Note: This postscript is the result of an unexpected message from a Ms. Kamali Chandler, a lady who hails from the Dominican Republic and whose family were friends with the Brauers when they lived there. In 1947, Herta and her husband were forced to flee the island nation leaving their children behind for a few years. Kamali explains the reason why.
Many of the people I’ve written about left no diaries, journals, letters, or personal accounts that I’ve found, nor were they otherwise renowned so evidence of them might be found on Wikipedia, on the Internet, or in books or articles. Other than proof of their existence or possibly a random obituary or a certificate of a vital event in their lives, which give a sense of where they were at a specific point in time, the motivation for their movements may be unclear. Even where a paper trail of a person’s life exists, often there are unanswered questions. Thus, I’m often left to think about how or why people wound up where they did.
In the case of Herta Brauer, née Stadach (1904-1983) (Figure 1), a relative by marriage and subject of Post 122, the reason why she and she her family came to the Dominican Republic is evident. More is known about Herta Brauer because she was a preeminent figure in dance and ballet in the Dominican Republic and later in Mallorca, Spain.
As I previously discussed at length, the Dominican Republic was one of the few places in the world willing to accept Jews during World War II. In part, the Dominican Republic was willing to take in Jews to have the United States overlook the regime’s mass killing of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic’s northwestern frontier during the so-called “Parsley Massacre” in October 1937. Also, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), the island nation’s brutal dictator from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, was known to have been extremely racist so agreed to take in Jews to “whiten” the population.
Even though Herta and Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) (Figure 2) were Jewish and had gotten married in March 1932 in Berlin, they received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI to remarry as Catholics when they were living in Rome. It’s possible that the Pope interceded on their behalf to obtain a visa for them to immigrate to the Dominican Republic, a predominantly Catholic country.
Regardless of how and why Herta Brauer arrived in the Dominican Republic, she managed to become very well established in the country by founding a ballet school there. Quoting what I wrote in Post 122:
“While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo [today: Santo Domingo], through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo (1915-1978), Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou (one of my informants), Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978, reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.
Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house, probably beginning in early 1943. Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while others apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.
It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.”
Given the roots and connections Herta established in the Dominican Republic including with the Trujillo family, I have long wondered why she and her husband suddenly departed for Puerto Rico in 1947. Absent a chronicle of her life, I assumed I would never learn the reason.
Like similar imponderables, the answer came via one of my readers. Towards the end of January, a lady of Dominican Republic descent, Kamali Chandler, contacted me from New York after she stumbled on Post 122. Following the discovery of my post, Kamali told her mother, Francis Brea, who was very elated. Kamali explained that her mother, also now residing in New York, often chats about and has fond memories of Till Brauer (1932-2001) and Oliver “Chichi” Brauer (b. 1942) (Figure 3), Herta and Hanns Brauer’s two sons. It turns out that Francis Brea was friends with the Brauers, and she recalls Hanns was affectionately known as “Le Monsieur.” Such firsthand accounts and memories of people I write about imbue them with a tangibility that my words alone cannot inspire.
But the story takes on a darker twist. Rafael Trujillo was interested in the Brauers, particularly Herta, for the purpose of opening a ballet school in the Dominican Republic. At some point, however, Trujillo’s interest in Herta became romantic, but his amorous intentions were not reciprocated. Trujillo had a reputation of killing women who rebuffed his advances, so feeling they were no longer safe in the Dominican Republic, Herta and Hanns Brauer fled to Puerto Rico. This must have happened quite suddenly because they left their two sons in the care of Kamali’s grandmother, Altagracio Garo, née Brea. (Figure 4) The youngest son, Oliver born in 1942, was the only Brauer born in the Dominican Republic. Francis Brea’s recollection is that the two boys lived with her family until Oliver was about seven years of age, so for roughly two years until 1949. (Figure 5) As an adult, the older son Till and his family (Figures 6-7) periodically returned to Santo Domingo to reconnect with Kamali’s family and her cousins. They spent summers at Kamali’s uncle’s home, Robinson Brea Garo.
To remind readers, the Brauers arrived in the Dominican Republic with Herta’s older daughter, Yutta Maria Münchow (1926-2001) (Figure 8), offspring of an earlier marriage. At the time of her mother’s sudden departure, Yutta was in nursing school so also stayed behind (Figures 9a-b) but would eventually leave the Dominican Republic.
In closing, the answer to seemingly trivial questions sometimes come from unexpected directions. What makes the explanation so intriguing is that it involves a brutal dictator who took a love interest in one of my relatives, placing her in harm’s way and altering the course of her life.
Note: In this lengthy post, I discuss one of my Jewish relatives by marriage who along with her family wound up in the Dominican Republic during WWII. I explore the cultural and political context in which Herta Brauer worked and her role in introducing ballet to the country under the sponsorship of Flor de Oro Trujillo, the daughter of the country’s longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo.
It is generally accepted there are seven continents in the world, from largest to smallest, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Probably not unlike many readers, I can trace ancestors or relatives connected to all these continents apart from Antarctica. Within North America, I occasionally learn about family that passed through one of the Caribbean islands, usually Cuba. This post dwells on one Jewish family member, Herta Brauer, who lived with her family in the Dominican Republic for several years. As a result of a relationship she mysteriously established with Flor de Oro Trujillo (Figure 1), one of the daughters of the Dominican Republic’s longtime notorious and brutal dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, Herta was instrumental in the introduction of ballet into the country. In this post I discuss Herta Brauer’s time in the Dominican Republic and the significance of her contribution to Dominican culture.
For the benefit of new subscribers as well as longtime followers, let me briefly review how I learned about Herta Brauer, a relative by marriage whom I introduced to readers in Post 34. Several years ago while in Germany visiting the son of my deceased first cousin, I was perusing my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s photographs that had been inherited by this cousin. One picture immediately caught my attention. On the reverse was written in German what translates as, “Three generations: Grete-Herta-Till & Neubabelsberg 1933”; Neubabelsberg is located near Spandau, on the western 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).” (Figures 2a-b) I had an epiphany at this moment when I realized that my grandmother’s sister, Margareth Auguste Berliner, whose birth record I had previously discovered on LDS Microfilm Number 1184449 (Figure 3), had survived to adulthood; this was an “aha” moment because my father had never mentioned the existence of his maternal aunt, so I assumed after first learning about her that she had died at birth or in infancy. As I explained in Post 34, I would eventually learn that my great-aunt Margareth, Grete for short, had been murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.
I first came across the surname “Brauer” when examining the personal papers of my paternal great-aunts Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck that are archived at Berlin’s Stadtmuseum, coincidentally also in Spandau. Here, I discovered multiple letters written to my great-aunt Elsbeth in East Berlin from Calvia, Mallorca by Hanns & Herta Brauer between 1965 and 1967. (Figure 4) 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. (Figures 5-6) Until I found the previously mentioned photo of Grete, I had assumed the Brauers were friends of my great-aunt, not closely related family.
Margarethe Berliner (1872-1942) married a man named Siegfried Brauer (1859-1926) in August 1891. (Figure 7) They had two sons, Kurt Brauer (born on July 7, 1893) and Ernst Han(n)s Brauer (born August 9, 1902) (Figure 8) and at least one daughter, Hildegard Brauer (born April 8, 1892), who was also murdered in the Holocaust; possibly, a Thea Brauer born in 1911 who perished in 1919 and who was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] may have been another of their daughters. Kurt Brauer died in 1920 and was also interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, but Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) married Herta Brauer née Stadach (1904-1983) in 1932. (Figures 9a-c) Herta had a daughter by a previous marriage while Ernst and Herta had two sons. The vital statistics for Margarethe and Siegfried Brauer and select descendants and close family are included in a table at the end of this post.
As I explained to readers in Post 34, after learning of my maternal great-aunt’s existence, I quickly turned to ancestry.com. There, I found a surprising number of documents and information on the Brauer family which began to fill in some temporal gaps. With information recently acquired, I am better able to partially understand the Brauer family’s movements from 1941 onwards although their length of residence during some periods is still unclear.
One document I found for Herta Brauer was her Social Security Death Index which indicated that she died in August 1983 (Figure 10), and that her last supposed place of residence was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Aware of a Puerto Rico connection, I Googled the Brauer surname and Puerto Rico, and found a promising lead in the form of a “Till Carl Brauer Mongil”; as an aside in most Spanish-speaking countries offspring carry two surnames, that of their father and mother, thus “Brauer” and “Mongil.” Since Till Brauer once ran a fishing business in Puerto Rico (Figure 11), I was easily able to contact him via email and confirm that he was indeed related to Ernst and Herta Brauer; he was their grandson. We exchanged information and photos and have continued to stay in contact.
Fast forward. The source for an increasing number of my Blog stories is inspired by readers who contact me through Webmail. Typically, I’m asked for or offered information about the people whom I write about, or people ask whether we are related; often readers are curious as to the source of my information.
I was recently contacted by a Mr. Francisco Pou (Figure 12) from the Dominican Republic who is working on a documentary about the history of classical ballet in his country. It turns out that Herta Brauer is the person who introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic. Since Francis stumbled upon mention of her in my Blog, he was curious whether I could provide additional background information about Herta since she disappeared from the country’s records “almost mysteriously,” according to Francis. I sent him some ancestry.com documents, as well as copies of the letters written by Ernst and Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca to my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck in East Berlin in the mid-1960’s; I also sent Francis a few family photos obtained either from Till Brauer or found among my great-aunt Elsbeth’s personal papers archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. However, the tale that Francis related is much more compelling, the telling of which will allow me to share lesser-known history about the Dominican Republic’s role during WWII offering to save Jewish refugees.
Let me provide some context for the Dominican Republic’s role in offering Jews safe haven during WWII and the direct impact this had on Herta Brauer and her family.
In July 1938, delegates from 32 countries met in Evian, France to try and address the issue of German-Jewish refugees caused by the Nazis’ aim to make Germany judenrein (cleansed of Jews). This international conference was in response to the mounting political pressure on the United States and other nations. Most Jews from Germany and elsewhere wanted to go to the United States but were unable to obtain visas needed to enter. Even though the violent pogroms in Germany of November 1938 were widely reported on in the news, Americans were unwilling to welcome Jewish refugees; amid the Great Depression, Americans feared these displaced persons would compete with them for jobs and social programs set up to help them.
Rather than sending our Secretary of State to the Evian Conference, President Roosevelt instead selected a businessman and close friend of his to attend, Myron C. Taylor. During the nine-day meeting, while nation after nation expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews, most nations including the United States refused to accept any refugees. One notable exception to this position of refusing to allow more Jewish refugees was the tiny nation of the Dominican Republic. Astonishingly, they offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees.
The Dominican Republic Settlement Association Inc. (DORSA) acquired 22,230 acres on the north coast of the country in a place called Sosúa from the Dominican President Rafael Trujillo; the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corp. (Agro-Joint) heavily subsidized the project. The agreement ultimately negotiated and signed by DORSA and the Dominican Republic assured the immigrants freedom of religion and eased immigration by offering tax and customs exemptions.
While the Dominican Republic had agreed to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees, it is estimated that only about 5,000 visas were issued and that barely 700 Jews made it there. The reality is that while the visas would have allowed the recipients to escape the Holocaust, most of the refugees receiving them never reached the Dominican Republic since transatlantic travel proved to be extremely difficult, especially for Jews from occupied countries.
When WWII started, there were only about 40 Jews in the Dominican Republic. The first immigrants arrived in the middle of 1940, and it is estimated that by 1942 the Jewish population was 472. Jews continued to arrive in the Dominican Republic after WWII ended so that by 1947, they numbered 705. The project to bring Jews to Sosúa was intended to promote agricultural development along the Dominican Republic’s northern coast though most refugees were not inclined towards agriculture and preferred to work as businessmen and artisans. Each refugee family was given 82 acres of land, 10 cows plus one additional cow per child, and a $10,000 loan at one percent interest. The number of Jews in the Dominican Republic gradually continued to decline in the decades after WWII. By the 1980’s, most of the Jewish refugees in Sosúa had sold their land to tourist developers and left the country to pursue economic opportunities elsewhere. According to the estimates of Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola’s “World Jewish Population, 2016,” the Dominican Republic is home to between 100 and 300 Jews.
The motivation for Jews to escape to the Dominican Republic during WWII is obvious but readers may wonder what motivated President Trujillo to offer to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. As previously stated, Trujillo hoped that these refugees could contribute to the country’s agriculture and consequently donated land in Sosúa in anticipation of a Jewish agricultural settlement. It is also believed that he supported letting Jewish refugees into the country as part of his strategy to encourage European rather than Haitian immigration. Trujillo was reputedly extremely racist and wanted Jewish immigrants as a way of “whitening” the Dominican Republic. Additionally, Trujillo personally profited by pocketing the “processing fees” that immigrants (or their sponsors) had to pay to be allowed in.
Trujillo used this same approach with refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Japanese migrants. In the case of the latter, the Dominican Republic signed a treaty with Japan in 1956. The Japanese motivation was to use emigration policy to improve the country’s international image following WWII by having the Japanese contribute to the development of foreign countries. Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, by contrast sought to use Japanese migrants as a buffer against black Haitian squatters by settling them along the country’s western border with Haiti.
There is a tragic side note to Trujillo’s decision to accept Jewish refugees during WWII. In 1937, the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who share the island of Hispaniola, was the scene of a mass slaughter in which historians estimate between 9,000 and 20,000 Haitians were killed in the Dominican Republic. It earned the name the “Parsley Massacre” because Dominican soldiers carried a sprig of parsley. When the soldiers encountered people suspected of being Haitian, they would ask them to pronounce the Spanish word for it, “perejil.” Haitians whose first language was Haitian Creole found it difficult to say it correctly, which cost many of them their lives.
In any case, the U.S. administration regarded Trujillo as a staunch ally but after the scale of the massacre emerged, President Roosevelt’s administration made the Dominican Republic pay reparations to the victims’ families, money which ultimately never reached them. Regardless, it is believed that by agreeing to take in Jewish refugees Trujillo was trying to get back into the good graces of the United States.
Let me turn now to discussing Herta Brauer and her family’s arrival in the Dominican Republic, and the specific role she played there insofar as it is known. Shortly after Francis Pou contacted me, he sent me copies of the Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit in accordance with law no. 95” for Herta and her family. (Figures 13-16) It shows they arrived at Ciudad Trujillo (https://www.encyclopedia.com/…/ciudad-trujillo), as Santo Domingo was known from January 1936 until November 1961, on the 25th of March 1941. Herta was accompanied by her husband Ernst, their son Till Brauer, and Herta’s daughter by her first marriage, Yutta Maria Muenchow.
A ”List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” shows the family left Lisbon, Portugal on the 22nd of February 1941 aboard the ship the “S.S. Marques de Comillas” (Figure 17); this same form shows their last previous address was in Rome, Italy. The “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” form shows the family arrived in New York City on the 12th of March 1941 (Figure 18), so a little less than three weeks later. A handwritten note on this form indicates they “Transshipped to Santo Domingo” on the 20th of March 1941 aboard the “S.S. Cosmo.” Another “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” confirms the family sailed from New York City on the 20th of March 1941. (Figure 19) The family appears to have briefly made landfall in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the 25th of March before sailing onto Santo Domingo the same day; the nautical distance between these two spots is 252 miles. Prior to receiving the Brauer’s Dominican immigration forms from Francis, I had mistakenly assumed the family had ridden out the war in Puerto Rico. It’s now clear to me that by the 25th of March 1941, Herta and her family were in fact in the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican immigration forms sent to me by Francis Pou show the family resided at “Calle Socorro Sanchez #9” in Ciudad Trujillo upon their arrival. However, according to Francis, the family did not stay in Ciudad Trujillo, nor did they relocate to the Jewish community of Sosúa. Instead, they moved to the town of Jarabacoa, located in the Central Mountain Range of the Dominican Republic at an elevation of more than 1700 feet; Francis characterizes this as the “Switzerland of the Caribbean.” (Figures 20-21) Francis believes that Herta and her family moved to this mountain town because it was in a safe and remote place, and only later relocated to Ciudad Trujillo when they realized the Dominicans were no threat to them as Jews and because her work required her to be in a larger city.
The name Jarabacoa comes from Taino indigenous people who spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. Notably, the Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492.
I recently stumbled on a 2015 paper by Jorge Mendoza entitled “Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia,” translated as “Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde.” This paper includes numerous references to Herta Brauer and explains the political and cultural context in which she worked; it rounds out my understanding of Herta’s involvement in the Dominican Republic. I will highlight some of the author’s findings.
The dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was sworn in as head of the Dominican Republic on the 16th of August 1930. A devastating cyclone hit the island 18 days later that is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 8,000 people, a significant percentage of the capital’s 50,000 inhabitants. Trujillo’s emergence and the rapid reconstruction he instigated in the wake of the devastating cyclone resulted in the emergence of lower-class workers and peasants and middle- and upper-class civil servants, intellectuals, and businessmen who supported the dictatorship. Herta Brauer arrived in the country amid Trujillo’s 31 years in office when the life of Dominicans revolved around his image and that of his family.
Jorge Mendoza uncovered information on Herta in an article published on the 9th of October 1944 in the defunct Dominican newspaper “La Nación” entitled “Nace el ballet en República Dominicana,” “Ballet is born in the Dominican Republic.”; the article was based on an interview conducted with her by a journalist identified only by the initials “R.M.A.” Curiously, the news story noted that Herta and Dr. Ernst Hanns Brauer apparently received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI himself to marry while they were living in Rome. This notation is a bit puzzling since Herta and Ernst are known to have gotten married in Berlin on the 12th of March 1932 and self-identified as Jewish. Could this marriage exemption mean they had converted to Catholicism after they arrived in Italy whenever that was? If I’m interpreting things correctly, it was around the same time Pope Pius XI granted the Brauers a special marriage release that they decided to emigrate to the Dominican Republic. Whether the Pope interceded on their behalf to facilitate this or whether they obtained visas under the terms negotiated at the Evian Conference is unknown.
The idea of creating a dance school came to the Brauers while they were living in Jarabacoa. According to the journalist R.M.A., the Brauers “. . .became intoxicated with the light and color of the tropics,” and listening to the typical merengue imbued them with the rhythmic sense of “the simple people of the mountain.” The Brauers lived for a year in Jarabacoa before relocating to a house in Ciudad Trujillo located a block away from the ocean that still stands today.
While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo, through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo, Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou, Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978 reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.
Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house probably beginning in early 1943. (Figure 22) Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while other donors apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.
It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.
During Trujillo’s rule, art and culture became a means of propaganda and a distraction from the regime’s brutal excesses. Trujillo imposed merengue as the national dance in Dominican society, and in his honor, merengues were written extolling his virtues. Herta Brauer was the first dance teacher to bring merengue to ballet. Taking the basic steps of this popular dance, she combined them with the techniques of ballet to favorable review. In the first merengue ballet she choreographed, Herta named the musical piece “El general llegó,” “The General Arrived,” a clear reference to Trujillo. There can be little doubt that Herta had taken note of the price she had to pay for the privileges she was granted by the Trujillo regime, which included being “untouchable” by any competitors wishing to diminish her cultural influence.
Francis believes that Flor de Oro’s cultured lifestyle may have drawn her to Herta and that introducing her father to ballet may have given Flor an entrée into his government.
Herta Brauer will be prominently featured in the documentary Francis is currently developing. She is important because she introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic, because she was the first person to blend Dominican folk music with ballet, and because she created choreographies for public events where Trujillo was in attendance. Significantly, coming from a country of a little more than ten million people, Herta trained a generation of accomplished ballet dancers that continue to be over-represented in some of the world’s major ballet companies, such as Martha Graham, the Washington Ballet, etc.
Regardless, in around 1947 Herta decided to take leave of the Dominican Republic leaving everything in the hands of a Hungarian dance teacher, a Magda Corbett, another Jew. (Figure 23) The reasons for Herta’s departure are not entirely clear, although a negative review may have angered her, or she may simply have accepted a better offer from the University of Puerto Rico.
A “Passenger Manifest” for Pan American Airways shows that Ernst Brauer arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico alone from the Dominican Republic on the 7th of October 1947 (Figure 24), roughly coinciding with the time the Brauers are believed to have left the country. As with historic documents that provide temporal information, the passenger manifest includes another interesting fact. It shows that at the time that Ernst Brauer departed the Dominican Republic he was still deemed to be “Stateless” and had only ever been issued a Dominican residence permit; he never received Dominican citizenship even though he had lived there for almost seven years. It may be that only Ernst and Herta’s youngest son, Oliver Brauer (Figure 25), born in the Dominican Republic on the 24th of January 1942 ever obtained Dominican citizenship. (Figure 26) What is known about Oliver is that he along with the rest of the Brauers became American citizens, likely in Puerto Rico. To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War Oliver left for Germany, where he is believed to have died.
It’s unclear how long Herta and Ernst Brauer resided in Puerto Rico. However, an undated newspaper article about Ernst and Herta Brauer’s continued balletic work in Mallorca, Spain after their arrival there unequivocally states they remained in Puerto Rico for eight years. (Figure 27) Assuming they arrived there from the Dominican Republic in 1947, that would mean they stayed until around 1955; this would also coincide with their arrival in Mallorca, Spain. The “Report of the Death of an American Citizen” was completed for Ernst showing he died on the 19th of May 1971 in Calvia, Mallorca, where he is interred. (Figure 28) As previously mentioned, Herta’s Social Security Death Index indicates she died in August 1983 and claims her address at the time was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (see Figure 10) For this reason, I erroneously assumed she had left Mallorca and rejoined her children in Puerto Rico following her husband’s death. Till Brauer, however, confirms that Herta Brauer died in Mallorca and is buried in the same cemetery alongside Ernst Brauer.
In reading the undated news article discussing Herta and Ernst’s continuing work in Mallorca, it’s clear that Herta taught dance while her husband oversaw the business aspects of running the dance studio. Why Ernst and Herta came to Mallorca is another unanswered question, but Francis directed me to a 1954 video on YouTube showing the close relationship that Trujillo had with Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain. Is it possible that Flor de Oro Trujillo recommended Ernst and Herta to Franco? Like in the Dominican Republic, according to Francis, it appears that their school in Mallorca was also subsidized and that free ballet lessons were offered. Regardless, it seems that Ernst and Herta could not avoid living in yet a third totalitarian country.
REFERENCES
ANU Museum of the Jewish People. “The Jewish Community of the Dominican Republic.” https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e250705/Place/Dominican_Republic
Davis, Nick (2012, October 13). The massacre that marked Haiti-Dominican Republic ties. BBC.
“History of the Jews in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Dominican_Republic
“Japanese Settlement in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_settlement_in_the_Dominican_Republic
Johnson, Rudy (1978, February 17). Flor de Oro Trujillo, Whose Father Led Dominican Republic. New York Times, Section D, Page 12.
Mendoza, Jorge (2015, January-December). Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia (Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde). Istimica, pp. 99-130.
Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. “Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic (Sosúa: Un Refugio de Judíos en la República Dominicana),” https://mjhnyc.org/exhibitions/sosua-refuge-jews-dominican-republic-sosua-un-refugio-de-judios-en-la-republica-dominicana/
R.M.A. (1944, October 9). Nace el ballet en República Dominicana (Ballet is born in the Dominican Republic). La Nación.
“The Jews of the Dominican Republic.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ysm2cqydwwE
“Trujillo Y Franco 1954.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JO_f-OZsg
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Evian Conference,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-evian-conference
World Jewish Congress. “Dominican Republic.” https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/DO
VITAL STATISTICS OF MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & SELECT FAMILY & DESCENDANTS
NAME
EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE
Auguste Margareth Berliner (self)
Birth
19 March 1872
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Margareth Auguste Berliner’s birth record (LDS Microfiche 1184449, p. 101); 1891 marriage certificate
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 postscript about my great-aunt Margareth “Greta” Brauer née Berliner details the substantial amount of new information I’ve learned about her and her family in the few short months since I published the original post in September 2018. In the process, sadly, I also learned when and where she died.
Aware of a Puerto Rican connection to my great-aunt Greta Brauer’s family and frustrated I had been unable to learn what happened to her after 1933, I recently did an Internet query on the member of her family I knew had lived there, namely, “Till Brauer.” However, given the cataclysmic events associated with Hurricane Maria in September 2017, I had scant expectations I would be able to locate much less connect with any member of the Brauer family; on the contrary, I expected anyone from the family who’d survived the Hurricane to have decamped for an unknown destination on the U.S. Mainland, as many Puerto Ricans did. So, it came as an enormous surprise when I quickly discovered a “Till Brauer Mongil” (Figure 1), operating a charter fishing business out of Carolina, Puerto Rico, which lies immediately east of the capital San Juan. His website stated he was no longer in business, but because it had once been an active operation, an email address was provided. I immediately sent a message with tempered expectations, but within less than an hour, surprisingly, I received a response from Till Brauer asking me to call him. I immediately did.
Till Carl Brauer Mongil, born in 1959 in Puerto Rico, it turns out, is the great-grandson of Greta Brauer, and my third cousin once-removed. As we speak, Till has contracts to conduct inspections related to cleanup and reconstruction of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure resulting from Hurricane Maria, and is extremely busy. Understandably, we’ve had only one opportunity to communicate, so all I’ve learned is from a brief phone conversation. Still, I was able to pick up enough information to correct and supplement what I discussed in Post 34.
In my original post I included a picture of three generations of Brauer taken in 1933 in Neubabelsberg, near Spandau, outside Berlin. The photo, reprinted here, shows my great-aunt Greta, her daughter-in-law, Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till as a baby. (Figures 2a-b) I also showed an image taken in Calvia, Mallorca in 1966, similarly reprinted here, showing a son Oliver holding a young daughter named Margarita. (Figure 3) I mistakenly concluded that Till Brauer and Oliver were one person, but, in fact, Ernst and Herta Brauer had these two sons. This was my first error, but not my only one. Till Carl Brauer Mongil, I learned, is the son of the Till Brauer shown in the 1933 photograph. To remind readers, in Spanish-speaking countries, newborns are given two surnames, that of their father and mother, thus the “Brauer Mongil” attached to Till’s name.
Briefly, let me discuss some of the documents and Passenger Manifests I found for Ernst and Herta Brauer’s family on ancestry.com and connect these to some of what Till Brauer told me.
The names of Ernst, Herta, and Till Brauer, along with that of a Yutta Maria Muenchow clearly traveling with them, are listed on a “Manifest of Alien Passengers” bound for New York City aboard the Spanish linerSS Marques de Comillas that departed Lisbon, Portugal on February 22, 1941; this document showed their last permanent residence prior to leaving Europe had been Rome. (Figure 4) A “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry,” shows the arrival of these four people in New York on March 12, 1941. (Figure 5) The title of this manifest suggests the Brauer family was separated from passengers disembarking in New York; a notation in the upper right-hand corner of this document confirms the family’s stay in New York was brief as they were “transshipped to Santo Domingo [Dominican Republic] on the SS Coamo (Figure 6) on March 20, 1941.” And, this comports with a third Passenger Manifest showing the entire family leaving New York City on March 20, 1941 aboard this passenger ship. (Figure 7) An Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) file, dated May 2, 1941, lists the entire family having traveled aboard the SS Marques de Comillas. (Figure 8) Finally, another Passenger Manifest shows Ernst Brauer traveling alone to San Juan, Puerto Rico from Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic on October 7, 1947 aboard a Pan Am flight. (Figure 9)
The four Passenger Manifests and the INS file generally confirm what Till Carl Brauer (to distinguish him from his father Till Brauer) related. Till Brauer was married to a Puerto Rican woman, a circumstance that eventually allowed the Brauers to settle in Puerto Rico, although not before first living in the Dominican Republic for several years by choice or necessity; Ernst and Herta’s son, Oliver, was born there, and judging from the various Passenger Manifests I found, it appears the Brauers lived in the Dominican Republic no longer than seven years, though Till Carl claims it was about four years.
Till Carl Brauer explained that Herta Brauer’s maiden name was “Stadach,” and that she had previously been married to a Karl Ferdinand Hermann Münchow (Figure 10), by whom she had had a daughter, Yutta Maria Münchow. (Figure 11) Thus, the “mysterious” Yutta Maria who traveled with the Brauers was Herta’s daughter by her first marriage.
As explained in Post 34, in ancestry.com I located a document titled “Report of the Death of An American Citizen,” for Ernst Hanns Brauer showing he passed away in Calvia, Mallorca on May 19, 1971. (Figure 12) I found no corresponding form for Herta Brauer, and, in fact, the Social Security Death Index recorded her address at the time of death in August 1983 as San Juan, Puerto Rico (Figure 13); I assumed she had died there. Till Carl told me that in truth both Ernst and Herta died in Mallorca. The circumstances that lead the Brauers to relocate there are connected to historical events in the United States during the late 1960’s. Readers will recall that at the time America was ramping up its presence in Vietnam. The compulsory draft would have made both Till and Oliver eligible to be called up since Puerto Ricans are citizens of the unincorporated territory of the U.S. Opposed to the war, and not wanting their sons to be drafted, the Brauers left the country. It’s clear that neither parent ever relinquished their American nationality, and, both sons, had dual American-German nationality; Oliver ultimately died in Germany, place unknown. Till Carl was unable to tell me anything about the daughter Oliver is shown holding in a 1966 picture of the two of them.
The thing I had most wanted to find out from Till Carl was when and where Greta Brauer, his great-grandmother, died, but he didn’t know. I began to despair finding out. On this note, Till Carl and I ended our conversation with a promise on my part to send him all the documents I’d uncovered related to his family.
In compiling all this evidence, but convinced I’d already examined the various Holocaust victims’ databases, I decided to double check for Grete Brauer before sending all the family documents to Till Carl Brauer. For reasons that are unclear, I had never found or simply overlooked my great-aunt’s name in these databases but this time I found her and confirmed she died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on November 24, 1942 (Figure 14), an all too familiar ending with Jewish relatives whose deaths remain unsolved during the Nazi era.
Following my brief conversation with Till Carl, I exchanged an email with Larry Leyser, my third cousin once-removed whom I’ve alluded to in other posts. I told him in passing I’d spoken to one of our relatives in Puerto Rico, and, a short time, later he sent me a picture and a clipping from a Puerto Rican newspaper asking whether it had anything to do with the people shown or mentioned. Incredibly, it did. The photo and newspaper article were scanned from a horde of items Larry had borrowed from one of his cousins, curiously included in this stash, and set aside as people to be identified later. Simply because I mentioned Puerto Rico, Larry sent these documents to me on the off-chance they might be connected to what I was working on. The picture shows Herta and Ernst Brauer book-ended by their two sons, Oliver on the left, Till on the right along with a family friend, on the day of Till’s wedding. (Figure 15a-b) Herta and Ernst Brauer are rightmost in the newspaper picture, involved, as they were most of their lives, in dance and theater. (Figure 16)
One final thing. My still-living 89-year old mother, who knew my grandmother, Greta Brauer’s sister, says my grandmother never mentioned having an older sister. What, if anything, to make of this omission is unclear.
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!
