friends, and acquaintances. This post is about one such puzzle.
Recently, Peter and I were discussing one of my great-uncles, Robert Samuel Bruck (1871-1887), who I thought had died as a child in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], only to eventually learn that he bafflingly died in Braunschweig, Germany, 445 miles west-northwest of Racibórz, as a teenager. I learned of Robert’s survival to adolescence from a page in the Pinkus Family Collection (Figure 2), archived at the Leo Baeck Institute, which I shared with Peter. The mention of Braunschweig caught Peter’s attention because this town is located only 21 miles southwest of where Peter lives near Wolfsburg, Germany.
Another name caught Peter’s attention on this same page, namely, that of Rudolf Löwenstein, my great-aunt Hedwig Bruck’s husband, who it was noted died on the 22nd of August 1930 in Danzig. (Figure 2) To remind readers, in Post 16, I was able to confirm Rudolf Löwenstein’s death on this date in the Mormon Church’s microfilm records for Danzig, Microfilm Roll No. 1184408. (Figure 3) Peter was unable to locate Rudolf’s death certificate in online records from Danzig but was curious whether I’d be interested in having him seek other documents related to Rudolf; I told him I was, particularly since I had no idea how Rudolf had died. Naturally, I assumed it was of natural causes, which I soon learned was not the case. Having strangely been unable to find Rudolf Löwenstein’s death certificate, Peter presciently wondered whether he might have died somewhere other than Danzig.
In a very short time, by accessing Danzig Address Books available online, Peter was able to track Rudolf and his family’s addresses and occupations between 1903 and 1933, summarized below:
1903—Director of the tobacco factory RUMI—Weidengaße 48
1904—Merchant—Weidengaße 48 (with a widow LÖWENSTEIN)
1905-1907—Merchant, representative of the advertising expedition Rudolf Mosse and Paul Stabernick, Heilige Gastgaße—Weidengaße 48 (Figure 4)
Peter’s findings related to Rudolf’s fate transcend what the Danzig Address Books of the day reveal. He was able to track down four newspaper accounts from two newspapers, the “Danziger Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ)” and the “Volksstimme,” from August 23rd and August 25th, the days immediately following Rudolf’s recorded death date.
TRANSCRIPTION
(“Danziger Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ)” article from Saturday the 23rd of August 1930) (Figure 7)
In der Nähe von Friedrichsdorf bei Iglau stützte, wie aus Prag gemeldet wird, Freitag nachmittag 4 Uhr ein Flugzeug ab, das auf der Strecke Prag-Preßburg verkehrte. In dem Flugzeug befanden sich 13 Personen, von denen bei dem Absturz vier auf der Stelle getötet wurden. Von den schwer verletzten Personen sind kurz nach der Einlieferung in das Iglauer Krankenhaus vier weitere gestorben. Ferner sind zwei Passagiere schwer und einer leicht verletzt worden. Unter den Getöteten befindet sich der Ingenieur Bernhard EIMANN aus Dresden. Das Flugzeug war vom Typ Ford und stand bei den tschechoslowakischen staatlichen Aerolinien seit Frühjahr vorigen Jahres in Dienst. Es vermochte 14 Passagiere und zwei Mann Besatzung zu fassen. Das Flugzeug ist anscheinend in eine Gewitterzone geraten.
Die Flugzeugkatastrophe bei Iglau hat nach neueren Meldungen 10 Todesopfer gefordert, da von den im Krankenhaus eingelieferten Verletzten sechs gestorben sind. Unter den Toten befinden sich zwei Ausländer, außer dem bereits genannten Ingenieur EIMANN aus Dresden, ein Passagier namens Ködenstein aus Dänemark. Man vermutet, dass der Pilot im Sturm die Orientierung verlor, unter die Wolken herabging und das Flugzeug infolge eines Windstoßes abglitt. Ein Teil des Flugzeugs bohrte sich in die Erde ein, der andere geriet in Brand.
TRANSLATION
“Passenger plane crashed
10 deaths
As reported from Prague, a plane, which operated on the Prague- Preßburg route, crashed near Friedrichsdorf near Iglau, at 4 o’clock on Friday afternoon. The plane contained 13 people, four of whom were killed immediately in the crash. Of the seriously injured, four others died shortly after being transferred to the hospital in Iglau. Two passengers were also seriously and one slightly injured. Among those killed is engineer Bernhard EIMANN from Dresden. The plane was of the Ford type and had been in service with the Czechoslovakian state airlines since spring of last year. It was capable of carrying 14 passengers and two crew members. The plane apparently got into a thunderstorm zone.
According to recent reports, the air disaster near Iglau has claimed 10 lives, as six of the injured who were hospitalized have died. Among the dead are two foreigners, apart from the already mentioned engineer EIMANN from Dresden, a passenger named Ködenstein from Denmark. It is suspected that the pilot lost his orientation in the storm, went down under the clouds and the plane slipped as a result of a gust of wind. One part of the plane drilled into the ground, the other caught fire.”
TRANSCRIPTION
(“Volksstimme” article from Saturday the 23rd of August 1930) (Figure 8)
10 Tote bei einem Flugzeugunglück
Flugzeug stürzte auf ein Dach – Die Orientierung verloren
Am Freitagnachmittag um 4 Uhr verunglückte bei Iglau auf dem Wege nach Preßburg im Sturm ein Passagierflugzeug der staatlichen Fluggesellschaft. 10 Personen fand den Tod.
Das Flugzeug flog zunächst in großem Sturm und Regen. Bald nach dem Start stieß der Flugzeugführer auch noch auf dichten Nebel, so dass er die Orientierung verlor. Unterdessen wurde der Sturm immer heftiger. Die Maschine wurde hin und her geworfen und schließlich zu Boden geschleudert. Hier verfing sie sich in einem Baum, der umgerissen wurde. Dem Flugzeugführer gelang es noch einmal, die Maschine hochzureißen. Der Versuch einer Notlandung mißglückte jedoch. Das Flugzeug stürzte auf das Dach eines Hauses, fiel um und explodierte. Vier Personen verbrannten, 6 wurden durch den Aufschlag tödlich verletzt. Unter den Opfern der grausigen Katastrophe befindet sich auch der Dresdner Ingenieur Bernhard EIMANN. Der Pilot fand ebenfalls den Tod.
Die Unglücksmaschine wurde vor drei Monaten von Ford aus Amerika bezogen. Sie verfügte über Sitzplätze für 14 Personen und versah den Verkehr zwischen Prag und Preßburg.
TRANSLATION
“10 dead in a plane crash
Airplane crashed onto a roof – Lost orientation
On Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock on the way to Bratislava a passenger plane of the state airline was involved in an accident near Iglau. 10 people were killed.
The plane first flew in a heavy storm and rain. Soon after take-off, the pilot also encountered dense fog so that he lost his orientation. Meanwhile the storm became more and more violent. The plane was tossed back and forth and finally flung to the ground. Here it got caught in a tree that was knocked down. The pilot managed to pull the plane up once more. However, the attempt of an emergency landing failed. The plane crashed onto the roof of a house, fell over and exploded. Four people were burned, six were fatally injured by the impact. Among the victims of the gruesome catastrophe is the Dresden engineer Bernhard EIMANN. The pilot was also killed.
The crashed aircraft was purchased by Ford from America 3 months ago. It had seats for 14 people and provided traffic between Prague and Bratislava.”
TRANSCRIPTION
(“Danziger Allgemeine Zeitung (DAZ)” article from Monday the 25th of August 1930) (Figure 9)
Zu dem schweren Flugunfall bei Iglau, über den wir Sonnabend berichteten, werden folgende Einzelheiten bekannt: Der auf dem Flug von Preßburg nach Prag verkehrende große, dreimotorige Eindecker geriet kurz vor Iglau in eine schwere Gewitterböe, weshalb sich der Pilot gezwungen sah, eine Notlandung vorzunehmen. Aus bisher noch nicht ganz geklärter Ursache, wahrscheinlich durch ein plötzliches Umspringen des Windes, überschlug sich aber der Apparat, noch ehe er den Boden erreicht hatte. Die schwere Maschine stürzte auf ein von Arbeitern bewohntes Haus, durchschlug das Dach und zerstörte auch einen Teil des Mauerwerks. Der Aufprall war so heftig, dass im Augenblick des Aufschlags eine Explosion des Benzintanks erfolgte.
In wenigen Sekunden war die Maschine in ein Flammenmeer gehüllt. Das Feuer griff auch trotz des starken Regens auf das Hausdach über. Die Feuerwehr löschte den Brand und versuchte die Passagiere aus ihrer furchtbaren Lage zu befreien. Die Hilfe kam jedoch zu spät. Von den 13 Insassen des Flugzeugs konnten vier nur mehr als verkohlte Leichen geborgen werden.Die Identität dieser vier Toten konnte noch nicht festgestellt werden.
Ein Danziger bei der Iglauer Flugzeugkatastrophe tödlich verunglückt
Wie wir erfahren, ist bei dem Flugzeugunglück in Iglau (Tschechoslowakei) auch ein Danziger Kaufmann, der Inhaber einer hiesigen Announcen-Expedition, Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, ums Leben gekommen.
TRANSLATION
“The air disaster at Iglau
The following details are known about the serious air accident at Iglau, which we reported on Saturday: The large, three-engined monoplane flying from Bratislava to Prague was caught in a heavy gust of thunder shortly before Iglau, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing. For reasons not yet fully explained, probably due to a sudden change in wind, the plane overturned before it reached the ground. The heavy machine crashed into a house inhabited by workers, punctured the roof and also destroyed part of the masonry. The impact was so violent that at the moment of impact the petrol tank exploded.
In a few seconds the machine was enveloped in a sea of flames. The fire also spread to the roof of the house despite the heavy rain. The fire brigade extinguished the fire and tried to rescue the passengers from their terrible situation. But help came too late. Of the 13 passengers on the plane, four were recovered as charred bodies, but the identity of the four dead could not yet be determined.
A man from Danzig was killed in the Iglau air disaster
As we learn, the plane accident in Iglau (Czechoslovakia) also killed a merchant from Danzig, the owner of a local advertising expedition, Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN.”
TRANSCRIPTION
(“Volksstimme” article from Monday the 25th of August 1930) (Figure 10)
Bei der Flugzeugkatastrophe in Iglau – Tragisches Ende eines Besuchs in der Heimat
Die Flugzeugkatastrophe bei Iglau, über die wir am Sonnabend ausführlich berichtet haben, hat ein elftes Todesopfer gefordert. Der Kaufmann Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, der Vater des bekannten, augenblicklich in Paris lebenden Danziger Malers Fedja LÖWENSTEIN, ist seinen Verletzungen erlegen.
Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, der im 59. Lebensjahr stand, war auf dem Heimflug von Prag nach Danzig. Er hatte eine Geschäftstour in die Tschechoslowakei unternommen und damit einen Besuch seines Heimatortes Johannisbad verbunden. Der Rückflug nach Danzig sollte bereits einige Tage früher erfolgen, wegen des ungünstigen Wetters aber wurde der Start auf Freitag verschoben. Am Nachmittag erfolgte dann das furchtbare Unglück, das zu den schwersten Flugzeugkatastrophen überhaupt zu rechnen ist.
Vorläufig ist noch unbekannt, wie das Unglück geschah. Man nimmt an, dass das Flugzeug vom Blitz getroffen wurde. Die Machine stürzte auf das Dach eines Hauses, fiel um und explodierte.
Vier Personen verbrannten und sieben Passagiere, darunter Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, wurden durch den Aufschlag tödlich verletzt. Die Leiche Löwensteins wird nach Danzig überführt und hier beigesetzt werden.
TRANSLATION
“Danzig merchant killed in accident
At the airplane disaster in Iglau – Tragic end of a visit to the home
The air disaster at Iglau, which we reported on in detail on Saturday, has claimed an eleventh life. The merchant Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, the father of the well-known Danzig artist Fedja LÖWENSTEIN, who is currently living in Paris, succumbed to his injuries.
Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, who was nearly 59 years old, was on his flight home from Prague to Danzig. He had gone on a business trip to Czechoslovakia, which included a visit to his hometown of Johannisbad. The return flight to Danzig should have been a few days earlier, but due to the unfavorable weather, the start was postponed to Friday. In the afternoon, the terrible accident occurred, which is one of the most serious aircraft disasters ever.
It is not yet known how the accident happened. It is assumed that the aircraft was struck by lightning. The plane crashed onto the roof of a house, fell over and exploded.
Four people were burnt and seven passengers, including Rudolf LÖWENSTEIN, were fatally injured by the impact. Löwenstein’s body will be transferred to Danzig and buried here.”
According to the contemporary newspaper accounts, Rudolf Löwenstein, who at the time of his death was almost 59 years old, was on his way home to Danzig. The flight on which he was killed was flying from Preßburg, Czechoslovakia [today: Bratislava, Slovakia] to Prague, when it went down near a town called Iglau. (Figure 11) Rudolf had gone on a business trip to Czechoslovakia, which included a visit to his hometown of Johannisbad [today: Janské Lázně, Czech Republic]. The plane he was on got caught in a heavy rainstorm. Soon after take-off, the pilot became disoriented on account of dense fog, and attempted an emergency landing near Iglau. Possibly due to wind shear, the plane overturned before it could land, crashed into the roof of a house, and exploded; 11 of the 13 passengers aboard were killed. The plane was of a Ford type, possibly a Ford Trimotor 5-AT-B. (Figure 12) Production on this model started in 1925 by the companies of Henry Ford and ended on June 7, 1933. Designed to hold 15 to 17 passengers, it was intended for the civil aviation market, but also saw service with military units.
Let me move on to where my father may have been on the 22nd of August 1930 when his uncle Rudolf was killed. My father received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland], the latter of which ended on the 17th of August 1930 (Figure 13); Allenstein is only a little more than 100 miles southeast of Danzig so he likely returned there by train after this apprenticeship.
My father did not establish and open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until the 9th of April 1932. In the interim, he apprenticed with a dentist in Danzig, Dr. Fritz Bertram (Figure 14), and likely stayed with his Aunt Hedwig and Uncle Rudolf in Danzig, and possibly two of their three children living at home.
The plane Rudolf Löwenstein was flying was reported to have gone down at around 4pm on the 22nd of August; already by the following day, the two Danzig newspapers had reported on the tragedy. Thus, it’s likely my father’s uncle was expected home the evening of the 22nd of August, and that the family had already been notified or learned of the plane crash that ultimately resulted in Rudolf’s death. Clearly, ninety years after the incident, it’s impossible to know exactly how events played out on that day and when the family eventually learned of Rudolf’s tragic accident but it’s likely my father was present when the family heard about what had happened; it’s not clear from contemporary news accounts whether Rudolf was killed instantly or not. The fact Peter Hanke has not found Rudolf’s death certificate in Danzig may possibly mean it is to be found in the Czech Republic.
As an aside, while I have multiple photos of my great-aunt Hedwig and her three children (Figure 15), and know all their vital statistics, regrettably, I have no known pictures of Rudolf Löwenstein. None of Hedwig and Rudolf’s children bore any offspring, though two were married, so it’s been difficult to track down where their personal papers wound up after their deaths. So, for the moment, Rudolf remains faceless.
Note: In this post, I describe a recent contact I had with a reader of my Blog who was able to partially answer the question of whether the German government ever paid restitution to the heirs of the Woinowitz sugar plant for the forced sale of the factory by the Nazis during the 1930’s. I also discuss some of what I’ve learned about the heirs, detail some of the documentary evidence I’ve uncovered, and raise new questions now that earlier ones have been answered.
When I launched my family history Blog two years ago, I expressed hope readers would contact me with information about people and topics I would write about over time and/or establish ancestral connections between our families based on these accounts. This has happened on various occasions, and this Blog post is about one such encounter. It is a particularly satisfying story because it relates to several earlier posts, resolves a few mysteries I was never previously able to unravel, and establishes connections between events and people I earlier viewed as unrelated. Yet, like the Lernaean Hydra, one question gets answered and two “grow” in its place.
This story really begins when I was a youth. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1), came to America in 1948, at the age of 41. He never again worked as a dentist because the American authorities wanted him to completely reestablish his dental credentials, something he felt he was too old to do. Instead, he went to work for one of his cousins, Franz Kayser (1897-1983) (Figure 2), who ran an import business. When this cousin’s wife left him and got remarried with Curt L. Sterner, who similarly ran an import business, my father became part of the “package.” For the remainder of his working days, my father worked for Mr. Sterner.
Both Franz Kayser and Curt Sterner were Jewish and escaped Nazi Germany, as did Mrs. Catherine “Ulrike” Sterner (1908-2005) (Figure 3), the former Mrs. Kayser, also German though not Jewish. Growing up, my family would occasionally socialize with Mr. and Mrs. Sterner. On various occasions over the years, Ulrike would tell the story of her first husband’s uncle who had refused the Nazis offer to leave Germany in the 1930’s with 80 percent of his wealth intact. This was contrary to Ulrike’s advice, which was rejected on account of her juvenescence and presumed naivety. She maintained the uncle and his family could have lived very comfortably on the remaining money. Instead, he wound up committing suicide when it was no longer possible for German Jews to leave, with or without their money. Whether Ulrike ever mentioned this uncle’s name, I can’t recall.
Ulrike and Franz Kayser had one son together, John Kayser. (Figure 4) Ulrike was prescient and could see what awaited Jews who stayed in Germany. She traveled to England to give birth to John in 1938 so that he would have a British passport; while the family briefly returned to Berlin following John’s birth, they quickly fled to America after Kristallnacht. John and I are third cousins, and he provided the name of his father’s uncle, Dr. Erich Schück, Uncle Schück as he was familiarly known. (Figure 5)
Fast forward. Through my Blog, I recently received an email from a gentleman in Denmark, Mr. Allan Grutt Hansen. (Figure 6) He explained that his great-aunt, his grandmother’s sister that is, Hedwig Schück née Jendricke, had been married to Dr. Erich Schück. I have Dr. Schück in my family tree, though I never knew he’d been married. While this obviously expands my family tree, I was more interested in what it might reveal about the Schücks who once co-owned the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik outside Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] that I wrote about in Post 36.
Mr. Hansen is an avid genealogist and visits places associated with his family in Germany and Poland. This year he and his wife visited Upper Silesia, including Ratibor. As he’s done in the past, he did an Internet query on the still-standing Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 7) outside Ratibor before his trip but, unlike earlier searches, this time landed upon my recent Blog post on the subject. Ergo, his email to me. As an aside, I learned, to my pleasure, that Allan used my Blog posts as a guide to some places he visited in Silesia.
In Post 36, I explained that Dr. Erich Schück’s father, Adolph Schück (Figure 8), had been partners with one of his brothers-in-law, Sigmund Hirsch, in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik; I’m unsure whether they were equal partners. Adolph died in 1916 and seemingly his shares passed into the hands of his three children, including his only son Erich. It’s unclear who inherited Sigmund’s stake in the business when he died in 1920, although it’s likely his two married daughters, Henrietta and Helene Hirsch (Figure 9), did. Though the factory was shuttered sometime in the 1920’s for economic reasons, the families retained ownership. To remind readers, I was never previously able to resolve the question of whether the Schück and Hirsch families were compensated by the German government for the sale or confiscation of the property after the Nazis came to power in 1933. My friend Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 10), Silesian historian, however, affirmed that during his days working as an attorney he transacted a legal sale of the sugar factory from rightful owners. This is where things stood until I was contacted by Mr. Allan Grutt Hansen from Denmark.
Allan was not only able to answer the question of German restitution, but he provided documentation on how monies were meted out to his ancestors; he sent me the eight pages of the restitution agreement, naturally in German, detailing how his branch of the family was indemnified for sale of the sugar factory. There are specifics I’m still trying to understand and additional records I’m currently working to obtain, but the broad outline is becoming clearer.
The written materials Allan sent me deals only with the one-sixth of the estate involving his ancestors. The West German government ostensibly compensated all eligible heirs in 1966 for the forced sale of the sugar factory in September 1936. If my understanding is accurate, compensation paid out in 1966 was based on what the factory would have sold for in 1936 had the sale been voluntary. It appears the value of the factory in 1936 was estimated in 1966 to have been about 450,000 Reichsmark (RM) (i.e., in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30). This figure was divided into six equal shares of 75,000 RM, which likely represented the number of eligible heirs and/or “estates.” (Figures 11a-b)
This figure was “adjusted” upward in 1966 by multiplying the 75,000 RM by 1.9 “boosting” the value of Dr. Erich Schück’s shares to 142,500 RM; perhaps this was done to offset the ridiculously high “wealth tax” assessed in 1936 by the Nazis that reduced the amount he actually received. However, Dr. Schück’s heirs only reaped 2,500 RM in 1966 because 140,000 RM had already been disbursed in 1936. (Figure 11c) This only makes sense to me if Erich was the only heir to receive monies from sale of the sugar plant in 1936. If so, the West German government may have attempted to rectify this “oversight” in 1966 by paying out equal portions of 142,500 RM to each of the five other heirs or their descendants. Until the complete restitution package is in hand, it’s unknown how much was paid out in 1936 and to whom, and how much in 1966 and again to whom. Watch this space for further explanation.
Examining the documentation provided by Allan Grutt Hansen, formal compensation proceedings were apparently initiated in the early 1960’s in Hansestadt Lübeck (Figure 11a), the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Hedwig Schück was probably no longer alive at the time, having passed away on the 9th of June 1960, at a then-undetermined location. I’ve already told readers Dr. Erich Schück committed suicide, place and date also then-undetermined. I’ll discuss below how details in the restitution package allowed me to track down the place they died, and, in the case of Dr. Schück, the year he died.
The documentation on the one-sixth of the compensation doled out to Allan’s family lists by name all the heirs and their shares. These included: Anna Johannsen née Brügge (1/12th share); Sophie Dalstrand née Brügge (1/12th share); Christian Brügge (1/24th share); and Helmuth Brügge (1/24th share). (Figure 11d) Let me briefly explain how these people are related to Dr. Erich Schück.
As previously mentioned, Dr. Erich Schück was married to Hedwig Schück née Jendricke. Hedwig’s mother, Anna Pelagia Jendricke (1873-1953), had her out-of-wedlock in 1889 when she was only 16 years old. Possibly, because the family came from a small town in Poland, Gołańcz, with conservative values they pretended Hedwig was Anna’s sister rather than her illegitimate daughter, thus the maiden name “Jendricke.” Anna would eventually get married to a Christian Brügge (1853-1926) with whom she had four additional children. (Figure 12)
In any case, Anna Johannsen and Sophie Dalstrand were sisters-in-law of Dr. Erich Schück, while Christian and Helmuth Brügge were two of his nephews. All four of Dr. Schück’s heirs were related through marriage to Hedwig Schück née Jendricke.
Allan provided some historical background to clarify where his Brügge and Jendricke lineages came from and how, after WWI, geo-political factors influenced why the Brügges wound up in Denmark and the Jendrickes ended up in Germany. This is important for understanding why some members of Allan’s family were so German-minded, and how it influenced their actions during WWII. I’ll return to this shortly. While not directly relevant to restitution for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, it establishes some context for understanding the present-day borders of Denmark, Germany, and Poland, and by extension other European countries. (Figure 13)
Allan’s Brügge ancestors come from the Danish-German border region of Schleswig, divided today between Germany and Denmark. His Jendricke family comes from the Polish-German border region of western Poland. Schleswig was originally entirely Danish, while western Poland was Polish, but after several hundred years of German influence and pressure from German authorities in both areas, western Poland (as well as northern Poland) and southern Denmark became German. A war was fought between the Danes and the Germans in 1864 when the Danish government sought to reunite the whole of Schleswig under Danish control; the Danes were defeated and wound up losing 40 percent of their land and population. Denmark only recovered the northern half of Schleswig in 1920 following a plebiscite asking the residents whether they wanted to be Danish or German.
In the 1890’s, Allan’s Danish-minded great-grandfather, Christian Brügge (1853-1926) (Figure 14) apparently traveled to western Poland and found his wife, Anna Pelagia née Jendricke, in Gołańcz, Poland; they settled in Flensburg in south Schleswig, which today is in Germany, on the German-Danish border. When south Schleswig was not restored to Denmark in 1920 (Figure 15), Christian Brügge immediately moved his family to Copenhagen in Denmark. Allan’s great-grandfather wrote an article for a Flensburg newspaper promising to return once south Schleswig again became part of Denmark. It never has.
Western and northern Poland had already been incorporated into German Prussia, when Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia divided the rest of Poland among them, and Poland ceased to exist for 123 years between 1796 and 1919. Following WWI, between 1919 until 1939, Poland regained its independence until Hitler and Stalin started WWII by again dividing Poland. Following the war, Poland never regained its eastern half (now a part of Belarus and Ukraine), and instead Poland was “parallel-shifted” westward, and Poland was compensated by regaining western and northern Poland. This redrawing of the map resulted in 7 million Poles being deported from the former eastern part of Poland to western and northern Poland, and 12 million Germans from the latter areas being deported to Germany. This was ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.
Let’s return to the story of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. According to Allan, Lübeck, where compensation proceedings were initiated, may not have been an accidental location. Let me explain and tell readers at the outset this involves “skeletons in the closet,” so to speak. Anna “Anni” Johannsen née Brügge, who received 1/12th of the compensation that was meted out in 1966, was married to a Bende Johannsen. (Figure 16) Because both were German-minded and eager to make Denmark German, they supported the Nazis. They worked at the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen during WWII, a place called the “Shell House” because it had been confiscated from Shell Corporation during the war. Anni translated forced confessions from captured Danish freedom fighters, while her husband worked in an administrative position. While neither was ever convicted of directly torturing or killing anyone, Anni as a German citizen was expelled from Denmark after the war, and her Danish husband Bende left with her, with both eventually settling in the Holstein-Oldenburg- Lübeck area, in a town called Neustadt. If Anni initiated the compensation proceedings after her sister’s death in 1960, as seems likely, this may explain why it was handled by the “Landesrat Oldenburg (Holstein).” Regardless, it’s an irony the ardent Nazi Anni benefited from the expropriation of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik.
Regular readers know I always try to track down historic documents to bolster my account of events. Immediately after establishing contact with Allan, I asked him for a picture of his great-aunt Hedwig and vital data about her. I quickly learned he had no photos of her, no idea where she’d died, and no letters or personal papers belonging to her; if Hedwig maintained a relationship with her mother and half-siblings, it appears it was at best a casual one. My question, however, prompted Allan to re-examine the compensation documents, and there he discovered Hedwig had lived on one of the poshest streets in Berlin.
In Post 49, I described to readers how to use the challenging Landesarchiv Berlin database to search for vital records, and the importance of knowing which of Berlin’s 12 boroughs a vital event took place. In the absence of knowing for certain which borough an event took place, I ALWAYS begin by looking at records for the well-heeled borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, where virtually all my Jewish ancestors lived and/or worked. Knowing the exact date Hedwig Schück died and knowing she had lived in a “posh” Berlin district, I used this same approach, and lo-and-behold, I discovered her name in the Wilmersdorf death register listing for the year 1960. (Figures 17a-b)
The search for her husband Dr. Erich Schück was more challenging since I had no idea when or where he’d killed himself. John Kayser, Erich’s grandnephew, assumed he’d died in Ratibor, while I’d always assumed, he’d committed suicide in Berlin. Knowing from the restitution file the Nazis had forced the sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik in 1936, I could see no reason why Erich would have stayed in Ratibor following the sale of the sugar plant. Most of my relatives, living in smaller communities, who lost their positions or businesses in such places after the Nazis came to power, quickly moved to Berlin; there, at least for a time, they could get “lost” in the relative anonymity of a larger city. Both my father and uncle relocated to Berlin from smaller towns after they lost their dental practices during the 1930’s.
I began by searching for Dr. Erich Schück in ancestry.com, and was rewarded by finding him listed in three Berlin Address Books, respectively, for 1936, 1937 and 1938, living at Landhausstrasse 37 in the Wilmersdorf borough of Berlin (Figure 18); the 1936 Address Book also lists a “Frau Dr. Schück,” Erich’s wife, living at the same address. I did not find him listed in any Berlin directories after 1938 but didn’t automatically assume he’d died that year. Most of my Jewish ancestors living in Berlin told to report for deportation were ordered to do so in 1942 and killed themselves that year.
Having narrowed Dr. Schück’s residence to Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1938, I began scouring the Landesarchiv Berlin death listings for that borough from that year forward; in short order, I discovered his name in the 1938 register. The only surprise is while I’d been told by family that he was a medical doctor, I discovered he was actually a “Dr. jur.,” Doctor juris. (Figures 19a-b)
Now knowing both Dr. Schück and his wife died in Berlin, I’ve requested copies of their death certificates from the Landesarchiv Berlin. They currently have a several month-long backlog so it will be some time before I can report to readers any new information these documents may contain.
I also searched Dr. Schück’s wife in ancestry.com. I found a “Heddy Schück” listed in a 1954 Berlin Phone Directory living at “Fasanenstrasse 38, Charlottenburg” (Figure 20), which matched her address in the compensation package. Reminded that Hedwig was listed as “Heddy,” Allan’s mother later recalled that she in fact went by this diminutive.
Readers will correctly surmise that my conversation with Allan Grutt Hansen has partially answered the question of whether the Schück family was compensated for the forced sale of the sugar factory located in Woinowitz. But, like the Hydra of mythological renown, I may have raised several new questions for the one I’ve answered, namely, who, if anyone beyond Dr. Schück, received monies paid out in 1936; who initiated the compensation proceedings in the 1960’s; and which heirs were indemnified in 1966? There may be other new questions based on the answers to the ones enumerated. Because the restitution was only resolved in 1966, it’s possible that Germany’s privacy laws may prevent release of the complete compensation package for many years to come. Time will tell.
Note: In this Blog post, I discuss how I inadvertently uncovered vital records information for several people in my family tree and talk about leaving open the possibility of discovering evidence of ancestors whose traces appear negligible.
In the prologue to my family history blog, which I initiated in April 2017, I conceded there are some ancestral searches which are bound to end up unresolved during my lifetime. While I never actually close the book on these forensic investigations, I place them on a back-burner in the unlikely event I discover something new or make a new connection. This Blog post delves into one recent find that opened the door to learning more about several close ancestors whom I’d essentially given up hope of unearthing anything new.
Given my single-minded focus over the last two years on writing stories for my family history blog, I’ve woefully neglected updating my family tree which resides on ancestry.com. An opportunity recently presented itself to piggy-back on a friend’s membership to ancestry and review the hundreds of “leaves” associated with the roughly 500+ people in my tree. Typically, at the top of the list of ancestry clues are links to other family trees that may include the same people as found in one’s own tree. While I systematically review these member trees, I only “import” new ancestral information if source documents are attached to the member trees and I can confirm the reliability of the details; I may occasionally make exceptions if trees or tree managers have been trusted sources of information in the past, and/or I otherwise can confirm the origins of the data. Over the years I’ve seen multiple trees replicate the same erroneous information, and this is a path I choose to avoid.
The family ancestral information I happened upon came from a family tree I discussed in Blog Post 39, entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” “Silesian Jewish Families.” Regular readers may recall this tree has an astronomical 52,000+ names in it, so it should come as no surprise that it is often the source of overlapping or new information for individuals found in my own modest-sized tree. That said, I still apply the same rigorous principles in assessing the information found in this larger tree. I rarely take anything at face-value when it comes to vital records (e.g., births, baptisms, marriages, deaths) given the multiple reasons, often inadvertent or negligent, why data may be incorrect or divergent (e.g., illegible or unintelligible writing on source documents; transcription errors). With these caveats in mind, however, I came across some vital record information on the Silesian Families tree that seemed credible given the specificity of birth and death dates for a few individuals in my tree. The information related to my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer; while I’d previously found Gerhard’s birth certificate mentioning his parents, I had never found precise birth and death dates for Ernestine or Gerhard, so this was particularly intriguing.
Having previously established contact with the manager of the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree, a very helpful German lady by the name of Ms. Elke Kehrmann, I again reached out to her. I acknowledged that remembering the source of data for 52,000+ people is unrealistic but thought I should still ask. Initially, Ms. Kehrmann could only recall the information came from a manuscript prepared by an American Holocaust survivor who’d wanted to memorialize his lineage; with numerous computer upgrades over the years, Elke expressed the likelihood the document was digitally irretrievable. Disappointed, but not surprised, I was prepared to accept the vital records information at face-value.
Then, much to my delight, a day later Elke told me she’d located the source document from a larger collection entitled the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994).” (Figure 1) It was too large to email, but she opined I might be able to locate it on the Internet, and, sure enough, I immediately learned the collection is archived at The Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI) and can be downloaded for free. For readers unfamiliar with this institute, according to their website, “LBI is devoted to the history of German-speaking Jews. Its 80,000-volume library and extensive archival and art collections represent the most significant repository of primary source material and scholarship on the Jewish communities of Central Europe over the past five centuries.”
The Pinkus Family Collection is enormous. From the “Biographical Note” to the collection, I learned the Pinkus family were textile manufacturers. Their factory, located in Neustadt, Upper Silesia [today: Prudnik, Poland], was one of the largest producers of fine linens in the world. Joseph Pinkus became a partner in the firm S. Fränkel when he married Auguste Fränkel, the daughter of the owner. Their son Max Pinkus (1857-1934) was director until 1926. Subsequently, Max Pinkus’s son Hans Pinkus (1891-1977) managed the family company from 1926-1938 until he was forced out after the company’s total aryanization in the wake of Kristallnacht. Both Max and Hans Pinkus were very active in civic and cultural affairs and interested in local history; they amassed a large library of books by Silesian authors. In their spare time, they devoted themselves to genealogical research, the basis of the family collection archived at LBI. Hans Pinkus left Germany at the end of 1938, emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family in 1939, and died in Britain in 1977.
In reviewing the index to the collection, I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, Elke came to my rescue and pointed me to “Series VII” (Figure 1), described as encompassing not just close Pinkus family relations but the broader array of families in Upper Silesia. Within this series I located pages related to my family, although, unlike other portions of the collection, ancestral information is recorded in longhand, in Sütterlin, no less. Even so, I was able to decipher most of the numerical data, and enlisted one of my German cousins to translate the longhand.
Here is where I discovered the source of the birth and death dates for my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer. A summary of vital information for Josef Mockrauer, his two wives, and their children follows:
I made other surprising discoveries in the Pinkus Collection. Briefly, some context. The second-generation owners of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor were my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 10) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer. (Figure 11) As the table below shows, Fedor and Friederike Bruck had eight children, only six of whom I’d previously been able to track from birth to death; Elise and Robert remained wraiths whose existence I knew about but assumed had died at birth, a not uncommon fate in the 19th century. This was not, in fact, what happened. Elise lived to almost age 4, and Robert to age 16. While Elise expectedly died in Ratibor, mystifyingly, Robert died on December 30, 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, more than 450 miles from Ratibor. Why here is unclear. Their causes of death are a mystery, though childhood diseases a real possibility.
With respect to the tables above, I don’t expect readers to do anything more than glance at them; for me, they’re a quick reference as to what I know and where it came from, a form of metadata, if you will. The italicized information in the tables was new to me and originated from the Pinkus Collection.
As a related aside, Friederike Mockrauer and Josef Mockrauer were siblings. Interestingly, Josef Mockrauer would go on to eventually marry one of his sister’s daughters, his niece, my great-aunt Charlotte Bruck. Incestuous, I would agree.
Remarkably, on the very same page where I discovered Elise and Robert’s dates and places of death, I found my father and his three siblings listed! (Figure 17) Inasmuch as I can tell, the detailed family information was recorded by either Max (Max died in 1934) or Hans Pinkus around the early- to mid-1930’s, at which time my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, would have been a dentist in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig, and this is precisely what is noted: “Zahnarzt im Tiegenhof (Freistaat Danzig)”; “Freistaat Danzig” was the official name of this former part of the Deutsches Reich after World War I.
Tracking down the Pinkus Collection with its relevant family history is admittedly noteworthy, but the real service was rendered by Max and Hans Pinkus. Their detailed compilation of ancestral data from related Silesian families was gathered while running a full-time business and in the days before genealogical information was digitized, when most of the painstaking work had to be undertaken manually through time-consuming letter-writing, and perhaps occasional phone calls and family gatherings. So, while I take obvious pleasure in having discovered the Pinkus Collection, I acknowledge the true forensic genealogists for amassing this valuable trove of family history.
Let me conclude by emphasizing that well-done family trees to which ancestry.com leads genealogists can often be the source of valuable forensic clues but should be closely scrutinized and delved into to before accepting the data prima facie. And, finally, I have no idea how many “cold cases” I can eventually solve but the challenge is what motivates me.
Note: In this post, I tell readers a little more about a signet ring given to my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, by his landlady in 1937 upon his departure from Tiegenhof, where he had his dental practice in the Free State of Danzig. The post is based on information provided by one of the co-authors of a book on the history of Tiegenhof, Mr. Grzegorz Gola.
I apologize to readers at the very outset, as this Blog post is likely to be of interest to few of you and is more a reflection of my obsession with accuracy, recognizing I’m not an expert on many subjects I write about. When people with expertise on the matters I discuss enhance my understanding of these topics, I’m delighted.
From Blog Post 3, regular readers may recall the extraordinary lengths to which I went to learn the identity of a woman my father only ever referred to when I was growing up as “Die Schlummermutter,” translated roughly as “landlady.” With much letter-writing and the help of a gentleman from the Danzig Forum, I eventually learned Die Schlummermutter was named Frau Margaretha “Grete” Wilhelmine Gramatzki née Gleixner. She was born in Tiegenhof on June 13, 1885 and died there on February 24, 1942.
Figure 1. My father and “Die Schlummermutter” (Grete Gramatzki) in Tiegenhof in Spring 1933, with sisters Suse Epp (left) and Idschi EppFigure 2. Die Schlummermutter, or as she was locally known “dicke Grete” (fat Grete)My father spoke of Grete Gramatzki with great affection, and the surviving pictures of the two of them together attest to this friendship. (Figure 1) She was an enormous woman, weighing more than 400 pounds, and someone I picture to be of outsize personality. (Figure 2) Given the close bond between “dicke Grete” (“fat Grete”), as she was known to locals, and my father, it comes as no surprise that upon my father’s departure from Tiegenhof, some months after Grete’s birthday in June 1937 (Figure 3), she gave him a parting gift. That souvenir was a signet ring (Figure 4) that had belonged to her husband, who I came to learn was Hans Erich Gramatzki. He was born on August 10, 1879 and died at an unknown date. My father arrived in Tiegenhof on April 9, 1932, and while multiple photos post-dating his arrival show Grete Gramatzki, none of her husband exist; I surmise he was no longer alive by the time my father moved to town.
Figure 3. Grete Gramatzki on what would have been her 52nd birthday on June 13, 1937, with an unknown friend on her left and my father’s then-girlfriend Erika on her right. My father left Tiegenhof shortly after this photo was takenFigure 4. Signet ring given to my father by Grete Gramatzki, once belonging to her husband
“The main element of the coat of arms on the ring shows a sloped battle axe embedded in a shield on what was once a red background, today only very faintly visible. The Gramatzki family is Polish aristocracy of the so-called Topór tribe or clan, once living around Preußisch Eylau [today: south of Kaliningrad, Russia]. And, in fact comparing the ring’s coat of arms to that of the Topór tribe shows them to be remarkably similar.”
A signet ring is described as “. . .having a flat bezel, usually wider than the rest of the hoop, which is decorated, normally in intaglio, so that it will leave a raised (relief) impression of the design when the ring is pressed onto soft sealing wax or similar material.” Thus, in the case of the ring given by Die Schlummermutter to my father it is essentially the “signature” of the Gramatzki family and a mirror image of their family’s coat of arms, so I logically assumed. However, Mr. Grzegorz Gola remarked the following:
“In my opinion, this is a variant of the ‘oksza’ coat of arms. (Figure 5) It is very similar to the ‘topór’ coat of arms. (Figure 6) ‘Oksza’ is a battle axe with a sharp tip, inaccurately, a halberd. According to the rules of heraldry, ‘oksza’ is turned to the right [left, when looking at the impression that would be pressed onto soft sealing wax]. The Gramatzki family had a ‘topór’ coat of arms. The Gramacki family had a ‘oksza’ coat of arms. The name ‘Gramacki’ in Polish is pronounced almost identically to the German pronunciation of ‘Gramatzki.’”
Figure 5. The “Oksza” Polish Coat of Arms of the Gramacki familyFigure 6. The very similar “Topór” Polish Coat of Arms of the Gramatzki family
It’s not entirely clear what to make of this, that the ring given to my father, supposedly belonging to Grete Gramatzki’s husband, shows the Gramacki rather than the Gramatzki coat of arms. Possibly, the Polish Gramacki’s originally hailed from Germany or Prussia, and the Gramacki’s and Gramatzki’s have common ancestors.
Figure 7. The signet ring’s heraldic border; neither the Oksza nor the Topór coat of arms bear such a border
Mr. Grzegorz Gola noted one other thing:
“. . .it is interesting that the coat of arms has a heraldic border (a narrow strip on the edge of the coat of arms). (Figure 7) This is very rare in Polish coat of arms. Much more often, this occurs in Scottish, French or English coat of arms. Formerly, in Poland, this meant it was the coat of arms of a younger, newer branch of the family. (In England and France, the heraldic border meant the family of an illegitimate child.)”
Perhaps the first and second issues are interrelated, the slight variation in the shape of the battle axe and the presence of a heraldic border, indicating that Grete Gramatzki’s husband was from a younger branch of an older family or an offspring of an illegitimate son.
Note: In this post, I discuss the evidence for my father’s, Dr. Otto Bruck, conversion to Christianity from Judaism, confirmation of which I recently came upon completely inadvertently.
Growing up, my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, never discussed being born into the Jewish religion. If my memory is correct, I think I first learned about it when I was visiting my maternal grandmother in Nice, France as a child. At the time, we were walking through Vieux Nice, when she turned, pointed to a building, told me that’s where my father worked as a dentist after WWII, and mentioned he was Jewish; it would be many years before I understood the significance of all this. Regular readers may recall I discussed my father’s time in Nice after the war in Post 26 and touched on the fact that he was not legally permitted to practice dentistry in France because he was “apatride,” stateless. He was eventually caught and fled to America before he could be brought up on charges that were eventually dropped by the French authorities.
Because religion was not a part of my upbringing, I never gave much thought to it, although, ironically, I was eventually baptized as a Roman Catholic in Lyon, France on August 2, 1957, when I was six years old. (Figure 1) Given the events my father had lived through, it made sense to him I should have a religion. It’s always puzzled me, however, why my father thought that being baptized would afford me any protection if a future anti-Semitic political entity gained power and decided, as the Nazis had, that anyone with two Jewish grandparents is a Jew. Puzzles without answers.
Given my father’s casual attitude about many things, including relatives and religion, it’s not surprising that much of what I’ve learned about such matters has involved a lot of effort. Because my father considered himself German rather than Jewish, it would have made sense to me if he had converted to Christianity from Judaism. But, as I just remarked, because of my father’s casual attitude, it would also not have surprised me if he’d never made the effort to formally convert. Regardless, I’d never previously been able to find definitive proof either way.
The archives at the Centrum Judaicum Berlin include documentation that my father’s brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, converted from Judaism at the Messiah Chapel in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, Kastanienallee 22 on June 11, 1939, very late indeed. Similarly, the Centrum Judaicum Berlin retains archival records for my Aunt Susanne’s husband, Dr. Franz Müller, who converted much earlier, on November 25, 1901, but still lost his teaching position at Humboldt University many years later, in 1933.
I’m unaware of any comprehensive database that includes the names and records of Jewish converts in Germany. However, since conversion records survive at the Centrum Judaicum for both of my uncles, and since my father attended dental school in Berlin, I began the search for proof of my father’s own conversion here; they found nothing although it was suggested that knowing the specific church where he might have converted could prove useful. Knowing my father had also apprenticed in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] for a short period after graduating from dental school, I contacted the archives there, again to no avail. The other place I reckoned where my father might have converted to Christianity was the town where he was a dentist between April 1932 and April 1937, Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland], although I had no idea at the time where to begin looking for such records.
I’ve learned, it was not uncommon beginning in the last half of the nineteenth century for German-Jews to convert to Christianity as a means of assimilating into German society. A virulent wave of anti-Semitism that had emerged in Germany in the 1880s may have been another factor in the decision of some Jews to convert.
I remember, as a child, my father talking about his time in Tiegenhof and how he drank heavily in those days. Multiple pictures from my father’s days there exist showing him visibly inebriated. (Figure 2) My father was by no means an alcoholic, and he justified his heavy drinking as “necessary to fit in.” I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that my father was an active sportsman, particularly an excellent tennis player. It’s highly likely there were barriers to becoming a member of the various sports and social organizations in Tiegenhof to which my father belonged, religion no doubt being one of them. Thus, I have concluded that if my father did not convert to Christianity before he arrived in Tiegenhof, the provincial mores of this small town may have necessitated he do so here. That said, until recently, I’d been unable to find any evidence my father ever converted.
Few of my father’s papers survive, but one document that has caught my attention only because it included the names of two members of the Joost family. (Figure 3) Readers must understand that on account of all the Tiegenhof-related documents, books, and address directories I’ve perused over the years, many family surnames are now extremely familiar to me; such was the case with the surname “Joost.” In reviewing this document, I was absolutely convinced it was a dental invoice because at the top of the paper it included my father’s name and identified him as a “zahnarzt,” a dentist. Still, it seemed odd my father would have saved only one invoice among the many he’d no doubt written over the years as a dentist.
Setting aside this anomaly, I began to research in various databases the Joost names I found on the paper in question. As readers can see, towards the bottom left side is written “Alb. Joost,” while on the bottom right side is written “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost.” From ancestry.com, I discovered there lived a “Schneidermeister,” a tailor, in Tiegenhof, by the name of “Jacob Albert Joost,” born on July 27, 1865, who died on January 23, 1937. The profession was passed on to his son, “Alfred Albert Joost,” born on June 4, 1898 (Figure 4-5), who died on February 18, 1975; he was married to Käthe Großnick. (Figure 6) The existence of the father and son tailors was confirmed by various Tiegenhof Address Books. (Figures 7-10) Because both father and son had Albert in their name, I was uncertain whether the presumed dental work had been done on the father or son.
To resolve this confusion, I asked one of my cousins to decipher the document. I learned the document was a receipt not for dental work, as I’d thought, but for payment of a church tax. Like in Germany and several other European countries, in the Free State of Danzig, where Tiegenhof was located, members of the Protestant or Catholic Churches were compelled to pay a church tax of 7.5% of their income. In 1936, my father was obviously a member of the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof (Figures 11-14), and his annual tax amounted to 90 Guilden 90 Pfenninge; he was permitted to pay his obligation in four installments. The first payment of 22 Guilden 74 Pfenninge was made on October 6, 1936, and it was receipted by “Alb. Joost,” while the second and third installments were made on December 29, 1936. Kaethe Joost was the authorized representative of Albert Joost, so the “f” in “f. Alb. Joost Kathe Joost” stands for “fuer,” “for” or “in place of,” indicating she signed the receipt in lieu of her husband. The last installment would have been due on March 15, 1937, a payment my father is unlikely to have made because by then he would no doubt have been expelled from the Church for being of the “Jewish race.” By mid-1937, my father had left Tiegenhof.
Having found the clear-cut proof that my father had converted to Christianity and knowing he’d been a member of Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church, I contacted Mr. Peter Hanke from the Danzig Forum asking him whether conversion records for this church still exist. He told me he’d never found such records, and that they’d likely not survived the turmoil of WWII. This was disappointing but hardly unexpected.
Interestingly, Peter did find a brief reference to Albert Joost in Vol. 36 of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the one-time annual journal for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants. In German it says: “Bei Joost war fruehmorgens um 4 Uhr Licht, um diese Zeit arbeitete er bereits in seiner Werkstatt; um 9 Uhr abends war immer noch das Petroleumlicht in der Werkstatt zu sehen. Der war einer von den Tiegenoertern, die ich nie in einem Gasthaus gesehen habe, aber jeden Sonntag im blauen Anzug in der Kirche.” Translated: “Joost was already at work at 4 a.m. in the morning. At 9 p.m. the kerosene lamp could still be seen in his workshop. That man was one of the “Tiegenoerter,” never seen in a tavern but come Sunday always wore a blue suit to church.” Possibly, Albert Joost was the “tithe collector” with his wife for Tiegenhof’s Evangelical Church.
Proof of my father’s conversion to Christianity came in a most roundabout way. As mentioned, it’s highly unlikely his actual conversion document survived WWII, but the important thing is that my father’s attempt to assimilate into German society ended in failure and he was still forced to flee to save himself.
Note: This article provides a brief update to another Blog post of August 2017 about Hans “Mochum” Wagner, a once-close friend from my father’s years living in Tiegenhof.
Unlike “Die Schlummermutter,” “Grete Gramatzki,” towards whom my father had almost maternal feelings and spoke of fondly and often, my father never once mentioned Hans “Mochum” Wagner’s name when I was growing up. As a matter of fact, nowhere in my father’s photo albums is his name even written. This seemed odd given the many pictures there are of him. Once again, it was my father’s 94-year-old friend, Peter Lau, who recognized Mochum Wagner (Figure 1) and told me what he could remember of him. Given the National Socialist era through which my father lived, perhaps I should not be surprised that Mochum Wagner was a wraith. Like many Germans at the time, Mochum likely calibrated that remaining friends with a Jew was not only impossible but dangerous. I can hardly imagine the pain and disappointment my father felt at losing a close friend, probably one of many. Still, perhaps this provided the necessary impetus for my dad to leave Tiegenhof while he still could and enabled him to survive WWII.
Among the things Peter Lau told me about Mochum Wagner was that his father was a “Schornsteinfegermeister,” a chimney sweep, and that Mochum was killed early during WWII. I was able to confirm the former from Günter Jeglin’s book “TIEGENHOF und der Kreis Großes Werder in Bildern”; towards the back of this book there are listings of former businesses in Tiegenhof and their operators, and under the profession of “Schornsteinfegermeister,” appears the name “WAGNER, J.” As to when or where, or even whether, Mochum Wagner had died, I had not previously been able to confirm this.
In the previous two posts, I’ve discussed the assistance that a member of “Forum.Danzig.de,” Peter Hanke, has graciously provided in resolving several troublesome issues related to former residents of Tiegenhof whom my father was acquainted with. In Post 29, I mentioned that Peter directed me to a database on FamilySearch entitled “Heimatortskartei Danzig-Westpreußen, 1939-1963.” This is a civil register of refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland. Consisting of handwritten and typed index-sized cards, it was developed by the German Red Cross after WWII to help people find their families who’d been expelled from this region. All the available cards have been photographed and uploaded to FamilySearch.
Peter sent me a download of a “Heimatortskartei,” for a JOHANNES WAGNER (Figures 2a & 2b), the father of Mochum Wagner. Of the roughly 4,000 cards I’ve studied from this database, it is among the most informative. It provides the names and dates of birth of Johannes Wagner’s seven children by his wife, HEDWIG née AUSTEN; it gives their dates of birth and the date Johannes’s wife died.
According to the Heimatortskartei, Hans Wagner, my father’s one-time friend, was born on June 12, 1909 in Tiegenhof. His profession was “Sportlehrer,” or physical education teacher. (Figure 3) He died during WWII, as Peter Lau had asserted. He was killed or went missing on February 11, 1942, in Volkhov, Russia [German: Wolchow], located 76 miles east of St. Petersberg, formerly Leningrad. Mochum may have died during the Russian offensive launched in January of 1942 against the Germans around the Wolchow River. Peter Hanke checked the German website, “Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.,” with data on German war casualties, and confirmed birth and death information. (Figure 4)
The Wagner family Heimatortskartei provided other information, including the names and birth dates of Mochum Wagner’s six siblings; three of these siblings are listed in the 1927-28 Tiegenhof Address Book. (Figure 5) In Post 6, I discussed names found in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar. Under December 5th, my father recorded “Truden,” one of his girlfriends (Figures 6 & 7); this is clearly Mochum Wagner’s sister, Gertrud “Truden” Wagner, whose date of birth was December 4, 1912 (the difference of one day is not considered significant since such information was sometimes approximated by family).
In his 1932 Day Planner, my father also records an indecipherable name by the date June 12th, the day Mochum Wagner was born (Figure 8); this may be a notation of his former friend.
One Wagner whose identity cannot be confirmed from the Wagner family Heimatortskartei is that of “Hanni Wagner.” In two photos taken in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] showing Mochum Wagner is his German Army Lieutenant’s uniform, she is alongside him. (Figures 9 & 10) Since Mochum is not known to have been married, I’ve always assumed this was one of his sisters, although “Hanni” is not a typical diminutive for any of their names, so her identity remains in doubt. Since Mochum Wagner, or “Johannes Wagner,” as he was officially named, died in February 1942, the two pictures with Hanni Wagner and Alfred Schlenger taken in 1942 were likely recorded only weeks before Mochum died.
Note: This tale is about another of my father’s first cousins, Mr. Fritz Goldenring. This post provides an opportunity to explore the fate of a Jewish émigré, who, while he did not perish in a concentration camp or ghetto in Europe, is every bit as much a victim of Nazi persecution as those individuals who were murdered in these places. How I learned about Fritz does not follow a linear path, although I’ll strive to relate my discoveries in a somewhat chronological fashion. Like the stories of many of my relatives, there are glaring gaps in what I’ve pieced together.
Two of my father’s photos taken in May 1938 in Fiesole, Italy, following his arrival there after fleeing Germany, show a woman identified as Eva Goldenring. (Figures 1 & 2) I later learned she was another of my father’s first cousins. Like most of his relatives, Eva and her mother Helene Goldenring, née Hirsch, were rarely mentioned when I was growing up, although I knew they’d survived the war and eventually immigrated to America. Both daughter and mother stayed at the Pension “Villa Primavera” in Fiesole, Italy, co-managed by my Aunt Susanne Müller, Helene twice in 1937-38 (Figures 3 & 4) and Eva in 1938.
In Post 14, I discussed the Tenant Brewer, Markus Braun, from Ratibor, the town where my father was born. Markus had a dozen children by his first wife, Caroline Spiegel, then two more by his second wife, Johanna Goldstein. I’m distantly related to most of my American cousins through Markus Braun. My third cousin, once-removed, Larry Leyser (Figure 5), is one such relative, and, like myself, an active genealogist. Several years ago, Larry shared a two-page summary written by his grandmother, Katerina Leyser, née Rosenthal (Figure 6), detailing some of Larry’s ancestors. This document provided the first mention of Fritz Goldenring and identified him as the brother of Eva Goldenring and son of Helene Goldenring; no other information was given.
To try and learn more, I turned to ancestry.com, and happened on a tantalizing mention of Fritz Goldenring originating from Aufbau Newspaper, saying he had died in Shanghai; Fritz’s name was listed in the April 19, 1946 edition of Aufbau. (Figure 7) Aufbau (German for “building up, construction”), I discovered, is a journal targeted at German-speaking Jews around the globe founded in 1934. From September 1, 1944 through September 27, 1946, Aufbau printed numerous lists of Jewish Holocaust survivors located in Europe, as well as a few lists of victims. These lists, which have been digitized, contain 33,557 names that are searchable via “JewishGen’s Holocaust Database,” “JewishGen Germany Database,” and the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database.” According to JewishGen, the extent of the information available on any individual varies widely.
For Fritz Goldenring, I learned he was born on September 11, 1902 and died on December 15, 1943; intriguingly, it gave his last residence simply as “Nizza.” Coincidentally, Nizza is the Italian name for Nice, France, a place with which my family has connections, as readers may recall. Mistakenly believing that Fritz may last have resided here before immigrating to Shanghai, I asked an acquaintance at Nice’s l’Hôtel de Ville whether she could find any trace of Fritz Goldenring there, to no avail. Knowing of the Goldenring family’s travels to Genoa, Italy in July 1926, I looked for a “Nizza” nearby, and discovered a place named “Nizza Monferrato” only 65 miles away; I sent the Comune there an email, received a very gracious reply saying Fritz Goldenring similarly had no connection to this place.
Realizing I was grasping at straws, I resolved to renew my search for Fritz Goldenring from the place he’d assuredly lived, namely, Shanghai. I turned to my friend, Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, from the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society, who assists fellow “travelers.” I asked whether she could refer me to someone in the Jewish community in Shanghai, and she suggested I contact “Chabad” centers in Shanghai; Chabad is one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world. I emailed three such centers in Shanghai, asking who I should contact about obtaining a copy of Mr. Goldenring’s death certificate, and almost immediately received an email from Rabbi Shalom Greenberg. He’d forwarded my request to Mr. Dvir Bar-Gal, who leads “Tours of Jewish Shanghai.”
Mr. Bar-Gal, it turns out, is an Israeli photojournalist whose mission of tracking down traces of Shanghai’s Jewish past began by accident, when he discovered a Hebrew tombstone in a Shanghai antique shop in 2001. He’s become known as Shanghai’s “gravestone sleuth,” tracking down Jewish tombstones scattered around the city’s outlying villages, tombstones used for everything from building beams to washboards. Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, Shanghai transformed from a small fishing village to China’s largest city and become known as the “Pearl of the East.”
The Jewish tombstones that Mr. Bar-Gal is racing the clock to save are remnants of Shanghai’s Jewish community that once numbered no fewer than 30,000 Jews. Jews first arrived in Shanghai in 1845, built their fortunes, and quickly occupied key positions in the city, making significant social and economic contributions. Russian Jews escaping the pogroms of the early 1900’s represented the next wave of immigrants. They were followed by the last major group of Jewish immigrants, the most well-known of three waves, European refugees escaping Nazi terror. At the time, China was the only country in the world where Jews did not require an entry visa, and this is certainly the reason my father’s cousin, Fritz Goldenring, sought refuge here.
Many of the Jewish refugees who arrived in Shanghai were penniless but were assisted by the wealthier and established Sephardic Jews. After the Japanese occupied Shanghai in 1937, the Nazis applied pressure on them to deport or murder the city’s Jews, an order they refused. Instead, they confined the roughly 20,000 stateless Jewish refugees to the Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the “Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees,” an area roughly one square mile in the Hongkou district. About 23,000 of the city’s Jewish refugees were restricted or relocated to the area between 1941 and 1945 by the “Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees.” The Shanghai Ghetto was never walled, and Jews were housed alongside local Chinese, who lived in equally deplorable conditions.
The first Jewish cemetery was established in 1862, and by the 1950’s four Jewish cemeteries existed in Shanghai containing 3,700 graves. As the city expanded, in 1958, it was decided to systematically transfer the graves to a newly constructed international cemetery to the west of the city. The few Jews who remained after the Communists came to power were supposed to assist in these transfers, but during Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution,” the international cemetery was instead destroyed, and the gravestones scattered. These uprooted tombstones are the traces of Shanghai’s Jewish past that Mr. Bar-Gal is striving to relocate and preserve.
So, as readers can clearly conclude, referral to Mr. Bar-Gal was fortuitous. While unable to provide a death certificate for Mr. Goldenring, Mr. Bar-Gal provided two valuable clues. He told me that before being expelled from Germany, Fritz had last worked in Darmstadt, Germany as a journalist. He recommended I contact Darmstadt to obtain his death certificate, so I sent the Rathaus (City Hall) there an email. My request was eventually forwarded to the Stadtarchiv, or City Archive, in Darmstadt, and finally, in October 2017, they responded. They could find no evidence that Fritz Goldenring had lived in Darmstadt, but they did find a reference to him in on-line directory at the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, the Hesse Central State Archive, in Wiesbaden. They added one additional clue, namely, that Fritz was born in Berlin.
With this new information, I next contacted the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv. They eventually responded telling me there exists an Entschädigungsakte, a claim for compensation file, submitted by Helene Goldenring, née Hirsch, as the heir of her son Fritz Goldenring. (Figure 8) After paying a fee, I was able to obtain a copy of this 160-page file, a document that ultimately filled in some holes.
This file includes typed and handwritten pages, all in German, so I convinced one of my cousins to review and summarize the highlights. The compensation file, while leaving many facets of Fritz’s life in doubt, did answer some questions. It confirmed Fritz had been born in Berlin; attended grammar and high school there; apprenticed as an office worker in Nordhausen; and worked in Hamburg for Schenker & Co., a transport and logistics company dealing with planes, ships and trucks. He eventually became a journalist, as I’d learned from Shanghai. As his situation in Germany became increasingly tenuous, he hoped to parlay his possession of perfect pitch and musical talents into a ticket elsewhere, so in 1938 he went to Berlin. While there, he was apparently arrested for jay-walking and jailed for three days. In a classic example of a “Catch-22,” upon his release, he was deemed to have been “previously convicted” and forced to leave Germany.
Knowing Fritz’s sister and mother had both stayed at the “Villa Primavera” in Fiesole, I re-examined the Pension’s guest logs, and discovered Fritz had also stayed there, registering for a month-long visit on May 16, 1938. (Figure 9) I surmise after he was deported from Germany, Fritz first went to Fiesole before eventually making his way to Shanghai. While in Fiesole, he even played in a men’s tennis tournament because, among my father’s personal papers, I discovered a newspaper clipping showing my father and Fritz’s results. (Figure 10)
It’s not clear how long Fritz Goldenring stayed in Italy, but like my aunt and uncle, he likely left no later than September of 1938, probably from Genoa aboard a luxurious Italian or Japanese cruise ship headed to Shanghai. I became curious whether Mr. Bar-Gal could tell me when Fritz arrived there, so I again contacted him. There exists an Emigranten Adressbuch for Shanghai, dated November 1939, listing Fritz Goldenring, which Mr. Bar-Gal sent me a scan of, proving Fritz was there no later than late 1939. (Figures 11a & 11b)
The Japanese designated the Shanghai Ghetto on February 18, 1943 and compelled those who’d arrived after 1937 to move there by May 18, 1943; many relocated Jews lived in group homes called “Heime,” including Fritz, who lived at “Alcockheim 66,” along with 60 other men. Helene Goldenring’s compensation file explained Fritz’s cause of death, namely, Sprue and Avitaminose. Avitaminosis is a disease cause by a deficiency of vitamins, and is closely associated with sprue, a chiefly tropical disease characterized by diarrhea, emaciation, and anemia. Fritz is recorded as having died on December 15, 1943 at the Ward Road Hospital in Shanghai; apparently, the winter of 1943 in Shanghai was severe, and hunger was widespread.
Fritz’s mother’s compensation file, together with immigration records available from ancestry.com for his family, illustrate how widely the Goldenring family was dispersed during WWII. Fritz’s sister, Eva Goldenring, for reasons I’m striving to understand, survived incarceration in the notorious French detention center of Gurs at the base of the Pyrenees in southwestern France; Eva would eventually live in Madrid before immigrating to America in 1947. Fritz’s mother, Helene, made her way to Valparaiso, Chile, where her brother, Robert Hirsch, an engineer, had immigrated in 1939 from Bilbao, Spain. Robert died in 1943 in Chile, and on July 3, 1947, Helene immigrated to New York (Figure 12), where she was reunited with her daughter. (Figure 13)
