Heimatortskartei Archives - bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 184: TIPS ON USING THE “HEIMATORTSKARTEI” DIRECTORY FOR DANZIG-WESTPREUßEN: A CASE STUDY

Note: This post will admittedly be of interest to a limited audience, mostly ancestral researchers looking for records related to their non-Jewish German ancestors displaced from West Prussia by the advancing Red Army towards the end of WWII. However, since people of Jewish descent were obviously embedded in their communities and invariably interacted with their non-Jewish counterparts as friends, lovers, neighbors, business associates and clients, etc., before many of these people turned on them, some Jewish readers may be interested, as I was, what may have happened to their ancestors’ contemporaries. This post provides tips on using the so-called “Heimatortskartei” directory for Danzig-Westpreußen. I show readers how to find records using as an example a family my father was friends with he originally met in Tiegenhof, giving a brief family history and discussing some vital documents I found along the way.

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART II)

POST 182: THE JEWISH ANKER FAMILY FROM DANZIG AS THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER DR. OTTO BRUCK

POST 183: FATE OF SOME OF MY FATHER’S FRIENDS FROM THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

My German friend Peter Hanke first made me aware of the “Heimatortskartei (HOK)” directory for Danzig-Westpreußen in 2018 when I was researching people from Tiegenhof my father knew as acquaintances and friends during the five years he lived there. Heimatortskartei literally translates as “home town index.” HOK is a systematic directory that lists the German population in the former German eastern settlement areas according to their place of residence in September 1939. Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the aftermath and destruction of the war. It helped displaced Germans to figuratively find their way back to their original home areas or connect with those from their former regions. Individuals from a particular “Kreis” (county or district) would register their names, addresses, and other relevant information with the Heimatortskartei, creating a sort of “social network” for those who shared the same origin.

When I originally looked at the HOK cards I was specifically searching for former residents of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], so Peter sent me links to two HOK microfilm rolls from there.

Link to the first part of Tiegenhof:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/008301757?cat=232907

Link to the second part of Tiegenhof and Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland]:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/film/008301758?cat=232907

The available microfilms reside on the familysearch.org platform. Organized alphabetically, using the Tiegenhof directory was seamless. I revisited these microfilms in writing the previous Post 183. Aware that some of my father’s friends and acquaintances from his years living in Tiegenhof were not in the HOK directory, it naturally occurred to me they might have lived in Danzig or elsewhere in West or East Prussia.

When I began looking at the Danzig-Westpreußen directory, I immediately realized it would be much more challenging to find HOK records for these areas. Unlike the HOK cards for former residents of Tiegenhof, the ones from Danzig-Westpreußen are organized by street address under each of the municipalities in West Prussia. I feared that finding addresses specifically for former Danzig city residents might require knowing which “borough” they formerly lived in, like when searching vital records for people who lived in Berlin. Daunted by the prospect of finding anyone absent an address and city sector, I again turned to my friend Peter for tips on how best to search the directory.

A brief digression. I was first introduced to my friend Peter Hanke through the online archive “forum.danzig.de” when researching my father’s friend from Tiegenhof who at the time I only knew by her sobriquet, “die Schlummermutter.” As I discussed in the previous post, Peter helped me discover her real identity, Margarete “Grete” Gramatzki. The forum.danzig is focused on researching and writing about people and places in the Free City of Danzig, discussing and answering members and reader questions broadly related to the area, and more. I’ve infrequently made use of the forum’s talents because the exchanges are primarily in German though members are very willing to help non-German speakers answer questions.

Returning to the subject of this post, when I asked Peter for advice on how best to search the HOK directory, I learned another very useful service the forum provides, namely, developing indices for finding records in various archives and directories. Peter sent me two links. The first link (Figure 1) is to all the phone and/or address directories since these were first produced for the municipalities in the Free City of Danzig; often multiple jurisdictions or towns are included in the back of the Danzig city directories:

https://momente-im-werder.net/01_Offen/01_Adressbuecher/Adressbuecher.htm

Figure 1. The portal page from the “Momente in Danziger Werder. . .” listing the various address and phone directories available for towns in the Free City of Danzig

The second link (Figure 2) lists the names of all the streets by municipalities in the Free City of Danzig. This link also identifies by microfilm number and page numbers where HOK records for people who lived on those streets can be found.

https://momente-im-werder.net/01_Offen/80_Werkzeug/Heimatortskartei/0_HOK.htm to get a first impression

Figure 2. The portal page from the “Momente in Danziger Werder. . .” listing all the municipalities (circled) which link to the microfilms and page numbers by street for each town

The top left item under this link is “Dzg. Stadt” (Danzig Stadt), city of Danzig. Clicking on this provides an alphabetical list of the former German-named streets of Danzig. (Figures 3a-b) Likewise, clicking on the other municipalities at the top provides a list of street names from former times for those towns. (see Figure 2)

Figure 3a. The portal page for “Dzg Stadt” listing microfilms and page numbers by street starting with letter -A-

Figure 3b. List of all the streets in the city of Danzig that once started with the letter -O-, including Ostseestrasse discussed in this post

As readers can see, the instructions are in German. I suggest readers translate them using the “Immersive Reader” function. Readers will notice that Address Books for some years are shaded in yellow. (Figure 4) These can only be read using the “DjVu Reader” which will need to be downloaded to your computer. Instructions are provided on forum.danzig.

Figure 4. List and links to all the address and phone directories available for the city of Danzig; those shaded in yellow can only be read using the “DjVu Reader”

Let me make a few points about the HOK directory. While HOK directories exist for areas other than Danzig-Westpreußen where Germans were expelled from following the end of WWII, this is the only area where the records have been digitized and are available online. To appreciate how daunting it would be to narrow one’s search for HOK cards for just Danzig-Westpreußen without the forum’s user tools, this directory alone includes 265 rolls of microfilm containing 1,000,000+ records!

The HOK directory is based on the 1939 census. While forum.danzig has uploaded many pre-1939 address and phone directories for Danzig and surrounding municipalities, readers searching the HOK directory should concentrate on those from 1939 to 1942.

A challenge the forum.danzig’s user tools can’t obviously address is when one does not know which jurisdiction in the city-state of the Free City of Danzig the person being researched may have lived. According to AI Overview, the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939) (Figure 5) included the city of Danzig (Gdańsk), and the towns of Zoppot (Sopot), Oliva (Oliwa), Tiegenhof (Nowy Dwór Gdański), and Neuteich (Nowy Staw). In addition to these towns, it also encompassed 252 villages and 63 hamlets. When searching for someone in the HOK directory, it makes sense to begin by assuming the person lived in the city of Danzig proper, the largest municipality in the Free City, though clearly this will not always be the case.

Figure 5. 1940-41 map of the Free City of Danzig showing the major towns mentioned in this post

It’s worth pointing out that the HOK records for nearby East Prussia, which included the city of Königsberg [today: Kaliningrad, Russia], outside the Free City of Danzig, which had a population in 1940 of about 375,000 compared to Danzig’s approximately 400,000 at the time, have not been digitized. In 1940, Königsberg was considered one of Germany’s 10 largest cities. I suspect some of my father’s friends and acquaintances resided there as his albums include photos taken there.

The people who will be the focus of this post are Kurt Lau and his wife, Käthe Lau, née Pluskat, who my father first encountered in Tiegenhof, probably shortly after he moved there in April 1932. (Figure 6) My father also knew their sons, Peter (1923-2022) and Rudolf (1920-1944), though Rudolf was killed near Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland] in 1944. My father remained friends with the Lau family throughout his life (Figure 7), a friendship my wife Ann and I continued until the death of Peter and his wife several years ago. (Figure 8)

Figure 6. Kurt and Käthe Lau at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] in 1935

Figure 7. From left to right: Paulette Brook, Lolo Lau, Christian Lau, Trixie Lau, Käthe Lau, and Kurt Lau in June 1963 in Deggendorf, Germany

Figure 8. In May 2012 in Oberhausen, Germany, me with Lolo and Peter Lau, Kurt and Käthe Lau’s daughter-in-law and son

I began my ancestral research around 2011, following my retirement, prompted by seven albums left to me by my father capturing moments in his life from the 1910s until around 1948. At the time I tried to make sense of who was pictured and their names, Peter and his wife, Hannelore “Lolo” Lau, nee Gross, both born in Danzig, were still alive. They were very instrumental in identifying people in my father’s pictures and relating stories about some.

Peter also told me about his parents, my father’s dear friends. I will briefly recap this and supplement it with what I learned or confirmed through my own documentary research. While I met both Peter and Lolo once as a child, it was obviously long before I developed an interest in ancestry.

The paterfamilias Kurt Lau (Figure 9) was born on the 25^th February 1892 in the West Prussian town of Thorn [today: Torun, Poland], located near the Vistula River. Kurt’s father was a customs house inspector who moved to Danzig following his retirement. Kurt worked for a bank before WWI. While fighting in Verdun, France he was twice wounded. I found evidence of this in ancestry. (Figures 10a-b, 11a-b) Following his second injury, he was transferred back to West Prussia to a town called Graudenz [today: Grudziądz, Poland], only about 40 miles north of Thorn where he’d been born. (see Figure 5)

Figure 10a. Ancestry cover page of WWI German Casualty List dated 18 May 1916 listing Kurt Lau as wounded

Figure 10b. WWI German Casualty List dated 18 May 1916 with Kurt Lau’s name circled

Figure 11a. Ancestry cover page of WWI German Casualty List dated 24 December 1917 listing Kurt Lau as wounded

Figure 11b. WWI German Casualty List dated 24 December 1917 with Kurt Lau’s name circled

In Graudenz, Kurt met his future wife, Kathe Pluskat (Figure 12) who was then working in a bookshop. A 1913 Graudenz Address Directory lists Kathe’s sister Ella and widowed mother Anna, with Ella appearing to be the owner of the bookstore. (Figure 13) The Pluskat family had previously lived in Gumbinnen in East Prussia [today: Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia]. (Figure 14)

Figure 13. Page from 1913 Graudenz Address Book listing Käthe Lau, née Pluskat’s widowed mother Anna and sister Ella

Figure 14. Map showing the distance from Gumbinnen (Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia) to Graudenz (Grudziądz, Poland)

Following Kurt and Kathe’s marriage in 1919, they moved to Danzig where Kurt went to work for the still existing Deutsche Bank. Their two sons were born in Danzig. The bank offered Kurt the job of managing the “Tiegenhofer Ölmühle” in Tiegenhof, which produced oil from the widespread rapeseed plant growing in the Großes Werder. The experience gained managing the mill in Tiegenhof allowed Kurt and a Polish partner to buy a different mill in Danzig-Neufahrwasser in 1937 (Figure 15), at which point the family returned to Danzig. As I mentioned in the previous post, as the Russians were approaching Danzig, Kurt shipped parts of the oil mill equipment from Danzig to Hamburg, and in 1948/49, from there to Deggendorf in Bavaria where the mill was reconstructed.

Figure 15. 1940-41 map showing Danzig and its surrounding suburbs, including Danzig-Neufahrwasser

More could be said about the Lau family but I’m merely trying to illustrate how I tracked down their HOK cards. Until I reviewed the notes I’d taken following my get-together with Peter and Lolo in 2012, I’d forgotten the Lau family had returned to Danzig in around 1937 so that their HOK cards would not have been filed under Tiegenhof. I’d also forgotten that I’d recorded the address of the home where they lived in Danzig, namely, Ostseestrasse 6. (Figures 16-17) Contemporary address books from 1939-1942 list Kurt Lau at this address (Figure 18), so had I not found my notes, I could still have retrieved his address. With the index that forum.danzig has developed cross-referencing street names and microfilm numbers, I quickly located the corresponding pages and their HOK card numbers. (Figures 19a-b) Absent this user guide, I would have had to scan multiple microfilms.

Figure 16. Painting of the Lau home in Danzig located at Ostseestrasse 6 done in 1972

Figure 17. 2012 photo of the still-standing former Lau home in Gdansk, Poland

Figure 18. 1942 Address Book listing Kurt Lau as the factory manager of the “Tiegenhofer Ölmühle” living at Ostseestr. 6

Figure 19a. Page 1 of the HOK directory card for Kurt Lau

Figure 19b. Page 2 of the HOK directory card for Kurt Lau

I already knew most of the information on Lau’s HOK cards. Often this is not the case. For example, in Post 67, Parts I & II and Post 183, I discussed the premature and tragic deaths of Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe, one-time friends of my father. The 1940 Danzig Address Book lists two addresses for Gerhard, presumably one of which was his work address. It required checking both addresses in the HOK directory to find the family’s cards. This is how I learned about the existence of their daughter Gisela, raised by Gerhard’s parents following his death, and how I managed to eventually speak with her and learn what little she’d been told about her parents’ deaths.

Admittedly much of the information in the HOK directory is now dated but, that said, can still provide ancestral researchers clues on possible towns to check for descendants.

A gentleman from Los Angeles whose Anker ancestors from Danzig were the subject of Post 182 had a great-uncle who had an affair with his cleaning lady. She lived in Zoppot in the Free City of Danzig. A child was a result of that affair. The LA gentleman has the former address and surname of the cleaning lady, but ironically, the HOK records for that specific street on which she lived were never scanned or destroyed. While ancestral research can at times be frustrating, it is the possibility that success is just around the corner that makes it so addictive.

POST 183: FATE OF SOME OF MY FATHER’S FRIENDS FROM THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

Note: This post is primarily a discussion about the fates, where I’ve been able to learn them, of some of my father’s closest friends from his time living in the Free City of Danzig. Knowing that some of these friends were Mennonites provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion begun in Post 121 on the connection of this religious community to the Holocaust, particularly to the notorious concentration camp in nearby Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland].

POST 3, POSTSCRIPT: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE “SCHLUMMERMUTTER”

POST 4: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 4, POSTSCRIPT: OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 5: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: “IDSCHI & SUSE”

POST 7: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE CLUB RUSCHAU

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART I)

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART II)

POST 76: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. FRANZ SCHIMANSKI, PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 77: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. HERBERT HOLST, VICE-PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 78: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, KURT LAU, JAILED FOR “INSULTING THE NAZI GOVERNMENT”

POST 121-MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS

POST 121, POSTSCRIPT: MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS—FURTHER HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS

If my father were alive, I’ve no doubt he would characterize the years that he lived and worked in the Free City of Danzig between ~1930 and 1937 as the halcyon days of his life. When he opened his dental practice in the nearby Mennonite farming community of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in April 1932, he was only 25 years old. He quickly developed a thriving business and joined various civic, community, and sports organizations in town. He had many friends and acquaintances, and an active social life. Never a practicing Jew, he nevertheless converted from Judaism to Protestantism while living there to “fit in.” Growing up, I remember my father telling me this was also the reason he drank so much during his years living in Tiegenhof.

It’s safe to say that the larger city of Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], where my father apprenticed, while still staunchly conservative was a more cosmopolitan metropolis than Tiegenhof and had a more diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. While I’ve been able to learn little about the social and religious background of his friends from Danzig, I’m sure they came from a mix of backgrounds including Jewish. By contrast, his closest friends in Tiegenhof were mostly Mennonites.

Given the widespread support for the Nazi Party among Mennonites in the Free City of Danzig that helped them gain a majority of seats (38 out of 72) in the 1933 parliamentary elections, it’s inevitable that my father was quickly “blacklisted” following the National Socialists’ electoral victory. Periodically, I contemplate how disconcerting and upsetting it must have been for my father and many persecuted Jews to suddenly be ignored or worse by Germans who’d only the day before been cordial, if not friendly.

Among my father’s closest friends during his years in the Free City of Danzig were people he commonly referred to as “the Schlummermutter,” “Idschi and Suse” (Figure 1), “Mochum” (Figure 2), and “Gerhard and Ilse.” (Figure 3) I had to work hard to figure out their surnames since my father was typically silent on this matter.

Figure 1. My father with Suse, the “Schlummermutter,” and Idschi in Tiegenhof

Figure 2. My father with his erstwhile friend “Mochum,” probably at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland]

Figure 3. My father in Danzig with Ilse and Gerhard in the early 1930s

The Schlummermutter (Figure 4), most often mentioned to me growing up, was an enormous woman, weighing over 200kg (~440lbs). She was a revered figure and like a surrogate mother to my father. He never once referred to her by name, only by her sobriquet. Knowing her date of birth from pictures my father had taken on her birthday in 1937, thanks to the help of my friend, “the Wizard of Wolfsburg,” I eventually discovered her real identity, Margaretha “Grete” Gramatzki (1885-1942). Because of her size, she was referred to locally as “Grete dicke,” “fat Grete.” Gramatzki is considered a Mennonite surname. The Schlummermutter ran a boarding house in Tiegenhof, co-owning the building where my father had both an apartment and his dental practice, at Marktstrasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. The Schlummermutter in Spring 1933 in Tiegenhof

Figure 5. The building in Tiegenhof located at Markstrasse 8 where my father both lived and had his dental practice

The Schlummermutter, born on the 13^th of June 1885, died on the 24^th of February 1942 at 56, relatively young by today’s standards. In one of my father’s last known photos of her, taken following his departure from Tiegenhof, she appeared to have suffered a stroke, probably not unexpected given her obesity.

Two very close friends of my father, Suse (Figure 6) and Idschi (Figure 7), lived in Tiegenhof in the same apartment building owned by Grete Gramatzki. I discovered from a day planner I found among my father’s surviving papers that they were related, that’s to say, the oldest and youngest sisters in their family. Their surname “Epp” is yet another traditional Mennonite name. I discussed the sisters long-ago in Post 5, so refer readers to that publication for more background.

Figure 6. Suse Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

Figure 7. Idschi Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

A 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book lists Ida Epp (Figure 8) as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at street level in the building then owned by the Epp sisters at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, previously known as Marktstrasse. As I discussed in Post 3, Postscript, a 1930 Tiegenhof Address confirms that one or both Epp sisters were business partners of Grete Gramatzki (Figure 9), rather than simply boarders in the building Grete owned.

Figure 8. Ida Epp listed in the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8

Figure 9. A 1930 “Kreis Grosses Werder” Address Book showing Grete Gramatzki and Epp in business together at Markstrasse 8

As the Red Army was approaching Tiegenhof in 1945, Suse and Idschi fled by ship to Denmark along with thousands of other Germans. They lived there in prison-like conditions, and that’s where Suse (1877-1948) passed away in 1948, at the age of 71. Idschi (1893-1975) eventually went to live in Munich with her nephew, Rupprecht Braun, and died there in 1975.

Given the close friendship my father had with the Epp sisters, he was naturally included in their social circle. One event he attended and took pictures at was hosted by Susie and Idschi’s brother, Gerhard Epp (1884-1959), at his home in Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland]. (Figure 10) Originally a Mercedes dealer in Russia, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gerhard moved with his first wife, Margarete Epp, née Klaassen, to Stutthof. There, he founded and operated an engineering workshop, where among other things, he provided electricity for the village and serviced agricultural equipment. (Figures 11a-b)

Figure 10. Gerhard Epp with his first wife Margaretha Epp, née Klaassen with their Great Dane “Ajax” in Stutthof

Figure 11a. Leadership of the Mennonite-owned Gerhard Epp firm

Figure 11b. Gerhard Epp and his daughter Rita Schuetze, née Epp from the leadership team photo

Let me digress and explain to readers how a recent query from a reader led me to learning more about Gerhard Epp and his connection to the notorious nearby Stutthof concentration camp. I think readers will agree that this is far more interesting than learning about the fates of my father’s friends. The recent query came from a historian researching the background of a Mennonite man named Johannes Reimer, an SS member from 1933 and an SS guard at Stutthof from 1939 to 1944. The researcher is trying to counter a not-so-uncommon narrative by descendants that their German ancestors were “reluctant” SS members and committed no war crimes.

I’ve never previously come across the “Reimer” surname so out of curiosity did an Internet query in combination with “Stutthof.” In the process, I stumbled upon a well-researched article entitled “Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation” written by Gerhard Hempel in October 2010 with multiple mentions of Reimer; it’s not clear all references are to Johannes Reimer, though I’m inclined to think most are. The author is or was a professor of history emeritus at Western New England College.

The collaboration of the Mennonites with the Nazis and their often-brutal treatment of inmates as camp guards was previously known to me, and, in fact, I delved into this topic in Post 121, specifically in connection with Gerhard Epp. The reader who contacted me found this earlier post. The reason I’m revisiting the topic of the Mennonites and the Holocaust is that Rempel’s lengthy article mentions Gerhard Epp several times and provides more detail than I previously knew.

Let me begin by telling readers a little about the prison camp at Stutthof. This was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof 34km (~21 miles) east of Danzig in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. This was the first concentration camp to be constructed outside of Germany. It was established in 1939 by the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel), an armed unit of the Nazi Party under the control of Heinrich Himmler. As an early stronghold of the National Socialists, Danzig had a contingent of 6,000 SS stationed within the area as early as 1933. This was expanded following a clandestine visit by Himmler in 1939 with the creation of the so-called “SS Heimwehr Danzig” and the “SS-Wachsturmbann Eimann.” The latter organization was tasked with developing plans for prison camps to accommodate anticipated arrests.

An isolated and secluded spot surrounded by water and swamps close to the village of Stutthof near the East Prussian border was selected. The initial barracks were begun and constructed by Polish inmates from the nearby Danzig prison in August 1939, with the first 200 prisoners arriving by September. The number of barracks was quickly expanded so that by January 1940, the camp held 4,500 prisoners. Eventually, the Stutthof complex included 200 outlying camps, so-called Aussenlager, and external commando units. The camp was under the command of SS Standartenführer Max Pauly.

A brief aside. My Bruck family is related by marriage to the Pauly family. I’m in touch with several Pauly cousins, so I asked one of them how and if we’re related to Max Pauly. He does not know. Suffice it to say that when one discovers odious war criminals with a surname like one’s own, sometimes one prefers not to look too closely into possible connections.

The prisoners at Stutthof included victims from 25 countries, including many Jews. Appalling sanitary conditions prevailed in the camps, with inmates suffering extreme malnutrition, disease, and torture. Many succumbed from the living conditions and the slave-like work; others were summarily executed through various means.

As noted, some of the Stutthof camp guards were Mennonites. It is worth noting that Stutthof was in an area with the highest density of Mennonite residents of any place in the world. Some Mennonite apologists have tried to minimize the role that people of Mennonite heritage played in the atrocities committed at Stutthof, but it has become clearer over time they played a significant role in the number of people killed there. Rempel writes: “Horst Gerlach [EDITOR’S NOTE: a prolific German Mennonite writer] emphatically denies. . .that any gas chambers ever existed at Stutthof, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, his optimistic estimate that only 9,000 people were killed at Stutthof is a huge miscalculation—the most recent research concludes that at least 65,000 victims died at Stutthof.” (P. 512)

Regarding one of Stutthof’s auxiliary slave-camps, Rempel notes the following: “The SS owned the factory, and the guard contingent was made up largely of a group of ordinary criminals and rowdies, many of them recruits from ethnic German communities in Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. But the worst characters were from Germany itself, among them two Mennonites.” (p. 518)

Very briefly, the larger context for the Mennonite participation in the Holocaust stems from the fact that many had earlier joined the counterrevolutionary forces of the former Tsar in Russia. With his defeat, the “Mennonites now found themselves on the losing side of the conflict as enemies of the new communist government.” (Rempel, p. 509) Stalin’s emergence and the period known as the “Great Terror” or the ”Great Purge” brought about a campaign to rid the Soviet Union of the so-called undesirable class. Mennonites were among the first to be targeted in the late 1920s, which led to a fraying of Mennonite communal life. As Rempel notes, “A decade later this trend [“moral and lawless indifference”] blinded many to the inherent evil of the carriers of National Socialism who came to Communist Russia in German uniforms as purported liberators.” (Rempel, p. 511)

Stutthof began as a camp for political opponents of the Nazi regime and socially undesirable minorities. Since the SS organization provided no financial support for expansion of the camp, the local SS command staff was determined to profit from the incarcerated inmates. Initially, land was allotted to grow vegetables and for animal husbandry, allowing the camp to quickly become self-sufficient. However, once it began to engage in local trade it started to generate profits. It became even more profitable when the SS command began to lease out inmates to work in public and private enterprises throughout the region. This resulted in the expansion of subcamps and special command units, all whose economic activities became SS-specific enterprises.

From 1939 until December 1944, Stutthof grew from 1.2 acres to 296 acres. It goes without saying that the establishment of additional subcamps was the result of an increase in the number of inmates. By 1944 Stutthof had become the destination of choice for transport from other camps and for those arrested after the Warsaw uprising. It is estimated that between 110,000 and 120,000 prisoners passed through Stutthof between 1939 and 1945. If the estimate that 65,000 victims died at Stutthof is accurate, clearly more than 50 percent of prisoners who passed through were murdered.

Theoretically Stutthof was a political prison, that’s to say, a forced labor camp for various industries owned by the SS or other government agencies. Holocaust scholars have tended to use “slave labor” and “forced labor” interchangeably, though some make a distinction. Slave labor included Jews working in concentration camps, death camps, and other work camps with the intent by Nazis to work these Jews to death. By contrast, forced laborers included anyone “who was compelled to leave his or her home in order to work for Nazi Germany.” As Rempel notes, however, “In any case, compulsory physical labor. . .was no less deadly than mass murder by gas or poison pellets.” (p. 516)

In June 1944, Stutthof was converted from a slave labor camp to an extermination camp. Outdoor furnaces were constructed to dispose of bodies. The crematoria were justified to eliminate dead bodies, but by 1944 Stutthof was nothing less than a killing center. Proof of this could be found in barracks built to “house” Jewish men and women transferred from eastern camps overrun by the Soviet Army that were merely walls with no internal furnishings. Clearly, arriving inmates were immediately sent to the gas chambers. (Rempel, p. 515-516)

Stutthof was liberated on May 9, 1945, the first camp established outside Germany and the last to be freed. The camp was dissolved on January 25, 1945, and the inmates forced to slog west on a death march that by some accounts resulted in the death of one-third to one-half of the inmates.

I’ve told readers more about Stutthof than I planned but let me move now specifically to a discussion of Gerhard Epp’s connection to Stutthof.

The direct involvement of Mennonites as guards at Stutthof has been well established by Holocaust scholars. What has also become clearer is the extent to which Mennonite farmers and businessmen exploited the inexpensive labor available from Stutthof. The inmates were particularly in demand during the hard work associated with harvest time. They received no salaries, although they appear to have been reasonably well fed and decently housed. The farmers had to pay the camps for use of prison labor, likely at a rate less than the going rate for unskilled labor.

As to Gerhard Epp’s role, Gerhard Rempel remarks the following: “A Mennonite builder, Gerhard Epp, for example, not only leased 300 Jewish slave laborers at Stutthof to build a new factory near the camp but also served as some sort of general contractor to the SS in assuming responsibility for the construction of all buildings on the premises. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that a Mennonite built the barracks for the first concentration camp on non-German soil.”

Epp’s stepson, Hans-Joachim Wiebe (Figures 12-13), whom I once met in Lubeck, Germany, was interviewed by the Mennonite researcher mentioned earlier, Horst Gerlach, to gather information about Gerhard Epp’s industrial machine factory. Quoting: “According to Wiebe, the inmates marched the two kilometers to the building site every morning and back again at night. Meals were delivered to the site from the camp kitchens.” (p. 523)

Figure 12. Gerhard Epp’s stepson and Rita Schuetze’s half-brother, Hans Joachim “Hajo” Wiebe, in 2013 in Lübeck, Germany

Figure 13. Hajo Wiebe in 2013 surrounded from left to right by his great-niece Paula Schuetze, his partner Gunda Nickel, and his niece Angelika Schuetze

Gerhard is mentioned yet again: “Gerhard Epp’s machine factory in the village of Stutthof was certainly the largest Mennonite employer of slave labor. Epp had endeared himself to the regime by building a home for Hitler Youth in Tiegenhof. His main factory employed some 500 prisoners from at least 1942 to the end of the war and focused on the production of various kinds of armaments such as small firearms. Epp’s factory, along with others, evacuated machinery and stock supplies to the West to continue producing armaments in a place safe from the advancing Russian Army.” (Rempel, p.525) Today, Epp & Wiebe GmbH continues to be a thriving business in the field of heating and air conditioning in Preetz, Germany.

Rempel’s mention that Gerhard Epp’s armaments-producing machinery was shipped West as the Red Army was approaching is the second case that I’ve come across that this took place. I don’t mean to suggest that the evacuation of industrial equipment from West Prussia was uncommon, quite the contrary. I mention this because the other case involved a good friend of my father, Kurt Lau (Figure 14), who came to purchase the rapeseed oil production factory in Tiegenhof. I’ve come across no evidence or accounts that implicate or connect Kurt Lau to the lease or use of slave labor. In any case, prior to the arrival of the Russian Army, Kurt evacuated his machinery to Hamburg Germany which was eventually reconstructed in Deggendorf, Germany.

Figure 14. My father (right) in Koenigsberg, East Prussia [today: Kaliningrad, Russia] with Kurt Lau (middle)

Kurt Lau and his wife Käthe were lifelong friends of my father, who he first met in Tiegenhof. They were Protestants but unlike other purported friends never distanced themselves from him after the Nazis came to power. In fact, Post 78 is the story of how Kurt Lau was jailed for three months for “insulting” the Nazis. I became friends with their surviving son, Juergen Peter Lau (1923-2022), who identified many of my father’s friends and acquaintances from his pictures.

One couple who were at one time my father’s excellent friends were Gerhard (1908-1941) and Ilse Hoppe, nee Grabowsky(i) (1907-1941). My father met them in Danzig when he and Gerhard were dental apprentices. Gerhard opened his own dental practice in Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland], located a mere 13km (~8 miles) SSW from Tiegenhof, but eventually relocated to Danzig. Both tragically died young under gruesome circumstances. I wrote about their deaths in Post 67 (Part I) & Post 67 (Part II). They had a son named Rudi and a daughter named Gisela. With the help of my friend Peter Hanke, I eventually was able to track down Gisela (her brother Rudi committed suicide in 1965). She explained what she knew of her parents’ deaths, and, while tragic, they appear to have been self-inflicted in Ilse’s case and an accident in Gerhard’s instance.

Peter Lau identified another of my father’s very good friends who I knew only as “Mochum,” but whose full name was Hans “Mochum” Wagner (1909-1942). My father’s photo albums include many photos of him, and at one time they were likely extremely close. He was a physical education teacher in the primary school in Tiegenhof.

I located the Wagner family’s “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. From this I learned Mochum was killed or went missing on February 11, 1942, in Volkhov, Russia [German: Wolchow], 76 miles east of St. Petersberg, formerly Leningrad. He may have died during the Russian offensive launched in January 1942 against the Germans around the Wolchow River. I recorded his story in Post 4 and Post 4, Postscript.

My father was a member of a social and sports club called the “Club Ruschau.” (Figure 15) My father’s pictures enabled the local museum in Nowy Dwor Gdanski to locate one of the surviving structures of this club, now privately owned. I wrote about this in Post 7. My father spent many hours socializing with its members, swimming, playing pool, bowling, ice boating, drinking, and partying. His friends included the club president Dr. Franz Schimanski (?-1940) (Figure 16), the vice president Dr. Herbert Holst (1894-?) (Figure 17), as well as Herbert Kloss and Kastret Romanowski (Figure 18), and likely other club members.

Figure 15. My father recreating at the Club Ruschau

Figure 16. Club Ruschau President Dr. Franz Schimanski

Figure 17. Club Ruschau Vice-President Herbert Holst

Figure 18. My father standing alongside two of his good friends, Herbert Kloss (left) and Kastret Romanowski (middle) at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] in June 1932

Franz Schimanski is often pictured holding a cane. Records indicate he was wounded during WWI. He was a lawyer and notary by profession. He died in 1940 according to his HOK card. The surname Schimanski is a Germanized form of the Polish surname Szymanski, suggesting the family had a Polish cultural heritage.

Herbert Holst was a high school teacher who, according to Peter Lau’s wife, taught in the Langfuhr district of Danzig after leaving Tiegenhof. His fate is unknown, and I’ve learned little about him.

Herbert Kloss’ destiny is similarly unknown to me. “Kloss” or “Kloß” is a common enough surname that without an HOK card for him or his family, it is difficult to determine his fate. He appears to have been about the same age as my father so was likely drafted into the German army. If this in fact happened, he could easily have died in battle.

Similarly, I’ve learned nothing about Kastret Romanowski. Using names of members found in the index to the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” an annual monograph once published for former Tiegenhof residents and/or their descendants, I wrote a letter to a woman listed named Clara Romanowski; her connection was through marriage so she could offer no clues as to Kastret’s fate. Romanowski appears to be another surname of Polish origin.

As I mentioned at the outset, my father’s circle of friends and acquaintances in Tiegenhof and Danzig was extensive. I’ve chosen to highlight a few of his best mates. My father’s photo albums include pictures of other good friends, but unfortunately there are no captions to help with their identifications.

As I touched on earlier, I often ponder how his relationship with non-Jewish friends and acquaintances devolved once the Nazis applied pressure on them to sunder their social connections and business associationswith people of Jewish heritage. I can only imagine this was initially shocking to my father until he realized how personally at risk he was.

REFERENCE

Rempel, G. Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation. The Mennonite Quarterly Review, 84 (October 2010), 507-550. https://www.goshen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/75/2016/06/Oct10Rempel.pdf

POST 182: THE JEWISH ANKER FAMILY FROM DANZIG AS THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER DR. OTTO BRUCK

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)

Note: This post is the result of a recent contact with a gentleman living in Los Angeles whose Anker family, like my father, once lived in the Free City of Danzig. Due to Nazi persecution, both of our families left there around the same time in 1937. Coincidentally, our ancestors were both singled out in a contemporary Nazi-era newspaper, “Zweischen Weichsel und Nogat.”

Followers of my blog understand many of my posts discussing snippets of information acquired about members of my family emanate from casual or regular readers. The previous post about the British RAF airman Joe Powell who, along with my father’s first cousin Heinz Löwenstein, escaped from a work camp connected to German Stalag VIIIB in 1943 is one such example. In that case, the particulars came from Joe’s son, John Powell; he highlighted some intriguing details about Joe’s capture after he and a fellow RAF airman were shot down by the Germans over the coast of the Netherlands, as well as facts his father told him about his and Heinz’s escape from Stalag VIIIB and recapture. It just happens they were retaken in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], a place my father had ties to as well the Anker family I’ll be talking about in this post.

The current post continues in the vein of presenting tidbits of family information acquired from blog readers. I was recently contacted by a Jewish gentleman from Los Angeles, George Jakob Fogelson. Having read about my father Dr. Otto Bruck’s connection to Danzig and Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig, George reached out to tell me about his own Anker family’s links there at the same time as my father lived and worked in the area. George’s mother was once a Danziger (i.e., resident of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state), as were his grandparents and great-grandparents. George’s great-grandparents were Simon and Henriette Anker, with Simon being on the Board of Directors of the Great Synagogue there for 15 years.

In conjunction with a family history George is currently writing, among his family’s papers he came across a copy of an article from a Nazi-era newspaper entitled “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937. (Figures 1a-b) This is believed to have been an insert to the “Der Danziger Vorposten,” a National Socialist journal. George’s mother donated the original paper to the Leo Baeck Institute. On page 2 (Figure 2) was an article which singled out George’s great-uncle Arthur Anker by name under a very provocative headline, “How Much Longer Will the Jew Anker Own a Farm?” As George aptly notes, the article was “. . .a striking example of the antisemitic rhetoric that had become normalized under Nazi influence.”

Figure 1a. Cover page of the Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937, mentioning both the Anker and Bruck families

Figure 1b. Header of Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Figure 2. Page 2 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” discussing Arthur Anker, George Fogelson’s ancestor

The article reads in part:

“Now that Jews and their associates, at least those living in the Grosses Werder district, have either fled or are packing their suitcases, it may be time to make the Jew Anker aware that the population expects him to return land in the village of Gnojau, which he currently calls his own, to German hands.

It is typical Jewish impudence not to have already drawn the necessary conclusions. It is a disgrace that elements alien to our land and our race are depriving native, down-to-earth German farmers of land cultivated by our ancestors—not by the Jews.”

George spells out what the National Socialists were ultimately successful in doing:

“This language—casually dehumanizing, racially charged, and threatening—illustrates how public pressure and propaganda were used to isolate Jewish citizens and drive them from economic and social life. Though phrased in the guise of communal interest, the article functions as a public denunciation, aimed at legitimizing expropriation and preparing the population to accept—or even assist in—the displacement of their Jewish neighbors.”

Continuing:

“Arthur Anker, a respected member of the community and former board member of the local synagogue, was not merely criticized; he was targeted as a symbol of everything the Nazi movement wished to remove from German soil. The article reflects the broader campaign of intimidation and exclusion that escalated in the late 1930s, culminating in deportations and mass murder just a few years later.”

Arthur Anker and his family owned the largest grain business in Danzig. In view of the deteriorating social and political climate in Danzig at the time, following a “family conference,” the family agreed to sell everything they had and take their money to America. According to a front-page New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938 (Figure 3), announcing the family’s arrival in New York headed to California, the grain elevators valued at $500,000 were sold for half of that; the family also sold all their buildings and land.

Figure 3. New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938, announcing the Anker family’s arrival in New York headed to California

Apropos the sale of property by Jews in Danzig, George notes the following: “In the final week of October [1937], a new decree was issued ordering the removal of all Jewish businesses and offices from the city’s main streets. Those who had been evicted were forbidden from reopening elsewhere. At the same time, a law was passed requiring special permission from the Senate for any Jew to sell personal property—effectively blocking any chance of a fair sale and ensuring that Jewish assets could be seized or devalued.”

I know from my father’s compensation file, a copy of which I obtained from the German Embassy in conjunction with my ongoing efforts to obtain German citizenship, that my father’s forced sale of his own dental practice, resulted in a similar devaluation of the assets, equipment, and inventory with him getting pennies on the dollar.

Readers may wonder about the relevance of the Anker family’s experience to my father’s own history. Surprisingly, on page 3 of the same newspaper targeting Arthur Anker, George found a blurb about my father (Figures 4a-b) that translated reads as follows:

“We wish to inform our readers that the Jewish dentist, Dr. O. Bruck, has left Tiegenhof. The practice has now been assumed by Dr. Erich Kendziorra, a German-born dentist.”

Figure 4a. Page 3 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” with the blurb about my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

Figure 4b. The blurb about my father from the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Clearly, the National Socialists felt the need to trumpet their success in forcing my father to sell his dental practice to a “German-born dentist,” though like many persecuted Jews he too was German-born.

The lead story in the issue of the “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” targeting Arthur Anker and my father was titled “Four years ago, the absolute majority of National Socialists, today the constitutional majority.” I won’t include the translation but will just quote from George’s family history as to what the publication effectuated:

“By singling out Arthur Anker and Otto Bruck, both Jews, the publication shifted from abstract ideological rhetoric to a direct personal attack—contributing to the broader machinery of social exclusion, economic dispossession, and ultimately, the path toward deportation and genocide. The safety and future of Danzig’s Jews were now under serious and immediate threat.”

Dr. Erich Kendziorra was previously known to me as the dentist who took over my father’s dental practice in Tiegenhof. Let me explain. The address of the office building where my father had both his dental clinic and where he lived was Markstrasse 8. Students of history know that during the Nazi era large cities as well as smaller towns and hamlets renamed their major streets as Adolf Hitler Strasse. Tiegenhof was no exception, Markstrasse became Adolf Hitler Strasse. A 1943 Address Book I have a digital copy of shows Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying my father’s former office, then named and numbered Adolf Hitler Strasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Page from the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book showing Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying the dental office at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, formerly Marktstrasse 8, that my father had formerly occupied

Curious as to Dr. Kendziorra’s fate, I turned to ancestry.com and familysearch.org. A database I’d accessed back in 2018 when I first investigated this question are referred to as “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. It helped displaced Germans to figuratively find their way back to their original home areas or connect with those from their former regions. Individuals from a particular “Kreis” (county or district) would register their names, addresses, and other relevant information with the Heimatortskartei, creating a sort of “social network” for those who shared the same origin.

While the need for the Heimatortskartei has obviously diminished over time, it continues to be an extremely valuable resource for genealogists and those interested in tracing their family history, especially in regions that were affected by displacement or significant population changes. Case in point, there is a Heimatortskartei for “Danzig-Westpreussen, 1939-1963.” Back in 2018, when checking this index, I happened upon an index card from Tiegenhof for an Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger. (Figures 6a-b) Usefully, it provides her date of birth as the 12^th of July 1911. The back of the index card confirms that she was the widow of Dr. Erich Kendziorra, whose birth date is also provided, the 12^th of September 1911.

Figure 6a. Front side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, Dr. Erich Kendziorra’s wife, showing she was born on July 12, 1911

Figure 6b. Back side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, identifying her husband as Dr. Erich Kendziorra, giving his date of birth as September 12, 1911, and the date and place of his death in Hungary during WWII

According to the Heimatortskartei, Dr. Kendziorra was killed in a place called Kaba, Hungary on the 17^th of October 1944. Presumably drafted into the Wehrmacht despite being a dentist, I assumed he had been killed on the Eastern Front battling the advancing Red Army. Such happens to be the case. Kaba turns out to be less than 40km (~25 miles) from a place called Debrecen, Hungary. (Figure 7) In October 1944, the same month Dr. Kendziorra was killed, the Battle of Debrecen took place. The siege of Debrecen was a significant part of the overall Hungarian campaign. The battle involved German and Hungarian forces against the Red Army, and while Debrecen was the main target, the fighting extended to surrounding areas like Kaba.

Figure 7. Map showing the approximate distance from Debrecen, Hungary to Kaba, Hungary where Dr. Erich Kendziorra was killed in October 1944

It’s unclear when Dr. Kendziorra arrived in Tiegenhof, nor where he came from. I located a fleeting reference to a dentist by that name in a 1936 address book from a place called Arendsee in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 721km (~448 miles) southwest of Tiegenhof, but am unsure whether this is the same person. (Figures 8a-b) What is certain is that his widow Erika died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried there in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf, interestingly alongside her husband. This information comes from Geneanet, and the date of birth and the name of Erika’s deceased husband confirm what I found on her Heimatortskartei. (Figures 9-10)

Figure 8a. Cover page from ancestry from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 8b. Page from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 9. Information from Geneanet showing that Erich Kendziorra’s wife died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf alongside him

Figure 10. Headstone for Erika and Erich Kendziorra from the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf in Berlin

Notwithstanding the fact that Arthur Anker, his siblings, and their children escaped Danzig, Leslie Anker, one of George’s cousins, estimates that no fewer than 28 descendants of Simon and Henriette’s extended family were murdered in the Holocaust.

I encourage readers to contemplate this post in the context of our ongoing political divisiveness and Martin Niemoller’s quote at the outset of this post. I don’t think any of us want to find ourselves on the wrong side of history by our descendants or future generations.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia notes three key facts about Niemoller’s statement, which begins “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out. . . “:

“(1) The quote that begins with the words ‘First they came for. . .’ continues to be used today in popular culture and public discourse. It has often been adapted to reflect current social issues and debates across the world.

(2) There are different versions of the quotation because it originated from Martin Niemoller’s impromptu public speeches.

(3) The quotation expresses Niemoller’s belief that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. He felt this was especially true of the leaders of the Protestant churches, which were made up of Lutheran, Reformed, and United traditions.”

REFERENCE

Fogelson, George Jakob (ND). “The Beginnings of Open Violence.”

POST 121, POSTSCRIPT: MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS—FURTHER HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS

Note: This postscript to Post 121 stems from several comments I obtained from readers I think are worth further discussion.

POST 3, POSTSCRIPT: OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE “SCHLUMMERMUTTER”

POST 78: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, KURT LAU, JAILED FOR “INSULTING THE NAZI GOVERNMENT”

POST 121-MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS

Several years ago, while doing research on Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] formerly located in the Free City of Danzig where my father Dr. Otto Bruck apprenticed as a dentist in the early 1930’s, I happened upon a discussion forum entitled “Forum.Danzig.de.” As I recall, at the time I was trying to learn about a close friend of my father from nearby Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], an enormous lady he had only ever referred to as the “Schlummermutter.” Through informants I would eventually learn her name was Margaretha “Grete” Gramatzki née Gleixner, and that she owned the building where my father lived and had his dental practice. I only fleetingly participated in the discussion forum because it is primarily oriented towards German speakers, a language I don’t speak. One forum member I briefly chatted with was Mr. Uwe Sager who put me in touch with my good German friend, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” Peter Hanke. Regular followers of my Blog may recall Peter has been enormously helpful tracking down and translating German ancestral documents for me, almost magically so, ergo his sobriquet.

In any case, following publication of Post 121, Uwe Sager recently sent me an email. He recognized Figure 8, the illustration I found in one of Ben Goossen’s articles showing Gerhard Epp and the leadership team of his business enterprise, the Firma Gerhard Epp Maschinenfabrik in Stutthof. (Figure 1) To remind readers Gerhard Epp was the middle sibling of two of my father’s closest friends from Tiegenhof, the Mennonite sisters Suse and Idschi Epp, who also lived in the same boarding house as my father. Among my father’s surviving pictures is one showing a social event my father attended in the early 1930’s at the home of their brother Gerhard Epp in Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland]. Uwe graciously sent me a link to the complete German-language publication in which Figure 8 was originally printed, entitled “Ostseebad Stutthof,” translated as the “Baltic Seaside Resort of Stutthof,” by Günther Rehaag. Pages 114 and 115 of this publication, reprinted here, include additional images of the buildings and employees of the Firma Gerhard Epp. (Figures 2a-b)

Figure 1. Leadership of the Mennonite-owned Gerhard Epp firm in Stutthof (from Ben Goossen’s 2021 article)

Figure 2a. Page 114 from Günther Rehaag’s book “Ostseebad Stutthof” discussing and showing photos of the “Firma Gerhard Epp Maschinenfabrik in Stutthof”; this page includes Figure 1. with the names of employees captioned

Figure 2b. Page 115 from Günther Rehaag’s book “Ostseebad Stutthof” discussing and showing photos of the “Firma Gerhard Epp Maschinenfabrik in Stutthof”

The original picture of Gerhard Epp from Günther Rehaag’s publication identified the people in the photo, information not included in the picture reprinted in Ben Goossen’s article. To my surprise, seated to Gerhard’s left, to his right as the viewer is looking at the picture, was Gerhard’s daughter by his first marriage, Rita Schuetze née Epp (Figure 3), looking every bit as radiant as in the contemporaneous picture given to me in 2014 by her family (Figure 4); readers will recall I mentioned meeting Rita that year as an elderly woman who sadly was suffering from severe Alzheimer’s.

Figure 3. Closeup of photo from Günther Rehaag’s book showing Gerhard Epp seated next to his daughter, Rita Schuetze née Epp

Figure 4. Gerhard Epp’s daughter, Rita Schuetze née Epp, by his marriage to his first wife Margaretha Epp née Klaassen (photo provided to me by Rita Schuetze’s family)

Another reader who contacted me was intrigued by my father’s photos from 1933, 1934, and 1935, respectively, of Nazis parading on the street below his dental office and asked whether I have additional pictures of Żuławy Wiślane, the alluvial delta area of the river Vistula, in the northern part of Poland; I shared my father’s photos from the Żuławy region with this gentleman. This reader contacted me because of our overlapping connection to Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between April 1932 and April 1937. It turns out this reader’s mother was born there in 1924, and his grandfather was a civil servant in Tiegenhof for 20+ years.

I was able to confirm this person’s association with Tiegenhof through the database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK).” This database includes images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works) of more than 20 million displaced Germans arranged by their town of origin.

This supportive reader brought up that Tiegenhof had been named in League of Nations reports from the 1930’s as a “hotbed” of rising Nazism. This follower shared an article published on the 11^th of January 1932 in the “Danziger VolksStimme” with the translation (Figures 5a-c) describing an incident involving an attack by Nazi supporters on workmen, providing an insight into the gathering storm. This article was not much different than the Nazi attack reported on in a local newspaper in 1935 or 1936 directed at my father’s Protestant anti-Nazi friend, Kurt Lau, discussed in Post 78.

Figure 5a. Header of “Danziger VolksStimme” paper published on Monday, the 11th of January 1932, including an article describing a Nazi attack on workmen

Figure 5b. Article from the “Danziger VolksStimme” published on the 11th of January 1932 describing the Nazi attack on workmen

Figure 5c. Translation of the article from the “Danziger VolksStimme” from the 11th of January 1932

Aware of this reader’s interest in Żuławy Wiślane and some of the places discussed in Günther Rehaag’s book on Stutthof, I forwarded him the PDF. While acknowledging the remarkable achievement of tracking so many Mennonite families and pictures connected to Stutthof, he noted the glaring omission of discussing the nearby Stutthof concentration camp on the edge of the town where it is estimated that between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners died because of murder, starvation, epidemics, extreme labor conditions, brutal and forced evacuations, and a lack of medical attention.

This is reminiscent of the postwar observations by the Mennonite Heinrich Hamm I discussed at length in Post 121 who, according to Ben Goossen, sought to focus exclusively and falsely on a narrative that portrayed Mennonites as victims of Nazi brutality. Quoting from Goossen: “Hamm later expressed regret for the death and dying that pervaded the Epp factory in Stutthof. Yet he explicitly named only German victims of Soviet air raids, not Jewish concentration camp prisoners. ‘[M]uch, much blood of innocent women and children flowed on Epp’s land,’ Hamm told his sons. ‘Uncountable, nameless dead. . .No one asked who they were, where they came from, nothing was recorded.’ One wonders about the goal of this private postwar accounting. Was Hamm helping himself forget about Jews worked to the bone in Epp’s factory by recalling refugees he and Epp tried to save? His use of the word ‘gassing’ suggests this possibility, since bodies of refugees could have been cremated, whereas exhausted Jews would have been gassed.

What is clear is that the Mennonite-owned factory in Stutthof was a place of terror. For hundreds of prisoners enslaved there, the factory’s Mennonite managers were responsible for much of that terror. It is also clear that after the war, Hamm tried to distance himself from this responsibility. He instead emphasized the suffering of his own family, which fled Stutthof in April 1945. As they crossed the Baltic under the cover of night, a Soviet submarine torpedoed their ship. Hamm praised God for allowing the damaged vessel to make it to Denmark. The family remained in Denmark for eighteen months. Hamm emphasized his gratitude for the comfort he found during these lean times through worshipping with fellow Mennonite refugees and other Christians.”

As a brief aside, Suse and Idschi Epp, my father’s Mennonite friends from Tiegenhof, were among those who fled to Denmark from Danzig-Westpreußen in 1945 as the Red Army was approaching; Suse died there before she could be repatriated to Germany. In researching the flight of Germans to Denmark, it highlights how as the fortunes of wars change victimizers often become victims.

In a largely forgotten chapter of history, some 250,000 Germans were interned in Denmark following WWII. Beginning in February 1945, Denmark, which was then occupied by the Nazis, was forced to take in refugees from the East as the Soviets advanced towards Berlin. Mostly spared the fighting, Denmark was Berlin’s favored destination for exiles.

At the time of Denmark’s liberation by the Allies on May 5^th, more than 250,000 Germans were scattered around the country, accounting for roughly five percent of Denmark’s population. Fearing this German minority would eventually gain too much influence, they were rounded up and interned in large camps or re-purposed military camps; accommodations were primitive and unsanitary. Many of the refugees died shortly after arriving, already exhausted by the journey, and suffering from various illnesses. The Danish Medical Association explicitly refrained from treating refugees, arguing that helping them was indirectly assisting the German war machine. As a result, between 1945 and 1949, when the last refugees left the country, 17,000 of them died, 60 percent of whom were children under the age of five. Following the cessation of hostilities, the Danish authorities had always wanted to send the German refugees back to Germany as soon as possible but conditions there were so chaotic this was impossible. Complicating matters was that most of the refugees came from areas no longer part of Germany, now being in Russian or Polish controlled areas; for this reason, it took until 1949 before the last German refugees were repatriated.

This last paragraph quoted from Ben Goossen segues nicely into the last reader whom I want to reintroduce to readers, a Danish gentleman named Allan Grutt Hansen. (Figure 6) Allan has been featured in several earlier posts. Suffice it to say, that following publication of Post 121, he contacted me to remind me about the post-WWII history of the Slesvig part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein; known to Danes as Southern Slesvig and formerly part of Denmark until the Second Schleswig War (1864), Allan has repeatedly spoken to me of this area, and I will briefly relate this area’s recent history.

Figure 6. Allan Grutt Hansen (b. 1962) from Denmark

After the end of WWI, the Treaty of Versailles provided for two plebiscites to determine the new border between Denmark and Germany. The two referendums were held in 1920, resulting in the partition of the region. Northern Schleswig voted by a majority of 75% to join Denmark, whereas Central Schleswig voted by a majority of 80% to remain part of Germany. The likelihood that what was then referred to as Southern Schleswig would vote to remain German meant that no referendum was held there. Today, Southern Schleswig is the name used for all German Schleswig.

An entry in Wikipedia succinctly describes the situation following the end of WWII:

“Following the Second World War, a substantial part of the German population in Southern Schleswig changed their nationality and declared themselves as Danish. This change was caused by several factors, most importantly the German defeat and an influx of many refugees from the former Prussian eastern provinces, whose culture and appearance differed from the local Germans, who were mostly descendants of Danish families who had changed their nationality in the 19th century.

The change in demographics created a temporary Danish majority in the region and a demand for a new referendum from the Danish population in South Schleswig and some Danish politicians, including prime minister Knud Kristensen. However, the majority in the Danish parliament refused to support a referendum in South Schleswig, fearing that the ‘new Danes’ were not genuine in their change of nationality. This proved to be the case and, from 1948 the Danish population began to shrink again.”

As Allan has remarked to me on several occasions, Denmark did not want to risk having Southern Schleswig incorporated into Denmark to avoid planting seeds for a possible future conflict with Germany over this region. Then-Czechoslovakia’s Sudeten crisis of 1938 provoked by the demands of Nazi Germany that the Sudetenland be annexed to Germany because of the large number of Sudeten Germans living there was not far from the minds of Danes when they decided to avoid a similar situation down the road that might result in a substantial number of Germans living within Denmark’s borders.

REFERENCES

Admin-Danish Immigration Museum. “German Refugees,” 15 October 2021, https://www.danishimmigrationmuseum.com/german-refugees/

“Denmark’s German refugees remember forgotten WWII chapter.” Digital Journal, https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/denmark-s-german-refugees-remember-forgotten-wwii-chapter/article/574780#:~:text=Denmark%E2%80%99s%20German%20refugees%20remember%20forgotten%20WWII%20chapter%20By,clearly%2075%20years%20on%20from%20World%20War%20II.

“Duchy of Schleswig.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Schleswig.

Goossen, Ben. “Hitler’s Mennonite Voters.” Anabaptist Historians, 7 October 2021, https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2021/10/07/hitlers-mennonite-voters/

Rehaag, Günther. Ostseebad Stutthof: Grenzdorf B, Bodenwinkel, Ostseebad Steegen, Kreis Grosses Werder, Danzig-Westpreussen. Heimat-Dokumentation Stutthof, Danzig-Westpreussen, 1995.

“Southern Schleswig.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Schleswig.

POST 76: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. FRANZ SCHIMANSKI, PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

Note: I continue my forensic investigations into people my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, knew during the five years he lived in Tiegenhof, in the Free State of Danzig. In this post, I discuss a man who befriended him named Dr. Franz Schimanski, a lawyer and notary by profession, and President of the Club Ruschau. The fate of such people, though not family, has always intrigued me, and I’m continuously trying to locate some of their descendants.

Post 7: Dr. Otto Bruck & Tiegenhof: The Club Ruschau

Figure 1. Dr. Franz Schimanski, President of the Club Ruschau, Spring of 1933

I return in this post and the ensuing one to Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], the town in the Free State of Danzig where my father briefly had his dental practice between April 1932 and April 1937. I’ll talk about two men who were, respectively, the President and Vice-President of the “Club Ruschau,” the local sports club my dad joined with whose members he regularly socialized. The President was Dr. Franz Schimanski (Figure 1), and his deputy was Dr. Herbert Holst, both of whom I discussed in Post 7. My father would no doubt once have characterized these people as good friends given the numerous pictures of them which survive among his photos.

Finding out what happened or may have happened to people from Tiegenhof and Danzig who were once within my father’s orbit of friends, acquaintances and professional colleagues has always piqued my interest. Because of the turbulence, movements and vast relocations in this part of Europe during WWII, and the eventual ouster of Germans from the area after the war, it is particularly challenging to track down what happened to some of the people my father knew. As regular readers know, I’ve already related the fates of some of them. I tell these stories dispassionately since I have no idea how my dad’s relationship with these people ended in the era of National Socialism. The only thing my father ever said about this is that by the time he left Tiegenhof in 1937, he no longer had any dental clients and knew few people who still acknowledged his existence. I can only imagine how heartrending and dangerous this must have been.

Thanks to the intervention of Mr. Peter Hanke, my acquaintance from “forum.danzig.de,” recently I’ve learned a little more about Dr. Schimanski. There are major gaps in my understanding of his life, and unlike other people my father knew from Tiegenhof, I’ve yet to track down any of his descendants. Let me briefly review what I know for sure, what I surmise, and what Peter has recently uncovered about Dr. Schimanski.

Figure 2. Page from the 1925 Address Book for “Kreis Großes Werder” identifying Dr. Franz Schimanski as a “Rechtsanwalt und Notar,” lawyer and notary

Figure 3. Page from the 1930 Address Book for “Kreis Großes Werder” identifying Dr. Franz Schimanski as a “Rechtsanwalt,” lawyer

From Address Books for the District in which Dr. Franz Schimanski resided, Kreis Großes Werder im Freistaat Danzig, listings in 1925 (Figure 2) and 1930 (Figure 3) directories show him to have been a “Rechtsanwalt und Notar,” a lawyer and notary. Two newspaper articles Peter found in Die Presse. Ostmärkische Tageszeitung. Anzeiger für Stadt und Land. (The Press. Ostmärkische Daily Newspaper. Gazette for City and Country.) (Figure 4) from 1912 first announce Dr. Schimanski’s appointment as notary (Figure 5), then several days later provide background (Figure 6):

Figure 4. Cover page of the 18th of August 1912 “Die Presse. Ostmärkische Tageszeitung. Anzeiger für Stadt und Land. (The Press. Ostmärkische Daily Newspaper. Gazette for City and Country.),” mentioning Dr. Schimanski

Figure 5. Brief article from “Die Presse,” dated the 17th of August 1912, reporting on Dr. Schimanski’s appointment as Tiegenhof’s notary

Thorn [today: Torun, Poland], the 17^th of August 1912, page 2:

Transcription:

“(Personalien bei der Justizt.) Der Rechtsanwalt Dr. Schimanski in Tiegenhof ist zum Notar dortselbst ernannt. . .”

Translation:

“(Personal details of the Judiciary.) The lawyer Dr. Schimanski in Tiegenhof is appointed the notary there. . .”

Figure 6. Article from “Die Presse,” dated the 20th of August 1912, providing the background that led to Dr. Schimanski’s appointment as Tiegenhof’s notary

Thorn [today: Torun, Poland], the 20^th of August 1912, page 6:

Transcription:

“Tiegenhof, 20. August. (Drei Rechtsanwälte)
hat sich unser Städtchen in den letzten Wochen ge-
leistet. Die Überfüllung der Juristenlaufbahn be-
dingt, daß viele Assessoren nicht in den Staatsdienst
aufgenommen werden. Der Überschuß ist auf die
Rechtsanwaltschaft angewiesen. Wird nun in einem
Ort durch Fortzug oder Tod eine Anwaltsstelle frei,
so sind gleich viele Bewerber auf dem Posten. So
war es auch hier. Herr Justizrat Künstler siedelte
als lebenslänglicher Notar nach Berlin über.
Darauf ließen sich die Herren Gerichtsassessor Dr.
Schimanski aus Stuhm und Rechtsanwalt Selleneit
in die Liste der Rechtsanwälte beim hiesigen Gericht
eintragen. Beide konnten sich jedoch hier nicht be-
haupten, da hier noch ein dritter tätig ist. Es han-
delte sich also bei den beiden neuen Herren darum,
wer das Notariat bekommen würde, denn von den
Einnahmen eines Rechtsanwalts allein kann in
dem kleinen Bezirk der dritte Herr nicht bestehen,
und mehr als zwei Notarstellen sind hier nicht vor-
gesehen. Es schweben zwar schon lange Gerüchte
darüber, daß unser Amtsgerichtsbezirk durch den
rechts der Weichsel belegenen Teil des Kreises Dan-
ziger Niederung vergrößert werden soll, doch liegt
die Verwirklichung dieses Wunsches noch in weitem
Felde. Infolgedessen wird der nicht zum Notar er-
nannte Rechtsanwalt unsere Stadt wieder verlassen.”

Translation (using DeepL Translator):

“Tiegenhof, 20 August. Our town has afforded itself three lawyers in the last few weeks. The overcrowding of the legal career means that many assessors are not accepted into the civil service. The surplus is dependent on the legal profession. If a lawyer’s position becomes vacant in a town as a result of a move away or death, the same number of applicants are on the job. So it was also here. Mr. Justizrat Künstler moved to Berlin as a lifelong notary. Then the court assessor Dr. Schimanski from Stuhm and lawyer Selleneit joined the list of lawyers at the local court. Both could not assert themselves here, however, since here still a third one is active. So the two new gentlemen were concerned with who would receive the notary’s office, because the third gentleman cannot exist in the small district from the income of a lawyer alone, and more than two notary offices are not provided for here. Although there have been rumors for a long time that our court district is to be enlarged by the part of the district of Gdansk’s lowlands to the right of the Vistula, the realization of this wish is still a long way off. As a result, the lawyer, who was not appointed a notary, will leave our city again.”

Figure 7. Copy of an original document with Dr. Franz Schimanski’s seal and signature dated the 15th of July 1913 that Mr. Peter Hanke found for sale on eBay

One of the most remarkable things Peter found related to Dr. Schimanski, he located, of all places, on eBay! He discovered an original document with Dr. Schimanski’s signature and seal, dated the 15^th of July 1913 (Figure 7), from shortly after he was appointed notary in Tiegenhof. From this document, we can determine that one of the earliest projects he worked on was a contract for construction of a narrow-gauge railroad.

Figure 8. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar reporting on the exact date he arrived in Tiegenhof, the 9th of April 1932

Figure 9. My father’s membership papers to the “V.f.B., Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband,” dated the 12th of November 1932

My father arrived in Tiegenhof according to his Pocket Calendar (see Post 6) precisely on the 9^th of April 1932 (Figure 8), exactly one week before his 25^th birthday. Throughout his life, my dad was an active sportsman, and he wasted no time applying for membership to the local sports club, the “V. f. B. Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband (Baltic Sports Federation),” to which he was accepted on the 12^th of November 1932. (Figure 9) While this was ostensibly a sports club (Figure 10), in order to be accepted by the businessmen and social elite, one clearly had to be a member of civic organizations in town, particularly if one expected to have a successful dental practice. Many of the club’s social events appear to have taken place at the Club Ruschau, located in Petershagen [today: Zelichowo, Poland], just outside Tiegenhof. Mr. Marek Opitz, the current director of the Zulawskie Museum in Nowy Dwór Gdański, was unaware of the club’s existence until I asked him about it and sent him photos. I discussed in Post 7 how Mr. Opitz was able to locate one of the Club’s surviving buildings, to which he took me and my wife on one of our visits to Nowy Dwór Gdański. (Figure 11)

Figure 10. My father recreating at the Club Ruschau

Figure 11. Me in 2012 at the entrance to the only surviving building of what was once the Club Ruschau with my hand on the original doorknob

Figure 12. The regular members of the Club Ruschau, including Dr. Franz Schimanski with his cane in hand, in June 1932, several months before my father’s formal admittance to the “V.f.B., Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband”

Numerous of the photos of Dr. Schimanski and other members were taken at the Club Ruschau. (Figure 12) In multiple photos, he is shown holding a cane. I surmise Dr. Schimanski was a veteran of WWI and was wounded in theater. Ancestry.com has numerous WWI German Casualty Lists, identifying those killed and wounded in action. I attach a single example with a “Franz Schimanski” listed; in this case, the number “15.6” (i.e., 15^th of June) follows the name. (Figure 13) This may correspond to the month and day of birth, or, just as likely, to the day the person was killed or wounded. Regardless, I have no knowledge this Franz Schimanski was my father’s friend. I only know from other pictures in my father’s photo albums that Dr. Schimanski was born in June, year unspecified, based on a birthday party held in his honor that month in 1933. I’m not a very good judge of age, but I would gauge Dr. Schimanski was born around 1880, give or take a few years. If he went to war in 1914, he would have been around 34, seemingly old to be a foot soldier, although Peter Hanke found a secondary source which indicates about 30% of German soldiers were that age or older during WWI. To date, I’ve been unable to locate any primary birth, marriage or death records definitively related to Dr. Schimanski. This was a very common surname in Kreis Großes Werder, and in fact in the 1935 Danzig address book alone, there are 98 listings for Schimanski!

Figure 13. German WWI Casualty List dated the 17th of July 1918 with the name of a Franz Schimanski circled, not necessarily my father’s friend

Several pictures among my father’s collection show Dr. Schimanski with who I think is his wife and three adult daughters. (Figure 14) Unlike most of his other pictures, he doesn’t identify the ladies by name but merely refers to them as Lieblinge, “darlings.” My dad clearly had a sweet spot for Dr. Schimanski’s family. Regardless, his pictures give no further clues I can pursue to determine the fate of Dr. Schimanski’s family.

Figure 14. Dr. Franz Schimanski standing next to his wife and three seated daughters, bookended by Kastret Romanowski on the left, another friend, and my father on the right

Figure 15. The “Totenkarte,” death card, from the “Heimatortkartei Danzig-Westpreußen” for Dr. Schimanski, showing he died in 1940 and that the information was reported by the “Rechtsanwalt” Dr. Kurt Heidebrecht

Figure 16. Listing from the 1942 “Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für den Bezirk der Reichspostdirektion” for Dr. Kurt Heidebrecht, a presumed colleague of Dr. Schimanski who reported only that Franz died sometime in 1940

The Totenkarte, death card, from the Heimatortkartei Danzig-Westpreußen database for Dr. Schimanski (Figure 15) indicates only he died in 1940. The information was reported by a Dr. Kurt Heidebrecht, who is listed in the Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für den Bezirk der Reichspostdirektion Danzig 1942 (Official telephone directory for the district of the Reichspostdirektion Danzig 1942) as a Rechtsanwalt u. Notar, lawyer and notary (Figure 16), just as Dr. Schimanski was. I assume Drs. Heidebrecht and Schimanski were once colleagues. Peter Hanke was able to find a Heidebrecht living in Hamburg, Germany who may be a descendant of Kurt Heidebrecht. I’ve written a letter to this person hoping he is related and may be able to tell me what happened to Dr. Schimanski and his family. Watch this space for further developments.

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART I)

Note: This post is about two of my father’s former friends, non-Jews, from his time living in the Free State of Danzig in the 1930’s, and information I recently uncovered about their peculiar deaths.

Figure 1. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, in Winter 1930-1931 in Danzig

Figure 2. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, as a young dentist in Tiegenhof

My father, Dr, Otto Bruck, received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. These lasted until about mid-August 1930 according to letters of recommendation written by the two respective dentists. My father did not open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until April 1932, so inasmuch as I can surmise from surviving letters and photos, my father spent the intervening period apprenticing in the Free City of Danzig. (Figures 1-2) He may have been mentored by a Dr. Fritz Bertram, a dentist whom he took pictures of (Figure 3) and who is identified by name in his surviving pocket calendar (Figure 4), the subject of Post 6.

Figure 3. Zahnarzt (dentist) Dr. Fritz Bertram sailing in the Bay of Danzig with friends on the 18th of April 1931; Dr. Bertram may have mentored my father

Figure 4. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar listing a few names and phone numbers of business associates, notably, Dr. Fritz Bertram and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe

As a brief aside, my father’s decision to relocate to Danzig from Berlin may have been prompted by the fact he had an aunt and uncle who lived there, and that he was close to at least two of their three children (Figures 5-6), who interestingly I met when I was a young boy.

Figure 5. One of my father’s first cousins, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Loewenstein (1902-1986), on the 8th of March 1929 in Danzig, a cousin he may temporarily have stayed with while he was apprenticing there

Figure 6. Another of my father’s first cousins from Danzig, Heinz Loewenstein (1905-1979), brother of Hansi Goff

In any case, a gentleman whom my father befriended in Danzig was named Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 7) As I discussed in Post 6, I learned from a 1934 Danzig Address Book that, like my father, he too was a dentist, in the adjacent town of Neuteich, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Staw, Poland] (Figure 8), 8.8 miles southwest of Tiegenhof. Possibly, Gerhard, who appears from pictures to have been about the same age as my father, may also have been a dental apprentice when he and my father became friends. (Figure 9)

Figure 7. The earliest of my father’s pictures of his former friend from Danzig, Dr. Gerhard Hoppe, with whom he may have apprenticed

Figure 8. Page from the 1934 Danzig Address Book listing dentists in the Free State of Danzig with both my father and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe from Neuteich listed; my father’s first name is erroneously listed as “Heinz” when his actual first name was “Otto” although the address of his dental practice, Markstrasse 8, is correct

Figure 9. Dr. Gerhard Hoppe as a young man

Figure 10. My father with Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe walking along Wollwebergasse in Danzig during the Winter of 1931-1932

Gerhard and his girlfriend Ilse (Figure 10) are among a group of my father’s former friends whose fates I’ve so far been unable to determine; pictures exist of all of them in my father’s surviving photo albums. These friends were non-Jewish, and I refer to them as “former” friends since during the Nazi era they would have been under enormous pressure to disassociate themselves from any Jews and any businesses they might have run. So, in the case of my father, I know that while he still had a few non-Jewish friends who whom he socialized, he no longer had any dental clients by the time he shuttered his practice and left Tiegenhof for good in 1937. The relationship he had with these erstwhile friends may have been more nuanced, but I don’t know this for a fact. Judging from the dates on my father’s pictures, after mid-1936, his circle of friends had narrowed considerably.

I’ve told readers that I periodically recheck these one-time friends’ names in ancestry.com and other ancestral databases. I recently did this again with Gerhard and Ilse, and, astoundingly, uncovered historic documents related to both. I tell myself I should perhaps be less surprised I discover new documents, and more bewildered I did not find them during earlier searches. Regardless, my recent finds have allowed me to sadly put to rest the fate of Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. But, like most of the mysteries I seemingly resolve, they are like the mythological hydra, lop off one head and two grow in its place.

The search parameters I entered in ancestry.com were simply Gerhard’s first and last name, a place he might have lived, Danzig in this case, and the year I estimated he was born, so 1907, the same year my father was born. I immediately discovered his marriage certificate (Figures 11a-c), and the marriage register with he and his wife’s names, and their respective parents’ names. (Figure 12a-b)

Figure 11a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate showing they were married on the 30th of July 1932 in Marienburg

Figure 11b. Page 1 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate

Figure 11c. Page 2 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate with the names of witnesses

Figure 12a. Ancestry.com cover page of marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

Figure 12b. Marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

The two-page marriage certificate, among other things, provides Gerhard’s complete name: “Gerhard Ludwig Rudolf Otto Hoppe”; his date of birth: 18th of February 1908; the date and place he was married: 30th of July 1932, Marienburg [today: Malbork, Poland] (Figure 13); his wife’s complete birth name: “Frida Charlotte Ilse Grabowsky” (also ending in “i” in some documents); his wife’s date of birth: 3rd of August 1907; and Gerhard’s profession: “Zahnarzt,” dentist. Three things instantly confirmed I had found the “right” Gerhard Hoppe: his date of birth off by one day from the date listed in my father’s pocket calendar (Figure 14), his wife’s name, Ilse, and his profession, dentist. Very likely, my father would have attended Gerhard and Ilse’s 1932 wedding. The second page of German marriage certificates typically list witnesses, but unfortunately my father’s name is not among them.

Figure 13. Photo taken by my father of the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Marienburg, today Malbork, the town where Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe were married in 1932

Figure 14. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar showing Gerhard’s Hoppe birthday was on the 17th of February when in fact it was on the 18th of February

I would eventually locate documents for three generations of Gerhard and Ilse’s ancestors.

Now, here’s where things began to seriously stray from my preconceived notion of Gerhard and Ilse’s fates. With Ilse’s maiden name in hand, “Grabowsky,” I was now able to search entries for her. The first document I found for her was her death certificate showing she’d died on the 15th of April 1940 in the Langfuhr borough of Danzig (Figures 15a-b), known today as Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, the most upscale of Danzig’s boroughs, then and now. This document shows she died at less than 33 years of age, somewhat surprising but perhaps not so unusual given wartime realities. Shortly after discovering Ilse’s death certificate, I found Gerhard’s death record, showing he’d died on the 27th of July 1941 (Figures 16a-b), a little more than a year after his wife, also in Danzig-Langfuhr; at the time of his death he was 33, only slightly older than his wife had been. To say I was stupefied learning Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe had died so young, so soon after one another, and outside the theater of war would be an understatement.

Figure 15a. Ancestry.com cover page of Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate identifying her parents, whom she pre-deceased, as Richard Grabowky(i) & Else Grabowsky(i) née Ehmer

Figure 15b. Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate showing she supposedly committed suicide on the 15th of April 1940 in Danzig (her cause of death is circled)

Figure 16a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate, listing his parents, whom he pre-deceased, as Otto Hoppe & Anna Hoppe née Birkholz

Figure 16b. Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate showing he died on the 27th of July 1941 in Danzig (his cause of death is circled)

Immediately curious as to whether the death certificates listed their causes of death, I turned to Mr. Peter Hanke. He is a German gentleman from “forum.danzig.de” with whom I’m in touch and who’d recently offered to ask the Polish archive in Malbork, Poland for death certificates for some of my father’s former friends, including Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. I wanted to let him know I’d found their death certificates and ask if the records stated how they died. The answer left both of us horrified and saddened.

Ilse Hoppe’s cause of death was listed as:

“Todesursache: Durchschneiden der Halsschlagader (Selbstmord)” (Figure 15b)

Cause of death: cutting through the carotid artery (suicide)

And, Gerhard Hoppe’s death was caused by:

“Todesursache: Schädelbruch und komplizierter Oberschenkelbruch links- und rechtsseitig” (Figure 16b)

Cause of death: skull fracture and complicated thigh fracture on the left and right sides

Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe’s deaths leave us with more questions than answers given their extreme violence; they seem more like murders than suicides or health-related deaths.

According to Peter Hanke, an implausible but not impossible explanation as to the cause of Gerhard’s death may relate to the location of his apartment. I mentioned above that a 1934 Danzig Address Book indicates Gerhard was a dentist in Neuteich, Free State of Danzig, although by 1940-1941, a Danzig Address Book shows he’d relocated to Danzig proper and lived at Karrenwall 5 (Figure 17); he is not listed in the 1939 Address Book (Figure 18), suggesting he moved to Danzig in 1940 before Ilse’s death (i.e., Ilse commits suicide in Danzig, not Neuteich). Old German Address Books list people alphabetically as well as by street address and occupation, and, interestingly, in 1940-1941, Karrenwall 5 shows that not only did Gerhard Hoppe reside there but so too did numerous bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (Figure 19), a trend that continues into 1942. (Figure 20) Could it be that the Nazi Party wanted Gerhard’s apartment, and was not squeamish about asserting its interests? We may never know. Unfortunately, contemporary Danzig newspapers have not yet been digitized, although by 1941 the news outlets were most assuredly controlled by the Nazis and are not likely to provide an accurate portrayal of what might have happened to Gerhard.

Figure 17. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book showing Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s dental office was located at “Theaterplace 30” while his apartment was at “Karrenwall 5”

Figure 18. Page from 1939 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year

Figure 19. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year, including Dr. Gerhard Hoppe and various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

Figure 20. Page from 1942 Danzig Address Book, the year following Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s death, showing Karrenwall 5 still housed various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

There exists a database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” that include images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works); more than 20 million persons are included in these card files arranged by the town of origin. I discussed this database in Post 38. Peter Hanke checked the name “Hoppe” for Danzig, and, incredibly found HOK cards for Gerhard and Ilse’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939 in Danzig (Figure 21), and for Gerhard Hoppe’s parents, Otto Hoppe and Anna Hoppe née Birkholz (Figures 22a-b), who raised Gisela after her parents’ deaths. The timing of Ilse Hoppe’s supposed suicide less than a year after her daughter’s birth makes the cause of her death even more suspicious.

Figure 21. “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939, showing that in 1958 she lived in Bad Harzburg, Germany

Figure 22a. Front side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard’s father, Otto Hoppe, showing his granddaughter Gisela Hoppe’s address in 1958

Figure 22b. Back side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Otto Hoppe listing his wife, Anna Hoppe née Birkholz, and granddaughter, Gisela Hoppe

Gisela is shown living in Bad Harzburg, Germany in May 1958. As I prepare to publish this post, just this morning I learned that Gisela, who is about to turn 80 years of age towards the end of November, is still alive. As we speak, I’m trying to establish contact with her and share the multiple images I have of her parents. (Figures 23-24) Watch this space for Part II of the story!

Figure 23. Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe on the beach in Zoppot, Germany [today: Sopot, Poland]

POST 29: TIEGENHOF: UNRAVELLING THE “MYSTERY” OF HEINRICH “HEINZ” REGEHR

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”—Oscar Wilde

Note: This story has me going back to the town in the Free State of Danzig, Tiegenhof, where my father was a dentist between April 1932 and April 1937, to talk about a man whose destiny has remained opaque, a man named Heinrich “Heinz” Regehr. Though I relate this tale in a linear fashion, the way I learned things did not follow a straight line.

Figure 1-Heinrich “Heinz” Regehr in **Königsberg**, East Prussia in April 1936, between Hans “Mochum” Wagner on the left and an unknown man on the right

For readers who have regularly followed my Blog, you may recall from Post 2 that my father’s now 94-year-old friend, Juergen “Peter” Lau, whom he first met in Tiegenhof as a young boy, recognized numerous people in my father’s photographs. This story begins with one such identification, an individual named Heinrich “Heinz” Regehr. The sole photograph of Heinz Regehr shows him walking across the street in the former East Prussian city of Königsberg (today: Kaliningrad, Russia) in April 1936, in the company of two other friends, one of whom is known to me, Hans “Mochum” Wagner discussed in Post 4. (Figure 1) When Peter first identified Heinz Regehr, he told me his name, nothing more.

Figure 2-Page in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar with “Linchen Regehr’s” name by the date January 13th

In yet another post, Post 6, discussing the names in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar, under the date January 13^th I mentioned finding a “Linchen Regehr,” who I would later learn was the wife of this Heinz Regehr. (Figure 2) Seemingly, the Regehrs, husband and wife, were friends or acquaintances of my father’s, so I became intrigued about what had happened to them.

Thus, upon my return to the United States in 2013, I turned to the membership index in the back of the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” the now-defunct annual journal for former German residents of Tiegenhof and their descendants. On multiple occasions over the years, the index of members has been immeasurably useful, in part because the maiden names of women are provided. I used the index to identify all the people with the surname “Regehr,” and went on a letter-writing campaign in the hopes I could learn Heinz Regehr’s fate.

One German lady to whom I wrote was a Ms. Anneliese Franzen née Regehr. Some weeks passed, and eventually I was contacted on her behalf by her daughter living in Atlanta, Georgia, Ms. Meike Guenzerodt. She explained to me that Heinz Regehr was her mother’s father, that’s to say, her grandfather, who had disappeared in fighting at the end of WWII and was presumed dead.

Ms. Guenzerodt provided a little history about the family’s escape from Tiegenhof towards the end of WWII. Meike explained that Anneliese’s mother had been involuntarily institutionalized in a psychiatric facility outside Tiegenhof, and this delayed the family’s departure as the Russians were approaching. Eventually, however, families of institutionalized patients were assured by German authorities their loved ones would be evacuated to Bremen, in the western part of Germany, before the Russians arrived. With these assurances in hand, Anneliese’s grandfather took Anneliese and her two sisters and fled westward; at the time, Anneliese, the youngest, was six years old (born 1938); the middle sister, Evamarie, was 16 (born 1928); and the oldest, Lore, was 21 (born 1923). Their father, Heinrich Regehr, was in the German Army at the time and they would eventually learn had gone missing in action in 1945 near Küstrin, 60 miles outside Berlin in the German state of Brandenburg, on the Oder River along the border with Poland.

The promised evacuations of the patients in the psychiatric facility never materialized, and the doctors and nurses decamped, leaving the inmates to fend for themselves. With no staff to prevent them from wandering off, Anneliese’s mother made her way back to Tiegenhof. There, a nurse found her wandering the streets and took her in, where she survived a mere three weeks before succumbing to disease in 1945. After the war, the family was visited by this former nurse and learned of the mother’s fate.

Meike explained that because of the family’s hasty retreat from Tiegenhof, no family photos of Heinz Regehr had survived. She asked whether I could send her a copy of my father’s picture of him for her mother, an entreaty I was most happy to oblige.

Believing I had resolved the question of Heinz Regehr’s fate, I set the issue aside. In 2014, when I again visited Peter Lau in Germany, our conversation veered to Heinz, and I mentioned I’d learned he’d gone missing in action during the war and presumably died. I can practically visualize Peter’s look of disbelief when I told him this. He recounted that Heinz Regehr had in fact survived WWII, and eventually immigrated to Alberta, Canada. He’d previously married Lina Regehr, following the death of her first husband, Franz Schlenger, a son of Otto Schlenger, owner of Tiegenhof’s Dampfmahlmuehle (steam-operated flour mill). I would later learn from a descendant of Hedwig “Hedsch” Schlenger, to which Post 10 was devoted, that Lina and Heinz had had two boys, Henry Regehr, born in 1932, and Martin Regehr, born in 1940.

At this point, I started to wonder whether I’d uncovered the proverbial “skeleton in the family closet.” I began to question if Heinz Regehr had not had two families, that’s to say, that he had somehow survived WWII. With one wife, I knew he’d had three daughters born, respectively, in 1923, 1928 and 1938, and with Linchen Regehr, he’d apparently had two sons, born, respectively, in 1932 and 1940; the fact that he’d had his third daughter by his first wife between the time he had his two sons with his second wife troubled me greatly. As implausible as this may seem, readers must remember that Anneliese had “affirmatively” identified her father, and Peter Lau had confirmed my father’s picture depicted Heinz Regehr. Nonetheless, I never felt entirely comfortable with my conclusion, so I set the issue aside for future consideration as I continued researching other facets of my family’s history.

Figure 3-Heinrich & Lina Regehr’s older son, Henry Regehr, as a young boy in Tiegenhof in Hans “Mochum” Wagner’s class (Source: Günter Jeglin book “TIEGENHOF und der Kreis Großes Werder in Bildern”)

It wasn’t until I began writing stories for this Blog that I came back to the question of Heinz Regehr. I turned to ancestry.com, and did a query on him, and, lo and behold, was directed to “Find-A-Grave,” which confirmed that Heinrich Regehr (1898-1965) and his wife, Lina Regehr (1901-1968), were buried in Mountain View Memorial Gardens in Alberta, Canada. I also uncovered an obituary for the older of Heinrich and Lina Regehr’s sons, Henry Regehr (1932-2012). (Figure 3) The obituary confirmed that Henry Regehr was born in Tiegenhof on June 11, 1932, and provided names of surviving family members, including a son named Robert Regehr. Armed with this information, I turned to Alberta’s White Pages, and phoned several Regehrs who seemed promising. A few days later, Henry’s son, Robert Regehr, returned my call and confirmed he was Heinrich Regehr’s grandson. We exchanged information, he shared a little of his family’s story, and eventually he would confirm that my father’s picture was indeed his grandfather. So, it now seemed I had the “proof” that Heinz had survived the war and immigrated to Canada, seemingly abandoning his first family.

Figure 4-Documentation from “Volksbund Deutsche” Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.” with information on Heinrich Regehr who went missing on March 1, 1945

Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, I tried to learn more about Anneliese Franzen’s father who’d gone missing in action during WWII, thinking there might be updated information or something to suggest it was a different Heinrich Regehr. I discovered a German website (https://www.volksbund.de/en/volksbund.html) with data on German war casualties. This organization describes itself as follows: “Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. is a humanitarian organization charged by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany with recording, maintaining and caring for the graves of German war casualties abroad.” This website included the name of the Heinrich Regehr I presumed was Anneliese’s father, so I requested a copy of the documentation. What I received confirmed what Anneliese’s daughter had told me, namely, that her grandfather had gone missing on March 1, 1945. (Figure 4) An additional piece of information that Volksbund Deutsche provided was the date of birth of Heinrich Regehr, specifically, March 27, 1897. While not necessarily significant, it differed by a year from what I’d discovered on “Find-A-Grave” for the Heinrich Regehr in Alberta. Hoping to resolve this discrepancy, I contacted Alberta’s Provincial Government trying to obtain his death certificate but was told, not unexpectedly, only family members could obtain this document.

Figure 5-Page from 1927-28 Tiegenhof Address Book for the “Kreis Großes Werder,” including two listings for Heinrich Regehr

Within the past month, I again queried “Heinrich Regehr” on ancestry.com. Because “Regehr” is a common Mennonite name, often tens of thousands or even millions of “hits” will appear. Perhaps, because I’d never previously scrolled through enough of the names, on this particular occasion I was directed to an 1927-28 Address Book for the “Kreis Großes Werder,” the “kreis” or “state” (i.e, the equivalent of a county) in which Tiegenhof was located; I’d never previously come across this directory for Tiegenhof, a comprehensive one 23 pages long. What I discovered gave me further pause. It included two listings for Heinrich Regehr, one on Lindenstraße, the second on Schloßgrund. (Figure 5) However, knowing that Heinrich had been a “Bankbeamter,” or “bank official,” at the “Kreissparkaße,” or district savings bank, and knowing this bank had been located on “Schloßgrund,” I considered that the second listing might be his private residence. By itself, this was still not enough to conclude there were two Heinrich Regehrs.

A brief digression is necessary. Occasionally readers will send me photographs or documents related to my Blog posts or provide other useful information. One such reader recently suggested I register for a forum, entitled “Forum.Danzig.de,” which devotes an entire section to Tiegenhof. Because this forum is in German and requires painstaking use of Google Translate, which in the case of German yields completely tortured transliterations, it took me time to sign up. With an English-speaking member’s assistance, I eventually negotiated the process, and uploaded my first question. While this forum has turned into an absolute boon, results of which will be presented in upcoming posts, in this post I want to focus on Heinrich Regehr.

The gentleman from “Forum. Danzig.de” who assisted me, Mr. Peter Hanke, has been gracious and helpful beyond measure. In the span of less than two weeks, Peter has helped me solve no fewer than three thorny issues that have confounded me for several years, including the question of Heinrich Regehr. Uncertain whether the Danzig Forum knew of the 1927-28 Address Book for the Kreis Großes Werder I’d discovered on ancestry.com, I offered to make the Tiegenhof portion of it available to members. Peter confirmed the Forum’s awareness of this directory, then gave me a link to additional directories for Tiegenhof, which he offered to send. After looking through the list, I asked him for two address books for landowners in Kreis Großes Werder, one for 1925, the other for 1930.

Figure 6-Page from 1925 Tiegenhof Address Book listing Heinrich Regehr on Lindenstraße

After receiving these address books, I searched for Heinrich Regehr, hoping, once and for all to resolve the question of whether I was dealing with one person or two. Unlike the 1927-28 address book, the 1925 address book included only the one Heinrich Regehr listed at Lindenstraße, seemingly related to a Hermann Regehr, a “hofbesitzer,” or farm owner, and “getreidehandlung,” someone involved in crop treatment. (Figure 6) The 1930 address book again included this Hermann Regehr, but also “Lina Regehr” at Vorhofstraße. (Figure 7) While unlikely, I briefly considered Heinrich had first been a farmer, then later gone into banking. While I had no definitive answer, because Lina Regehr’s address was different, I became more certain there were two different Heinrichs.

Figure 7-Page from 1930 Tiegenhof Address Book listing Heinrich Regehr on Lindenstraße & Lina Regehr on Vorhofstraße

I mentioned in passing my quandary to Peter Hanke, and, unexpectedly, within a day he confirmed two Heinrich Regehrs had lived in Tiegenhof and provided the following information on each:

Heinrich REGEHR I (Figures 8a & 8b)

Business: Merchant

Rank: Unteroffizier (non-commissioned officer)

Date of birth: May 27, 1897

Place of birth: Neukirch [today: Nowa Cerkiew, Poland]

Address in Tiegenhof: Marienburgerstr. 14

Home State: Kreis Großes Werder

During WWII: Ground personnel in Elbing [today: Elbląg, Poland]

Missing in action since May 1, 1945 (somewhere near Küstrin/Reppen/West-Sternberg/Zorndorf)

Relatives: Father Hermann Regehr, born January 29, 1867

Figure 8a-“Heimatortskartei” for Heinrich Regehr I (front)

Figure 8b-“Heimatortskartei” for Heinrich Regehr I (back), listing Anneliese Franzen’s name

Heinrich REGEHR II (Figures 9a & 9b)

Date of birth: December 18, 1898

Place of birth: Rückenau [today: Rychnowo Żuławskie, Poland]

Address in Tiegenhof: Neue-Reihe 1-3

Business: Director of the Kreissparkaße

Immigrated to Canada after WWII: Calgary, Alberta

Wife: Lina, née ZULAUF widowed SCHLENGER

Children: Heini (Heinrich) (born June 11, 1932); Martin (born June 5, 1940)

Lina’s children by her first marriage: Brigitte SCHLENGER (born August 25, 1922 in Danzig-Langfuhr); Rudolf SCHLENGER (born October 11, 1923 in Neuteich)

Figure 9a-“Heimatortskartei” for Heinrich Regehr II (front)

Figure 9b-“Heimatortskartei” for Heinrich Regehr II (back) with Lina Regehr’s name and date of birth, along with those of her children by her two marriages

Surprised as to the speed with which Peter had confirmed the existence of two Heinrich Regehrs, born in consecutive years, living in Tiegenhof at the same time, I naturally asked where the data came from. It was clear it didn’t originate from any Address Books. Peter gave me a link to a free online catalog on FamilySearch entitled “Heimatortskartei Danzig-Westpreußen, 1939-1963,” a database whose existence was previously unknown to me. This is a civil register of refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland. Consisting of handwritten and typed index-sized cards, it was developed by the German Red Cross after WWII to help people find their families who’d been expelled from this region. All the available cards have been photographed and uploaded to FamilySearch.

Figure 10a-“Heimatortskartei” for Hermann Regehr, Anneliese Franzen’s grandfather (front)

Figure 10b-“Heimatortskartei” for Hermann Regehr, Anneliese Franzen’s grandfather, listing the names & dates of birth of Anneliese and her siblings (back)

Figure 11-Obituary for Lore Schoel née Regehr, Anneliese Regehr’s oldest sister

I reviewed the index cards on roughly 4,000 former residents of Tiegenhof. Not only did I relocate the Heimatortskartei for Heinrich Regehr I and II, but I also found a card for a Hermann Regehr (Figures 10 a & 10b); the names and dates of birth of Anneliese and her two siblings are included on the flip side of the card confirming this was the grandfather who fled Tiegenhof with his three grand-daughters. (Figure 11) This Hermann Regehr is found in the 1925, 1927-28 and 1930 Tiegenhof Address Books. In ancestry.com, I was also able to locate his birth register. (Figure 12) Additionally, Peter Hanke accessed the Church books of the Mennonites, a paid service, and discovered the family overview for Hermann Regehr’s father, Johann Regehr. (Figure 13) While not detailed here, the Mennonite books also contain information on Johann Regehr’s parents going back yet another generation

Figure 12-Birth register listing for Hermann Regehr, Heinrich Regehr I’s grandfather, born January 29, 1867

Figure 13-Page from the Church book of the Mennonites for Johann Regehr, Heinrich Regehr I’s grandfather

Figure 14-Page from the Church book of the Mennonites for Heinrich Regehr, Heinrich Regehr II’s grandfather

Similarly, for the family of the Heinrich Regehr II who wound up in Alberta, Canada, Peter accessed the Mennonite Church books for his father and grandfather, both also named Heinrich Regehr. (Figure 14)

The Heimatortskartei catalog often provides invaluable clues as to family connections, spouses, vital events, and more. Beyond the Regehrs, in at least three other instances, I connected names and/or dates on the cards to the corresponding information in my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar or to pictures in my father’s collection. These will be the subject of future Blog posts.

I can hear readers saying, “It’s obvious there were two different Heinrich Regehrs!” And, while I would be inclined to agree, I try to avoid making facts fit a false narrative. The “fact” is that both Anneliese Franzen and Peter Lau recognized the same Heinrich Regehr. What I initially failed to consider is that because her father disappeared from her life when she was very young, no older than six years old, Anneliese may have had only vague recollections of what her father looked like and may have jumped to the conclusion, based on the name I provided, that the picture I sent was of her father. Regardless, taking the time to patiently research Heinrich Regehr has led to a finding that supports what Anneliese and her family have always known and dispels any notion their father “abandoned” them.

REFERENCE

Jeglin, Günter

1985 TIEGENHOF und der Kreis Großes Werder in Bildern.