Note: In this second postscript to Blog Post 34, I relate to readers additional information that has come to my attention about my great-aunt, Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner, and her family, largely the result of a member of the Brauer family having come across my family history blog and having contacted me.
One of my expressed desires when I launched my Bruck family history blog in April 2017 is that not only would I relate to readers forensic discoveries I’d made about my father’s family, friends and acquaintances, but perhaps from time to time readers would come across my blog, contact me, and tell me how we are related or share additional information or tales about people that have been the subject of my posts. My expectations have been met, in some cases exceeded, on multiple occasions. This is particularly satisfying when the people or family I’ve written about met a tragic end at the hands of the Nazis and their henchmen. The opportunity to relate even a small part of these people’s lives ensures they will not have passed through this world completely unnoticed.
For readers who’ve not followed the previous posts about my great-aunt Margareth Auguste Brauer née Berliner, let me briefly review. In early 2018, while visiting my German first cousin’s son who is in possession of some of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s surviving pictures and papers, I asked if I could peruse these documents. Surprisingly, included among the pictures was a single photo captioned partly in my uncle’s handwriting, identifying my grandmother’s sister, Grete Brauer, a great-aunt. (Figures 1a-b) I’d never heard about her growing up, though had discovered a record of her birth on March 19, 1872 (Figure 2), in the Jewish microfilm records available online for Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] from the Church of Latter Day Saints; having previously never found any evidence she survived into adulthood, I’d erroneously assumed she’d died at birth or in childhood. While I knew my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner (Figure 3), growing up, I was only six years of age when she passed away in New York City, so it’s not unexpected my grandmother would never have spoken to me about her older sister. Readers may well wonder why my father never told me about her, and I can merely respond by saying that, apart from his beloved sister Susanne, murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942, he had scant interest in family. Regardless, the picture from my uncle’s estate dated 1933 proved that Margareth Brauer née Berliner had indeed lived well into adulthood. What happened to her after 1933 was initially a mystery.
While learning about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer was a new development, I had previously come across the surname “Brauer.” In 2014, when examining the personal papers of two renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, a suburb of Berlin, I’d come across multiple letters penned to Elsbeth Bruck by Ernst Hanns Brauer and his wife Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca, Spain; just to be clear, Franziska and Elsbeth were sisters of my father’s father, as opposed to Margareth, who was a sister of my father’s mother. At the time, I’d not yet worked out that my Bruck relatives were related to the Brauers through my great-aunt Margareth Berliner’s marriage to a man named Siegfried Brauer, and that Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 4) was their son and my father’s first cousin. (Interested readers will find a table at the end of this post with vital statistics of my great-aunt Margareth Brauer and her immediate family.)
Regular readers may recall I was eventually able to track Ernst and Herta Brauer’s descendants to Puerto Rico. (Figure 5a-b) I discussed this in the first postscript to Post 34. In the earlier postscript I also explained to readers that my great-aunt Margareth Brauer had been murdered in Theresienstadt, a fact I uncovered in the Yad Vashem “Shoah Names Database,” a directory I’d neglected to check before publishing my original post.
Margareth Brauer’s husband, Siegfried Brauer, died in 1926 in Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland]. (Figures 6a-b) His death was reported to authorities by a Hildegard Brauer, whom I confused with Herta Brauer, Siegfried’s daughter-in-law, Ernst Brauer’s wife. I hadn’t yet discovered that Margareth and Siegfried Brauer had had a daughter named Hildegard. Once I found Hildegard’s birth certificate (Figures 7a-b) and checked her name in the “Shoah Names Database,” I realized she too had been a Holocaust victim, like her mother. (Figure 8)
This current postscript was originally intended to merely update readers on Hildegard Brauer’s fate until I was contacted through my blog’s webmail by a delightful gentleman from Los Angeles named Eri Heller. Like other individuals researching their ancestors, he accidentally discovered my family history blog, specifically the posts about my great-aunt Margareth Brauer. He learned about some of his ancestors and family history he’d previously been unaware of; he also graciously shared with me high-quality pictures of Margareth and Siegfried Brauer (Figures 9-10), as well as their daughter Hildegard (Figure 11), and explained our familial connection. Unbeknownst to me, Siegfried Brauer (~1859-1926) had an older brother, Adolf Brauer (1857-1933) (Figures 12-14), that’s to say Margareth Brauer’s brother-in-law and Eri Heller’s grandfather. So, while Eri and I are not blood relatives, we are second cousins by marriage. Using MyHeritage, I was able to reconstruct much of Eri Heller’s ancestry and find additional photos of his family, although it is not my intention to elaborate on that here.
I’ve previously mentioned to readers I’ve come across a Jewish Silesian family tree on ancestry.com with in excess of 60,000 names; my tree has slightly more than 750 names, and I use it mostly to orient myself when writing about various forebearers and figuring out ancestral connections. One of the greatest pleasures I derive is attaching photos to people in my tree. Without my blog, it’s unlikely I would ever have obtained pictures of my great-aunt and-uncle, Margareth and Siegfried Brauer, and their daughter, Hildegard Brauer, two of whom were victims of the Holocaust. As I implied at the outset, having pictures of individuals and researching and writing their stories makes these otherwise spectral beings in my tree come to life. And, likewise, this is the reason I liberally pepper my blog posts with documents and photos to “prove” these individuals once walked among us.
MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & HER IMMEDIATE FAMILY
Note: This post is about Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, one of my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s “silent heroes,” who hid him in Berlin during WWII for periods of his 30-month survival “underground.” Having learned she was married to my uncle’s cousin, I discuss how I worked out their exact relationship in what was on my part a clear case of over-thinking their consanguinity.
Among my uncle’s surviving papers are two declarations, pledged under oath, identifying people who provided life-saving support to my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (Figure 1) during the 30 months he lived “underground” in Berlin during WWII. My uncle’s trying ordeal began in October 1942 when friends warned him the Gestapo was preparing to pick him up for “questioning,” detainment which would have led to his deportation to a concentration camp and certain death; straightaway, he went into hiding to avoid arrest. The declarations written, respectively, on January 19, 1947 and February 3, 1947, were basically intended as letters of reference for the Americans. They attested to my uncle’s “good character” and provided a brief chronology of how and with whose help he’d survived underground. A little context is necessary.
As discussed in previous Blog posts, almost immediately after the war ended, my Uncle Fedor applied to what he described as the “pertinent authorities,” presumably the Russians in this case, for permission to take over the office and apartment of Hitler’s former dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, which had survived the war unscathed. (Figure 2) Permission was granted in early May 1945. While my uncle’s situation may have seemed comparatively secure at the time, he’d apparently been warned by the Americans that he was at risk of being kidnapped by the Russians on account of his knowledge of Hitler’s fate, which Stalin sought to conceal. My uncle no doubt realized his danger since both Blaschke’s dental assistant, Käthe Heusermann, and Blaschke’s dental technician, Fritz Echmann, both of whom he knew, had been taken away by the Russians in 1945, not to reappear again in the West for many years. While my uncle maintained his dental practice in Blaschke’s former office until around July 1947, the declarations written in January and February 1947 strongly suggest my uncle was, so to speak, working on an exit strategy earlier.
One of the two affidavits provided to the American authorities on behalf of my Uncle Fedor was written by Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger. (Figures 3a-b) She mentioned how she hid him in her home for brief periods during the war and described her kinship as the wife of my uncle’s cousin; Lisa did not provide her husband’s name but only wrote he died in 1941, cause unknown. I first came across Lisa Pauly’s name in 2014 when I visited the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, outside Berlin, to examine the archived papers of two of my renowned great-aunts, Elsbeth Bruck and Franziska Bruck. There, I discovered a letter written by my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, on February 2, 1947, mailed from Fayence, France to my great-aunt Elsbeth in Berlin care-of Lisa Pauly living at Maßmannstraße 11 in the Steglitz borough of Berlin. (Figure 4) Ultimately, this address proved to be useful for learning how long Lisa Pauly may have lived; more on this later.
Let me digress for a moment. In Post 33, I discussed the extraordinary lengths to which I went to finding two of my second cousins, born in Barcelona, but living outside Munich, Germany. Once I had established contact with one of these second cousins, Antonio Bruck, he connected me to a third cousin, Anna Rothholz, who in turn put me in touch with yet other third cousins, brothers Peter and Andreas “Andi” Pauly. This was a fortuitous development. Peter and Andi gave me a detailed hand-drawn Pauly family “Stammbaum,” family tree, developed by their father years before these could be created on-line. While I was still a long way from figuring out the hereditary connection between Lisa Pauly’s husband and my Uncle Fedor, this Stammbaum eventually paved the way for working this out, although not without some missteps.
As readers can see in Figure 5, a “Lisa” is highlighted, shown married to a “Franz” who died in 1941. Based on the affidavit Lisa Pauly had written in 1947, logically, I knew this was she and her husband. My confusion stemmed from the fact that Lisa’s husband was the son of Dr. Oscar Pincus and Paulina Charlotte Pauly, presumably named Franz Pincus. I continued my search, convinced there had to be a different Lisa who’d married a Pauly. After many fruitless months, I eventually began looking for her in Family Trees in ancestry.com. I finally found her on a tree listed as “Lisa Krüger,” born in the year 1890. (Figure 6) As discussed in Post 39, the tree is entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” Silesian Jewish Families. There is a notation in German on this tree that Lisa Krüger was married to a Franz Pincus, born in Posen [today: Poznan, Poland] on October 23, 1898, and that he went by the surname “Pauly.” I then realized my Uncle Fedor and Franz Pauly were second cousins, grandsons of sisters (Figures 7 & 8), and understood how badly I’d misconstrued their kinship. This was clearly a case of my over-thinking things and ignoring what the Pauly Stammbaum had clearly indicated.
Why Franz Pincus decided to change surnames and take his mother’s maiden name is unknown. Since both names are clearly Jewish and neither would have afforded an advantage in the Nazi era, I assumed Franz’s decision was made before the Nazis ever came to power. And, I was able to prove this using Berlin Phone Directories available on ancestry.com. Franz Pincus apparently changed his surname to “Pauly” between 1928 and 1930. A 1928 Berlin Phone Directory (Figure 9) lists a “Franz Pincus” living at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau in the southwestern suburbs of Berlin, but by 1930 “Franz Pauly” is living at this address. (Figure 10)
As mentioned earlier, I knew from the affidavit Lisa had written and the letter my grandmother had written to my great-aunt in 1947, addressed to Lisa, that she resided at Maßmannstraße 11 in the Steglitz borough of Berlin. I searched both Lisa and Franz’s names in ancestry.com and found him listed at this address in Berlin Phone Directories between 1936 and 1940 (Figure 11), the year before he died. Beginning in 1966 and continuing through 1977 (Figure 12), Lisa’s name appears at the same address, suggesting the apartment building survived the war and that Lisa had lived there continuously, possibly from 1936 onwards. The disappearance of Lisa Pauly’s name from Berlin Phone Directories after 1977 may coincide with her approximate year of death. As we speak, I’m working to obtain Lisa’s death certificate from the Bürgeramt Steglitz to confirm when she died.
I’ve been able to learn almost nothing more about Lisa and Franz Pauly. While Peter and Andi Pauly have numerous Pauly family photos, they have none of either of them. It’s an enduring mystery to me how Lisa Pauly avoided deportation to a concentration camp given that at least three of her husband’s Pauly aunts were murdered in the camps along with their husbands and some of their children.
In the subsequent post, I will tell readers about other silent heroes who enabled my uncle to survive his 30 months underground in Berlin during WWII, inasmuch as I’ve been able to work this out.
“I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger.” (David Berger in his last letter, Vilna 1941, quoted from www.yadvashem.org brochure)
NOTE: This post examines the fate of some of the Jewish residents and guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, Italy, between roughly March 1937 and September 1938, the period during which my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck co-managed the property as a bed-and-breakfast with a Jewish emigrant formerly from Austria and Germany, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi. Investigating what became of the guests who stayed at the Villa Primavera during this time wound up upending my preconceived notion that the boarders were all Jewish emigrés permanently fleeing Germany.
Surviving historic records archived at the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” in Fiesole, place my aunt Susanne and my uncle Dr. Franz Müller’s arrival there in about March 1936, and their departure in mid-September 1938. Beginning approximately a year after their arrival, that’s to say, in March 1937, and continuing until they left for France in mid-September 1938, registration logs from the Villa Primavera record numerous guests. I was surprised at the large number of visitors who stayed there, mostly Jewish, and just assumed my aunt and uncle hosted them as they tried to escape Europe and Nazi persecution. While I eventually came across a reference indicating my aunt and Ms. Jacobi had run the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast, explaining the multiple boarders, this did not initially alter my view that the Jewish guests had already permanently fled Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland, never to return.
To remind readers, during Italy’s Fascist era, all out-of-town visitors to Fiesole and elsewhere were required to appear with their hosts at the Municipio, or City Hall, provide their names and those of their parents, declare their occupation, state when and where they were born, show their identity papers, give their passport numbers, divulge their anticipated length of stay, and complete what was called a “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy.”(Figure 1) As readers will rightly conclude, collecting this information represented a vast invasion of privacy, although forensic genealogists can glean an enormous amount of useful ancestral data. While virtually all the Soggiorno forms state the reason for the guest’s visit as “turismo,” tourism, I concluded this was a “cover” for their real purpose, planning their escape to America or elsewhere. There can be little doubt in examining the Soggiorno forms that most guests were educated and accomplished people of means, likely with good personal and professional contacts elsewhere in the world who could sponsor them and help them obtain travel visas. That said, this did not ensure that Jews were able to obtain such outside help or even intended to leave Europe.
With the Soggiorno forms and Fiesole registration ledgers in hand, using ancestry.com, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem Holocaust victims’ databases, as well as general Internet queries, I set out to try and determine the fate of as many of the guests of the Villa Primavera as possible. With respect to my own family, I already knew what had happened to them, in particular that my beloved aunt Susanne (Figure 2) and my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 3) had both died in the Holocaust; similarly, I already knew that one of my first cousins twice-removed, Auguste “Gusti” Schueck (Figure 4), had died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia on May 28, 1943. But, I was very curious whether other individuals who had passed through the Villa Primavera suffered a similar fate or managed to find sanctuary elsewhere. The findings upended my preconceived notion that the guests at the Villa Primavera were on a one-way journey out of Europe at the time they stayed in Fiesole.
Below is a table, alphabetically-arranged, of the Jewish residents and boarders who stayed at the Villa Primavera between March 1937 and September 1938, with comments as to their destiny, where discovered. Below the table, I highlight a few individuals, discussing some interesting things I’ve learned about them, including pictures, where found.
NAME (NATIONALITY)
DATE & PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE & PLACE OF DEATH
COMMENT
Argudinsky née Fleischer, Elisabetta (UNKNOWN)
11/24/1873 Reichenbach, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Bachrach née Bachmann, Elvire (SWISS)
9/15/1872 Karstein
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Baerwald née Lewino, Charlotte Victoria (GERMAN)
8/6/1870 Mainz, Germany
3/16/1966 St. Gallen, Switzerland
Destiny: Immigrated to America, died in Switzerland (Figure 5)
Berend, Eduard (GERMAN)
12/5/1883 Hannover, Germany
1973 Marbach, Germany
Destiny: Left Germany in 1939, returned after WWII
Bergmann née Neufeld, Amalie (GERMAN)
4/16/1881 Posen, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Brieger née Elias, Else (GERMAN)
2/19/1888 Posen, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Bruck née Berliner, Else (GERMAN)(Figure 6)
3/3/1873 Ratibor, Germany
2/16/1957 New York, NY
Destiny: Immigrated to America
Bruck, Eva (GERMAN) (Figure 7)
8/19/1906 Barcelona, Spain
8/15/1977 Ainring, Germany
Destiny: Immigrated to Spain, died in Germany (Figure 8)
Bruck, Franziska (GERMAN)
12/29/1866 Ratibor, Germany
1/2/1942 Berlin, Germany
Destiny: Suicide victim of the Holocaust
Bruck, Otto (GERMAN) (Figure 42)
4/16/1907 Ratibor, Germany
9/13/1994 New York, NY
Destiny: Immigrated to America
Cohnnée Pollack, Caroline (GERMAN)
Unknown
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Cypres, Jacques (BELGIAN)
10/29/1904 Antwerp, Belgium
Unknown
Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 9)
Donath, Ludwig (GERMAN)
3/6/1900 Vienna, Austria
9/29/1967 New York, NY
Destiny: Immigrated to America
Donath née Camsky, Maria Josefa (GERMAN)
8/20/1902 Vienna, Austria
4/21/1975 Vienna, Austria
Destiny: Immigrated to America, returned to Austria after her husband’s death
Elias, Dr. Carl Ludwig (GERMAN)
9/19/1891 Berlin, Germany
1942 Auschwitz, Poland
Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz
Fleischner née Schoenfeld, Gabriele Ann Sophie (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 10a &b)
10/12/1895 Vienna, Austria
9/22/58 Massachusetts
Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Gabriele Anna Fleischner-Lawrence
Fleischner, Dr. Konrad George (AUSTRIAN)(Figures 11a& b)
10/12/1891 Vienna, Austria
9/1963 Massachusetts
Destiny: Immigrated to America, died Conrad Lawrence
Goldenring, Eva (GERMAN)
10/29/1906 Berlin, Germany
12/1969 Wilmington, DE
Destiny: Left Germany for France & Spain; eventually immigrated to America
Goldenring, Fritz (GERMAN)
9/11/1902
12/15/1943 Shanghai, China
Destiny: Left for Shanghai where he died in the Shanghai Ghetto
Goldenring née Hirsch, Helene (GERMAN)
3/25/1880 Ratibor, Germany
1/12/1968 Newark, NJ
Destiny: Left for Chile & eventually immigrated to America
Grödel, Emilie (GERMAN)
Unknown
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Hayoth HAYDT, Dr. Eugen (GERMAN)
4/19/1906
Metz, France
Unknown
1/17/1973
Sydney, Australia
Destiny: Unknown
Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”;
Died as Alvin Eugene Werner Haydt or A.E.W Haydt
Hayoth HAYDT née Winternitz, Lilly (GERMAN)
8/12/1908
Vienna, Austria
Unknown
2/4/1997
Sydney
Destiny: Unknown
Arrived in Sydney, Australia on 2/6/1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND”
Heilbronner, Dr. Paul Milton (GERMAN) (Figures 12 & b)
11/22/1904 Munich, Germany
4/6/1980 Santa Barbara, CA
Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Paul Milton Laporte
Heilbronnernée Wimpfheimer, Sofie (GERMAN) (Figures 13a & b)
3/18/1876 Augsburg, Germany
3/26/1965 Los Angeles, CA
Destiny: Immigrated to America, died as Sofie Broner
Herz, Dr. Phil. Emanuel Emil (GERMAN)
4/5/1877 Essen, Germany
7/8/1971 Rochester, NY
Destiny: Immigrated to America (Figure 14)
Herz née Berl, Gabriele (GERMAN)
4/26/1886 Vienna, Austria
1957 Rochester, NY
Destiny: Immigrated to America
Hirschfeldt née Wolff, Katharina (GERMAN)
4/16/1866 Berlin, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Jacobi née Goldberg, Lucia von (GERMAN)
9/8/1887 Vienna, Austria
4/24/1956 Locarno, Switzerland
Destiny: Fled to Switzerland where she died after WWII
Kleinmann née Lewensohn, Gretchen (GERMAN)
12/31/1894 Hamburg, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Kleinmann, Dr. Phil & Med. Hans (GERMAN)
9/28/1895 Berlin, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Kleinmann née Luvic, Sophie (GERMAN)
11/27/1863 Memel, East Prussia
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Kuhnemund née Goldschmidt, Helene Ida (GERMAN)
3/15/1901 Berlin, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Leven née Levÿ, Johanna (GERMAN)
6/25/1866 Koenigshoeven, Germany
7/2/1942 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia
Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto
Leyser née Schueck, Auguste (GERMAN)
1/26/1872 Ratibor, Germany
10/5/1943 Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia
Destiny: Murdered in Theresienstadt Ghetto
Locker, Dine Martha (POLISH)
Unknown
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Maass, Margarete (GERMAN)
2/16/1880 Friedberg, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Unknown
Matthias, Julius (GERMAN)
5/15/1857 Hamburg, Germany
5/16/1942 Hamburg, Germany
Destiny: Died in Germany during WWII
Müller, Dr. Franz (GERMAN) (Figure 15)
12/31/1871 Berlin, Germany
10/1/1945 Fayence, France
Destiny: Left for Italy & France, where he died
Müller née Bruck, Susanne (GERMAN) (Figure 42)
4/20/1904 Ratibor, Germany
~9/7/1942 Auschwitz, Poland
Destiny: Murdered in Auschwitz
Nienburg née Niess, Emmy (GERMAN)
8/16/1885 Berlin, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII
Oppler née Pinoff, Gertrude (GERMAN)
1/13/1876 Görlitz, Germany
3/9/1952 Frankfurt, Germany
Destiny: Died in Germany after WWII; (granddaughter of Marcus Braun, subject of Post 14)
Rosendorff, Friederike Elfriede (GERMAN)
11/28/1872 Berlin, Germany
Unknown
Destiny: Appears to have died in Germany after WWII
In the case of several people associated with the Villa Primavera, including my aunt and uncle (Figure 17), Lucia von Jacobi (Figure 18), and Charlotte Baerwald, their intent had been to stay in Fiesole “per sempre,” forever. In the case of most guests, however, their anticipated length of stay typically varied between a few weeks and two months.
Eduard Berend (Figure 19) was an eminent editor of the works of Jean Paul (1763-1825), a German Romantic writer. After fighting in WWI, Berend pursued an academic career, but on account of anti-Semitism, he was rejected as a teacher at three German universities. In 1927, the Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, eventually commissioned him with the historic-critical edition of the works of Jean Paul. By 1938, he had completed 20 of the 32 planned volumes, works that established Jean Paul as one of the most important writers of German classicism, alongside Goethe and Schiller. Still, he was dismissed by the Prussian Academy in 1938. Soon thereafter he was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, and was only released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately.
Prior to WWII, Eduard Berend had developed an unlikely friendship with a Heinrich Meyer, a Goethe scholar at the Rice Institute in Houston with Nazi sympathies. Desperate, Berend turned to Meyer for help in December 1938. In spite of Henrich Meyer’s Nazi leanings, which landed him in prison in Texas in 1943 and ultimately got him fired, Meyer secured an affidavit for Berend to leave Germany for Switzerland where he even supported Berend financially. After the war, Berend continued his work on Jean Paul. He went back to Germany in 1957, and by the time of his death in 1973, had completed twenty-eight volumes.
The passport on which Eduard Berend traveled to Switzerland in 1939 was different than the one on which he traveled to Fiesole in May 1937, comparing the number on the Soggiorno form (Figure 20) with that on his 1939 passport, found on the Internet. (Figure 21)
Franziska Bruck
I was able to procure a copy of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s death certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin. (Figure 22) The certificate states the gruesome way in which she killed herself on January 2, 1942, “selbstmord durch erhängen,” suicide by hanging, no doubt after being told to report to an old-age transport for deportation. (Figure 23)
In previous posts, I’ve explained to readers that beginning in 1937-38, all German Jewish men had to be called “Israel,” and all German Jewish women had to be called “Sarah”; these names were added to official birth, marriage and death certificates. Readers will note that on my great-aunt’s death certificate, the name “Sara” has been added.
My great-aunt Franziska spent two months at the Villa Primavera between September and November 1937. I’ve often wondered what her fate might have been had she not returned to Berlin. I can only surmise that like many Jews, she was either in denial as to what might happen upon her return, or her options for leaving Germany were limited.
Ludwig Donath (Figures 24a & b) and his wife, Maria Donath née Camsky (Figures 25a & b), were among the last German Jewish guests at the Villa Primavera, staying for no more than a month in July-August 1938. Ludwig Donath was a famous character actor (Figures 26 & 27) who’d had a distinguished career on the stages of Vienna and Berlin, before leaving Nazi Germany in 1933. He and his wife arrived in Hollywood via Switzerland and England, departing from Liverpool for New York in February 1940. Donath appeared in many American films, with at least 84 credits to his name, and was often typecast as a Nazi in films from 1942. (Figure 28) He was briefly blacklisted in the 1950’s for alleged left-wing connections, but resumed steady television work in 1957 for the remainder of his life.
Carl Ludwig Elias was born in 1891 to a distinguished art critic, Dr. Julius Elias, who was instrumental in promoting French Impressionism in Germany. Likely because of his father’s connections with the art world, an oil portrait of “Carl Ludwig Elias 7 ¼” by Lovis Corinth was painted in 1899. (Figure 29) Carl Ludwig was a lawyer in Berlin and immigrated to Norway when the Nazis came to power. Nonetheless, after the Nazis invaded Norway in December 1940, he was captured and deported with 500 other Jews from Denmark to Auschwitz in 1942, where he was murdered.
Helene Goldenring visited the Villa Primavera on two occasions, for about a month between May-June 1937, and, again, between December 1937 and January 1938 for two months. Both of her children, Eva and Fritz Goldenring, who’ve been discussed in earlier posts, were also guests on separate occasions. Helene’s name appears in a Berlin phone directory as late as 1940 (Figure 30), indicating she returned to Germany after her sojourns in Fiesole. At some point, she seems to have joined her brother, Dr. Robert Hirsch, in Chile, before eventually immigrating to America in 1947 after his death, where she reunited with her only surviving child, Eva. (Figure 31)
In May 2021, I was contacted by Ms. Tamara Precek, a most delightful Czech lady who has resided in Barcelona, Spain for the past 20 years. She is researching the Winternitz families that lived in Prague around 1850, of whom Lillian Haydt née Winternitz is descended. Tamara asked me to send her the “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia” forms for Eugen (Figure 43) and Lillian (Figure 44), suspecting I had misread their surnames. Indeed, I had mistaken HAYDT as “Hayoth.”
Tamara has recently been able to learn what happened to them after their brief stay at the Villa Primavera. They managed to immigrate to Australia, arriving there on the 6th of February 1939 aboard the ship “NIEUW HOLLAND.” Dr. Eugen Haydt changed his named to Albin (Alvin) Eugene Werner (Warner) Haydt (A.E.W. Haydt) but was still generally known as Eugene Haydt. He was a tradesman, and died on the 17th of January 1973; his wife may have worked with him, and passed away on the 4th of February 1997. They appear not to have had any children.
Ms. Precek even found a picture of the apartment building where they resided in Sydney. (Figure 45)
Ms. Jacobi co-managed the Villa Primavera as a bed-and-breakfast with my aunt Susanne. She fled Fiesole in 1938 in favor of Switzerland, leaving everything behind, including her personal papers, which were miraculously found in Florence and saved by a German researcher in 1964, Dr. Irene Below (see Blog Post 21 for the full story).
Johanna Leven stayed at the Villa Primavera for the first two months of 1938, but clearly returned to Germany after her stay. She was eventually deported from Mönchengladbach, Germany to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in then-Czechoslovakia, where she perished in 1942. (Figure 32)
Julius Matthias was among the oldest guest to have stayed at the Villa Primavera, being almost 80 when he visted there between March and April 1937. After his days in Fiesole, he returned to Hamburg, Germany, where he died on May 16, 1942, seemingly of natural causes (i.e., senility, broncho-pneumonia). His death certificate (Figure 33) states he was a non-practicing Jew, although this fact would not have prevented him from being deported to a concentration camp. His death certificate assigned him the name “Israel” to identify him as a Jew.
Paul Schoop was born in 1907 in Zurich, Switzerland, one of four accomplished offspring (with Max Schoop (b. 1902); Trudi Schoop (b. 1903); Hedwig “Hedi” Schoop (b. 1906)) of a prominent family. Paul’s father, Maximilian Schoop, was the editor of Neue Zurcher Zeitung and president of Dolder Hotels. Paul (Figure 34) came to America in September 1939, and eventually joined his three siblings in Van Nuys, California. He was an accomplished composer, concert pianist and conductor, first in Europe and later in America. Paul’s brother-in-law was Frederick Maurice Holländer (Figures 35a & b), the famed composer and torch song writer, who’d once been married to one of Paul’s sister, Hedi Schoop. (Figures 36a & b)
I surmise the reason the Schoop children came to America is because of greater economic and professional opportunities rather than on account of Nazi persecution.
Jenny Steinfeld’s tale is a poignant one. Her name appears with that of her son, Paul Steinfeld, on an April 1937 manifest of boat passengers bound from Bremen, Germany to New York. (Figure 37) A scant five months later, between September and November 1937, she is a guest at the Villa Primavera, clearly having come back from America. Jenny eventually returns to Berlin, and on August 27, 1942 commits suicide there, yet another victim of Nazi persecution. (Figure 38) As with my great-aunt Franziska, who too returned to Berlin from Fiesole, one wonders why Jenny walked back into the maws of death.
This post deals only in passing with my immediate and extended Bruck family. For this reason, it involved considerably more forensic research, as most of the guests at the Villa Primavera were previously unknown to me. Still, learning more about these people was important to me. In some small way, as the Holocaust victim David Berger wrote in 1941, I hope I have honored and recognized a few other Jewish victims of Nazi persecution so they are not forgotten.
Regular readers will know the enjoyment I derive making connections between people and events related to my family. One of my German first cousins, once-removed, Kay Lutze, is friends with an Anja Holländer, living in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Figure 39) Anja is related to Frederick Maurice Holländer, the brother-in-law of Paul Schoop, who stayed at the Villa Primavera. In assembling this involved Blog post, I recollected this fact and also that Anja claims a relationship to my Bruck family. I asked Kay whether he knew the relationship, and he could only tell me that the mother of a Holländer named LUDWIG HEINRICH HOLLÄNDER was a Bruck. Curious about this, I researched this man on ancestry.com, and, indeed, discovered various historic documents that confirm the distant relationship of the Holländer family to my Bruck family. Ludwig’s mother was HELENE HOLLÄNDER née BRUCK (1812-1876), who I think is my great-great-great-great-aunt; Helene was married to a BENJAMIN HOLLÄNDER (1809-1884). I discovered his death certificate (Figures 40a & b), along with that of their son Ludwig (1833-1897). (Figures 41a & b)
Note: My paternal grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, had an older sister, Margareth Berliner, the evidence of whose survival beyond birth is examined in this post.
Berliner was the maiden name of my grandmother, Else Bruck (Figure 1), born on March 3, 1873, in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland). According to Jewish birth records for Ratibor, available from familysearch.org, my grandmother had two siblings, an older sister MARGARETH AUGUST BERLINER, born on March 19, 1872 (Figure 2), and a younger brother, ALFRED BERLINER, born on November 6, 1875. All three children were the offspring of my great-grandfather, HERMANN BERLINER, and his wife, OLGA BERLINER née BRAUN. (Figure 3)
As discussed in Post 14, Olga Berliner was one of twelve children the brauereipachter (tenant brewer) MARCUS BRAUN had with his wife CAROLINE BRAUN née SPIEGEL. Through the names and dates of birth of all of Marcus’s children, I was able to establish connections with descendants of Marcus Braun, distant cousins living in America whose names I’d heard about growing up. Thus, I was aware of and came to learn of Alfred Berliner’s three children with his wife CHARLOTTE ROTHE, first cousins of my father; readers may recall, Charlotte Rothe died in the Holocaust and was the subject of Post 18. Alfred died in 1921 in Ratibor and was once buried in the Jewish Cemetery there. (Figure 4)
Oddly, no one in my family ever mentioned my grandmother’s older sister Margareth Berliner, so after learning of her, I assumed she had died at birth or shortly thereafter; this would not have been unusual at the time.
Fast forward to this past summer when I visited my first cousin’s son in Hilden, Germany, who inherited my uncle Fedor Bruck’s personal papers and pictures. On the off-chance they might contain family items of interest, I asked if I could peruse these items. Cached among the photos was one labelled on the back as a GRETE BRAUER. (Figure 5a-b) This caught my attention because during my visit in 2014 to the Stadtmuseum, where the personal papers of two renowned great-aunts, Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, are archived, I discovered multiple letters sent to my great-aunt Elsbeth in East Berlin from Calvia, Mallorca by HANNS & HERTA BRAUER. The letterhead on some letters read “DR. E. H. BRAUER,” and they were variously signed “Ernst,” “Hanns,” and “Ernst & Herta.” Elsbeth’s archived materials also include photos the Brauer family sent her, though none of Grete Brauer. Until I found Grete’s photo, I had assumed the Brauers were family friends of my great-aunt.
As I said, the photo of Grete in my uncle Fedor’s surviving papers was captioned. In one handwriting was written “Three generations: Grete-Herta-Till & Neubabelsberg 1933”; Neubabelsberg is located near Spandau, on the outskirts of Berlin. Then, in what was unmistakably my uncle’s shaky handwriting, he had added: “Aunt Grete Brauer (mother’s sister with her daughter-in-law and grandson).” This was an “aha!” moment because I knew then that my grandmother’s sister had indeed survived into adulthood and had lived at least as late as 1933, making her 61 years of age at the time. This is the first concrete evidence I’d come across confirming Margareth’s “existence.”
Armed with this new information, I turned to ancestry.com. I found a surprising number of documents and information on the Brauer family there, although notable gaps still exist. In combination with the photos and letters from the Stadtmuseum, I’ve been able to partially construct a family tree covering four generations.
Among the documents found were birth certificates for two of Margareth Brauer’s sons. An older son, KURT BRAUER, was born on July 7, 1893 (Figure 6), in a place called Cosel, Prussia (today: Koźle, Poland), located a mere 20 miles north of Ratibor, where Margareth was born; the younger son, ERNST HAN(N)S BRAUER, was born on August 9, 1902 (Figure 7), also in Cosel, Prussia. The birth certificates provided the father’s name, SIEGFRIED BRAUER. Given the proximity of Cosel and Ratibor, I thought some Brauers might have been buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and, indeed, I discovered Kurt Brauer died in 1920 and was buried there, and that a photo of his headstone exists. (Figure 8)
Also, once buried in the Ratibor Jewish Cemetery was a young girl named THEA BRAUER, born in 1911 who died in 1919. Whether or how she might be related to Margareth and Siegfried Brauer is unclear, but a poor photo of her headstone also survives.
Siegfried Brauer’s death certificate (Figure 9) states he was born in approximately 1859 in a place called “Biskupitz County Hindenberg” (today: Zabrze, Poland, near Katowice), and died at 67 years of age, on February 5, 1926 in Cosel, Prussia; he appears to have been a Judicial Councilman. Interestingly, his death was reported by a HILDEGARD BRAUER, who I initially thought was his daughter-in-law, the aforementioned “Herta”; because no maiden name is given, I now think Hildegard was another of Siegfried & Margareth’s children. A 1927 Address Book for Cosel, Prussia lists Siegfried’s widow (“witwe” in German) Margareth still living there. (Figure 10)
Margareth & Siegfried’s son, Ernst Hanns Brauer (Figure 11), eventually became an American citizen, and died on May 19, 1971 in Calvia, Mallorca, Spain (Figure 12), where he’s buried. He and his family traveled to Puerto Rico in 1941 (Figures 13 & 14), where they appear to have ridden out the war there before moving to Mallorca. Oddly, a 14-year old girl named YUTTA MARIA MUENCHOW was in their company when they traveled to Puerto Rico; her connection to the Brauer family is unknown. Ernst’s wife, HERTA LEONORE BRAUER, maiden name unknown, was born on February 4, 1904 in Neumünster, Germany, and passed away in August 1983 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Figure 15) According to letters Ernst and Herta sent to my great-aunt, their son, alternately referred to as “TILL” or “OLIVER,” born in 1933, was married to an unnamed Puerto Rican woman, and they had a daughter MERLE-MARGARITA, born 1966. (Figure 16) The fate of Oliver, his wife, and their daughter is unknown.
These vital statistics merely highlight the large amount of data available from ancestry.com on the Brauer family.
Still, so far, I’ve been unable to determine when and where my great-aunt Grete died, someone who for the longest time was an ethereal figure. I tried one other thing attempting to ascertain her fate. I turned to the Mallorca White Pages to search for Brauers possibly still living there. I found a KERSTEN BRAUER living in a community only 22 miles north of Calvia, where Ernst Brauer is buried. I was firmly convinced I’d found one of his descendants. I was able to reach her by phone, after having carefully translated my questions into Spanish. Amusingly, I’d barely introduced myself in tortured Spanish, before Ms. Brauer impeccably asked, “do you speak English?” What a relief! Reaching Ms. Brauer was a veritable stroke of luck as she hails from Switzerland and spends only short periods in Mallorca. Nonetheless, originating from Switzerland and given that her name is spelled “Bräuer” (pronounced “Breuer”), makes it exceedingly unlikely she is distantly related to my great-aunt.
The letters Ernst and Herta Brauer wrote to my great-aunt Elsbeth spoke of their public work in Mallorca, and even included a newspaper clipping. (Figure 17) Herta was working on a novel as well as building up the ballet school in Palma de Mallorca, while Ernst was play-writing and making connections with local members of international high society, such as the English writer Robert Graves settled in Deià, Mallorca. (Figure 18) One letter from 1967 (Figure 19) spoke about two Englishmen visiting Mallorca looking for two ballerinas from Herta’s ballet school to appear in a movie starring Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn, who did in fact collaborate on at least three different movies. Ernst did some translations of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s works that were performed in Mallorca, while their son, Oliver, had a minor role in a movie starring Roy Black, the famous German schlager singer and actor. No mention is made of Grete in any of Ernst and Herta’s letters from Mallorca, so we can safely assume she was no longer alive.
The last year we can assuredly place my great-aunt Grete in Germany, 1933, would have been a very perilous time for Jews. Whether she escaped Germany with the rest of her family, died before the mass arrest of Jews there, or was deported on an age-transport to a concentration camp is unknown. More forensic work is required to answer these queries.
Part of the appeal for me in doing forensic genealogy is finding connections between people and places, sometimes in the most unexpected fashion. Case in point. One place in Europe my wife and I like to recuperate during our family pilgrimages is a town called Velden along the Wörthersee, a lake in the southern Austrian state of Carinthia, a place my parents first took me to as a young boy. Imagine my surprise this year when we were strolling along the lake and discovered a bust of Roy Black (1943-1991) in Velden. (Figure 20) Knowing that Roy Black was of German origin, I could not imagine why he was being celebrated in southern Austria. As it turns out, in the last years of his short life, Roy had a comeback as singer and leading actor of the hit TV show “Ein Schloß am Wörthersee (known internationally as “Lakeside Hotel”; literally “A Castle on Lake Wörthersee”).” Small world!
Note: This post is the next chapter in my Aunt Susanne and Uncle Franz’s story, following their departure from Fiesole, Italy around September 16, 1938. Their exodus came on the heels of enactment of racial laws by Fascist Italy beginning in 1938 enforcing discrimination mainly against Italian and foreign Jews. The final destination, at least in the case of my Uncle Franz, was Fayence, France, 230 miles almost due west as the crow flies across the Ligurian Sea. Why my aunt and uncle fled here was a decision shrouded in mystery, but one I eventually worked out with the assistance of an American researcher studying Dr. Franz Müller’s renowned son, Peter Müller-Munk.
Fayence is located in France’s Var region. (Figure 1) It’s a charming small town of medieval origin that was once fortified and is considered one of a series of “perched villages” that overlooks the plain between the southern Alps and what’s called the Esterel massif, which borders the Mediterranean Sea between Cannes and Saint-Raphaël. Fayence is slightly more than 40 miles west-southwest of the beautiful seaside town of Nice, along France’s Côte d’Azur. Nice is where my parents met in 1946, and a place I spent some enjoyable summers with my maternal grandmother. I’ve been told my grandmother even took me on an outing to Fayence as a child, though I have no recollection of this. But, like Fiesole, Italy, Fayence is a place I associate with my aunt and uncle.
Following my aunt and uncle’s departure from Fiesole, likely in the company of my grandmother and my father, I presume they traveled by train through Nice on their way to Fayence. Since my father had an aunt and cousins who lived in Nice, they may even have spent a few days there along the way. Unlike Fiesole, La Mairie or L’Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Fayence does not appear to have maintained immigration or emigration logs during this period, so it’s impossible to pinpoint my relatives’ arrival there. Suffice it to say, by early October 1938, they were likely in place.
I learned why my aunt, uncle, and grandmother settled in Fayence because of my family tree on ancestry.com. One day, I was contacted via my tree by a woman from Coral Gables, Florida, Ms. Jewel Stern (Figure 2), wanting to speak with me about my uncle. Ms. Stern was trying to learn all she could about Dr. Franz Müller’s renowned son, Peter Müller-Munk. She explained that not only did my uncle have a son by his first marriage, but he also had a daughter, Karin Margit Müller-Munk, a fact I was unaware of. She was married to a man named Franz (“Francois” in France) Hermann Mombert, who with his brother Ernst owned the fruit farm in Fayence where my family sought refuge in 1938. Margit’s brother came to America in 1926 and went on to become a world-renowned silversmith and industrial designer in Pittsburgh, thus, he was known to me unlike his sister, who died relatively young and anonymously in Fayence. Ironically, through Ms. Stern I learned a lot about my own extended family.
Among my father’s pictures are two sets of photographs from Fayence, the first taken between September and November of 1941, the second precisely on March 2, 1947. Some context is necessary. With few other options available to my father after leaving Fiesole, Italy, barely a month later, on October 21, 1938, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in Paris. He was stationed in Saïda and Ouargla, Algeria (Figure 3), as a member of the “1ère Batterie Saharienne Porteé de Légion.” Because of his Jewish origins, my father, like all other Jewish enlistees at the time, was given an alias; during his time as a legionnaire, he was known as “Marcel Berger.” (Figures 4a & 4b) Because my father spoke fluent French he easily passed as a Frenchman.
Between September and November of 1941, my father visited the south of France while on leave from the French Foreign Legion (FFL). It was during this time that he last saw his sister Susanne (Figure 5) and took photos in Fayence. (Figures 6 & 7) What imbues this visit with historic interest is the fact that as a soldier in the FFL, he was able to travel, likely under his pseudonym, across “enemy” lines from Algeria to France. One must assume such travel was possible only because the FFL was ostensibly allied with Vichy France—a regime that, until November 1942, was most powerful in the unoccupied, southern “free zone” centered on the commune of Vichy. In theory, Vichy France also represented the French Colonial Empire, of which Algeria was a part, so this may explain how my father was able to travel between Africa and France in the middle of WWII.
As an aside, the Vichy Government, which had enacted anti-Semitic laws in the 1930’s and 1940’s, would occasionally send one of their envoys to liaise with FFL military units based in North Africa, ostensibly to root out Jews; during these visits some commanders, perhaps because of their antipathy and disdain for the Vichy Government, sent their foreign regiments on random deployments deep into the Sahara. (Figure 8) Regardless of the reason, this likely saved Jewish lives, including my father’s life.
The second set of pictures from Fayence was taken on March 2, 1947. (Figures 9 & 10) My father and one of his first cousins visited the Mombert family with whom my grandmother was still living to celebrate her 74th birthday the next day. At the time, my father worked as a dentist in Nice, an intriguing story that will be the subject of a future Blog post. The two sets of pictures from Fayence, along with letters and documents I’ve located, indicate seven members of my family once lived there. These included my Aunt Susanne, my Uncle Franz, my grandmother “Mummi,” as she was known, Francois and Margit Mombert, along with Francois’s brother Ernst and their mother, Nellie Mombert. Their vital data is summarized in the table at the end of this post.
Ms. Stern spent over 20 years studying and collecting the works of Peter Müller-Munk and learning about him and his family; her goal, which came to fruition in 2015, was to develop a special exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh on Peter’s amazing works. (Figure 11) To learn about Peter’s father, Ms. Stern enlisted one of her Parisian friends to travel to Fayence, visit L’Hôtel de Ville, find Dr. Franz Müller’s final resting place and that of his daughter (Figures 12, 13 & 14), obtain copies of their death certificates, take pictures of the fruit farm where my aunt and uncle had lived, and more. Ms. Stern graciously shared all this information with me, and, in turn, I rounded out my uncle and aunt’s story by providing pictures, documents, and history about their lives in Berlin and Fiesole. It was mutually beneficial.
In 2014, my wife and I retraced the steps taken by Ms. Stern’s friend and visited Fayence. Additionally, Ms. Stern told us of an elderly local woman who had once worked for Francois Mombert beginning in 1941 when she was 15, so we planned through our contact at L’Hôtel de Ville (Figure 15), Mme. Claudine Clary (Figure 16), to interview this Mme. Marie-Rose Siri. Immediately upon our arrival in Fayence, we spoke with Mme. Clary, who, among other things, explained where my uncle and his daughter are buried and told us their graves will soon be evacuated if their tombs are not restored and maintenance fees paid. (Figure 17)
Our visit with Mme. Siri and her daughter, Martine Siri (Figure 18), had been pre-arranged. My fluency in French meant I could converse directly with Mme. Siri. I was particularly curious about one picture taken in Fayence (Figure 19), showing my aunt and uncle eating lunch with his daughter and son-in-law, Margit and Francois Mombert. A young lady is serving them, and I was curious whether Mme. Siri recognized herself, but unfortunately not. As a young girl, Mme. Siri did household chores and helped harvest and package fruit for eventual sale in Cannes; the farm produced apricots, peaches, apples, and later artichokes and strawberries. Mme. Siri recalled that Ernst Mombert, who had severe “strabisme,” or crossed eyes, was nonetheless able to work in the orchards.
Mme. Siri fondly recalled Francois. She remembered collecting mushrooms with my Aunt Susanne, and my aunt’s ability to discern edible fungi. Poignantly, Mme. Siri told the story of when my Aunt Susanne was arrested by the Vichy in late August 1942; she was in hiding at the time, and the officials left word that if she did not present herself to the authorities, they would instead arrest one of the elderly members of the family. This is not something my aunt would ever have countenanced so she turned herself in.
Mme. Siri mentioned something intriguing, specifically, that Francois Mombert and possibly also his wife were part of the French Resistance. When the French collaborators came to the fruit farm along Chemin Banegon in late August 1942, they only arrested my Aunt Susanne and Ernst Mombert even though the three elderly members of the family were certainly present. Why all the Jews at the farm were not seized then is unclear.
While Mme. Siri’s memories of my family’s years in Fayence are few, what she was able to recall brought them to life, if only dimly.
Before leaving Mme. Siri, she and her daughter explained how to get to the nearby house once located along Chemin Banegon (Figure 20) where the former Mombert homestead is located. I was very interested in seeing the place. In doing family history, chutzpah is sometimes required. Showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of a stranger’s house situated in a rural setting in a foreign country is an example. To say we startled the current owner, Mme. Monique Graux, would be a mild understatement. Fortunately, Mme. Graux was intrigued by the nature of our unplanned visit, and, entirely because of my wife’s warm and sympathetic countenance, invited us in and showed us around her home, inside and out. (Figures 21 & 22)
Mme. Graux claimed she and her husband purchased the house along Chemin Banegon around 1960 from a gentleman named M. Lebreton, who’d owned it for only two-and-a-half years and bought it from Francois Mombert. Mme. Graux never met Francois Mombert nor his wife, so could tell us nothing about them. She explained the house dates from 1740 and was historically used to tan animal hides. Given that Margit Mombert died in Fayence on March 22, 1959, sale of the house before her death strikes me as a bit improbable. Curious as to when Mme. Graux and her husband purchased the farmhouse, I asked Mme. Clary about obtaining a copy of l’acte de propriété, the deed of ownership; the notary company informed her I could not get it because I am not related to the current owner.
Near our hotel was a winery where we wanted to do a tasting. As Americans traveling abroad, we typically stand out, so it intrigues the French when they hear someone obviously American speak their language with only a hint of an accent. Such was the case when we visited this winery, and the owner engaged me in conversation. The reason for our visit to Fayence came out, and the owner, M. Alain Rebuffel (Figure 23), remembered his grandfather talking about knowing my family; he recalled his grandfather was more kindly disposed towards Jews than his grandmother, who wanted nothing to do with them. Interestingly, Mme. Clary told us her father similarly remembered my family.
M. Rebuffel suggested we speak with his uncle, M. Roger Faye (Figure 24), who is the custodian at the cemetery where Dr. Franz Müller and his daughter are interred and lives in the adjacent house. Upon our visit to the cemetery, we examined and photographed the now crumbling tomb of my uncle and his daughter. Then, we called on M. Faye, who mentioned that several years earlier he had evacuated a tomb belonging to a member of the Mombert family, whose name he could not remember. I ultimately worked this out when I discovered an on-line biography about Francois and Ernst’s father, Paul Karl Mombert. He was a professor at the University of Giessen in Germany, who like my Uncle Franz, was fired in 1933. He was imprisoned by the Nazis, but eventually released; he died from cancer shortly thereafter, on December 1, 1938, in Stuttgart, Germany, and his ashes were sent to Fayence. There is no doubt that the Mombert tomb evacuated in Fayence was that of Paul Mombert.
Following my return to the States in 2014, I contacted the Archives Départementales du Var in Draguignan, France to inquire about Fayence real estate records and determine precisely when Ernst and Francois Mombert purchased the property along Chemin Banegon. Fortunately, the historic records have survived and place acquisition of the farm in December 1933. (Figure 25)
As mentioned above, Ernst Mombert was arrested along with my Aunt Susanne by the Vichy collaborators in August 1942, and neither survived. The real estate records reveal a minor, but interesting historical fact. They indicate that on September 6, 1947, exclusive ownership of the farm was transferred to Francois Mombert (compare Figure 26 to Figure 25), that’s to say, almost five years to the day after Ernst Mombert was deported to Auschwitz. In the case of my Aunt Susanne, deported to Auschwitz the same day as Ernst, it took the Comune de Fayence seven years, until 1949, to officially declare her dead. (Figure 27) The wheels of bureaucracy grind slow.
Ms. Stern learned much about Peter Müller-Munk from the personal papers of his aunt, Marie Munk, one of the first female lawyers in Germany. Marie became a judge in 1930, but, like many Jews, was dismissed from her judicial position in 1933. She eventually came to the United States, obtained her law degree here, and had a notable career as a women’s rights activist. Marie Munk’s papers are archived at Smith College, and in one letter, the date of her niece’s marriage to Francois Mombert on December 4, 1934 is mentioned. Unknown initially when and where they’d been married, it took Ms. Stern and me a long time to track this down. On a second visit to Fayence in 2015, in passing, I mentioned this date to Mme. Clary who immediately checked her office records and located Francois and Margit’s marriage certificate. (Figure 28) Interestingly, after Margit’s death in 1959, Francois Mombert continued to correspond with Marie.
The next Blog post will be the final chapter about my Aunt Susanne’s abbreviated life.
Below readers will find the vital events of the seven family members I’ve determined lived in Fayence.
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”—Elie Wiesel
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”—Elie Wiesel
NOTE: This article tiers off my previous post dealing with my Uncle Fedor, and a postcard he mailed on his 14th birthday from Breslau, Germany. For most of my readers, I expect this article will be of limited interest, so briefly let me explain why I’ve written it. With the exception of my Uncle Fedor, I had never heard of the other people whose names appear on the postcard. I had low expectations when I started gumshoeing, so was pleasantly surprised when I figured out all their identities. I was even more delighted when I found pictures of the person to whom the card had been mailed. Sadly, I also felt an obligation to share with readers the fate of my great-aunt Charlotte Berliner, and in a small way remember that she once existed. And, finally, I wanted to tell about the various databases I checked to uncover the vital events of the named people.
In the previous Blog post dealing with my Uncle Fedor Bruck, readers will recall that on his 14th birthday on August 17, 1909, my uncle went on a hot-air balloon ride in Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland). Along with “Alfred & Lotte,” all signed a card postmarked from a mail train, copied here (Figures 1a & 1b), addressed to “Fräulein Helene Rothe” and sent to the attention of “Martin Rothe” in Meseritz in the province of Posen, Prussia (today: Miedzyrzecz, Poland). This was the first time I came across the surname “Rothe” in my family research.
I had been told by my parents that members of my grandmother Else Berliner’s (Figure 2) family had immigrated to New York. While I’d never met them growing up, my parents had occasional contact with them in America. These included two of my father’s first cousins, Peter Berliner and his sister (Figure 3); Ilse’s husband, Walter Goetzel, was even a witness at my parent’s wedding. (Figure 4) Gradually, though, our families lost contact. Still, without too much difficulty I was able to find Peter Berliner’s ancestors, though too late to meet Peter who died in 2000. It was while researching him in ancestry.com, however, that I learned his parents were Alfred Berliner and Lotte Berliner, née Rothe, thus, the great-uncle and -aunt “Alfred & Lotte,” who, along with my Uncle Fedor, signed the card postmarked in 1909 from Breslau, Germany. Hence, the Rothe family is related to the Berliner family by marriage.
Figure 2-My grandmother Else Bruck, née Berliner (1873-1957)
During a visit to the Polish State Archives in Raciborz in 2014, I discovered the certificates for two of Alfred and Lotte Berliner’s three known children, Peter Berliner and his sister, Ilse Goetzel, née Berliner. Both of these documents confirmed that Lotte Berliner, née Rothe, was their mother.
I discovered additional information about my great-uncle Alfred Berliner from familysearch.org, the Mormon Church website. Microfilm roll 1184448, containing Jewish death records from Ratibor, confirmed Alfred died there on February 19, 1921, and that his wife Lotte Berliner was present. (Figure 5) Readers may remember Alfred Berliner was a brewer and the owner of the “M. Braun Brauerei” in Ratibor. Alfred was interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and a photo of his tombstone exists among the photos archived at the Muzeum Raciborzu that I examined in 2015. (Figure 6)
While all these documents provided conclusive evidence of when and where Alfred Berliner died, I did not yet know his wife’s fate. Previously, I’ve made mention of the database: Östliche preußische Provinzen, Polen, Personenstandsregister 1874-1945 (Eastern Prussian Provinces, Germany [Poland], Selected Civil Vitals, 1874-1945). Not only was I able to locate Alfred and Lotte Berliner’s marriage certificate here (Figures 7a & 7b), but I also was able to find Lotte Berliner’s birth certificate (she was born Charlotte Henriette Rothe) (Figures 8a & 8b), that of two of her siblings, Helene Lina Rothe (Figure 9) and Curt Isidor Rothe (Figure 10), the names of her parents, Martin Rothe and Babette Pinner, and the death certificate of her father Martin. (Figure 11) Thus, with the historic documents found in the “Eastern Prussian Provinces” database, I was now certain that the 1909 postcard had been sent to Lotte Berliner’s sister, Helene Rothe, to the attention of Lotte and Helene’s father, Martin Rothe.
Figure 12-March 1964 passport picture of Helene Rothe to whom 1909 postcard was sent by her sister Lotte and brother-in-law Alfred Berliner
I previously mentioned I was able to locate descendants of Peter Berliner and his sister Ilse, in America. Through them, I even obtained photos of the Helene Rothe to whom the 1909 postcard had been sent. (Figure 12) I also learned a little about “Tante Lena,” as she was affectionately known; members of the Goetzel and Berliner families visited her a few times in Landau in der Pfalz, Germany, where she then lived. They learned that her husband, Dr. jur. (lawyer) Johann Alois Schönhöfer, a non-Jew, hid her in a basement and protected her throughout WWII, and that she emerged severely malnourished, with a deformed back. Knowing where Helene Rothe had lived, I contacted the Rathaus, basically City Hall, in Landau, and obtained a copy of her death certificate and learned she died there on January 17, 1981. (Figure 13)
Lotte Berliner was the last name on the 1909 postcard whose fate I had still to work out. When researching one’s Jewish relatives during the Nazi era, at some point one must consider they may have been murdered in the Holocaust, and search their names in the database of victims. Such was the case with my great-aunt Lotte Berliner. She is listed in Yad Vashem, as having been deported from Berlin, Germany to Auschwitz-Birkenau aboard “Transport 27, Train Da 13 on January 29, 1943,” arriving there a day later (Figure 14); whether Lotte relocated to Berlin after her husband’s death is unknown. A recently added feature on Yad Vashem allows users to view the route trains took to transport their victims to the extermination camps, in the case of my great-aunt Lotte, Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Figure 15)
NOTE: This Blog post marks a transition from stories about Tiegenhof, the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was a dentist, to Ratibor in Upper Silesia, Germany [today: Raciborz, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland], the town where my father was born in 1907. The next series of posts will cover the Bruck family’s association and connection to Ratibor, although future posts will likely take me back to Tiegenhof, as I uncover more information about my father’s circle of acquaintances and friends there. This post will detail the Bruck family’s historic ties to Ratibor, but will also discuss the available documentary evidence, unearthed in both in Ratibor and elsewhere, that inspired and guided much of the research I later undertook related to my family.
NOTE ABOUT FIGURES: HYPERLINKS WILL BE FOUND BELOW SOME FIGURES AND MAPS ALLOWING READERS TO OPEN THESE ITEMS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND VIEW THEM AT FULL SIZE.
The Bruck family’s most enduring link to the former German town of Ratibor, Upper Silesia (Figure 1), was its long-standing ownership of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen“ Hotel. (Figures 2, 3) Family control of the hotel appears to have extended through three generations, beginning no later than the mid-19th Century and continuing through the first quarter of the 20th Century. Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4) and his wife Charlotte Bruck, nee Marle (1811-1861) (Figure 5) were the original family owners of the Prinz von Preußen. In time, Samuel’s son, Fedor Bruck (1837-1894) (Figure 6) and his wife Friederike Bruck, nee Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 7) took over the hotel. Following Fedor’s death in 1892, his widow Friederike, and two of her daughters, Franziska Bruck (1866-1942) and Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970), ran the hotel. When Friederike, Franziska and Elsbeth left for Berlin in 1902, the hotel passed into the hands of the oldest of Fedor and Friederike’s children, Felix Bruck (1864-1927) (Figure 8) and his wife, Else Bruck, nee Berliner (1873-1927) (Figure 9), that’s to say, my grandparents. None of Felix and Else’s children ever managed the hotel, although I recall my father telling stories of working in the hotel as a young boy fetching wine from the cellar, a sommelier in training.
Figure 8-Felix Bruck (1864-1927)Figure 9-Else Bruck, nee Berliner (1873-1957)
There are indirect clues as to when Samuel Bruck acquired the Prinz von Preußen. Jewish birth records available for Ratibor on-line through the Mormon Church’s website at familysearch.org (Microfilm Roll #1184448), cover the period from approximately 1817 through 1874. Charlotte Bruck is known to have given birth to at least nine children between 1831 and 1849. Birth records of the time recorded the profession or occupation of the father, and in all instances for Samuel Bruck, either “Kaufmann” or “Handelsmann” (merchant, tradesman, or businessman) is documented; Samuel Bruck is known to have been a successful wood merchant before he purchased the Prinz von Preußen. By contrast, the birth records for his son, Fedor Bruck, always registered his occupation as “Gastwirt” or “Gasthofbesitzer” (innkeeper). This suggests that Samuel Bruck bought the Prinz von Preußen following the birth of his last child in 1849 after his career as a wood merchant.
While no longer in existence, the Bruck’s Hotel Prinz von Preußen once stood at Oderstraße 16 [today: ulica Odrzanska], at the corner of Oderstraße and Niederwallstraße [today: 3 Maja, Sawickiej, Podwale] (Figure 10), only a short distance from the River Oder. John Murray’s English-language “A Handbook for Travelers on the Continent,” a traveler’s guidebook published in 1850, touted the “Prinz von Preußen” as a very comfortable hotel; later editions characterized the hotel as the best one in Ratibor. At the time, a town of 6,000 inhabitants, Ratibor was described as an ideal place for persons traveling by rail between Breslau [today: Wroclaw,Poland] and Vienna, then part of the Austrian Empire, to spend the night. The journey by rail from Ratibor to Breslau was a six hour trip, while the train ride from Ratibor to Vienna took 12 to 13 hours.
Figure 11-King Leopold I of Belgium who spent a night at the Prinz von Preußen in 1853
The “Prinz von Preußen” must have been one of the most fashionable hotels to stay at in this part of Prussia because in a book on Ratibor, entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor“ by Augustin Weltzel, the author records that on May 10, 1853, King Leopold I of Belgium spent the night. (Figure 11) King Leopold I was a German prince who became the first king of the Belgians following their independence in 1830, and reigned between July 1831 and December 1865; he was the uncle of Queen Victoria.
A historian, Ms. Katrin Griebel from Zittau, Saxony, who has studied the surviving personal papers of Franziska Bruck (Figure 12) and Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 13) archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau outside Berlin, to which future Blog posts will be devoted, has gleaned some anecdotes about the Bruck family and the hotel from the personal papers of these two great-aunts. According to Ms. Griebel, the building occupied by the Bruck’s Hotel was the former palace of a marquis. Upon the nobleman’s death, the palace became known as the “Prinz von Preußen.”
Personal family papers also tell us that Fedor Bruck, son of Samuel Bruck, did not enjoy working in the hospitality industry, preferring to be a musician. He took violin lessons, and is reputed to have spent a goodly sum of money honing this craft. His daughter, Elsbeth Bruck, was an ardent socialist her entire life. When she was working in the Prinz von Preußen, she is reputed to have been engaged to a Polish cook working in the kitchen there. Her parents were not at all amused, and sent her to the Riesengebirge [today: Krkonoše (Czech), Karkonosze (Polish); mountain range in the north of the Czech Republic and the southwest of Poland] to “get some fresh air and clear her head.” Later, Elsbeth was an actress and peace-activist, and was imprisoned in Görlitz in 1916 and, again, in 1918, for her activism. When she lived in Munich, she gave birth out-of-wedlock to a child who died in infancy (Wolfgang Bruck’s Death Certificate No. 448). Her family is known to have disapproved of Elsbeth’s free-spirited lifestyle. During the Nazi era, she was in exile first in Czechoslovakia, then in London. After the war, she returned to Germany and spent the remainder of her life in the German Democratic Republic, formerly East Germany. She is buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in the former East Berlin, adjacent the “Memorial to the Socialists.” (Figure 14)
In March 2014, I attended a presentation, sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, by Mr. Roger Lustig, a specialist on genealogical records from the former Prussian state. Following his presentation, I contacted Roger, and narrated my family’s connection to Ratibor. I described the microfilm records I’d been able to find for Ratibor through familysearch.org, records very familiar to Roger, that broadly cover the period from 1814 to 1940, but indicated there appear to be gaps; I asked Roger whether some of the documents were to be found elsewhere or had been destroyed during WWII.
Figure 15-Entrance to the „Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu“
Because Roger also has ancestors from Ratibor, he was anxious to help me out. He made clear that most of the birth, marriage, and death records from Ratibor from roughly the 1870’s onward would be found in the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu“ (Polish State Archives in Raciborz) (Figure 15), that’s to say, as civil rather than religious documents. The basis for this situation is rooted in the 19th Century when the Roman Catholic Church was under frequent attack by liberal nationalists in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who saw the existence of a Church loyal to the Pope as a threat to national unity. The most hostile of these attacks on the Church took place in Germany, and was known as the Kulturkampf (“Cultural Struggle“). The Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to break the influence of the Catholic Church which he saw as a threat to the recently established German Empire. While the Kulturkampf was primarily a dispute between the Roman Catholic Church and the Prussian state, clearly, when recording of Catholic marriages and other vital events at a registry office of the state became mandatory, other religious denominations were affected.
In any event, the Church of Latter Day Saints, has not yet gotten around to making copies of the registers in the civil archives, so the only way to view them is to personally visit these repositories across Poland. My wife and I already had plans to spend thirteen weeks in Europe in 2014 visiting places from Poland to Spain associated with the Bruck family diaspora, so decided to incorporate another visit to Raciborz.
To facilitate my investigations, Roger offered to put me in touch with an English-speaking Polish researcher, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj, who has spent many years researching the Jews from her hometown of Rybnik, located only a half-hour from Raciborz; he explained she could help me navigate the State Archives in Raciborz. Roger quickly sent Malgosia an email telling her about our planned visit and our interest in examining the archival records there. Within hours, Malgosia sent an introductory email offering her assistance during our upcoming visit. Since our scheduled trip to Raciborz was still several months away, Malgosia even offered to visit the Polish State Archives in Raciborz in advance to scope out what might be available on the Bruck family’s ties to Ratibor.
Imagine my surprise when barely a week later Malgosia recounted her visit to the State Archives, and told me she‘d found a portfolio of documents related to the Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen,“ covering the period from roughly 1912-1928; needless to say, I was amazed such documents would have survived the destruction wrought by WWII. Eventually Malgosia photographed and sent me all these documents, and I forwarded them to German relatives who reviewed and gleaned interesting tidbits from them.
While most of the handwritten documents related to the Bruck‘s Hotel are penned in Sütterlin, the signatures, including several by my grandfather, Felix Bruck, are Latinized. The subject of the documents are primarily administrative, and record dealings with the local police who apparently handled such matters as approving extended business hours to accommodate returning WWI veterans; undertaking inspections of the hotel and recording violations; authorizing sale of alcoholic beverages; reviewing and approving proposed hotel renovations; and authorizing subleasing of the hotel’s restaurant under the auspices of the Bruck name.
Of particular interest in the portfolio are the hotel’s floor plans. (Figure 16) The hotel is known to have had two kitchens, one to prepare normal meals and another to deliver kosher fare to its Jewish guests. In published advertisements of the hotel, respectively, from 1925 (Figure 17), 1926 (Figure 18), and 1931 (Figure 19), numerous amenities were noted. These included 40 well-appointed hotel rooms with running warm and cold water, a conference room, an exhibition area, a secretarial pool, a hotel phone as well as a phone to call other parts of Germany, a first class kitchen, good cultivated wine and beer, “real” liquor, local access to hockey and tennis arenas and more.
It is not entirely clear when the Prinz von Preußen was sold by my grandfather, Felix Bruck. The archival dossier includes a August 1925 document in which the entrepreneur “Max Kunzer” is allowed to install a beer pressure device using carbolic acid rather than compressed air. However, by August 1926, the owner of record is a “Hugo Eulenstein” who requests and is granted permission to sell alcoholic beverages in the Bruck’s Hotel. Mr. Eulenstein‘s association with the hotel may have been brief. By 1931, the Bruck’s Hotel had a new “Geschaftsleitung” or “executive board,” headed by an “Ernst Exner,” formerly of the Sachs Hotel in Patschkau [today: Paczków, Nysa County, Opole Voivodeship, Poland].
The length of Mr. Exner’s ownership of the Bruck’s Hotel is unknown, although it is certain the Bruck’s Hotel was damaged in the latter throes of World War II by the Russian Army, although how badly remains unclear. One of the curators at the Muzeum Raciborzu sent me an outstanding photo of Ratibor’s main square, probably taken towards the end of the 1940’s or early 1950‘s, showing workers demonstrating around the Virgin Mary’s Column with St. Jacob’s Church seen along the right side; squarely in the center of the picture in the background can be seen the Bruck’s Hotel still standing tall. (Figure 20)
The decision to tear down the Bruck’s Hotel and other brick structures once located along Oderstrasse appears related to at least two things. While the structural integrity of the hotel may have been compromised during the war, it appears that Polish authorities were also looking to scavenge bricks throughout Poland to rebuild Warsaw and, perhaps, at the same time eradicate some traces of the German-era. Regardless, today the Bruck’s Hotel no longer stands and the cultural landscape of the area where it once stood looks vastly different.
Felix Bruck’s name appears in a 1916 Berlin phone directory, and shows him living in Berlin-Charlottenburg in the same area as his sister Franziska Bruck (Figure 12), a famous florist about whom more will be said in future posts. Even if the sale of the Bruck’s Hotel did not take place until the early 1920’s, quite possibly my grandfather had ceded management of the hotel to another family member or it was being co-managed with a potential buyer. Felix Bruck is known to have suffered from diabetes, a disease which may have been better treated in Berlin but which, ultimately, was the cause of my grandfather’s demise in 1927.
The Bruck’s Hotel “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel was probably referred to as either the “F. Bruck’s Hotel” or the “Prinz von Preußen.” This is borne out by silverware (knives, forks, spoons) in my possession, some of which have written on them “Prinz von Preußen,” and others which are inscribed with the name “F. Bruck’s Hotel.” (Figure 21) It seems likely that these items were taken as “souvenirs” by Felix and Else Bruck upon their sale of the hotel, and reflected the silverware in use in the dining room at that time. Regardless, the monogram of the three generations of Bruck family to have owned the hotel are reflected in the surviving silverware.
By now, readers have perhaps divined that where possible I enjoy illustrating my Blog posts with photos and artifacts related to the topic at hand that come from a variety of sources. In a future post, I’ll eventually relate to the reader the challenging process I went through to find two of my second cousins, that’s to say, my great-uncle’s grandchildren. Suffice it to say for now, that this great-uncle, Wilhelm Bruck visited his brother Felix at the Prinz von Preußen in Ratibor in June 1914, and wrote an endearing postcard to his wife Antonie „Toni“ Bruck who’d stayed behind in Berlin with their two children. (Figures 22, 23) A copy of this postcard was given to me by Wilhelm’s grandchildren after I eventually located them. The translation of this postcard can be found here.
1850 Handbook for Travelers on the Continent: Being a Guide Through Holland, Belgium, Prussia and Northern Germany, and Along the Rhine From Holland to Switzerland (Seventh Edition). John Murray, Albemarle Street. London (p. 437)
1856 Handbook for Travelers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland (Eleventh Edition). John Murray, Albemarle Street, London (p. 426)
Weltzel, Augustin
2010 Geschichte Der Stadt Ratibor (1861). Kessenger Legacy Reprints. Kessenger Publishing.
