Heinz Ludwig Berliner Archives - bruckfamilyblog.com

POST 62, POSTSCRIPT 2: THE FAR-REACHING SEARCH FOR MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER: ANOTHER DEADEND

Note: While continuing my longstanding search for Heinz Ludiwg Berliner, one of my father’s first cousins who is reported to have wound up in Bolivia, I learned that he was merely one of about 20,000 Jews who escaped there from Nazi Europe. I discuss Bolivia’s motivation for allowing so many European Jews into the country when the doors to them in most other countries had been closed.

POST 62, POSTSCRIPT: THE FAR-REACHING SEARCH FOR MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER—FURTHER PROOF OF HEINZ’S EXISTENCE

POST 122: HERTA BRAUER, THE FAMILY CONNECTION TO THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC’S NOTORIOUS DICTATOR, RAFAEL TRUJILLO

POST 129: THE UNSUCCESSFUL QUEST TO TRACK DOWN DR. ERICH BRUCK IN ARGENTINA

The Circulo Israelita de Bolivia ( Jews of Bolivia (haruth.com ) is the highest synagogue on earth, located at an altitude of more than 12,000 feet in La Paz, Bolivia. The synagogue serves the 500 to 700 Jews in a country where the citizens are predominantly Catholic. It retains copies of various documents and newspaper clippings related to the immigration of Jewish people to Bolivia and the creation of the Jewish communities in La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz. I first contacted the Circulo Israelita de Bolivia in 2019 after learning that my father’s first cousin, Heinz Ludwig Berliner, survived the Holocaust by somehow making his way there. (Figure 1) I had hoped they might have evidence of Heinz’s presence in the country, but regrettably not.

Figure 1. Page from MyHeritage ancestral database entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” showing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born in Ratibor on the 24th of September 1916, living in Berlin-Charlottenburg at the time, who emigrated to Bolivia

After my last contact with the synagogue in January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic burst upon the global scene, I set aside my pursuit to track down my father’s first cousin. Thus, it came as a big surprise when the Circulo reached out to me recently with new information. I’d clearly planted a seed during our earlier exchanges. Synagogue staff explained that an anthropologist named Dr. Sandra Gruner-Domić is currently in Bolivia doing research on the history of Jews there, and the topic of Heinz Berliner came up.

It turns out, Dr. Gruner-Domić had found a so-called “Censo De Extranjeros,” a foreigner census form (Figure 2), for a gentleman named Erich Blumenthal Berliner. This document is a mandatory declaration that Bolivia’s Minister of Immigration required be filled out by all foreign immigrants. Obviously, given the identical surname to my ancestor Heinz Berliner caused synagogue staff and Dr. Gruner-Domić to wonder whether there might be any connection between these two Berliners. After briefly getting my hopes up, I quickly realized they are not related in any way I can easily discern.

Figure 2. A “Censo to Extranjeros,” a foreigner census form, for a gentleman named Erich Blumenthal Berliner who arrived in Bolivia the 2nd of October 1939; this census form was sent to me by Dr. Sandra Gruner-Domić, a Fulbright Scholar studying Jewish migration to Bolivia between 1937 and 1941

Still, as I had done and discussed in Post 129 for my unrelated but similarly surnamed individual named Dr. Henrik Brück, interred in “El Cementerio Judio” in Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña in Chaco Province, Argentina, I searched in ancestry for any evidence of Erich Berliner’s life in Germany. Intriguingly, I found his marriage certificate showing he married a woman a widow or divorcee named Edith Charlotte Rotenstein née Totschek in Berlin in 1934 (Figures 3a-c); this matches the maiden name of Erich Berliner’s wife on his foreigner census form. So, just as I had tracked Dr. Henrik Brück to his place of birth in Alba Iulia, Romania from Argentina, I was similarly able to backtrack from Bolivia Erich Berliner to his place and date of marriage in Berlin. Relevantly, however, neither is related to me.

Figure 3a. Cover page of Erich Berliner’s marriage certificate showing he married the widow or divorcee Edith Charlotte Rotenstein née Totschek on the 14th of November 1934 in Berlin

Figure 3b. Page 1 of Erich Berliner’s 1934 marriage certificate

Figure 3c. Page 2 of Erich Berliner’s 1934 marriage certificate

I exchanged a few emails with Dr. Gruner-Domić incidentally sharing Erich Berliner’s Berlin marriage certificate ruefully remarking this Berliner is unrelated to Heinz. Sandra then sent me a page from the database of individuals buried in the Jewish cemetery in Cochabamba with the names of two other Berliners, Frida and Lothar Berliner, with their specific birth and death dates. (Figure 4) This also allowed me to check their names in ancestry. I was very precisely able to find a birth certificate for an Adolf Lothar Berliner who was born in Berlin on the 11^th of October 1883 matching the date of birth from the Cochabamba database. (Figures 5a-b) I also found Lothar’s marriage certificate showing he got married on the 11^th of July 1921 in Berlin to a woman named Frieda Anna Pauline Dammann born the 24^th of November 1887. (Figures 6a-c) While her forename matches the Berliner buried in Cochabamba and I believe her to be Lothar’s wife, her date of birth is different. What to make of this is unclear.

Figure 4. Partial database of names of people interred in the cemetery in Cochabamba, Bolivia with the birth and death dates of two Berliners, Frida and Lothar Berliner

Figure 5a. Cover page of Adolf Lothar Berliner’s birth certificate showing he was born on the 11th of August 1883 in Berlin, matching information from the Cochabamba, Bolivia cemetery database

Figure 5b. Adolf Lothar Berliner’s 1883 birth certificate

Figure 6a. Cover page of Adolf Lothar Berliner’s marriage certificate showing he married Frieda Anna Pauline Dammann on the 11th of July 1921 in Berlin

Figure 6b. Page 1 of Adolf Lothar Berliner’s 1921 marriage certificate

Figure 6c. Page 2 of Adolf Lothar Berliner’s 1921 marriage certificate

In trying to find a photo of Sandra to include in this post (Figure 7), I learned much more about how Jews found refuge in Bolivia during the Nazi era. I’ll briefly review the historical context for this based on a Webinar Sandra delivered at the JDC Archives in May 2022: “Sandra Gruner-Domić Lectures on Bolivia, a Forgotten Refuge During the Holocaust: Jewish Immigration 1937-1941 | JDC Archives” This is a topic of potentially much greater interest to readers than my search for Heinz Berliner, although it fits well into trying to better understand how he wound up in Bolivia.

Dr. Gruner-Domić is a migration scholar and is on a Fulbright Scholarship to Bolivia for the 2022-2023 academic year. Recently, she has been examining the immigration of Jewish refugees in Bolivia during the Holocaust, including the role played by a Moritz Hochschild, a Jewish entrepreneur, and the second-wealthiest man in Bolivia at the time.

The immigration of Jewish refugees to Bolivia is a lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust. Amazingly, approximately 20,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe arrived in Bolivia between 1937 and 1941, at a time when other Latin American countries had closed their doors. Bolivia was among the 32 nations who attended the Évian Conference in July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. The conference was deemed a failure because aside from the Dominican Republic, delegations from the participating nations failed to come to any agreement about accepting the Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. At the Évian Conference Bolivia also refused to accept any Jewish refugees.

However, a month after the conference Bolivia notified the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of their willingness to begin accepting Jewish refugees. So, along with Shanghai and the Dominican Republic, Bolivia was the last country in the world in the lead up to WWII still issuing visas to Jews trying to flee Nazi persecution. Regular readers will recall that in Post 122, I talked about how another one of my relatives, Herta Brauer, escaped to the Dominican Republic.

As just mentioned, Bolivia issued 20,000 visas to Jewish refugees between 1937 and 1941. Let’s briefly examine Bolivia’s motivation for deciding to do so.

Between 1932 and 1935, Bolivia and Paraguay fought the Chaco War over control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco region, known in Spanish as Chaco Boreal, which was thought to be rich in oil. (Figure 8) The Chaco War was the bloodiest interstate military conflict fought in South America during the 20^th century and was fought between two of the continent’s poorest countries, both of whom had lost territory to neighbors during 19^th century wars. Bolivia lost its Pacific coast to Chile during the 1879 War of the Pacific, while Paraguay lost almost half of its territory to Brazil and Argentina in the Paraguayan War of 1864 to 1870. As a result both countries wound up landlocked. Although the 600,000 km2 of the Gran Chaco region was sparsely populated, control of the Paraguay River running through it was especially important to Bolivia because it would have provided access to the Atlantic Ocean.

Figure 8. Topographic map of South America showing where the Gran Chaco region is situated (Image Natural Earth, kk – nationsonline.org)

In any case, because of the war, Bolivia lost almost 60,000 people, or roughly 2 percent of its population; in addition, Paraguay captured around 10,000 Bolivian civilians, many of whom decided to stay in Paraguay after the war. Clearly, Bolivia was hemorrhaging people. Following the war, Bolivia was trying to counter its population loss as well as stem further losses by people seeking better economic opportunities in surrounding countries.

After the Chaco War, Bolivia was at an important historical crossroad amidst a nationalist resurgence. Immigration was one step in the country’s transformation, the goals of which were to modernize and repopulate the country, as well as colonize the eastern region of the country with the aim of expanding agricultural development there. Beginning in January 1937, President José David Toro Ruilova once again allowed the free entry of foreigners into the country that had been suspended during the Chaco War. Shortly thereafter Jews began to arrive in Bolivia.

The year 1937 was a turning point for Jews in Europe, with a massive exodus beginning in 1938, and the years 1938 and 1939 being characterized as the “Panic Migration Years.” The involvement of Moritz (Mauricio) Hochschild, a Jew who’d emigrated to Bolivia during the 1920’s, played a part in allowing Jews from Nazi Europe to enter the country. As Bolivia’s second wealthiest man and a leading mining industry businessman, he became an economic advisor to President Toro; the two of them found commonality and their personal relationship played a role in convincing Bolivia to allow Jewish migration. According to Dr. Gruner-Domić, the refugees arriving from Europe were viewed primarily as Europeans and secondly as Jews.

The first concrete measure taken by the Bolivian government was an agreement it signed in January 1937 with the Polish government to allow the resettlement of 250 Jewish families; an agreement was also signed with then-Czechoslovakia. In a few instances, even Jews who’d been incarcerated in concentration camps were released if they’d been lucky enough to obtain a Bolivian visa.

Prior to the mass migration of Jews into Bolivia, which peaked in 1939, there were only about 200 Jews in the entire country. It’s reported that on the 22^nd of February 1939 alone, more than 800 Jews arrived. The arrival of this many Jews at once strained the country’s infrastructure, so a decision was made to limit the number of refugees to 250 a month, though it’s unclear this limit was ever implemented.

The path by which most European Jews who’d secured a Bolivian visa came was via boat leaving from Hamburg, Germany or Milano, Italy, traveling through the Panama Canal, landing in Arica, Chile (Figure 9), then taking the train to La Paz; others came via train from Argentina or Brazil. Most Jews who found refuge in Bolivia in the late 1930’s and 1940’s did not stay, so today’s Jewish population is estimated at between 500 and 700. Following the war, those who had families elsewhere left. Judging from the relatively small number of Jews in Bolivia today, I reckon that Heinz Berliner was among those who decamped to a yet unknown country.

Figure 9. Map of Bolivia in relationship to Arica, Chile along the Pacific coast showing where most Jewish refugees arriving from Europe landed and took the train to La Paz

POST 62, POSTSCRIPT: THE FAR-REACHING SEARCH FOR MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER—FURTHER PROOF OF HEINZ’S EXISTENCE

Note: In this postscript, I discuss some intriguing new information that has come to light about Heinz Ludwig Berliner since publication of the original post, details of which bring me closer to determining his fate.

Post 62: The Far-Flung Search for My Father’s First Cousin, Heinz Ludwig Berliner

I can never predict when or from where further traces of ancestors I’ve written about in earlier posts may materialize. In my original publication, I explained to readers the challenges I encountered trying to uncover concrete evidence of Heinz Ludwig Berliner, one of my father’s first cousins. I first learned about him from a fleeting reference in a document written by my third cousin Larry Leyser’s grandmother detailing the fate of some of our family’s ancestors. His grandmother briefly remarked Heinz Berliner immigrated to some unspecified country in South America after WWII, where he purportedly committed suicide.

Figure 1. Cover of March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” showing Heinz Berliner’s stage name, “Enry Berloc,” along with the names of his co-performers, “Witha Herm” and “Maestro Kurt Kohn”

As discussed in the original post, I was able to confirm Heinz Ludwig Berliner’s appearance in South America through the cover of a playbill (Figure 1) sent to me by Tema Goetzel née Comac, the wife of Heinz’s nephew; the playbill showed that Heinz, using his stage name “Enry Berloc,” had performed at the “Teatro Municipal,” in an unspecified South American country, on the 19^th of March 1948 in the accompaniment of a “Witha Herm” and the “Maestro Kurt Kohn.” More on this later.

For two reasons, I never imagined it would be so difficult to track Heinz’s movements and eventual destination. First, both of Heinz’ s siblings, Ilse (Figure 2) and Peter Berliner (Figure 3), wound up in New York and were known to me since childhood. And, second, as alluded to above, I’m in touch with descendants of Heinz’s siblings, and assumed they would have letters or documents showing where he’d wound up; initially, all they found was the playbill cover to the 1948 recital in which Enry Berloc performed.

Figure 2. Heinz Berliner’s older sister, Pauline Ilse Berliner (1911-1981), standing alongside my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

Figure 3. Heinz Berliner’s older brother, Peter Berliner (1910-1977)

Heinz’s siblings were born in the same town in Upper Silesia where my father had been born, Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], and I was able to locate both of their birth certificates when I visited the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”; vexingly, on two separate visits I could never find Heinz’s birth record, though it was logical to assume he too had been born in Ratibor. I even asked my Polish historian friend in Racibórz, Mr. Paul Newerla, to confirm my negative findings, and his initial efforts were similarly fruitless. As previously discussed, I began to think Heinz may have been born earlier out-of-wedlock and/or born in the town where his parents had married, Meseritz [today: Międzyrzecz, Poland]. I even contacted the archives there but was told the on-line birth records would not be available until this current year; this is on account of Poland’s legal requirement prohibiting the release of birth certificates until 110 years after a person’s birth, so in the case of Heinz possibly soon after his parents married in 1909 in Meseritz.

Figure 4. Page from MyHeritage ancestral database entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” showing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born in Ratibor on the 24th of September 1916, living in Berlin-Charlottenburg at the time, having immigrated to Bolivia

As readers may recall, this search became moot when I recently discovered a document in MyHeritage entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” listing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born on the 24th of September 1916 in Ratibor, showing he lived in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin in 1939, and indicating he had immigrated to Bolivia. (Figure 4) I had some initial doubts this was my father’s first cousin, but after transmitting this new information to Mr. Newerla, Paul was able to finally locate Heinz’s birth certificate in the State Archives in Raciborz, misfiled as it happens, confirming his parents’ names.

Researching the names and information found on the cover of the 1948 playbill, I thought the “Teatro Municipal” was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as I told readers in my original post. Hoping to locate Berliners who may have wound up there before or after WWII, I turned to family trees on JewishGen, and contacted a lady in Australia who put me in touch with a Ms. Marcia Ras from Buenos Aires with Berliners in her family tree, who turned out to be exceptionally helpful.

Figure 5. Cover of March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with the circled name of the sponsoring organization, “Ministerio de Educacion y Bellas Artes”

Following publication of my original post, I sent Marcia a link to it, and she explained that Argentina’s Ministry of Education that had supposedly sponsored the 1948 recital at the Teatro Municipal had never borne the name “Ministerio de Educacion y Bellas Artes.” (Figure 5) Quick online searches showed that in both Venezuela and República Dominicana they were called that way. I sent an email to the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Education but never received a response. Given Venezuela’s severely dysfunctional state, I never bothered to contact them. I searched for a similarly named entity in other South American countries to no avail.

Marcia could find no evidence Heinz was ever in Buenos Aires. She told me that if he was, he did not enter the country legally. Thousands of Jewish refugees entered Argentina and other South American countries illegally, especially between 1938 and 1949, so he may well have been among them. Marcia was unable to find his name mentioned anywhere. A Ms. Silvia Glocer, an expert in Jewish musicians seeking refuge in Argentina whom Marcia consulted, confirmed she’d also never heard Heinz’s or the maestro Kurt Kohn’s names. They stressed this did not mean they’d never been in Argentina, only that no evidence could be found they’d been there.

Figure 6a. Picture of the chatelaine with an attached photo locket containing the image of Heinz’s father, Alfred Berliner (1875-1921) (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

Figure 6b. Photo locket with the image of Heinz Berliner’s father, Alfred Berliner (1875-1921) (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

My ongoing search might well have ended here. However, out of the blue, Tema Goetzel sent me a photo from a chatelaine (i.e., a clasp or hook for a watch, purse, or bunch of keys) (Figures 6a-b), asking if I recognized Alfred Berliner, Heinz Berliner’s father. While I know Alfred Berliner was once interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor and included a photo of his former headstone in the original post, I had no photos of him against which to compare; eventually, Tema sent two more photos, a second of Alfred Berliner (Figure 7), and a third of Alfred Berliner’s wife, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe, with their three children. (Figure 8) At long last, I’d tracked down a photo of the elusive Heinz Berliner, albeit as a young child! (Readers are reminded that in Post 18, I told the story of Heinz Berliner’s mother who perished in Auschwitz in 1943.)

Figure 7. Alfred Berliner, Heinz Berliner’s father (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

Figure 8. Heinz Berliner as a child with his two older siblings, Peter and Ilse, and his mother, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe (photo courtesy of Tema Goetzel, Heinz Berliner’s niece by marriage)

In the course of our recent conversations, I told Tema the Teatro Municipal I thought was in Buenos Aires was not in fact in Argentina; I related what Marcia Ras had explained to me. Tema, the source of the original playbill, thought it indicated the country. When I told her it didn’t, she again dug out the playbill and found three additional pages (Figures 9a-c) which she hadn’t previously sent, and these sheets specifically mentioned Bolivia, the country the “German Minority Census, 1939” document identified as Heinz’s destination. Armed with a country, I now quickly found a Teatro Municipal in La Paz. (Figure 10) Another puzzle solved.

Figure 9a. Second page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” confirming the theater was in La Paz, Bolivia (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 9b. Third page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with a summary of the critical reviews from different places where Witha Herm and Enry Berloc performed (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 9c. Fourth page of the March 19, 1948 playbill from the “Teatro Municipal” with the list of musical numbers in each act and the names of the performers (courtesy of Tema Goetzel)

Figure 10. Teatro Municipal de la Paz in Bolivia (Photo Credit: Gatol fotografia)

Having confirmed from two independent sources Heinz’s connection to Bolivia, I again contacted the Bolivian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, Circulo Israelita De La Paz, asking if they could check on Jewish musicians who may have sought refuge in Bolivia between roughly 1938 and 1949. This office has been gracious and helpful beyond measure but, to date, they too have been unable to confirm Heinz’s presence there. I think what is true of Jewish refugees entering Argentina illegally is also true of Bolivia. It may well be I’m unable to ever confirm whether or when Heinz died in Bolivia.

Figure 11. The popular British-Austrian orchestra leader, Ray Martin, born Kurt Kohn (1918-1988), whose musical score may have been used in the 1948 recital Heinz Berliner performed in

Marcia Ras discovered one other final intriguing thing. In the original post, I told readers that the Witha Herm mentioned in the 1948 playbill was a stage name for a woman known as Herma Wittmann, who died in 1992 in Los Angeles and is interred there. Similarly, the other musician mentioned in the playbill, Kurt Kohn, used an artistic name, Ray Martin (Raymond Stuart Martin). (Figure 11) A quick online search revealed Ray was born Kurt Kohn in Vienna, Austria on the 11^th of October 1918, and came to live and work in England in 1937. He was noted for his light music compositions, and created a legacy for himself in British popular music through his work with his orchestra in the 1950’s. I even located a descriptive catalog of his musical recordings, and tried to contact the compiler, Alan Bunting, but learned he’d died in 2016. Fortunately, the discography was created in collaboration with a Nigel Burlinson, whom I was able to reach. Mr. Burlinson sent a very gracious reply telling me he did not think the “Kurt Kohn” who performed at the Teatro Municipal in 1948 was the popular music conductor “Ray Martin” because at the time he was in England conducting orchestras. What to make of this is unclear? Possibly, the musical recital in which Witha Herm and Enry Berloc performed in 1948 in Bolivia merely used one or more of Kurt Kohn’s musical scores as accompaniment?

So, as often happens in my forensic investigations, I take two steps forward, one step back. I now know what Heinz Berliner looked like as a child, and confirmed he indeed immigrated to Bolivia after 1939, but am still left to ponder how and when exactly he died and whether he passed away in Bolivia.

HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Name (relationship)	Vital Event	Date	Place

Heinz Ludwig Berliner (self)	Birth	24 September 1916	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
Heinz Ludwig Berliner (self)	Death	after 1948	possibly in Bolivia
Alfred Max Berliner (father)	Birth	6 November 1875	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	17 January 1909	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Death	19 February 1921	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
Charlotte Henriette Rothe (mother)	Birth	2 April 1886	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Marriage	17 January 1909	Meseritz, Germany (Międzyrzecz, Poland)
	Death	January 1943	Auschwitz, Poland
Peter Hermann Berliner (brother)	Birth	8 November 1910	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	24 December 1948	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
	Death	25 July 1977	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
Pauline Ilse Berliner (sister)	Birth	1 October 1911	Ratibor, Germany (Racibórz, Poland)
	Marriage	2 April 1941	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.
	Death	January 1981	New York, N.Y., U.S.A.

POST 62: THE FAR-FLUNG SEARCH FOR MY FATHER’S FIRST COUSIN, HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER

Note: In this Blog post I detail the extensive efforts I’ve undertaken trying to uncover information on one of my father’s first cousins, a man named Heinz Berliner. In connection with this quest, I’ve communicated with individuals or accessed documents and databases in Poland, Germany, Argentina, Bolivia and Australia, as well as domestically in California, New York and Ohio.

Figure 1. My grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957) in 1925

Berliner was the maiden name of my father’s mother, that’s to say my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner (1873-1957). (Figure 1) She had a younger brother, Alfred Max Berliner (1875-1921), who had three children, Peter Hermann Berliner (1910-1977) (Figure 2), Pauline Ilse Berliner (1911-1981) (Figure 3), and another son named Heinz Berliner whose existence I learned about only in 2011. His name was mentioned in a document given to me by my third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser, written by his grandmother, Kate Leyser née Rosenthal (1903-1992) (Figure 4), discussing various family members; with respect to Heinz, Kate only recorded he’d committed suicide in South America, no year nor place specified.

Figure 2. Peter Hermann Berliner (1910-1977)

Figure 3. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, with his first cousin, Pauline Ilse Berliner (1911-1981)

Figure 4. Kate Leyser née Rosenthal (1903-1992), my cousin Larry Leyser’s grandmother, the source of the information on Heinz Berliner’s existence

Heinz’s siblings, Peter and Ilse, I’d known about since I was a child, as my parents had infrequent contact with them in New York where they lived; I was easily able to find information on both in ancestry.com, and eventually even located some of their descendants. Regarding Heinz I found nothing, although, in retrospect, knowing he’d wound up in South America, I’m not entirely surprised. I’d hoped that if he’d made his way to the southern hemisphere via New York, there would be some record of this, but such was not the case. To cover myself, I checked the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database, but fortunately there was no indication he’d perished in the Holocaust.

Having established contact with Peter and Ilse Berliner’s offspring, naturally, I asked them if they had any letters, pictures, family lore, etc. that might suggest where Heinz Berliner wound up in South America. The only piece of physical evidence the family ultimately found in February 2018 was a playbill or theatre program with Heinz Berliner handwritten above the stage name he’d apparently used, “Enry Berloc,” showing he performed as a dancer at the “Teatro Municipal” on the 19th of March 1948 (Figure 5); the Teatro Municipal is located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as it turns out. I’ll return to this later.

Figure 5. March 19, 1948 playbill from the Teatro Municipal in Buenos Aires showing Heinz Berliner’s stage name, Enry Berloc

Knowing Heinz Berliner had a connection to Argentina, I turned my attention to try and find someone in the Jewish community there who might be able to track down evidence of his immigration or death in that country. I started by contacting the Argentine Consulate, then two governmental entities to whom they’d referred me, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Worship of the Argentine Republic (http://mrecic.gov.ar/en), and the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (Immigration Office in Argentina) (https://Argentina.gob.ar). Next, I emailed Jewish Buenos Aires (contact@JewishBuenosAires.com), who referred me to AMIA (www.amia.org.ar), which is the main institution of the Jewish community in Argentina. Beyond learning from the Immigration Office in Argentina that records through 1953 show no evidence Heinz Berliner ever registered there, the other contacts bore no fruit.

Aware Heinz Berliner, or at least his alter-ego Enry Berloc, had been involved in the arts, I stumbled upon a website developed by Argentina’s Ministry of Culture of the Nation called “El Sur del Sur: Argentina el Pais su Cultura y su Gente,” “The Southernmost South: Argentina, the country, its culture and its people” (https://surdelsur.com/en/sections/people/). I was hoping the staff might point me to a cultural organization that maintains records of past cultural events. While the staff there proved to be exceptionally helpful, going so far as to check the database of the “Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos” (http://cemla.com.buscador) for any Berliners who’d immigrated to Argentina, ultimately this too proved futile. Thus, ended with no positive results around March 2018 my initial flurry of activity trying to track down Heinz Berliner in Argentina.

I resumed my quest again in October 2018 by asking Madeleine Isenberg, my contact at the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society (LAJGS), of which I’m a member, for suggestions on how to proceed. Madeleine suggested I post a message to the Latin-American SIG, https://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/LatAmSIG.html, which is precisely what I did. JewishGen hosts web pages for several “Special Interest Groups” (SIGs), whose interest is a geographic region of origin, or special topic. While Latin-American SIG was able to refer me to a few Berliners living in Buenos Aires, none of them had any known relationship to Heinz Berliner.

In addition to JewishGen hosting Special Interest Groups, they also have the “Family Tree of the Jewish People (FJTP),” where they centralize the collection of Jewish family trees. As of March 2017, they had collected 7,310,620 records from 6,266 family trees. I was able to locate a Berliner family tree, and contacted the family tree manager, who happens to live in Australia. After explaining what I was looking for, the tree manager put me in touch with yet another Berliner living in Buenos Aires, but, again, to no avail.

Let me switch gears for a moment. As readers can ascertain, the discussion above has been focused on my efforts to ascertain where Heinz Berliner emigrated in South America during or following WWII and when he might have died or killed himself. As frustrating as that search turns out to have been, trying to learn when and where Heinz Berliner was born, has been equally challenging.

Figure 6. Alfred Max Berliner’s (1875-1921) headstone from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

As mentioned above, Peter, Ilse and Heinz Berliner’s father was Alfred Max Berliner, who died in 1921 in Ratibor and was interred in the former Jewish Cemetery there (Figure 6); Alfred’s wife, Charlotte Berliner née Rothe, was murdered in the Holocaust in 1943. I talked about her in Post 18. On ancestry.com, I found Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s marriage certificate (Figures 7a-c) and discovered they were married the 17th of January 1909, not in Ratibor, Germany, where they lived, but rather in a place called Meseritz, Germany [today: Międzyrzecz, Poland]. In 2015, I found the birth certificates for Alfred and Charlotte’s two eldest children, Peter (Figure 8) and Ilse (Figure 9), among the vital records at the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”); these certificates show Peter was born in Ratibor on the 8th of November 1910, and Ilse on the 1st of October 1911, thus about eleven months apart. Oddly, I was never able to locate Heinz’s birth certificate, though I assumed he too had been born in Ratibor.

Figure 7a. Copy of page 1 of Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s 1909 marriage certificate (downloaded from ancestry.com, duplicate originating from the court in Berlin-Köpenick)

Figure 7b. Copy of page 2 of Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s 1909 marriage certificate (downloaded from ancestry.com, duplicate originating from the court in Berlin-Köpenick)

Figure 7c. Translation of Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s marriage certificate

Figure 8. Peter Hermann Berliner’s birth certificate showing he was born in Ratibor on the 8th of November 1910

Figure 9. Pauline Ilse Berliner’s birth certificate showing she was born in Ratibor on the 1st of October 1911

Fast forward. I revisited the State Archives in Racibórz in 2018, and double-checked for Heinz’s birth certificate, with equally disappointing results. Following my visit, Paul Newerla, the Silesian historian from Racibórz who occasionally helps me out, also systematically re-examined the birth records for Ratibor from 1897 through 1918 and likewise came up empty-handed. It became evident Heinz may have been born elsewhere, perhaps in the town of Meseritz where his parents were married in January 1909. Aware this might have happened, I sent an email to Międzyrzecz, Poland, formerly Meseritz, asking whether they could search their archives for Heinz’s birth certificate. They responded telling me their vital records are archived in Gorzów Wielkoplski, Poland [German: Landsberg an der Warthe], and are accessible on-line. Paul and I immediately checked the database and again could not locate any record of Heinz’s birth.

To remind readers, birth records in Poland and Germany are not generally available until approximately 110 years after a person’s birth; at present, birth records for Meseritz are only available through 1907. Even if Heinz was born in 1908 before his parents married, his birth record will not be on-line until 2020. At the time, other possibilities came to mind. Perhaps, Heinz’s father was not Alfred, in which case he would have his mother’s maiden name, Rothe, or alternatively he was born in a place other than Meseritz or Ratibor. Paul and I decided then to wait until 2020 to again check the on-line vital records for Meseritz.

In the course of scrolling through the vital records for Meseritz, I made a mildly interesting discovery. As previously mentioned, I originally found Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s marriage record in ancestry.com. (Figures 7a-b) Knowing when they got married, I searched for this exact record to test my ability to use the Gorzów database and had no trouble finding it. (Figures 10a-b) However, in comparing the two hand-written versions of the marriage record, I discovered they are slightly different though written by the same hand. I asked Paul Newerla about this. He explained the registration office, Meseritz in the case of the marriage between Alfred Berliner and Charlotte Rothe, kept the original certificate. As a precaution, the registration office was compelled to create a duplicate, which was submitted at the end of the year to the court, likely one in the Berlin borough of Köpenick with jurisdiction over Meseritz. The same thing was true of Ratibor; often original certificates in the registration offices have been destroyed and only copies survive, upon which a note is made to this effect.

Figure 10a. Copy of page 1 of Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s original marriage certificate from the Gorzów, Poland on-line database

Figure 10b. Copy of page 2 of Alfred and Charlotte Berliner’s original marriage certificate from the Gorzów, Poland on-line database

Hal Bookbinder, former President of JGSLA, recently emailed members reminding them they have free access to MyHeritage, explaining they’ve recently strengthened ship manifest searches to allow queries not only for the names of passengers but for where they were headed. I’ve rarely accessed this database, erroneously assuming it replicates information found in ancestry.com, but decided to run a test using Heinz Berliner’s name. I was utterly astonished, when after all this time searching for him, a page entitled “German Minority Census, 1939” listed a man by the name of Heinz Ludwig Berliner born on the 24th of September 1916 in Ratibor. (Figure 11) While this Heinz was born where I would have expected, two things gave me pause. First, Berliner was not an uncommon surname in Silesia, and, second, neither Paul Newerla nor I had previously found Heinz Berliner’s birth record in the State Archives in Racibórz. Nonetheless, I relayed this information to Paul and armed with a precise date of birth for this Heinz Ludwig Berliner, he offered to reexamine the Ratibor birth records. Yet again, Paul could not initially find Heinz’s name in the register of births, but suspecting something might be amiss, he requested the book with the actual birth certificates. And, there it was, Heinz’s birth certificate confirming his parents were Alfred and Charlotte Berliner and that he’d indeed been born in the same town as his two siblings. (Figure 12)

Figure 11. Page from MyHeritage ancestral database entitled “German Minority Census, 1939,” showing a Heinz Ludwig Berliner born in Ratibor on the 24th of September 1916, living in Berlin-Charlottenburg at the time, having emigrated to Bolivia

Figure 12. Heinz Ludwig Berliner’s birth certificate confirming he was born on the 24th of September 1916 to Alfred and Charlotte Berliner

This has been a long exhaustive search that has not ended with the discovery of Heinz Ludwig Berliner’s birth certificate. Besides providing Heinz’s date and place of birth, the German Minority Census, 1939 report included his middle name and two other previously unknown bits of information; it shows that in 1939 Heinz was living in the Charlottenburg Borough of Berlin and that he emigrated to Bolivia. Thus, began my most recent flurry of activity trying to track down when and where Heinz might have died.

First, I checked the 1939 Berlin Address Book for Heinz Berliner, as well as for his mother and two siblings, operating under the assumption they may all have been forced to live together in this increasingly risky period. Nothing showed up.

Next, I again turned to Ms. Madeline Isenberg, my contact at JGSLA, asking if she could refer me to anyone in the Jewish community in Bolivia, a South American country where I’ve never previously sought any relatives. She suggested I contact the Bolivian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, Circulo Israelita De La Paz (https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/BO), which I promptly did. The latter bureau sent a very gracious reply unfortunately informing me that Bolivia does not maintain any immigration records, suggesting I contact AMIA in Argentina, which readers will recall I had previously done. Circulo Israelita also checked Jewish death records for La Paz and Cochabamba, Bolivia, but nothing showed up.

When I again contacted AMIA, they referred me to Agrupación de Genealogía Judeo-Argentina (AGJA), which among other things, “facilitates the linking of the genealogical and historical roots of the Argentine Jewish Community with the global community, facilitating the reunification of disconnected families.” AGJA referred me to multiple websites and organizations, many of which I’d previously checked and reexamined, once more with negative results.

As readers can attest, with the information currently in hand, I’ve taken the search in South America for the fate of my father’s first cousin as far as I can.

I mentioned above the August 1948 dance recital in Buenos Aires in which Heinz Berliner, using the stage name Enry Berloc, performed. I searched for his co-performers, actress and dancer Witha Herm and pianist Kurt Kohn, hoping Heinz might have participated in other recitals with them. I was unable to locate any information on Kurt Kohn. However, Witha Herm (Figures 13-14), also a stage name, died and is interred in North Hollywood, California as Herma Wittmann (1907-1992). Her small claim to fame may be that in 1919, she acted in a German movie, Im Schatten des Glücks, which also starred Marlene Dietrich.

Figure 13. Information from “Find-A-Grave” on Witha Herm, Heinz Berliner’s 1948 co-performer, indicating she was born in 1907, died in in 1992, and is buried in North Hollywood, California

Figure 14. Witha Herm (left) with a friend

There are several take-aways for me from this exhaustive search for Heinz Ludwig Berliner. Because information is constantly being added to the ancestral databases, it is worth checking back every few months or once a year to see whether anything new shows up. Don’t assume, as I mistakenly did, that MyHeritage and ancestry.com replicate information. Searching for one’s Jewish ancestors who wound up in South America will be challenging, time-consuming, and often unproductive. And, the biggest admonition to myself, using a German word Mr. Paul Newerla, my Polish friend, taught me, “don’t act like a ‘besserwisser,’ a know-it-all,” just because you’ve been doing ancestral research for years!