POST 152: TANTALIZING CLUES ABOUT MY THIRD GREAT-GRANDFATHER JACOB NATHAN BRUCK (1770-1836) AND HIS LIFE IN RATIBOR [RACIBÓRZ, POLAND]

 

Note: Tiering off a few elusive clues I found about my third great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1836) from Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], I examine the historic and geographic context in which the events he was involved in played out.

Related Posts:

POST 13: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 150: UPPER SILESIAN GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS FROM RATIBOR [RACIBÓRZ, POLAND]

POST 151: LET’S CONVERSATE: A TRIBUTE TO MY FRIEND PAUL NEWERLA

 

In Post 150 I told readers how I discovered my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck’s death register listing among the primary source documents digitized by the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s “Silius Radicum” project. The index proves Jacob died in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] on the 29th of June 1836 at the age of 66. (Figure 1) As the oldest known Bruck from the Ratibor line, I refer to him as the paterfamilias.

 

Figure 1. The death register listing found in Upper Silesian Genealogical Society’s Ratibor Signature Book 1699 showing my great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Nathan Bruck died on the 29th of June 1836 at the age of 66

 

Finding definitive proof of my long-ago ancestor’s death is particularly satisfying as ancestral trees on ancestry.com and MyHeritage, often cloning erroneous information from one another, indeterminately placed his death as 1832. Having never been able to independently verify Jacob’s vital data, it was always an open question of when exactly he died.

In the last several months, I’ve uncovered a smattering of clues from a range of sources that give me a limited sense of Jacob’s life. Before delving into these, I want to touch on a few intriguing finds I’ve made in the process.

First, a little background. According to a memoir written by Bertha Bruck (Figure 2), the grandmother of one of my recently deceased cousins, Jacob Nathan Bruck and his wife Marianne Bruck, née Aufrecht had 12 children. Most of my cousins, whom I consider highly accomplished genealogists, can account for seven or eight of them. I think I can provide corroboration of nine of Jacob and Marianne’s purported 12 children. Presenting the underlying proof relying on evidence-based primary source documents will be the subject of an upcoming post.

 

Figure 2. Bertha Bruck whose memoir claims that Jacob Nathan Bruck and Marianne Bruck, née Aufrecht had 12 children

 

While researching one of Jacob and Marianne’s offspring, Marcus Moritz Bruck, I stumbled upon a Bruck Family Tree on Geneanet Community Tree Index. Geneanet is a collaborative website with ancestral data added by participants and intended for all genealogists.

I sound my usual admonishment about the accuracy of any ancestral tree particularly if source documents are not attached and/or identified. Nonetheless, Geneanet corroborates Jacob Nathan Bruck’s date of death as the 29th of June 1836, as I’ve independently discovered; having learned that Jacob was 66 upon his death obviously means that he was born in 1770. Geneanet not only confirms that Jacob was born in 1770, but also provides his exact date and place of birth, the 18th of February 1770 in Pschow [Pszów, Poland]. (Figure 3) Notwithstanding my usual doubts about the accuracy of ancestral trees, the specificity of Jacob’s place and date of death suggests it could be accurately drawn from an entry in some unknown birth register. For the moment, I reserve judgement.

 

Figure 3. Ancestral tree from Geneanet for Jacob Bruck confirming he died on the 29th of June 1836, and was purportedly born on the 18th of February 1770 in Pschow [Pszów, Poland]
 

Another intriguing find I made on the Bruck Family Tree in Geneanet is the name and dates of birth and death of Jacob’s father, Nathan Bruck, purportedly born in Upper Silesia in Poland in 1735 who died there in 1825 at age 90. (Figure 4) Again, absent more background information, I remain skeptical as to the veracity of this data.

 

Figure 4. Ancestral tree from Geneanet for Jacob Bruck’s father Nathan Bruck claiming he was born in 1735 and died in 1825 at age 90

 

Some brief historical geography. The historical region of Silesia is now in southwestern Poland. Silesia was originally a Polish province, which became a possession of the Bohemian crown in 1335, passed with that crown to the Austrian Hapsburgs in 1526, and was taken by Prussia in 1742. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Silesia was one of the regions of German territory that was granted to Poland by the Soviet Union in compensation for land in eastern Poland that was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, land that is today part of the Ukraine.

For the purposes of this discussion, in 1735 when Nathan Bruck was born Upper Silesia would have been part of the Hapsburg empire. (Figure 5) Where ancestral records from this period are archived and even whether they still exist are unknown. If Nathan did indeed survive until 1825, his death would likely have been recorded in the death register in the Prussian town where he died; it’s possible the register noting his age when he died survives while the Austrian Hapsburg empire birth register no longer exists. At present Nathan’s place of death is unconfirmed.

 

Figure 5. The Austria-Hungary Empire as it looked in 1914

 

I would like to briefly touch on a fascinating possibility stemming from the discovery that Nathan Bruck lived until age 90. Because of her ancestral connection to Jacob Nathan Bruck and Nathan Bruck, in passing I told Helen Winter, nee Renshaw, my fourth cousin from Wolverhampton, England, about my discovery, namely, about Jacob’s date of birth and the possibility that his father lived into his 10th decade. In response, Helen casually mentioned an unframed painting that she and her sister once saw 30 or more years ago of a diminished, toothless old man. The unnerving effect it had on young children means the picture remained secreted. Given her family’s ancestral connection to Nathan Bruck, could it be that this painting is a rendering of Nathan Bruck? The search is now on by Helen and her sister to try and relocate this potential “treasure.” Stay tuned!

Jacob Nathan Bruck is my and Helen Winter’s last common Bruck relative, being the third great-grandfather to both of us. Helen’s paternal grandfather, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) (Figure 6) wrote a memoir for his daughter Margot Renshaw, nee Bruck, Helen’s mother, in which he briefly mentioned Jacob.

 

Figure 6. Helen Winter’s grandfather, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) with his dachshund Seppel in 1913 in Mittenwald, Bavaria; Eberhard wrote a memoir for his daughter Margor, Helen’s mother, in which he spoke briefly about Jacob Bruck

 

The original German passage and the English translation read as follows:

ORIGINAL PASSAGE

Mein Urgrossvater Jacob Bruck, 1762-1832, war Hotelbesitzer. Ihm gehörte das erste Hotel in Ratibor an der Oder ( Oberschlesien ). Das Hotel hiess “Prinz von Preussen”. Es wurde von Jacob Bruck um 1800 erbaut und bestand noch, wie ich aus einer Zeitungsnotis entnahm, 1933. Jacob Bruck war ein unternehmender Mann. Er besass auch eine Werft an der Oder, wo grössere Schiffe ( sog. “Oderkähne”) gebaut wurden. Um das nötige Holz zu erhalten, pachtete er Walder in Osterreichisch- Schlesien.

TRANSLATION

My great grandfather, Jacob Bruck, 1762 -1832 [EDITOR’S NOTE: INCORRECT DATES], was a hotelier. He owned the first hotel in Ratibor on Oder in Upper Silesia. The hotel was called the “Prince of Prussia.” He had it built in around 1800 and it was still standing in 1933, according to a newspaper item I saw. Jacob Bruck was an enterprising man. He also owned a shipyard on the Oder, where large craft (the so called ‘Oder Barges’) were built. To obtain the timber needed for these, he leased forests in Austrian Silesia.

A few observations and comments concerning what Eberhard Bruck wrote about Jacob and his occupational endeavors. As previously discussed, Jacob was born in 1770, not in 1762, and passed away in 1836, not in 1832. Eberhard was born in 1877 so would not personally have known his great-grandfather. Likely, his “memories” of Jacob would be recollections he’d heard of him as a child and would be distorted by the prism through which childhood memories are often processed and remembered.

I have tried to confirm whether what Eberhard wrote vis a vis Jacob Bruck is true, and in the process crafted what I consider to be a more accurate scenario of what likely happened. I will relate this is a future blog post where I recount when the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel was probably built based on documented accounts of when the walls and towers surrounding and historically protecting Ratibor were torn down. I invite readers to stay tuned for this upcoming post but suffice it for now to say that it’s unlikely that Jacob had the Bruck’s Hotel constructed prior to his death nor that he was its first owner. This does not mean that Jacob did not operate the town’s first hotel as he is known to have owned several parcels of land in Ratibor. More on this below.

As I’ve discussed in earlier posts, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel survived WWII mostly intact but was dismantled by the Communist authorities to harvest the hotel’s bricks to rebuild Warsaw.

Prior to his passing, I asked my friend Paul Newerla whether Oderkähne, or Oder River barges, had ever been constructed in Ratibor, and he confirmed there had once been a shipyard there along the Oder River. He sent a postcard showing a large craft, possibly of the type Jacob manufactured. (Figure 7) Given that Jacob Bruck was fabricating these before he died in 1836 and that 1839 is the generally accepted date as the birth year of practical photography, no photographs of the barges Jacob manufactured are known.

 

Figure 7. Postcard of an “Oderkahne” sent to me by Paul Newerla, possibly representative of the type Jacob Bruck manufactured

 

I also discussed this matter with another good friend, Peter Albrecht von Preußen. As he was reading an 1861 book on Ratibor entitled “Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor und deren Stadtteile” (“History of the Town of Ratibor and Its Districts”) by Augustin Weltzel, I asked him to be on the lookout for any mention of Oder River barges or ship building activities in Ratibor but neither subject was broached.

A quick note about Augustin Weltzel’s 1861 book. Regrettably it is written in Fraktur font, a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand; Fraktur was commonly used to write German and other European languages from the 16th to the 20th century. Regrettably, this invaluable book has not been transcribed into modern-day German script, nor translated into Polish or English. On my behalf, Peter read through and synopsized relevant sections for me. Suffice it to say this book is full of valuable historical insights about the history of Ratibor that will serve as the foundation for my theory as to when the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel could realistically have been constructed.

Returning briefly to the issue of Oder River barges, Peter discovered that on average an Oderkahne was 130 feet long, 13 to 15 feet wide, and 3 to 4 feet deep, so by no means a small boat. Assuming these were assembled on land, the factory or shop would have had to have been very close to the river. Possibly the shipyard was located outside Ratibor’s city limits, and therefore not mentioned in Weltzel’s book.

Intriguingly, Peter sent me a photograph of the type of barge I initially imagined Jacob Bruck was constructing. (Figure 8) The reason it seems more representative of barges Jacob Bruck was building is that they were mostly used to transport agricultural products from Ratibor to Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], which this one appears to have been suited for. According to Weltzel, the three primary industries at the time wrote his book were weaving, grain production, and limestone manufacturing.

 

Figure 8. An example of a possibly older generation Oder River barge

 

The pole on the barge in Figure 8 would have been attached to a rope which in turn would have been fastened and pulled upstream by a horse from the banks of the Oder. Once unloaded, it could basically float empty downriver. The “newer” type of barge illustrated in Figure 7, which began to appear between around 1850 to 1860, would have been steam-powered. According to Weltzel, the Oder River was not well suited for larger barges between Ratibor and Breslau, even during the rainy seasons in the spring when high waters would have made navigating larger craft easier.

A constant concern for the city were the bridges spanning the Oder River which collapsed or were destroyed no fewer than a dozen times historically because of fires, wars, flooding, ice buildup, and strong currents undermining the structures. The bridges were constantly rebuilt in different locations but because of the sandy sediment of the Oder they rarely survived for long until advanced building techniques were devised.

Eberhard Bruck’s fleeting reference to the fact that Jacob obtained his wood to build barges from Austrian Silesia sent me on a search to find maps delineating this area. In the attached figure, readers can see where “Oster Schlesien,” Austrian Silesia, was situated. (Figure 9) According to Paul Newerla, later shipyards apparently obtained their wood from Slovakia and Hungary, perhaps cheaper alternatives. Regardless, all three areas would have been logical places from which to obtain wood given their proximity to Ratibor.

 

Figure 9. Map of “Osterr Schlesien,” Austrian Silesia, showing its proximity to Ratibor

 

Other fleeting references to Jacob Bruck can be found in a 1995 book by Thomas Wardenga entitled “Häuserbuch der Stadt Ratibor” (“House register of the town of Ratibor”). This book includes an 1812 map of Ratibor showing the town’s lots at the time, identifying property owners. Jacob is shown as the co-owner of three lots. (Figure 10)

 

Figure 10. 1812 map of Ratibor from Thomas Wardenga’s 1995 book with the three lots that Jacob Bruck co-owned

 

Jacob is identified as a so-called “arrendator.” Not recognizing or being able to obtain a clear translation of this obscure and obsolete occupation, I turned to Paul Newerla, my recently deceased friend, for clarification. Translated, this is what Paul explained about Jacob’s line of work: 

Arendator [EDITOR’S NOTE: ALSO SPELLED AS “ARRENDATOR”] is known to be a tenant of a pub, for example. During my research, I came across several instances where a tavern was leased by the noble owner of the village, for example. The right to produce spirits (distiller) was sometimes associated with the bar. However, the tenant had to buy the beer from the owner’s brewery. Sometimes it was the other way round: the right to brew beer was linked to the arrende, but the brandy had to be bought from the “lord”. In such cases, it can be said that a person could have been both “arrendator” and “distiller” and/or beer tenant (brewer).

Recently, while doing further research I discovered an excellent article by Alan Weiser entitled “The Arenda System: A Boon or Bane for Jews.” According to the author, “The arenda has been defined by the University of Virginia in its course on European Jewry as a system of leasing property in early modern Poland in which in exchange for a predetermined rent the lessor agreed to transfer to the lessee control over property or rights; thus, enabling the lessee to pocket any income produced from the leased property or rights. The arenda provided a livelihood for a significant proportion of Polish Jewish families.” Jacob as the lessee in an arenda contract would have been called an “arendar” or “arrendator.”

It has been suggested that because of the pressure the Jewish arendars were under to make payments to magnates and kings who owned the leased properties this resulted in large scale Jewish community debt causing the arendars to apply harsh measures to their serfs to ensure high productivity as soon as possible. According to Alan Weiser, “There was considerable anti-Semitic backlash resulting from this interaction.”

I encourage readers interested in learning more about the Arenda system to read Alan Weiser’s article and review his bibliographic references.

Thanks to another of my Polish acquaintances, Mr. Kamil Kotas from Chałupki, Poland, known in Prussian times as Annaberg, I was made aware of another very obscure reference to Jacob Bruck I would never have found on my own. On the Leo Baeck Institute’s website, in a file entitled the “Ratibor Community Collection,” Kamil found a typed German report translated as “The Jewish Community of Ratibor and its Cemetery” by C. Baendel. According to this document Jacob Bruck was one of the members of the Jewish community in Ratibor authorized to carry out the transaction of purchasing the land for the Jewish cemetery in 1814; according to C. Baendel, the deed is dated the 4th of October 1814.

Interestingly, the deed was signed by all those authorized on the Jewish side authorized to negotiate the purchase, while on the selling side, the three heirs of a man named Johann Huttny had to use the help of a witness to confirm their signatures (they were probably illiterate) and a translator (they were probably from the Slavic-speaking local population). C. Bandel notes the cemetery was once used to mine brown coal, the prospects of which do not appear to have been lucrative. He also mentions the centennial celebration of the cemetery was set for the 26th of November 1913. The link to C. Baendel’s document can be found among the references.

The Polish website, Cmentarz Żydowski w Polsce, List of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland, provides additional historical background on the Ratibor Jewish cemetery. Prior to its acquisition in 1814, Jews from Ratibor were buried in nearby Zülz [today: Biała Prudnicka, Poland], Nikolai [today: Mikołów, Poland], Langendorf [today: Hlučín, Czech Republic], or Hotzenplotz [today: Osoblaha, Czech Republic], or further afield in Bodzanów in central Poland. Purportedly, burials did not begin until 1817, though the oldest documented headstone dated from 1821. The last burials took place, respectively, in March 1940 and February 1941.

As I discussed in Post 13 and Post 13, Postscript, the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era in 1973. Quoting from an anonymous resident of Racibórz, who sent a letter to the Polish website Cmentarz Żydowski w Polsce, described the events as follows: “One day gentlemen appeared, described all the tombstones with colored paint, then arranged them according to some key. The most beautiful ones were taken to the reconstruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The less attractive ones were sold to stonemasons. The remains of the stones were still lying around for a long time. It looked terrible; the real devastation of the cemetery, demolished, felled, dug up stones. What was left was chaos, rubble, and so the bushes were overgrown. I think that the destruction was undertaken due to the necessity of delivering the marbles to Warsaw.”

A plaque was placed at the cemetery by a Pawel Głogowski in April 2014 (Figure 11), and more recently on 19th of December 2023, a ceremony was held there with representatives from Warsaw’s Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews; Director of the Museum in Racibórz; and several Jewish attendees including a Rabbi who offered a prayer. (Figure 12) Fragmentary pieces of headstones were collected. (Figure 13)

 

Figure 11. The commemorative plaque installed in April 2014 by Pawel Głogowski at the former entrance to the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

Figure 12. A recent ceremony held at the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor on the 19th of December 2023 with representatives from the Jewish community, the Museum of Racibórz, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and local attendees

 

Figure 13. Fragments of matzevahs gathered from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

In closing, I would note that while the historical references to my third great-grandfather are elusive, they’ve provided me the opportunity to discuss a wide number of topics including the geopolitical landscape at the time; ship building in Ratibor; the source of wood used in barge construction; the Arenda System; and the purchase of land for the construction of the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor and its ultimate destruction. 

REFERENCES 

Baendel, C. “Die jüdische Gemeinde von Ratibor und ihr Friedhof.” https://search.cjh.org/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=CJH_ALEPH000193739&context=L&vid=lbi&lang=en_US&search_scope=LBI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=sub,exact,Jewish%20cemeteries%20–%20Poland%20–%20Racibo%CC%81rz,AND&mode=advanced

Cmentarz Żydowski w Polsce. 

Spis cmentarzy żydowskich – List of Jewish cemeteries (cmentarze-zydowskie.pl)

Wardenga, T. (1995). Häuserbuch der Stadt Ratibor. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin.

Weiser, A. (2004). “The Arenda System: A Boon or Bane for Jews.”

https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/kolomea/arenda.htm

Weltzel, A. (1861). Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor.

Geschichte der Stadt Ratibor : Weltzel, Augustin : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

 

POST 147: THE GRÜNBERGER FAMILY TIE TO RATIBOR IN THE YEARS 1812-1815

 

Note: In this post, I draw a connection between a query I received from a reader on the process for installing Stolpersteine in Racibórz, Poland to a fleeting reference about one of this reader’s earliest ancestors from the second decade of the 19th century.

Related Post:

POST 142: “STOLPERSTEINE” COMMEMORATING THREE HOLOCAUST VICTIMS FROM RACIBORZ

POST 146: MY GRANDFATHER FELIX BRUCK’S (1864-1927) FINAL MONTHS OWNING THE BRUCK’S HOTEL IN RATIBOR, GERMANY

 

Having previously boasted that blog stories can be found on any street corner, I am discomfited if I don’t have at least 5 to 10 topics in my hip pocket awaiting future exposition. This sets off alarms and makes me think I’m not being sufficiently imaginative.

Sometimes what I think will be one post morphs into two, while other times two or more topics get condensed into one. The current post is an example of the latter.

Chronologically, this story begins with the publication of Post 142. To remind readers that post was about the installation of the very first so-called Stolpersteine in Racibórz, Poland, the town in Silesia where my father was born when the town was named Ratibor and was part of Germany. A Stolperstein is a ten-centimeter (3.9 in.) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. In the case of the ones recently installed in Racibórz, they commemorate three members of the Kochen family deported in 1938 to the Łódź Ghetto, namely, Szyja Kochen (1897-1944), Ester Bajla Kochen (1898-1944), and Natan David Kochen (1935-1944). (Figure 1)

 

Figure 1. The Stolpersteine recently installed in Racibórz, Poland for three members of the Kochen family deported to the Łódź Ghetto

 

Following publication of Post 142, I was contacted by a Barrister from Toronto, Canada, Perry H. Gruenberger, asking about the process for obtaining permission to install a Stolperstein. Perry explained that his grandparents had last freely lived in Ratibor and been deported and murdered during the Holocaust. Like the Kochen family, he is interested in commemorating his ancestors at their last place of residency in Racibórz.

Ignorant of the city’s requirements, I contacted Ms. Magda Wawoczny, a student acquaintance of mine from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland who hails from Racibórz and first told me about the Stolpersteine installed there, asking her about the process. She checked with Mr. Nadav Kochen from Israel who’d initiated the installation of the so-called “stumbling stones” in Racibórz for his ancestors.

In brief, Nadav explained that the consent of the Road Department or other administrator or city official of the area where the Stolpersteine are to be installed must be obtained. It goes without saying that the consent of the land owner is required. The “Institute of National Remembrance,” which has apparently been a major impediment to the placement of Stolpersteine in Poland for reasons discussed in Post 142, is seemingly not required. Polish officials Mr. Kochen contacted in Wrocław told him that because Stolpersteine are treated as artistic installations, as the German artist Gunter Demnig intended when he initiated the project in 1992, rather than monuments, the approval of the Institute of National Remembrance is not required.

The person who initiates the installation of the stumbling stone must somehow prove the person(s) lived there and died during the Holocaust and finance the production and installation of the stone. The requirement that the person died may be specific to Poland because based on personal experience in Germany a target of Nazi persecution need not have died to be commemorated by a Stolperstein. If a Stolperstein is proposed in an area designated as a national monument, the consent of the conservator of monuments is also required. And, finally, one must coordinate with the special office in Germany that handles Stolpersteine matters.

Mr. Perry Gruenberger initially contacted me towards the end of September telling me he wants to commission Stolpersteine in honor of his grandparents, Fritz Grünberger (1893-1944) and Henriette Grünberger, née Nesselroth (1897-1944), who had lived and worked in Ratibor. (Figure 2) His grandparents were initially deported to Theresienstadt, then later transported to Auschwitz. Perry explained that his father Günter Grünberger grew up in Ratibor until age 19 (1939) but survived the Holocaust. He escaped to Palestine via Italy.

 

Figure 2. Weidenstrasse, today known as ulica Staszica, the street in Racibórz along which Perry Gruenberg’s grandparents lived before they were deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz

 

When readers contact me asking about their ancestors who were victims of the Holocaust or are associated with places where my own relatives may have lived, typically, I check on ancestry.com, MyHeritage, the Arolsen Archives, the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database, as well as in my personal files for documents and images that may make these people’s relatives come to life.

I was quickly able to find Perry’s grandparents in Yad Vashem. (Figures 3a-b; 4a-b) I next checked an Excel database with the names of people formerly interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, which no longer exists, for any Grünbergers. Initially, I found four names with pictures of their headstones which I shared with Perry. (Figures 5-8) He was elated.

 

Figure 3a. Page 1 of documentation from the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Fritz Grünberger, Perry’s grandfather

 

Figure 3b. Page 2 of documentation from the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Fritz Grünberger, Perry’s grandfather

 

Figure 4a. Page 1 of documentation from the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Henriette Grünberger, Perry’s grandmother

 

Figure 4b. Page 2 of documentation from the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Henriette Grünberger, Perry’s grandmother

 

Figure 5. List of four Grünbergers and one Grünberg from the Excel database listing the names of Jews once buried in the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

Figure 6. Former headstone of Alice Grünberger, née Steiner (1892-1932) from the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor
Figure 7. Former headstone of Karl Grünberger (1865-1920) and his wife Alma Grünberger, née Loebinger (1867-1921), Perry’s great-grandparents, from the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 8. Former headstone of Marie Grünberger (1847-1918) from the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

Later when I reexamined the Excel database, I noticed a “Siegfried Grünberg (1863-1930)” listed (see Figure 5) and figured out this was Perry’s great-grand-uncle. (Figure 9) I also realized in searching the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database for Perry’s family I would need to check not only “Grünberger” and “Gruenberger,” but also “Grünberg” and “Grunberg.”

 

Figure 9. Former headstone of Siegfried Grünberger (1863-1930), Perry’s great-grand-uncle, from the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

Combined, in the Yad Vashem and the Arolsen Archives online databases, I discovered a total of five Grünbergers that had been deported to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz from Ratibor. (Figures 10-13)

 

Figure 10. List of deportees on transport XVIII/2 headed from Oppeln [today: Opole, Poland] to Theresienstadt on the 20th of November 1942 with the names of three Grünbergers from Ratibor (source: Arolsen Archives)
Figure 11. Deportation card for Emma Grünberger, née Herzka, departing Oppeln {Opole, Poland] aboard transport XVIII/2, showing she died on the 17th of December 1942 in Theresienstadt (source: Arolsen Archives)

 

Figure 12. Deportation card for Perry’s grandfather, Fritz Grünberger, deported from Thereseinstadt aboard transport XVIII/6 on the 29th of September 1944 (source: Arolsen Archives)

 

Figure 13. Deportation card for Perry’s grandmother, Henriette Grünberger, deported from Theresienstadt aboard transport XVIII/6 on the 6th of October 1944 (source: Arolsen Archives)

 

Let me briefly digress and share with readers a related discovery I made at about the same time. Long-term followers of my blog know that connections I make between seemingly unrelated documents and contacts most excite me.

In Post 146, I introduced readers to Mr. Kamil Kotas a gentleman formerly from the Racibórz District of Poland, now living in Münster in the German state of Westphalia. Kamil not only directed me to files archived at the State Archives in Wrocław Branch in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki with information on my family’s establishment in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, as previously discussed, but he also sent me links to two articles he’s written about Ratibor. Translated, one is entitled “Preliminary list of Jews from Racibórz deported to death camps,” and the second is “Jews with Prussian citizenship in the Racibórz region in the years 1812-1815.” Serendipitously, both contain information on the Grünbergers.

Through extensive research Kamil has compiled a comprehensive list of Jews from Ratibor deported to death camps. Quoting as to the method he used to draw up this list:

The list presented below is based on transport lists of people deported from Silesia to the Auschwitz death camp and to the ghetto and Theresienstadt camp. Scans of the lists are publicly available on the German website “Statistik des Holocaust”. Listed below are people whose last place of residence before deportation was Racibórz. In addition to the names and surnames, other information about the victims available on the lists was also seized. The types of information overlap for most of the people included and usually include: first name, last name, for women also maiden name, date and place of birth, occupation before capture, last address of residence. For some people, the dates of death were also written by hand on the typed letters, as well as short markings, the meaning of which could not yet be fully explained (it is assumed that these were identification numbers or transport numbers). As for the people who did not have a date of death inscribed, it does not mean that they survived the capture. It could happen that, for various unknown reasons, information about their deaths was not considered – the war and the Holocaust brought with them many missing and anonymous victims, and even meticulous German keeping of records did not guarantee the creation of gaps in the death register.

The list was prepared according to the order of transports (only brief notes were made about two transports, as there are no specific lists of people for them).

As just mentioned, five of Perry Gruenberger’s ancestors were deported to Theresienstadt on two separate transports per the information Kamil Kotas has assembled, including Perry’s grandparents. Below is the information related to the Grünbergers, some of which replicates or augments information I found in the online Arolsen Archives and Yad Vashem.

Transport XVIII/2 from Opole to Theresienstadt (Terezín, today in the Czech Republic), dated 20 November 1942.

Grünberger Max, born 22.3.1870 in Gniew in Pomerania, merchant, residing in Racibórz at Weidenstr. 15 (Staszica Street), date of death: 15.7.1943.

Grünberger Emma, née Herzka, born 18.12.1876 in Sedlnice (Sedlnitz) in Moravia, no profession, residing in Racibórz at Weidenstr. 15 (Staszica Street), date of death: 17.12.1942.

Grünberger Flora, née Toczek, born 28.4.1867 in Daniec near Opole, no profession, residing in Racibórz at Friedrichstr. 4 (Głowackiego Street), date of death: 27.11.1942.

EDITORS’ NOTE: I’m uncertain how Max and Emma Grünberger are related to Perry but given the years they were born I suspect that they were Siegfried Grünberger’s younger brother and sister-in-law, in other words Perry’s great-great-uncle and -aunt. Flora Grünberger, née Toczek, I know was Siegfried Grünberger’s wife, another of Perry’s great-great-aunts. The three Grünbergers on the November 20, 1942, transport were among 50 Jews deported from Oppeln, Germany [today: Opole, Poland], 38 of whom came from Ratibor. (see Figure 10)

The second transport with Grünbergers from Ratibor that arrived in Theresienstadt on the 3rd of August 1943 included Perry’s grandparents:

On August 3, 1943, two people sent from Racibórz arrived in Theresienstadt outside the transport (XVIII/6 “Ez”):

Grünberger Fritz, born 2.9.1893, accountant, residing in Racibórz at Horst Wessel pl. 11a (Wolności Square), no information about death.

Grünberger Henriette, born 29.6.1897, seamstress, housewife, residing in Racibórz at Horst Wessel pl. 11a (Wolności Square), no information about death.

 

According to the Arolsen Archives deportation cards, Fritz and Henriette Grünberger were deported from Theresienstadt, presumably to Auschwitz, on different transports leaving on two closely separated days, respectively, on the 29th of September 1944 (see Figure 12) and on the 6th of October 1944. (see Figure 13) 

Turning now to the second article Kamil Kotas has written, which as noted above includes the names of Jews with Prussian citizenship living in the Ratibor region in the period between 1812 and 1815. Relying on a website run by the Museum in Gliwice [German: Gleiwitz], Kamil has compiled and published a list of Jews who were citizens of the Silesian part of the Kingdom of Prussia in the years 1812-1815. The census is based on lists that were published in the years 1814-1815 in the official newspapers of the day in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland].

Some brief history. The lists were a result of the emancipation edict of 1812 affecting Jews in the Kingdom of Prussia, to which most of Silesia belonged to at the time. Under the edict, Jews were granted citizenship on the condition that they use permanent, immutable family names, as the rest of the inhabitants of Prussia had already done. Previously Jews had only used their first names and so-called patronymics, that’s to say, a variation of their fathers’ names. Without permanent surnames, the identification of Jews and administrative and legal proceedings involving them was complicated.

Based on the 1812-1815 censuses, the Museum of Gliwice was able to identify 67 Jews from the area of today’s Racibórz County. Notably, the list included the name of Ascher Grünberger from Annaberg, Kreis Ratibor, Prussia [today: Chałupki, Poland]. Chałupki is located along the current Polish-Czech Republic border about 15.5 miles south-southeast of Racibórz. (Figure 14) Interestingly, as Kamil perceptively notes in his article, only eight of the 67 Jewish citizens residing in the county at the time lived within the city’s limits.

 

Figure 14. Map showing the distance from Racibórz to Chałupki, Poland where Perry’s distant ancestor Ascher Grünberger came from according to censuses from 1812-1815

 

Perry shared his Grünberger family tree with me but regrettably Ascher does not show up on it.

Intriguingly, Kamil has researched and written about an Adolf Grünberger, born in around 1842. He was a Jewish merchant from Ratibor who received Hungarian citizenship on the 10th of October 1886, and emigrated to Timișoara, Romania after he became widowed, eventually remarrying Sharlote Schmidt in 1889 and building a house in Timișoara that still stands. How Adolf is related to Perry Gruenberger is entirely unclear.

As a related aside, my family’s earliest known association with Ratibor dates to 1819 when the names of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) and his brother Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) are included among the names of students who attended the inaugural class when the city’s gymnasium, or high school, opened. Thus, it was disappointing not to see my family’s surname included among the list of original Jewish inhabitants of Ratibor County. Possibly it’s an omission or my family lived in a different town outside the county’s borders at the time?

In my ensuing post, I will return to the two articles Kamil Kotas sent me, as they not only include members of the Grünberger family, but, astonishingly, also include distant ancestors of a childhood friend from New York. In contrast to Ascher Grünberger to whom Perry cannot draw an unbroken linear connection, in the case of this childhood friend we are able to make a direct connection to his earliest forebear. In collaboration with my friend’s daughter, an avid genealogist, we will briefly explore this connection.

 

REFERENCES

Kotas, Kamil. Casa Adolf Grünberger. www.ziemiaraciborska.pl/wstepna-lista-raciborskich-zydow-deportowanych-do-obozow-zaglady

Kotas, Kamil. (2022, March 2). Żydzi z obywatelstwem pruskim na ziemi raciborskiej w latach 1812-1815. Ziemia Raciborska.pl.

Kotas, Kamil. (2022, March 2). Żydzi z obywatelstwem pruskim na ziemi raciborskiej w latach 1812-1815. Ziemia Raciborska.pl.

 

 

 

 

POST 139: THE STORY OF A JEWISH WOMAN BURIED IN RACIBÓRZ’S CATHOLIC CEMETERY

 

INTRODUCTION

The following is a guest post written by Ms. Magda Wawoczny, a student in Jewish studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, who hails from Racibórz, Poland. Magda first contacted me in 2021 when she was working on her bachelor’s degree and interviewed me about my family’s connection to Ratibor (today: Racibórz, Poland), when the city was part of Germany. Regular readers know that my family owned the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor from around 1850 through the mid-1920s. Knowing I had visited Racibórz on a few occasions, Magda was also interested in my impressions of the city.

In May 2023, Magda reached out to me again in connection with her ongoing master’s degree work in Jewish studies, still centered around her hometown. Surprisingly, she asked if I could help her get in touch with Monica Lewinsky’s father, Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, who is a Radiation Oncologist in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to me, Monica’s immediate ancestors come from Ratibor and her great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky, was once buried in the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor.

More recently Magda has been researching a Jewish woman by the name of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann (1873-1928) whose body had been exhumed in 1972 from the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor prior to its destruction in 1973 and reburied in the town’s Catholic cemetery. The reason for this is explained in the current post. Magda’s interest in contacting Dr. Lewinsky stems from the fact that the Lewinsky and Linzer families were friends. Whereas the Lewinsky family emigrated to El Salvador during the 1920s and thereby survived the Holocaust, most of Minna Linzer’s family stayed in Ratibor and therefore perished.

Separately, but at around the same time as I was trying to reach Dr. Bernard Lewinsky, a German lady by the name of Ms. Jessica Nastos contacted me through my blog’s webmail. Jessica had stumbled upon Post 72 where I discussed so-called cabinet cards. One studio I’d specifically mentioned that produced these cards in Ratibor was the Helios Photo Studio, which was the subject of my previous post. Jessica told me her mother had once worked in the studio and offered to send me contemporary photos of the studio including a picture of an old envelope with the studio’s name and logo. Upon receiving the pictures, I realized they included images of the Linzer’s that Magda has been researching, including most family members from Ratibor who died in the Holocaust; astonishingly, there was even a picture of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann with her oldest son Jan (Germans: Hans). Minna’s husband, Hermann Linzer (1874-1944), carried this photo with him throughout World War I, and a bullet hole through the photo attests to a wound he suffered during the war. (Figure A)

 

Figure A. Minna Linzer, née Guttmann, with her oldest child, Jan Linzer; this photo was carried around by her husband Hermann Linzer during his deployment in World War I and bears a bullet hole attesting to a wound he received during the war (photo courtesy of Jessica Nastos family archive)

 

When so many Jews were murdered by the Nazis in their effort to obliterate proof of their existence, it is bitter satisfaction to uncover photos of some of these people to emphasize the fact that the Nazis ultimately failed.

With the above as backdrop, I now turn the lectern over to Magda.

 

Related Posts:

POST 13: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 72: FAMILY CABINET CARDS FROM RATIBOR & BERLIN PHOTO STUDIOS

POST 138: INTRIGUING DISCOVERIES ABOUT RATIBOR’S HELIOS PHOTO STUDIO

POST 139: THE STORY OF A JEWISH WOMAN BURIED IN RACIBÓRZ’S CATHOLIC CEMETERY

BY

MAGDA WAWOCZNY

JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY

The most important places related to the Jewish heritage of Racibórz that survived the end of World War II were the synagogue and the cemetery. While the synagogue was destroyed by a fire on the 9th of November 1938 on Kristallnacht (Figure 1), it endured as a ruin until it was demolished, the exact date of which is still being investigated. By contrast, the cemetery survived basically intact. Unfortunately, the Jewish inhabitants of Racibórz disappeared from the city’s landscape during the war—those who managed to escape after Kristallnacht survived outside Germany, those who remained died in concentration camps. As a result, the Jewish cemetery in Racibórz was eventually razed since the community which it had served no longer existed to take care of it. Or so it seemed until now. . .

 

Figure 1. The Jewish Synagogue in Ratibor on fire on the 9th of November 1938 on Kristallnacht

 

Currently, for the purposes of my master’s thesis, I am researching the Jewish cemetery which was ultimately demolished in 1973. Based on the available sources, it is known that before the liquidation, photo documentation of all the burials and headstones was made by Mr. Kazimierz Świtliński (Figure 2) at the request of the city authorities. The documentation is on file at the Museum of Racibórz, and illustrates impressive tombstones made of marble, granite, and sandstone. In this post I will focus on one belonging to Minna Linzer, née Guttmann. (Figure 3)

 

Figure 2. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the Polish gentleman who at the request of city authorities documented all the tombs and burials in Ratibor’s Jewish cemetery prior to its liquidation in 1973

 

Figure 3. The photo of Minna Linzer, née Guttmann’s headstone taken by Kazimierz Świetliński

 

During my archival investigations, my attention was drawn to an application by a woman from Racibórz who requested permission from the city authorities to exhume the body of her grandmother Minna Linzer from Ratibor’s former Jewish cemetery and transfer it together with the tombstone to the Catholic cemetery in the Ostróg district on Rudzka street. The woman emphasized that in the face of the anticipated liquidation of the cemetery, she felt an obligation to save the grave of her grandmother that she had taken care of and maintained for many years. The granddaughter was Elizabeth (Elzbieta) “Lilly” Slawik, née Grzonka. Her application to the city authorities was accompanied by a card with the inscription “eternal memory of those lost in the Auschwitz camp: Hermann Linzer, Jan Linzer, Małgorzata and Henryk Schiftan, Lota and Maks Tichauer.” (Figure 4)

 

Figure 4. The card with family names that accompanied Elizabeth (Elzbieta) “Lilly” Slawik, née Grzonka’s application to Racibórz city authorities requesting permission to exhume her grandmother’s remains from the former Jewish cemetery

 

Knowing only Elizabeth’s name and address, I started searching for her relatives. Fortunately, I managed to reach Elizabeth’s son, Minna’s great-grandson currently living in Germany. He explained that Elizabeth was the daughter of a Jewish man and a Catholic woman, and that the above-mentioned names are inscribed on the relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery. Elizabeth’s son mentioned that his mother took care of his great-grandmother’s tomb, and when she learned it was about to be destroyed, asked permission for the grave to be exhumed. Fascinatingly, he also mentioned that his mother had looked after the grave of Monica Lewinsky’s great-grandfather, Salo Lewinsky. (Figure 5) Despite directions from Elisabeth’s son to Minna’s grave in the Catholic cemetery, it was not easy to find.

 

Figure 5. The tombstone of Salo Lewinsky (1860-1930) photographed by Kazimierz Świetliński

 

Having been given the name of Salo Lewinsky’s still living grandson, Bernard Lewinsky, by Lilly’s son, I decided to try and contact him. For this purpose, I asked Richard Brook, author of this blog, for help. Dr. Lewinsky is an oncologist in Los Angeles, so he was quickly able to get in touch with him. Upon establishing contact, Dr. Lewinsky confirmed that his father George Lewinsky (1903-1989) had remained in contact with Elisabeth who took care of his father’s grave. Until the death of Bernard’s father, the families remained in contact. Unfortunately, the grave of Bernard’s grandfather, Salo, could not be saved when the Jewish cemetery was dismantled.

Thanks also to Richard’s help, I was able to obtain some information on the names inscribed on Minna Guttmann’s headstone and found on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s request to exhume her grave, such as their former place of residence, their occupations, and the date of the deportations to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

A breakthrough in my research came when Richard coincidentally received an email from Elizabeth’s great-granddaughter, Jessica Nastos, about the Helios Photo Studio which was the subject of Richard’s blog Post 138; it turns out “Lilly” had worked there. Thanks to Jessica, I learned that Elizabeth was the child of a Jew, Jan Linzer (mentioned on the card accompanying Elizabeth’s application to the city authorities), and a Catholic, Paulina Grzonka, who could not be together due to the Nazi rule and the specter of war. (Figure 6) To protect themselves and Elizabeth, Paulina and Jan decided not to get married, although they symbolically exchanged rings as keepsakes, with each other’s initials engraved on them.  Paulina (1895-1971) and Elizabeth (1926-2016) survived, while Jan (1901-1945) died in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

 

Figure 6. A photo of Elizabeth (Elzbieta) “Lilly” Slawik, née Grzonka with her unmarried parents, Hermann Linzer and Pauline Grzonka, taken in Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland) in 1926, the year of Lilly’s birth (photo courtesy of Jessica Nastos family archive)

 

Thanks to Jessica’s information, it was possible to establish the identities of the people on the card. Minna Linzer (1873-1928) was the first wife of Hermann Linzer (1874-1944). She died in 1928, and after her death Hermann got remarried to a woman named Amalie Nebenzahl (1884-1944). Both died in 1944 in Theresienstadt. Hermann and Minna had four children: Jan (German: Hans), Małgorzata (German: Margaret), Lota, and Leo. Leo, the youngest son, was the only one who survived the war. (Figure 7) Małgorzata and Lota together with their husbands also died in Theresienstadt.

 

Figure 7. Hermann Linzer and Minna Linzer, née Guttmann’s four children, from left to right: Jan, Leo, Małgorzata, and Lota (photo courtesy of Jessica Nastos family archive)

Thanks to Jessica, based on photos from the 1990s, which show a relocated grave in the Catholic cemetery, I was able to find it. It is still there and in very good condition. (Figure 8) When it seemed that only archival documents and stories remained of the city’s Jewish heritage, it turns out that there is a preserved remnant of Jews in Racibórz, and Minna’s grave is proof of that.

 

Figure 8. Minna Linzer’s headstone as it looks nowadays with the names of her husband, her three children, and their spouses who were murdered in the Holocaust

 

 

POST 110: DR. WALTER LUSTIG, DIRECTOR OF BERLIN’S “KRANKENHAUS DER JÜDISCHEN GEMEINDE” (HOSPITAL OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY) THAT SURVIVED THE NAZIS

 

Note: The Blog post is about Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital that inexplicably outlasted the Nazis, and its wartime Director, Dr. Walter Lustig, born in Ratibor, Germany, the same town where my father was born.

Related Posts:

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

POST 48: DR. ERNST NEISSER’S FINAL DAYS IN 1942 IN THE WORDS OF HIS DAUGHTER

POST 49: GUIDE TO THE “LANDESARCHIV BERLIN” (BERLIN STATE ARCHIVE) CIVIL REGISTRY RECORDS

POST 107: HARRO WUNDSCH (HARRY POWELL), A “DUNERA BOY” INTERNED IN THE AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK

 

This post has to do with my family only insofar as Dr. Walter Lustig, the man at the center of this story, was born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father and many of his family were born. From around 1942 until shortly after WWII ended in April 1945 Dr. Lustig was the Director of Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, a Jewish institution that miraculously withstood the Nazi onslaught.

This assault on German Jews left only between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews alive in Germany by the end of the war, compared to 500,000 Jews living there towards the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 when the Nazis seized power. By the time WWII started in 1939 two-thirds of these Jews had emigrated, though there still remained roughly 167,000 Jews in Germany in 1941, most of whom would be murdered.

Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is 265 years old. It was originally built in 1756 on Oranienburger Strasse near the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. Then, during Berlin’s mid-nineteenth century economic expansion that was due in large measure to its entrepreneurial Jewish population, the Jewish community built the city’s first general hospital, one of the largest of its kind, on Auguststrasse; it was built primarily to serve the needs of the Jewish population. As the years passed, even this structure proved inadequate, so in 1913, the current hospital along Iranischestrasse opened on the site it occupies today (Figure 1); there were seven principal buildings, together with ancillary structures. Presently, the hospital is located in the Wedding locality in the borough of “Berlin-Mitte” (Figure 2), which prior to 2001 was a separate borough in the northwestern part of Berlin.

 

Figure 1. The main building of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community) that opened in 1914 along Iranischestrasse

 

Figure 2. Map of Berlin’s 12 existing Boroughs and the neighborhoods in each, with Berlin-Mitte circled including the neighborhood of “Wedding” where Berlin’s Jewish Hospital is situated today

 

I have briefly mentioned Berlin’s Jewish Hospital in connection with three previous Blog posts. In Posts 48 and 49, I related the story of how one of my distant relatives, Dr. Ernst Neisser, was taken there on the morning of October 1, 1942, following his attempted suicide after being told to report to an “old age transport,” a euphemism for deportation to a concentration camp; fortunately, he survived only three days until October 4th before succumbing to his trauma. I say “fortunately” because the fear among Jews who attempted suicide is they would be resuscitated only to then be shipped to a concentration camp and gassed there.

According to a Jerusalem Post article by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, published on June 23, 2007, entitled “A hospital with history,” numerous Berlin Jews, like Dr. Ernst Neisser, who attempted suicide with gas or sleeping pills in the face of deportations ended up in Berlin’s Jewish Hospital for treatment, the only hospital that would still treat Jews during the Nazi era. According to this article, upwards of 7,000 Berlin Jews killed themselves before the Nazi dictatorship fell. Although Jews committed suicide in all sorts of ways, by far the most common method involved the ingestion of a poison such as potassium cyanide or an overdose of an opiate or sedative, usually Veronal.

Then, in Post 107, I mentioned an English lady named Kathy York, whose grandmother Maria Wundsch née Pauly (Figure 3), a distant relative of mine, worked at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital during WWII when Dr. Lustig was the Director there. Kathy tells me letters written about her grandmother’s fraught time working at the hospital exist, but these have yet to surface.

 

Figure 3. Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly with her husband Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch as a young married couple; Maria Wundsch, a full Jew, worked at Berlin’s during the war and likely survived because she was in a mixed marriage (photo courtesy of Kathy York)

 

I previously also told readers about Daniel B. Silver’s book about the hospital, entitled, “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I have relied heavily on this book in describing Dr. Lustig’s tenure as Director of the hospital and the hospital’s situation during the war. It is not my intention here to thoroughly review what interested followers can easily read for themselves, but rather to bring to light a few findings and connections I made on my own that add a little to the story. This said, some background about Dr. Walter Lustig and his wartime administration of the hospital are warranted.

After fierce street-to-street fighting against entrenched remnants of Hitler’s SS, on April 24, 1945, Russian soldiers had finally succeeded in wresting control from the Nazis of a stretch of Iranischestrasse that included the battle-scarred buildings of the “Krankenhaus Der Jüdischen Gemeinde” (Hospital of The Jewish Community). There they found hundreds of people including doctors, nurses, patients, workmen, and others who claimed to be Jewish. The Russians did not initially give credence to their assertions believing Joseph Goebbels’ 1943 declaration, chief propagandist for the Nazi party, that Berlin was “Judenrein,” or “Judenfrei,” meaning “cleansed (or free) of Jews,” according to National Socialist terminology applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Eventually the survivors convinced their Russian liberators they were Jews who had inexplicably outlasted the Nazis.

At the time of liberation, three of the hospital’s seven main buildings were no longer a part of the hospital. In late 1942, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, had expropriated the nurses’ residence, the Schwesterheim, as well as buildings that had housed the gynecology and infectious disease departments, for use as a military hospital, the Lazarett. Then, in 1944, the Gestapo appropriated and fenced off the hospital’s pathology laboratory and an adjacent gatehouse to use as a Sammellager, a collection camp for Jewish deportees. By 1944, most of Berlin’s remaining Jews had already been deported so a single, smaller holding facility now sufficed.

According to Daniel B. Silver, several published sources report the hospital’s population at the time of liberation at around 800. However, Hilda Kahan, Dr. Lustig’s secretary throughout his tenure as Director of the Jewish Community Hospital, states in a videotaped interview that the number was closer 500. Regardless of the precise number, they represented a large proportion of Germany’s identifiable Jews as they were defined by the Nazis. Statistics a young Jewish woman was compelled to maintain for the Gestapo on a monthly basis indicate only 6,284 known Jews remained in Berlin on February 28, 1945. (Silver, 2003, p. 2)

Included in the final number of Jews found at the Hospital upon its liberation, according to Daniel Silver “. . .were patients and members of the medical, nursing, and support staff who had taken up residence in the hospital at various times, either because they had been bombed out or evicted as Jews from their former homes or because they were slave laborers assigned to work at the hospital. Also on hand were the remnants of groups of Jews who had been transferred to the hospital when the Nazis closed other Jewish institutions in Germany, such as orphanages and old age homes. Most of these unfortunates had been deported before the war ended, but some remained in April 1945. Among them were a handful of abandoned children who were suspected of being fully Jewish but whose ‘racial’ status had not been definitively determined. The Nazis had used the hospital as a kind of ghetto to which they consigned Jews who had nowhere else to live or whose status was ambiguous. These included Jews of foreign nationality and Jews who were being held there as potential bargaining chips in negotiating exchanges for German nationals captured in Palestine. The authorities also used the hospital to house Jews who had been brought to Berlin from other cities in Germany as part of a Nazi effort to separate them from their Aryan spouses. This was intended as a first step in overcoming the political and legal barriers to the deportation of Jewish men who lived in mixed marriages and whose Aryan spouses refused to divorce them despite Gestapo pressure to do so.” (2003, p. 8) As Winter further notes, “Most of the hospital population were half-Jews or spouses of Aryans. As such, they had been protected by Nazi rules that everyone knew could be changed at any time.” (2003, p. 12)

Also included among the “patients” were several Jews not receiving medical treatment who were protected from deportation by one or another prominent Nazi; this may have included Jews who had illicit affairs with well-placed Nazis, childhood friends of important Nazis who sought to protect them, Jews who had bribed high-ranking Nazis, or other cases whose reasons can only be guessed. A “lucky” group of survivors included Jews who had been incarcerated in the hospital’s auxiliary police ward, the so-called Polizeistation. These were Jews who fell ill while already in the hands of the police, Gestapo, or SS who for unknown reasons the Nazis sought to restore to health before killing them. Unbelievable!

My family’s remote association to Berlin’s Jewish Community Hospital and its miraculous survival through WWII, in addition to the hospital’s wartime Director’s connection to Ratibor, the same town in Upper Silesia where my father was born, drew my interest in writing this Blog post. Hoping I might be able to add a little to what has already been written and is known about Dr. Walter Lustig, I contacted Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 4), my retired lawyer friend from Racibórz who now researches and writes about the history of the town and Silesia and asked whether he could track down a copy of Dr. Walter Lustig’s birth certificate at the archive. Paul graciously agreed to help. He not only was able to locate Dr. Lustig’s birth certificate, but the Racibórz archives also provided a legal document related to Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, Bernhard Lustig, dated the 22nd of March 1939. I will discuss this in further detail below.

 

Figure 4. With my friend Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and Silesian historian, standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk, located in middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

 

First, let me tell readers a little about Walter Lustig. He was born as Walter Simon Lustig on the 10th of August 1891 in Ratibor, the son of the merchant Bernhard Lustig and his wife Regina Lustig née Besser. He graduated from the local gymnasium in March 1910 and enrolled at the University of Breslau in October of the same year. He studied medicine, specializing in surgery, and received his medical degree and license in the spring of 1915. He was drafted during WWI and served as a military doctor. During his wartime stint, he obtained a Ph.D., also in medicine. His military service was performed in Breslau, where he treated casualties from the eastern front. After the war he worked in public administration while maintaining a private medical practice; he spent most of his career as a medical administrator. He wrote prolifically on medical subjects.

Clearly driven to advance professionally, in 1927 he relocated to Berlin. His move there coincided with two changes that had far-reaching consequences. He married a non-Jewish physician, Dr. Annemarie Preuss, and took a job with the Berlin police department where he became acquainted with Fritz Wöhrn and Rolf Günther who eventually became Adolf Eichmann’s key aides in overseeing the hospital. It was Adolf Eichmann’s department in the Reichssicherbeitshauptamt (RSHA), the Reich Security Main Office, that had formal jurisdiction over the Jewish hospital.

According to Daniel Silver, Lustig “. . .advanced within the police hierarchy until in 1929 he was appointed to the position of director of the Police Presidium’s medical affairs department. He held the prestigious bureaucratic titles of Oberregierungsrat (chief administrative counselor) and Obermedizinalrat (chief medical counselor).” (2003, p. 24-25) The police department had broad administrative responsibilities that extended beyond criminal matters, and included overseeing health matters in schools, institutions, and group care facilities, and conducting occupational training for medical personnel; suffice it to say, this brought Lustig into contact with many senior government officials and leaders in the medical community.

In October 1933, Lustig lost his job because of the issuance of the Nazis’ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”). This law initially exempted veterans of WWI such as Lustig but because he had been stationed in Breslau and not on the eastern front, the exemption did not apply to him, and he lost his position. At some time, between 1933 and 1935 Lustig was employed by the health department of the Berlin Jewish Gemeinde, or community (more on this below). According to Daniel Silver, when exactly Lustig was employed by the Gemeinde, and what his exact duties were are unknown, though he apparently became active in matters relating to the Jewish hospital around this time. Regardless, Lustig proved as adept at rising in the official Jewish bureaucracy at the Gemeinde as he had rising through the ranks of the Berlin police department.

Without overwhelming readers with the tangled structure of the Jewish community, it is still worth reviewing the hospital’s situation following the events of Kristallnacht that took place on the 9-10 November 1938 to provide context for Dr. Lustig’s powerful administrative position during the war. In a structure that prevailed before the Nazis came to power and still exists today, every religious denomination was organized into a Gemeinde, depending on context, roughly translated as community, municipality, congregation, or parish. Prior to the Nazis seizing power in 1933, the Gemeinde in smaller cities resisted the formation of a central Jewish organization fearing it would be dominated by the Berlin Gemende. Eventually the reality of the Nazi takeover overtook regional concerns, and a central organization called the Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden, or Central Representation of German Jews, was formed. It was renamed after 1935 to “Jews in Germany,” a significant distinction meant to signal that Jews were no longer to be considered Germans.

As the remaining German Jews became more concentrated in Berlin over time, the distinction between the Berlin Gemeinde and the Reichsvertretung became blurrier with many officials holding parallel positions in both organizations. After Kristallnacht, the Reichsvertretung was dissolved by the Nazis, only to be resurrected when the Nazis realized this organization facilitated emigration, which at the time the Nazis were encouraging. Consequently, a new Jewish central organization was organized, substituting the word Reichsvereinigung (central organization) for Reichsvertretung (central representation). Membership in this organization was compulsory for every Jew, which was created to better discriminate against and control the Jewish population. It was under tight Gestapo supervision.

Daniel Silver summarizes the hospital’s situation by 1941: “So it was that by 1941 the hospital functioned under the organization umbrella of the Reichsvereiningung, although, through the Gemeinde health department, it still maintained a formal relationship to the Berlin Gemeinde. The most important aspect of the new arrangements that began in 1938 was that, through the Reichsvereiningung, the hospital was placed under the direct supervision of Department IV B 4 of the RSHA. Originally this had been the department in charge of ‘Jewish emigration and evacuation.’ By 1941 it had become the department for ‘Jewish affairs and evacuation,’ emigration having been largely abandoned as a Nazi objective. Its head was Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Final Solution.” (2003, p. 40)

Measures taken against Jewish professionals which began in 1933 with passage of the Nuremberg racial laws that pushed Jewish doctors out of jobs in non-Jewish clinics had a profound effect on the makeup of the Jewish hospital’s professional staff as it stood in 1941. Things came to a head with the decree of July 25, 1938, when all Jewish physicians, of which there were about 3,000 at the time in the Reich, were stripped of their medical licenses. By September, a limit of 700 Jewish physicians, referred to by the degrading title of Krankenbehandler, or “carer for the sick,” were restricted to treating Jewish patients or working in Jewish institutions.

Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of this provision was Walter Lustig. While many of Lustig’s contemporaries had by 1938 decided to emigrate, he consciously decided not to do so. Whether this was hubris or his marriage to an Aryan that he thought afforded him some protection or his previous relationship with Nazis during his days in the Berlin police department, Lustig benefited from others’ departures to rise in the Jewish hierarchy. Daniel Silver describes it as follows: “When his boss in the Gemeinde/Reichsvereinigung health department, Erich Seligmann, left Germany for the United States in 1939, Lustig took over his position. In July 1939, the Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt (Jewish chronicle) described him as the person who henceforth would be responsible for health matters within the Reichsvereinigung. In that capacity, he played a key role in filling vacancies that opened up at the hospital because of the emigration of members of the medical staff. At some point in 1940 or 1941 (exactly when is unclear), he was appointed as the Gesundheitsdesernent, or chief of the health department (of the Gemeinde), and thus became a member of the governing board of the Reichsvereinigung.” (2003, p. 43)

Eventually in around October 1942, Walter Lustig became the hospital’s director after the previous director Dr. Schoenfeld and his wife killed themselves; they had been among 100 Gemeinde and Reichsvereinigung officials handpicked in the second major deportation of communal officials, a selection Lustig was compelled to participate in after initially demurring. From 1942 onward, he was repeatedly forced to aid in the selection of hospital staff for deportation, and according to Daniel Silver was “. . .arguably the most powerful figure of German Jewry and the absolute master of the hospital.”

Again, quoting Daniel Silver, “For many, Lustig’s name evokes predominantly negative feelings. According to one source, ‘The name Walter Lustig awakens even today vigorous aversion among Jewish witnesses of the events.’ Yet even his detractors give grudging credit to his talents and to his accomplishment in keeping the hospital open through the final years of the Nazi regime. His contemporaries describe him in wildly differing terms—turncoat and Gestapo collaborator; savior of the hospital; the man who sent hundreds of Jews to their death; the man who saved hundreds of Jews from the camps; a protector of children; a lecher.” (2003, p. 26) Further complicating how Lustig is viewed in hindsight is the criticism that he was unsympathetic to the plight of his fellow Jews and that he was a Jewish anti-Semite, and that his mistresses may have influenced the people he selected for deportation. More on his purported anti-Semitism below.

At the time Mr. Winter published his book in 2003, he stated there were no known pictures of Walter Lustig. (2003, p. 26) While writing this Blog post, I was able to establish email contact with Daniel Winter, who formerly served as the general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Service. He mentioned that following the publication of his book students from the University of Potsdam, outside Berlin, found a picture of Walter Lustig while developing a traveling exhibit about Berlin’s Jewish Hospital. Unable to locate his copy of this image, I have separately contacted the University of Potsdam hoping they might find and send me one. I’m optimistic about sharing it with readers in the future.

Figure 5. Mr. Roger Lustig, expert on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, whose father Ernst Lustig was a distant cousin of Dr. Walter Lustig, the wartime Director of Berlin’s Jewish Hospital

Relatedly, about ten years ago, I attended a talk sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society given by a Mr. Roger Lustig (Figure 5), who specializes in research on Jewish families of Prussian Poland, and is a top expert on general German Jewish research. This talk was given just before my planned 13-week trip to Europe to follow in the footsteps of my Jewish family’s diaspora. I contacted Roger asking whether he might be able to refer me to someone in Racibórz who could help me. Because Roger also has ancestors from there, he was happy to assist. Over the years, we’ve periodically stayed in touch. Naturally assuming that Roger might in some way be related to Walter Lustig because of the common surname and their respective connections to Ratibor, while writing this Blog post, I asked him whether he might have Walter’s photograph. He was unable to help explaining that because Dr. Lustig was a short man, about 5’2”, he was self-conscious about being photographed. This comports with how informants described Lustig to Daniel Silver, namely, that he was small. (2003, p. 26) Others added that he was a “small, delicate person” and that he had “cold stabbing eyes—terrible eyes.” Another informant reported that Lustig was very Germanic in appearance, a man who “‘looked like a major from the First World War,’ with spectacles and a big moustache.” (2003, p. 26)

Roger Lustig pointed out something interesting to me during our recent exchange that speaks to whether Walter was anti-Semite. While writing his book, Silver coincidentally interviewed Roger Lustig’s father, Ernst Lustig, who addressed this question (i.e., Ernst Lustig’s great-great-grandfather was the brother of Walter Lustig’s great-grandfather (2003, p. 176)): “The characterization of Lustig as a Jewish anti-Semite is at odds with the reaction of his distant cousin Ernst Lustig. In a brief and anguished commentary on the judgment in the Wöhrn trial, Ernst Lustig expresses surprise and shock at the unfavorable way Walter Lustig is described. ‘What is difficult for me to comprehend,’ he writes, ‘is how this man could develop such a horrible attitude toward Jews when he himself was a flawless Jew.’ He remembers his cousin as a man who maintained friendly relations with his Jewish relatives, a man whom he knew as ‘Uncle Walter,’ and a man who once provided Ernst’s father with a genealogical sketch of the family that descended from Dr. Lustig’s great-grandfather Abraham, who had lived in the town of Adamowitz. This seems out of character with the picture of Walter Lustig as a man who took no interest in his Jewish roots, although it is true that the time in question, 1937-38, was already after the date when Walter Lustig decided to throw his lot in with the Jewish community to which the Nazis in any event had irrevocably assigned him.” (2003, p. 215)

It is difficult to reconcile the differing judgements of Walter Lustig. On the one hand, there is the man who selected colleagues and fellow employees for deportation, while on the other was a man who occasionally came to the rescue of assistants who’d been arrested by the Nazis. Then, in March 1943, the Gestapo showed up with trucks in front of the administrative building prepared to deport the entire establishment, patients, doctors, nurses, and all other employees; it was only Lustig’s call to Adolf Eichmann that forced the Gestapo to stand down, though it resulted in fully half of Lustig’s workmates being arrested. As Silver asks, “Did Lustig originate this Faustian bargain, offering up fully half of the total number of his professional colleagues and employees as the price for saving the hospital, and thereby himself and his job? Or was this decision imposed on him in circumstances over he which he had no control whatsoever? It is unlikely that anyone will ever know.” (2003, p. 143)

It is worth noting that while the RSHA and the Gestapo were technically part of the same organization and under the authority of the same leader, SS Führer Heinrich Himmler, the German bureaucracy was teeming with internal rivalries and tensions (2003, p. 141), a situation which may partially explain why the Jewish hospital survived the war. For all of Lustig’s purported influence with the Gestapo, he was unable to save his own father from being deported to Theresienstadt in 1943. (2003, p. 173 & p. 221)

Longtime followers of my Blog may recall the postscript to Post 13 about the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor. In that post, I explained the role a Polish gentleman named Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński played in photographing all the headstones of the graves before the cemetery was demolished during Poland’s Communist Era. At a time when purchasing film and processing black-and-white negatives cost a lot, Kazimierz photographed, developed, created a portfolio with a site plan, and donated all his work to the Muzeum Raciborzu to be archived. After learning about these images, I arranged to photograph all the images in 2015. Recalling these and the accompanying Excel database, I scrolled through them and discovered they include a photo of Walter Lustig’s mother’s headstone, Regina Lustig née Besser. (Figure 6) As mentioned above, Walter’s father, Bernhard Lustig, was deported to Theresienstadt where he died, so obviously no picture of his gravestone exists.

 

Figure 6. The headstone of Dr. Walter Lustig’s mother, Regina Lustig née Besser (1866-1914), interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz (photo courtesy of Kazimierz Świetliński)

 

Walter’s birth certificate, which my dear friend Mr. Paul Newerla was able to obtain from the Racibórz archives confirmed Walter’s date of birth, the 10th of August 1891, and his parentage. (Figures 7a-b) As I mentioned above, while Paul was searching for Walter Lustig’s birth certificate, the archives stumbled upon a legal document related to Bernhard Lustig dated the 22nd of March 1939. (Figures 8a-g) At the time Bernhard was 82 years of age indicating he’d been born in 1857; I would later learn he was born on the 6th of February 1857. Because he was in frail health at the time, Bernhard Lustig had requested that a Mr. Arthur “Israel” Stein be appointed as his guardian, which the courts granted. Despite his failing health, four years later the Nazis deported him to Theresienstadt, where he perished. One can only imagine the cruel circumstances under which Bernhard died.

 

Figure 7a. Copy of Walter Simon Lustig’s Ratibor birth certificate, Certificate No. 391, showing he was born on the 10th of August 1891 to Bernhard Lustig and Regina Besser née Besser, and that he was given the added name “Israel” on the 1st of January 1939

 

Figure 7b. Transcription & translation of Walter Lustig’s birth certificate

 

Figure 8a. Page 1 of a legal document dated the 22nd of March 1939 regarding Dr. Walter Lustig’s father, the merchant Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8b. Page 2 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8c. Page 3 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8d. Page 4 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8e. Page 5 of the legal document related to Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8f. Transcription of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Figure 8g. Translation of the first two pages of the legal document regarding Bernhard Lustig

 

Interestingly, the legal document Bernhard submitted to the court also requested that he be allowed to submit a corrected declaration of value for assets he’d mistakenly overvalued; this resulted in overpayment of the “Jewish expiation tax,” for which he sought reimbursement. It seems unlikely the courts ever acted upon this request.

From 1945 to the present, most people have expressed incredulity that the Nazis permitted an identifiable Jewish institution to continue to exist in Berlin, a city Goebbels had declared in 1943 “cleansed of Jews.” Mr. Silver offers possible explanations: 1) the Nazis saw the hospital as playing a useful role in the large-scale deportations during a time when all other Jewish organizations and institutions had been eliminated (2003, p. 62); 2) earlier in the war, before the large-scale deportation of most Jews, it is possible the Nazis allowed the hospital to survive to provide for the treatment of Jews who could spread epidemics to the general Aryan population (2003, p. 235-6); 3) for bureaucratic convenience, that’s to say, as a place in which the Gestapo could establish a kind of ghetto (2003, p. 237); and 4) for reasons of ambition, Adolf Eichmann may have stage-managed the transfer of the land and buildings the hospital occupied to a small powerless agency, the Academy of Youth Medicine, which he could easily control and thereby preserve the hospital and the site he coveted. (2003, p. 238)

Let me end this lengthy post by briefly discussing what is known about Walter Lustig’s fate. Following the war, the hospital fell into the Soviet-administered zone of Berlin. By then, Lustig had been appointed by the occupation-controlled local government as the director of health services for the Wedding district and had turned over the administration of the hospital to his aide Ehrich Zwilsky. Incredibly, Lustig had remained head of the Reichsvereinigung and had even petitioned the Soviet authorities to have it converted to the new Jewish Gemeinde, with himself as the head. His ambition clearly clouded his judgement; a more prudent course might have compelled him to flee, given the overall negative verdict by many who worked with him and thought he was a turncoat and Gestapo collaborator. Regardless, in June 1945, according to Ruth Bileski, a young Jewish woman sent in 1943 as a forced laborer to work in Lustig’s office, he was taken away accompanied by two uniformed Soviet officers, never to be seen again. Some claim he may have stage-managed his own disappearance to avoid being tried, although the likelier outcome is that he was killed by the Soviets.

REFERENCES

Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy. “A hospital with history.” Jerusalem Post, June 23, 2007, https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=Siegel-Itzkovich%2c+Judy.+%e2%80%9cA+hospital+with+history&d=4898311699633967&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=KvOBC3e8wZezfu1SQux0Q8WOOLP6t1uU

Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

 

POST 92: BEWARE IDENTICAL ANCESTRAL NAMES, THE CASE OF MY MATERNAL GREAT-GRANDFATHER HERMANN BERLINER

Note: In this post, I discuss a man named Ernst Berliner born in 1878 in Ratibor, Germany to a Hermann Berliner, coincidentally the same name as my great-grandfather. Initially I thought Ernst might be a previously unknown great-uncle, a younger brother of my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner.  

Related Post:

Post 34: Margareth Berliner, Wraith or Being?

Post 34, Postscript: Margareth Berliner, Wraith or Being? Death in Theresienstadt

Post 34, Postscript 2: Margareth Berliner, Wraith or Being? More Discoveries

 

Figure 1. In the early 1950’s in New York City, my father Dr. Otto Bruck holding me in his lap, seated next to his mother Else Bruck née Berliner, and brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck

 

This story started simply when I queried ancestry.com for the surname “Berliner.” This was my grandmother Else Bruck’s maiden name, who was born on the 3rd of March 1873 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. I knew her as a child growing up in New York City, although she died when I was only six years old. (Figure 1) Not surprisingly, she never spoke to me about her siblings and ancestors. Had she done so, I would not in any case have remembered since none of my relatives ever reinforced this knowledge.

My search yielded an intriguing result, the name “Ernst Berliner.” This was an unexpected discovery because according to ancestry.com he was born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, where many of my father’s family were born. Given my familiarity with Berliners living there at around this time, I was uncertain whether or how he might be related to my grandmother. While Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate was not available online, from the records I could locate, it showed he had lived in Frankfurt am Main before WWII; had been a Bank Director there prior to the war; emigrated to England; had his German nationality annulled following his departure from Germany (Figure 2) and was registered in England as a World War II Alien Internee upon his arrival there (Figure 3); was registered as a “German Persecutee” in 1950 (Figure 4); died in Willesden, Middlesex, England on the 15th of February 1956; and according to the “Index of Wills and Administration” from the National Probate Calendar had his estate administered on the 29th of May 1956. (Figure 5) He left his personal effects to a married woman named Barbara Friedlaender, a domestic helper. The England Death Register only shows that Ernst died in the first quarter of 1956 but provides specific information in which English register his death certificate can be found. (Figure 6)

 

Figure 2. Evidence of the Nazi Regime’s annulment of Ernst Berliner’s German nationality, showing he was born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, that he was a Bank Director, and last lived in Frankfurt (Main) prior to leaving Germany
Figure 3. England’s “Alien Exemption from Internment” card for Ernst Berliner dated the 8th of November 1939, showing his date and place of birth and occupation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4. Frankfurt, Germany “Registration of Foreigner and German Persecutee, 1939-1947,” dated the 4th of May 1950, listing Ernst Berliner
Figure 5. Page from England’s “National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administration)” showing Ernst Berliner died in Willesden, London, England on the 25th of February 1956, had his will administered on the 29th of May 1956, and left his personal effects to Barbara Friedlaender

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6. Page from England’s “Civil Registration Death Index,” showing Ernst Berliner died in the first quarter of 1956, and indicating the register where his death certificate can be found

 

With this data in hand, I turned to the United Kingdom’s (UK) General Register Office online database and ordered Ernst Berliner’s death record in April 2020. Previous UK death certificates I have ordered sometimes name the father, and I was hoping this would again be the case. During these Covid-19 times, it took more than three months for the official document to arrive. But, when it arrived, I realized it included negligible new information and named neither his father nor any next-of-kin. (Figure 7) The person who caused Ernst Berliner’s body to be cremated, identified as Erica Weiss, I later learned was someone who probably worked in his household as a domestic helper.

 

Figure 7. Ernst Berliner’s death certificate obtained from the United Kingdom’s “General Register Office,” confirming he died on the 25th of February 1956 in Willesden, London, England

 

 

Realizing there was little to be learned from the “backend” of Ernst’s life, I turned my attention to obtaining his birth certificate. Given Ernst’s year of birth in 1878, I knew the record would be among the civil records found at “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu,” State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz. I asked my historian friend from Racibórz, Poland, Mr. Paul Newerla, whether he could obtain a copy of Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate. Even though the State Archives is currently shuttered to the public on account of the Covid pandemic, Paul was able to contact their office and quickly obtain a copy of the document in question. (Figures 8a-b) The record identified Ernst’s father as Hermann Berliner, and, initially, I was stunned and excited by the discovery, thinking I had uncovered a previously unknown sibling of my grandmother. This would not have been unprecedented. In Post 34 and the postscripts, I discussed my grandmother’s older sister, Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner, who I learned about from a single picture of her found among my cousin’s collection of family photographs (Figure 9); my great-aunt Grete Brauer was murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on the 24th of November 1942 and was never mentioned to me growing up so I naturally assumed the same might have been true of a previously unknown great-uncle.

 

Figure 8a. Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate obtained from the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz,” proving he was born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor to a Herman Berliner, coincidentally the same name as my great-grandfather
Figure 8b. Translation of Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 9. My great-aunt Margareth “Grete” Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942), murdered in the Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1942

 

My grandmother was born in 1873, her older sister Grete in 1872, and her younger brother Alfred Max Berliner in 1875; the timing of Ernst’s birth in 1878 would not have been illogical. However, upon obtaining a translation of Ernst Berliner’s birth certificate, I discovered that his mother had not been my great-grandmother Olga Berliner née Braun but had instead been a Sara Riesenfeld.

I was next left to contemplate whether my great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (Figure 10) might have divorced his first wife and remarried this Sara. I swiftly concluded based on two pieces of evidence this was unlikely to have occurred. The Hermann Berliner who was married to Sara Riesenfeld was identified on their child’s birth certificate as a “hausierer,” an old-fashioned professional title meaning “street vendor,” or “door-to-door salesman.” I know that my great-grandfather was a “brauereimeister,” a master brewer, although I considered the possibility he might have changed professions after 1878. The more compelling evidence that I was looking at two different Hermann Berliners is that my great-grandparents Hermann and Olga were once interred together in the now destroyed Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor; I have a picture of their former headstone. (Figure 11)

 

Figure 10. My great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (1840-1910)
Figure 11. Headstone from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor for my great-grandparents, Hermann Berliner and Olga Berliner née Braun (1852-1920)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not entirely satisfied with the evidence I had mustered, I continued to look for further proof I was dealing with two different people by the same name. An 1889 Ratibor Address Book lists only one Hermann Berliner (Figure 12), so this was inconclusive.

 

Figure 12. Page from an 1889 Ratibor Address Book listing my great-grandfather Hermann Berliner and his mother Pauline Berliner, identifying her as “Witwe,” a widow

 

I returned my attention to Ernst Berlin, and ultimately found in MyHeritage a “1939 Register of England and Wales,” with his name and the members of his household then residing in London. (Figure 13) His wife “Grete” (i.e., misidentified as “?Rete”) and her date of birth, 6th of June 1880 (i.e., she was actually born in July), were listed. I quickly discovered she was born in Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] as Grete Moskowicz. Like her husband and many other Jews, she had her German nationality annulled following her departure from Germany (Figure 14) and was registered in the United Kingdom as a World War II Alien Internee upon her arrival there. She died in London on the 7th of April 1940, and her probate hearing was held on the 25th of July 1940 (Figure 15); Ernst, shown to be a retired bank director, inherited. I have found no evidence that Ernst and Grete had any children.

 

Figure 13. “1939 Register of England and Wales” for Ernst Berliner and his household members, listing his wife and domestic helpers, and their dates of birth
Figure 14. Evidence of the Nazi Regime’s annulment of Grete Berliner née Moskowicz’s German nationality, showing she was born on the 6th of June 1880 (July is the correct month) in Breslau and last lived in Frankfurt (Main) prior to leaving Germany

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 15. Page from England’s “National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administration)” showing Grete Berliner died in Willesden, London, England on the 4th of April 1940, had her will administered on the 25th of July 1940, and left her personal effects to her husband Ernst Berliner, a retired banker

 

I next turned my attention to family trees on ancestry.com and MyHeritage. With respect to these, I have often expressed my deep-seated concern that because these are not typically based on primary source documents, the data contained within them is often wrong. Compounding the problem is that genealogists developing their own trees often replicate errors from earlier trees. Still, I have begun to apply a principle I have learned from listening to an investment service to which I am subscribed that maintains the statistical data cited for stocks and companies may be “directionally correct but precisely wrong.” Applied to ancestral data, this means that while vital data of people included in trees may not always be precisely accurate, the relationship among the people may be correct.

Having had limited success finding additional information on Hermann Berliner, I turned my attention to his wife Sara Riesenfeld. Indirectly, I found a surprising amount of information on both in one family tree developed by a “Peter Lax,” confirming Ernst’s father was indeed a different Hermann Berliner than my great-grandfather (Figure 16); this tree identifies another of Hermann and Sara’s sons named Hans born on the 17th of February 1891 in Breslau. I also found the 1913 marriage certificate for a third son, Arthur Berliner, born on the 8th of September 1880, also in Breslau. (Figure 17a-b) According to Yad Vashem, both Arthur and Hans were murdered in the Shoah. There is quite a time span between the birth of Hermann and Sara Berliner’s three sons, 1878 to 1891, so the possibility of additional children exists. Still, based on the information in hand, it seems only Ernst survived the Holocaust.

 

Figure 16. Screen shot of Peter Lax’s family tree with information on Sara Riesenfeld (Ernst Berliner’s mother); circled is the incorrect date of her birth, shown as the 12th of January 1949 when it is in fact the 1st of December 1849, and the name of her father, “Israel Jacob Riesenfeld”

 

Figure 17a. Ancestry.com cover page for the marriage of Ernst Berliner’s younger brother Arthur Berliner to Amalie Luise Bernhardt on the 30th of April 1913 in Breslau, Germany
Figure 17b. Arthur Berliner’s 1913 marriage certificate with the names of his parents, Hermann Berliner and Sara Riesenfeld, circled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Lax’s tree, with more than 100,000 names in it, allows me to illustrate the point I was alluding to above that even the seemingly best documented trees contain errors. Case in point, Mr. Lax’s tree indicates Sara Riesenfeld was born on the 12th of January 1849 in Biała, Opolskie, Poland [formerly: Zülz, Germany], and identifies her father as “Israel Jacob Riesenfled (181601860).” (Figure 16) Consulting the Family History Library Microfilm Roll No. 1271493, found online at familysearch.org, with Jewish birth records from Zülz, Germany (Figure 18) for January of 1849, I could not initially locate Sara’s birth register listing. However, I eventually found her birth register listing under December of 1849. (Figure 19) Inadvertently, Peter Lax transposed “1/12/1849” (i.e., European designated date of 1st of December 1849) as “12/1/1849” (i.e., English designated date of the 12th of January 1849). This is another cautionary tale of consulting primary source documents where they exist to verify vital data.

 

Figure 18. 1893 map of Silesia with the towns of Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland); Beuthen, Germany (today: Bytom, Poland); and Zülz, Germany (today: Biała, Poland) circled

 

Figure 19. Birth register listing for Sara Riesenfeld circled identifying her father as Israel Riesenfeld and her date of birth as “1/12” (i.e., 1st of December 1849) (Source: Family History Library’s microfilm roll 1271493 for Zülz, Germany, pages 80 and 231 of 380 pages on this roll)

 

One specific piece of information included in Peter Lax’s family tree was the purported place and date of birth of Ernst Berliner’s father, Hermann, on the 1st of June 1852 in Beuthen, Silesia [today: Bytom, Poland]. (Figure 20) I again turned to the Family History Library online microfilms to confirm this, and successfully found and had transcribed and translated Hermann Berliner’s birth register listing. (Figures 21a-b) Hermann’s birth register listing includes the names of his parents, Hirschel Berliner and Jalünder Rohel née Silbermann, both of whom I later found in the “Jewish Records Indexing-Poland” and “JewishGen Worldwide Burial Registry,” “JOWBR.” This allowed me to “push back” their ancestral tree another generation.

 

Figure 20. Screen shot of Peter Lax’s family tree with information on Hermann Berliner (Ernst Berliner’s father), showing his date and place of birth, the 1st of June 1852 in Bytom, Poland (formerly: Beuthen, Germany)

 

Figure 21a. Birth register entry for Hermann Berliner circled, identifying his parents as Hirschel Berliner and Jalünder Rohel née Silbermann and his date of birth as 1st of June 1852 (Source: Family History Library microfilm roll 1335074 for Beuthen, Germany, page 31 of 476 pages on this roll)
Figure 21b. German transcription and English translation of Hermann Berliner’s birth register entry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having confirmed that Hermann Berliner, father of Ernst Berliner born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, was not my grandmother’s father prompted me to trace my great-grandfather’s lineage with reference to primary source documents. In the ensuing post, I will present this information. Regular readers know that without primary source documents in hand, I am most hesitant to accept ancestral and vital data found on other trees. Regarding my ancestral tree, I am much more interested in having well-sourced data and pictures on fewer people than unproven information going back multiple generations. While I assume there exists an ancestral connection between my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner and Ernst Berliner and his ancestors, I have not yet ferreted out this relationship.

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS FOR ERNST BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE RELATIVES

 

NAME

(relationship)

VITAL EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE OF DATA
         
Ernst Berliner (self) Birth 7 March 1878 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Ancestry.com;

State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz birth certificate

Death 25 February 1956 Willesden, Middlesex, England UK “Index of Wills and Administration, National Probate Calendar”;

UK General Register Office death certificate

Grete Moskowicz (wife) Birth 6 July 1880 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Multiple ancestry.com documents
Death 7 April 1940 Willesden, Middlesex, England UK “Index of Wills and Administration, National Probate Calendar”
Hermann Berliner (father) Birth 1 June 1852 Beuthen, Germany [today: Bytom, Poland] Family History Library Microfilm Roll 1335074 (Beuthen, Germany)
Death   Kattowitz, Germany [today: Katowice, Poland] Peter Lax Family Tree
Sara Riesenfeld (mother) Birth 1 December 1849 Zülz, Germany [today: Biała, Poland] Family History Library Microfilm Roll 1271493 (Zülz, Germany)
Marriage 5 February 1876 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Peter Lax Family Tree
Death   Kattowitz, Germany [today: Katowice, Poland] Peter Lax Family Tree
Arthur Berliner (brother) Birth 8 September 1880 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Eastern Prussian Provinces marriage certificate
Marriage (to Amalie Luise Bernhardt) 30 April 1913 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Eastern Prussian Provinces marriage certificate
Death 29 November 1941 Fort IX, Kaunas, Lithuania Yad Vashem
Hans Berliner (brother) Birth 17 February 1891 Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] Peter Lax Family Tree
Death Between 1941 and 1944 Minsk Ghetto, Belarus Yad Vashem; Peter Lax Family Tree

POST 85: FURTHER EVIDENCE OF MY UNCLE WALTER BRUCK’S DEATH IN INFANCY

Note: In this post I relate the story of how in the process of helping a reader whose grandmother died in 1940 in Ratibor, the birthplace of my father, I improbably discovered information on some of my own ancestors.

Related Posts:

Post 12: “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz (Ratibor)”

Post 13: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

Post 13, Postscript: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

 

Figure 1. 1903 Ratibor postcard of the “Oderbrücke,” the bridge over the River Oder dividing the town

 

Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] (Figure 1), the town in the Prussian province of Upper Silesia where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907 was one of the largest municipalities in the region. Periodically, readers who are descended from former inhabitants of Ratibor will contact me through my Blog asking for information I have or may have come across related to their ancestors. Often, their relatives are entirely unknown to me but seeing what, if anything, I can uncover about them becomes an extension of my own forensic genealogical endeavors. And, the pleasure I derive in helping others is sometimes magnified when I learn something about my own ancestors in the process. The inspiration for the current post stems from precisely such a situation.

 

Figure 2. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the gentleman from Racibórz responsible for photographing and documenting all the headstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

One reader, Dan Ward, recently contacted me after perusing Post 13 and Post 13, Postscript, and learning the “Muzeum w Raciborzu” in Racibórz had given me an Excel spreadsheet with the names of the Jews that had once been interred in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, requesting a copy of this database. This cemetery was demolished in the 1960’s during Poland’s Communist era to further expunge evidence of German residency in the area. Fortunately, before the stout headstones were torn down and sold off locally, a Polish gentleman whom I wrote about in Post 13, Postscript, Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński (Figure 2), had the foresight to photograph all the gravestones; these images served as the basis for the creation of the Excel database, with the Racibórz Museum staff gleaning as much vital information as possible from the high-quality snapshots. Despite the sharp and fine details on the photos, not all the data is discernible. More on this below.

Dan Ward contacted me seeking information on the tombstone and burial location of his grandmother, Rosa Wartenberger née Perl, who according to records he found was buried on the 29th of March 1940 in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor, Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, in Plot 153; she died or committed suicide before she was scheduled to be deported to a concentration camp. As a quick aside, the “Ward” surname is clearly the Anglicized version of the “Wartenberger” family name. Dan sent me screen shots with the source of this information, Jewish Gen. As readers can see, Rosa Wartenberger’s name was misspelled as “Risa Wortenberger,” although the transcriber obviously had trouble deciphering the script. (Figure 3)

 

Figure 3. Screen shot from “JewishGen” with information on Rosa Wartenberger, misspelled as “Risa Wortenberger,” showing she was interred on the 29th of March 1940 in the “Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor” in Plot 153

 

Armed with the information Dan sent me, I immediately began my own research. The first thing I checked was the Excel spreadsheet with the names of Jews formerly buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, and Rosa Wartenberg is not listed. Dan would later tell me his grandmother’s maiden name was “Perl,” and I found four individuals with this surname once interred in the Jewish graveyard, but being unfamiliar with Dan’s family tree, I am not sure how they might have been related to her.

Next, I checked address books and phone directories for Ratibor. I have previously told readers about a database on ancestry.com, entitled “Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974 (Adressbücher aus Deutschland und Umgebung, 1815-1974),” with address books for Germany, Poland, and other neighboring countries. In the only address book in this database for Ratibor for the year 1938, I found a single “Wartenberger.” It was for a man named “Kurt Wartenberger,” identified as a “gastwirt,” innkeeper, shown living at “Breite Straße 54.” (Figure 4)

 

Figure 4. Page from 1938 Ratibor Address Book listing “Kurt Wartenberger,” an innkeeper, shown living at “Breite Straße 54”

 

I asked my friend Mr. Paul Newerla from Racibórz, a retired lawyer whom regular readers have often heard me mention, who now researches and writes about the history of Silesia, whether the surname “Wartenberger” is familiar to him. It is not, but in a 1926 Ratibor Address Book not included among the “Germany and Surrounding Areas” directories, he too found “Kurt Wartenberger” listed, identified then as a “destillateur,” distiller, living at “Brunken 54.” (Figure 5) Other than finding Kurt Wartenberger’s name in the 1926 Ratibor directory, Paul could add nothing more.

 

Figure 5. Section from 1926 Ratibor Address Book listing “Kurt Wartenberger,” then a distiller, shown living at “Brunken 54”

 

 

I found it odd the address number “54” was identical in 1926 and 1938 but that the street names were different. Paul Newerla explained that “Brunken” was a connecting street to what is referred to as the Altendorf district, that’s to say, a little “outside” of Ratibor along the main road towards Oppeln [today: Opole, Poland] and Leobschutz [today: Głubczyce, Poland]. I located this street, respectively, on plan maps of Ratibor from 1927-28 (Figure 6) and 1933 (Figure 7), although a plan map from 1914 names it “Große-Vorstadt.” (Figure 8) In tiny print on all three plan maps, readers can see the number “54,” confirming it was the same corner lot with different street names over time.

 

Figure 6. 1927-28 Ratibor Plan Map with “Brunken” and number “54” circled

 

Figure 7. 1933 Ratibor Plan Map with “Brunken” and number “54” circled

 

Figure 8. 1914 Ratibor Plan Map with “Große-Vorstadt” and number “54” circled

 

I passed along what Paul and I had found to Dan Ward. He confirmed that Kurt had owned a tavern and that family papers in his possession place Kurt’s business at “Große-Vorstadt 54,” papers which must clearly pre-date 1927-28, by which time the street was known as “Brunken.” By 1938, the street had been renamed yet again because it was then called “Breite Straße.” According to Dan, Kurt Wartenberger was murdered in the Shoah in Buchenwald, and, indeed, Yad Vashem lists him as a victim of the Holocaust. (Figure 9)

 

Figure 9. Page from Yad Vashem confirming Kurt Wartenberger, born in 1884, was murdered during the Shoah

 

Next, I retraced Dan Ward’s steps to track down the source of the information on his grandmother, misspelled as mentioned above as “Risa Wortenberger.” The data, as I previously also said, originates from JewishGen, and relocating it was straight-forward. Here, however, is where things took an interesting turn. The source documentation for the data in JewishGen comes from elsewhere, namely, from the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2” (Figure 10), which is one of three microfilm rolls with data on the former Jewish inhabitants of Ratibor. While I had last examined this microfilm many years ago, when it was still necessary to order films from the LDS Church in Salt Lake City and have hard copies sent to a local Family History Library for viewing, I clearly remembered this roll as having limited or, at least, confusing information. Now that the Ratibor records are accessible online through familysearch.org, I decided to reexamine film 1184447.

 

Figure 10. Source of information on Rosa Wartenberger circled, namely, the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (LDS) “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2”

 

For anyone interested in seeking similar information from familysearch.org for towns they are researching, they can replicate these steps:

1) Go to familysearch.org (you can create a free account);​

2) Under the “Search” button, scroll down to “Catalog,” click enter, and go to the following page;​

3) Next, type in “Raciborz” under “Place,” or whatever town you are seeking records for (i.e., different spellings yield different results, so for towns that are now located in different countries than they once were, you may need to try alternate spellings);

4) Scroll down to “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz),” then hit “Search”;​

5) Select “Poland, Opole, Racibórz (Racibórz) – Jewish records (1),” hit enter;​

6) Next select “Matrikel, 1814-1940”;​

7) On the next screen select “1184447, Item 2” (select the camera icon all the way to the right; if there is a key above a camera icon, the microfilm is unavailable online).

There are 342 pages on Microfilm 1184447 but only pages 220 through 338, referred to as “Item 2,” specifically deal with Ratibor. The film contains “Friedhofsurkunden 1888-1940” for Ratibor, which Peter Hanke, my German friend who helps me with translations and making sense of German records, tells me is more aptly referred to as “Friedhofsdokumente,” or cemetery documents. The cemetery administration would use these files to see which tombs were unused; which ones could be reused after 25 or 30 years if descendants stopped paying to keep their ancestors interred; which tombs were reserved in perpetuity for so-called “family graves”; or simply to help visitors locate specific graves. These files often contain useful information for genealogists, as I illustrate below.

Let me digress for a moment. Given the disparate sources of ancestral information I have accessed over the years, including in this current post, I am often reminded of the American television game show “Concentration” that aired from 1958 until 1991. Basically, the game was based on the children’s memory game of the same name. Players had to match cards which represented prizes they could win. As matching pairs of cards were gradually removed from the board, it would slowly reveal a rebus puzzle that contestants had to solve to win a match. The similarity I see with genealogical research is not so much solving the rebus, but matching pairs of cards. Often years pass before a “genealogical card” I newly discover can be “matched” to one or more I found earlier in my investigations. The challenge, particularly as I get older, is retrieving the earlier “card” from my memory. Such is the case with connections to Microfilm 1184447, Item 2.

I downloaded, saved, and studied all 119 pages from this film, and made several interesting discoveries and connections. Of immediate interest, I found Rosa Wartenberger’s name in an index (Figure 11); as readers can discern from what I have circled in Figure 11, the number “46” appears to the right of Rosa’s name; this refers to the page number in the “Friedhofsdokumente,” on which Rosa’s name and interment date appear. Initially, I found only one page 46, not realizing there was a left page-right page pair.

 

Figure 11. Page 69 from Ratibor’s Cemetery Records with Rosa Wartenberger’s name circled, showing that her specific information can be found on page 46 of this register

 

Let me briefly explain. When the LDS Church originally photographed vital records for Ratibor and other places, they typically started by photographing the left-side pages from the front to the back of the register, then in reverse order from the back to the front photographed the right-side pages; thus, the left page-right page pairs, either identically numbered or consecutively numbered, from any register will not be found on consecutive microfilm images. Thus, while Rosa’s name does not appear on the left-hand page 46, it is found on the right-hand page 46; for reader’s ease, I have “grafted” the two pages in one (Figure 12), and translated, using a different grafted left-right pair of pages, the headers for each column. (Figure 13)

 

Figure 12. Left and right-hand sides of page 46 “grafted” together

 

Figure 13. The column headers translated for a left-right pair of pages containing information on what are called “Erbbegräbnisse,” multi-generational “hereditary graves”

 

As readers can see, by “Grabnummer,” grave number, 153, the date of Rosa’s interment is shown, the 29th of March 1940, which matches the information in JewishGen. The column titled “Belegt” translates to “occupied,” and signifies when a person was interred, rather than when they died.

Once a researcher understands the organizational “structure” of microfilms with cemetery documents, they are easy though tedious to use. On one left-right pair of pages, I was able to find both sets of great-grandparents on my father’s side. (Figure 14) Oddly, the names of Fedor Bruck (Figure 15) and his wife, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (Figure 16), are not found in the Excel spreadsheet at the Muzeum w Raciborzu, meaning no photo of their headstone was taken. However, Hermann Berliner (Figure 17) and Olga Berliner née Braun’s names do appear in the Excel spreadsheet indicating a picture of their gravestone exists. (Figure 18)

 

Figure 14. Index in “Family History Library International Film 1184447, Item 2” with the names of both sets of my great-grandparents on my father’s side circled, Fedor Bruck and his wife, “Frau F. Bruck” (Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer), and Olga Berliner née Braun and her husband, Hermann Berliner

 

Figure 15. One of my great-grandfathers, Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)
Figure 16. My great-grandfather Fedor Bruck’s wife, Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924), who died in Berlin but was interred in Ratibor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 17. Another of my great-grandfathers, Hermann Berliner (1840-1910)
Figure 18. Headstone for my great-grandparents, Olga and Hermann Berliner, once interred in the “Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know from a family tree in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute that my great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer died in Berlin on the 29th of February 1924 (Figure 19), though she was not buried there. From Microfilm 1184447, I learned she was instead interred on the 11th of May 1924 in Ratibor, almost 10 weeks later, presumably alongside her husband. Jews are typically interred within two to three days after they die, so a 10-week delay is very unusual. (Figure 20)

 

Figure 19. Family tree in the Pinkus Family Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute showing my great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer died in Berlin on the 29th of February 1924

 

Figure 20. Page 7 from Ratibor’s Cemetery Records showing Friederike Bruck was interred in the Jewish Cemetery on the 11th of May 1924, more than 10 weeks after she died in Berlin

 

On Microfilm 1184447, I also found a single page mentioning one of my father’s older brothers who died in infancy, Walter Bruck. (Figure 21) His name is found on a page entitled “Kleiner Kinderfriedhof,” small children’s cemetery. This is further proof of his existence. A brief explanation. After I began immersing myself in family history and creating a family tree years ago, I started to wonder why there was a nine-year age difference between my father’s oldest brother, Fedor Bruck, born in 1895, and my father’s older sister, Susanne Bruck, born in 1904, in an era where families were large. I eventually learned in 2014 when I visited the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu” (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Raciborz”) that another sibling had been born in 1900 (Figure 22) who died in infancy the next year (Figure 23), named Walter Bruck. I was able to retrieve both his birth and death certificates among the civil records archived at the Archiwum Państwowe. Thus, the discovery of Walter Bruck’s name on Microfilm 1184447 was confirmation he was once buried in the Jüdischer Friedhof Ratibor.

 

Figure 21. Page 30 of Ratibor’s Cemetery Records with my Uncle Walter Bruck’s name, interred in the “Kleiner Kinderfriedhof,” small children’s cemetery

 

Figure 22. My uncle Walter Bruck’s birth certificate showing he was born on the 15th of August 1900 in Ratibor
Figure 23. My uncle Walter Bruck’s death certificate showing he died on the 11th of April 1901

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the photos that Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński took at the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor before it was demolished is one showing the “Kindergräber,” children’s graves. (Figure 24) As readers can see, the children’s names on some of the headstones can be made out, though most are indecipherable. Interestingly, there is a separate index on Microfilm 1184447, entitled “Großer kinderfriedhof,” big children’s cemetery (Figure 25), with the names of older children buried in the Jewish Cemetery. Infants may have been interred in graves identified only by number, as I discovered in the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin.

 

Figure 24. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński’s photo of the “Kindergräber,” children’s graves, the section in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor where infants and young children were interred

 

Figure 25. Separate index on Microfilm 1184447, entitled “Großer kinderfriedhof,” big children’s cemetery, with the names of older children who died and were buried in Ratibor

 

As a tedious exercise for another day, which I started while researching and writing this post, is cross-checking the names on Microfilm 1184447 with those on the Excel spreadsheet. Some names on Microfilm 1184447 are not in the Excel database, while others are found in both. Preliminarily, I was able to amend death dates or years in the Excel directory, which, as previously mentioned, was compiled from photos, some of which are indistinct.

In closing, I would say one final thing. Based on the Excel index I obtained years ago, I mistakenly concluded then that none of my Bruck relatives had ever been interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, even though I knew some died there when the cemetery was still in use. However, with the benefit of the information I recently acquired from the Jewish records on Microfilm 1184447, I am certain that at least three relatives with the Bruck surname were once buried there. And, this discovery was spurred by helping a reader learn about one of his relatives, a case of helping yourself by aiding others, a most satisfying outcome!

POST 43: HELPING A JEWISH FRIEND UNCOVER HIS GERMAN ROOTS

Note:  In this Blog post, I talk about some ancestral research I undertook at the request of a childhood friend from New York of almost 60 years, and some interesting findings we made along the way.

Related Posts:  

Post 11: Ratibor & Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

Post 12: “State Branch of Katowice Archives Branch in Racibórz (Ratibor)”

Post 13: The Former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Racibórz)

 

Figure 1. My and my wife’s English-speaking Polish friend, Malgosia Ploszaj, from Rybnik, Poland, 16 miles east of Racibórz

First, let me set the stage.

In 2014, my wife and I spent 13 weeks in Europe driving everywhere from Gdansk, a Polish city on the Baltic coast, all the way to Valencia and Barcelona, along Spain’s eastern coast, visiting places my father and his family had once lived.  Prior to our departure, we attended a lecture in Los Angeles given by Mr. Roger Lustig, sponsored by the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society, on researching Jewish families of Prussian Poland, a place where many of my Hebraic ancestors come from.  Knowing we would be passing through Poland, I contacted Mr. Lustig about extant Jewish records for Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], formerly part of Upper Silesia in Prussia, where my father and many of his immediate family were born.  Roger took an immediate interest in helping since a branch of his own family came from there.  He graciously introduced me to an English-speaking Polish lady, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj (Figure 1), from nearby Rybnik, Poland [formerly: Rybnick, Germany], who is actively involved in researching what she calls “her Rybnik Jews” and who was enormously helpful when we met.  In Blog Post 12, I discussed how Malgosia helped me navigate the civil records at the “State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz.” (Figure 2)  Archived here, we discovered an administrative  file of historic police documents from the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel (Figure 3), a family-owned establishment through three generations (see Blog Post 11), as well as vital records for family members.

Figure 2. Entrance to “Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu,” the State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz
Figure 3. Cover of the administrative police file with historic documents dealing with the Bruck’s family “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, found at the State Archives in Racibórz

 

Figure 4. Entrance to the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, which was dismantled during Poland’s Communist Era and converted into Community Gardens

In February 2015, many months after our visit to Racibórz, Malgosia sent me a link to an hour-long BBC video done by an English journalist, Mr. Adrian Goldberg, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945.  In this video, Mr. Goldberg told his family story through home recordings he’d done with his now-deceased father who, like my own father, was Jewish and born in Ratibor.  Adrian’s father survived because his parents were able to secure a place for him on a Kindertransport (German for “children’s transport”) to the United Kingdom, although Adrian’s grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz, same as my beloved Aunt Susanne.  Malgosia provided local support to Adrian during the production of his video, which was filmed in the now-destroyed former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor (Figure 4), subject of my Blog Post 13, a place where many of my and Adrian’s relatives were once interred.

Following the release of Adrian’s video in 2015, we had occasion to exchange a few emails to bemoan the woeful condition of the former Jewish cemetery in Ratibor, and what might be done about this.  Within just the last two months, I was contacted by Adrian’s staff in connection with an article he was working on related to obtaining a German passport, which, as the son of a German refugee, he is entitled to.  Adrian’s article on the calculation that went into deciding to do so, given his father’s refugee status and the negative reaction his father likely would have had were he still alive, has since appeared in print on BBC.com on December 24, 2018.  Adrian makes clear his decision to apply for a German passport stems not from any political or philosophical standpoint, stressing he deeply loves England.  It is more a reflection of post-Brexit realities and the greater flexibility that being an EU citizen with the right to work and travel freely across 27 countries without any visa requirements provides; that said, the idea of adopting the nationality of a country that murdered many family members was not an easy one.

Figure 5. Harold and me as children

 

Adrian Goldberg’s deliberations about applying for a German passport happened to coincide with a request from my childhood friend Harold from New York, whom I’ve known for almost 60 years (Figure 5), for help documenting his German roots.  He has a similar goal, obtaining German passports for he and his immediate family; as the child of Jewish refugees who fled Germany in the 1930’s, like Adrian, my friend is entitled to a German passport.  My friend’s interest in securing dual nationality is different than Adrian’s, however.  It has little to do with wanting to become an EU member but relates to the increasingly divisive political environment in our country.  My friend wants the option of legally moving himself and his family to Germany should the political landscape in America continue to deteriorate and becomes far worse than that in Germany, and not find himself in the same circumstances as many German Jews did in the 1930’s, unable to find a safe port.  Contemplating returning to a country that perpetrated the Holocaust and killed some of Harold’s ancestors is an irony not lost on either of us.

Documenting my friend’s German lineage was a straight-forward task.  However, as ancestral searches are often wont to do, it morphed into searching for my friend’s family who may have wound up in the United States or South America after they left Germany, as well as a hunt for older ancestors who were born and died in Prussia.  I’m happy to report that the forensic genealogical work has now been taken over in exceptional fashion by my friend’s daughter.

Briefly, I want to devote the remainder of this post to talking about a few discoveries and connections my friend’s daughter and I have made, along with a mystery that remains unsolved.

My friend’s uncle Paul, his father’s brother, was born in 1900 in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, lived and worked in Berlin for a time, then emigrated from Germany in 1937 or 1938, arriving in New York in October 1938; this was merely a transit point, by choice or design, and he eventually alit in South America, Chile by all accounts.  My friend remembers an annual conversation that took place between his father and his uncle Paul, perhaps around one of their birthdays, but cannot otherwise recall what happened to him.  From my own personal experience, I can attest to the difficulty in finding evidence of Jewish ancestors who immigrated to South America before or after WWII; as we speak, I am trying to discover the fate of one of my father’s first cousins who lived and perhaps died in Buenos Aires, Argentina around 1948, so far to no avail.  As to Harold’s uncle, his daughter and I have so far hit a brick wall in determining his destiny.

As previously mentioned, Harold and I have known one another for almost 60 years.  Like my father, I was an active tennis player growing up.  So, in the course of discussing my friend’s family with him, we both clearly recalled one of his distant relatives who was a highly regarded tennis player when we were growing up.  My friend remembered her name, Marilyn, and because she was a ranked player for a time, we had no trouble finding information on her and even getting her phone number.  Several days later, I placed a “cold” call to Marilyn, left a message explaining who I was and that I was calling on behalf of my friend, who I thought might be related to her.  Later that day, Harold’s tennis-playing kin returned my call, and we had an eminently delightful conversation.

While I quickly receded into the background, I learned when Marilyn had been born, but equally importantly that her mother, Gisela, is still alive and of sound mind.  I passed this information along to Harold, uncertain exactly where it would lead, although excited on his behalf that he could converse with an older member of his family.

 

Figure 6. Photo of Gisela from her Immigration Card when she and her husband Ernest traveled to South America
Figure 7. Ernest’s Immigration Card photo when he traveled to South America with his wife

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prior to contacting Marilyn, I had already found Immigration Cards for both her parents, Gisela and Ernest, her father now deceased, with attached photos showing what they looked like when they traveled to South America. (Figures 6-7)  I forwarded these to Harold, at which point he had an “aha!” moment.  He dug out his bar mitzvah album photos and began comparing Gisela and Ernest’s immigration card pictures to them.  Triumphantly, Harold discovered a picture of himself with his parents and Gisela and Ernest altogether! (Figure 8)

Figure 8. Photo from Harold’s bar mitzvah showing Gisela and Ernest on the far left

Harold eventually spoke by phone with Gisela in December 2018 and sent her pictures he thought were of her and her husband at his bar mitzvah; she confirmed the pictures were them.  Gisela explained that Ernest and Harold’s father had been second cousins, and that Marilyn and Harold are therefore third cousins; it’s not clear Harold ever met his third cousin growing up in New York.  Gisela and Ernest would from time to time socialize with Harold’s parents when all lived in New York but drifted apart when they became “snowbirds” in different parts of Florida.  Gisela graciously provided a family tree to Harold that has allowed Harold’s daughter to broaden her ancestral investigations.  What Gisela was unable to provide, however, were clues as to where Harold’s uncle Paul wound up.

Tangentially, Harold’s daughter and I have discovered no fewer than three Upper Silesian towns where members of our respective families once lived, Ratibor, Beuthen [today: Bytom, Poland], and Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]; there are likely many more.  Given that some of these towns were modest in size, and the Jewish communities relatively small, it’s highly likely Harold’s family and my family intermarried, making us distant cousins.

In conclusion, let me remark on one thing.  Regular readers know my Blog is not political.  Yet, one cannot talk about Jews who were victims of National Socialism without being political and recognizing and condemning modern-day parallels.  Today’s populists who demonize and discriminate against Jews and other minorities are no different than the fascists of old.  It’s the canary in the coal mine when Americans of all stripes begin to consider moving elsewhere in the unlikely event that the political divisions in our country worsen.  It’s imperative we speak out against falsifiers and admirers of tyrants and dictators wherever and whenever they crawl out of the woodwork.

POST 13, POSTSCRIPT: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

Note:  This postscript provides an opportunity to acknowledge a “righteous man,” Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the Polish gentleman I learned was responsible for photographing and documenting the tombstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor.  I recently learned about this Polish gentleman from Mr. Paul Newerla, the retired lawyer and Racibórz historian, who was a friend of Mr. Świetliński.  In the process, I also learned about “lost treasure” recovered in Racibórz.

POST 13: THE FORMER JEWISH CEMETERY IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ)

Readers will recall from my earlier post that the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor was “liquidated,” not during the Third Reich but rather during Poland’s Communist era.  I learned that prior to its destruction, all the tombstones, the oldest of which dated to 1821, the youngest to 1940-1941, and their locations within the cemetery were photographed and plotted on a map.  I was told the original photographs and plan maps are stored at the Muzeum Raciborzu, so I arranged with the museum to view and photograph all these materials in 2015.

It had been cynically suggested that the headstones had been photographed perhaps by an agent of the Polish security services, possibly to fend off future attempts by Jewish descendants to reclaim property confiscated from their relatives by the Nazis.  Exactly how documenting the tombstones would have blocked such claims is not clear, on the contrary.

Figure 1. Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński, the gentleman from Racibórz responsible for photographing and documenting all the headstones in the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor

 

Figure 2. Plan map of the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor showing the location of the headstones whose images appear in photo album no. 6

Regardless, in June 2018, when I met Mr. Paul Newerla, Racibórz historian, I asked him whether he knew the history about the images.  Paul told me the pictures and maps had been made by a now-deceased friend of his, Mr. Kazimierz Świetliński. (Figure 1) Mr. Świetliński was the college-educated Chief of Racibórz’s Parks Department, and an excellent gardener.  He produced two copies of all the images and photo albums (Figure 2), one of which he donated to the Muzeum Raciborzu, the other which he retained for himself.  Produced as they were in the days before digital photography, developing the pictures came at great personal cost and sacrifice.

In anticipation of preparing this post, Paul Newerla passed along an article, which I will return to below, that included a little background on Mr. Świetliński and on the fate of the Jewish kirkut or “cemetery” in Racibórz.  Roughly translated from Polish, I quote:

“In 1972-73, the kirkut was liquidated.  Local stonemasons were permitted to remove Classical, neo-Gothic, and modernist matzevot [“tombstone”], which they later turned into tombstones in Catholic cemeteries.  Today, only old trees remain in the necropolis.” (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Fragment of a headstone from the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz, photographed in 2014

From this article, we learn Mr. Świetliński photographed the tombstones sometime before 1972, and the disposition of the Jewish tombstones.

Among the photographic images captured by Mr. Świetliński from the former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor are ones showing the “kindergräber,” or children’s graves (Figure 4); most of these graves appear to have headstones inscribed with the name and dates of birth and death of the children, some with sufficient clarity to make out specific information. (Figure 5)  I had hoped I might be able to find an image showing the grave of my father’s older brother, Walter Bruck, who died in infancy in Ratibor in 1901, to no avail. 

Figure 4. One of Mr. Świetliński’s images, showing the “kindergräber,” or children’s graves, in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz
Figure 5. Close-up of the headstone of Ernst Tichauer who died at two years of age and was buried in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz

 

Figure 6. The children’s grave for Wolfgang Bruck, one of my father’s first cousins buried in the Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee in East Berlin, whose headstone only has the number “33210” inscribed

The former children’s tombstones in Ratibor are unlike the kindergräber I recently had the opportunity to visit in the Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee in East Berlin, where at least three of my ancestors are interred, including one of my father’s first cousins who also died in infancy; here, the children’s tombstones are inscribed only with numbers (Figure 6), but without an index it is impossible to know who was buried where.  Fortunately, an index does survive for the cemetery in East Berlin.

The information on Mr. Świetliński and the disposition of the headstones from the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor in the article sent to me by Paul Newerla are only footnotes to the broader subject of the article.  The original article deals with an intriguing bit of local history and relates to a file from 60 years ago marked “CONFIDENTIAL” that was found at the Polish State Archives in Racibórz.

Figure 7. Historic postcard showing the former Jewish Synagogue in Ratibor

 

Figure 8. Plan map of Ratibor from 1927-28 showing the location of the former Jewish Cemetery in relation to the former Jewish Synagogue (both circled in red)

 

Figure 9. A photo of he former Jewish Synagogue in Ratibor in flames on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938

Apparently, a chest of papers and documents owned by Leon Blum, the former Socialist Prime Minister of France who was Jewish, wound up in Racibórz, hidden there in 1943 by the Germans; seemingly, the chest was squirreled away in the synagogue at the Jewish cemetery, once located on the outskirts of town along Leobschützstraße [today: Wilczej Górze and Fojcik głubczycki streets].  The problem, according to maps drawn by Mr. Kazimierz, is that no synagogue or chapel existed on the cemetery grounds.  Possibly, the chest was stored at the synagogue on Schuhbankstraße [today: ulica Szewska], once located in Ratibor’s city center. (Figures 7 & 8)  While torched on Kristallnacht (Figure 9), the synagogue survived WWII but was ultimately dismantled during the Communist era.  Interestingly, a black, sealed chest belonging to Leon Blum was eventually discovered in Racibórz, although the final correspondence, dated December 22, 1945, found in the “Confidential” file, makes no mention of where.  Possibly it was found in one of the larger family tombs at the cemetery, perhaps in the synagogue, or maybe even in the private home of a person who hid Blum’s souvenirs.  It’s assumed the black, sealed chest was transferred to Katowice, as Polish authorities had requested be done in 1945, and from there to the French embassy. 

Needless, to say, the question of how Leon Blum’s chest of personal papers wound up in Racibórz very much intrigued me, almost like a scene out of “The Monuments Men,” so I posed this question to Paul Newerla.  According to Paul, Leon Blum’s papers were confiscated by the Nazis in Paris around 1943 by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg or “ERR,” the Nazi Party organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during the Second World War and deposited in Racibórz.  At the time, the town was deemed to be sufficiently out of reach of Allied bombers and Russian forces to ensure the papers were not inadvertently destroyed.

Mr. Świetliński is owed a major debt of gratitude.  I characterize him as a “righteous man,” because in my mind he anticipated that one day Jewish descendants might want to know where their ancestors had been buried, see images of their ancestors’ graves, and know that someone, unrelated to the deceased, cared enough to record the existence of their relatives.  And, possibly, Mr. Świetliński thought future generations of Poles might be curious that a Jewish community once thrived in Racibórz and want to know how and why it disappeared.