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

 

Note: In this lengthy post, I discuss one of my Jewish relatives by marriage who along with her family wound up in the Dominican Republic during WWII. I explore the cultural and political context in which Herta Brauer worked and her role in introducing ballet to the country under the sponsorship of Flor de Oro Trujillo, the daughter of the country’s longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo.

 

Related Posts:

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 

It is generally accepted there are seven continents in the world, from largest to smallest, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Probably not unlike many readers, I can trace ancestors or relatives connected to all these continents apart from Antarctica. Within North America, I occasionally learn about family that passed through one of the Caribbean islands, usually Cuba.  This post dwells on one Jewish family member, Herta Brauer, who lived with her family in the Dominican Republic for several years. As a result of a relationship she mysteriously established with Flor de Oro Trujillo (Figure 1), one of the daughters of the Dominican Republic’s longtime notorious and brutal dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, Herta was instrumental in the introduction of ballet into the country. In this post I discuss Herta Brauer’s time in the Dominican Republic and the significance of her contribution to Dominican culture.

 

Figure 1. Flor de Oro Trujillo (1915-1978), first-born daughter of the Dominican Republic’s longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961)

 

For the benefit of new subscribers as well as longtime followers, let me briefly review how I learned about Herta Brauer, a relative by marriage whom I introduced to readers in Post 34. Several years ago while in Germany visiting the son of my deceased first cousin, I was perusing my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s photographs that had been inherited by this cousin. One picture immediately caught my attention. On the reverse was written in German what translates as, “Three generations: Grete-Herta-Till & Neubabelsberg 1933”; Neubabelsberg is located near Spandau, on the western outskirts of Berlin. Then, in what was unmistakably my uncle’s shaky handwriting he had added: “Aunt Grete Brauer (mother’s sister with her daughter-in-law and grandson).” (Figures 2a-b) I had an epiphany at this moment when I realized that my grandmother’s sister, Margareth Auguste Berliner, whose birth record I had previously discovered on LDS Microfilm Number 1184449 (Figure 3), had survived to adulthood; this was an “aha” moment because my father had never mentioned the existence of his maternal aunt, so I assumed after first learning about her that she had died at birth or in infancy. As I explained in Post 34, I would eventually learn that my great-aunt Margareth, Grete for short, had been murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.

 

Figure 2a. Greta Brauer, her daughter-in-law Herta Brauer, and her grandson Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933

 

Figure 2b. Captions on the back of photo with Grete Brauer, Herta Brauer, and Till Brauer, Neubabelsberg, Germany, 1933

 

Figure 3. Margareth Auguste Berliner’s birth record (March 19, 1872) (LDS Microfiche 1184449, p. 101)

I first came across the surname “Brauer” when examining the personal papers of my paternal great-aunts Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck that are archived at Berlin’s Stadtmuseum, coincidentally also in Spandau. Here, I discovered multiple letters written to my great-aunt Elsbeth in East Berlin from Calvia, Mallorca by Hanns & Herta Brauer between 1965 and 1967. (Figure 4) The letterhead on some letters read “Dr. E. H. Brauer,” and they were variously signed “Ernst,” “Hanns,” and “Ernst & Herta.”  Elsbeth’s archived materials also include photos the Brauer family sent her, though none of Grete Brauer. (Figures 5-6) Until I found the previously mentioned photo of Grete, I had assumed the Brauers were friends of my great-aunt, not closely related family.

 

Figure 4. Letter from Herta & Ernst Brauer dated the 9th of November 1967 sent from Calvia, Mallorca to my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck in East Berlin

 

Figure 5. Photo of Ernst Hanns Brauer in Calvia, Mallorca dated September 1967

 

Figure 6. Photo of Ernst Hanns Brauer standing next to the noted author Robert Graves (1895-1985) in Deià, Mallorca in April 1967

                                 

Margarethe Berliner (1872-1942) married a man named Siegfried Brauer (1859-1926) in August 1891. (Figure 7) They had two sons, Kurt Brauer (born on July 7, 1893) and Ernst Han(n)s Brauer (born August 9, 1902) (Figure 8) and at least one daughter, Hildegard Brauer (born April 8, 1892), who was also murdered in the Holocaust; possibly, a Thea Brauer born in 1911 who perished in 1919 and who was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] may have been another of their daughters. Kurt Brauer died in 1920 and was also interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, but Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) married Herta Brauer née Stadach (1904-1983) in 1932. (Figures 9a-c) Herta had a daughter by a previous marriage while Ernst and Herta had two sons. The vital statistics for Margarethe and Siegfried Brauer and select descendants and close family are included in a table at the end of this post.

 

Figure 7. Marriage announcement for Siegfried Brauer and my maternal great-aunt Margarethe Brauer née Berliner showing they married in Cosel O.S. (Oberschlesien) in August 1891

 

Figure 8. Birth certificate for Siegfried & Grete Brauer’s son, Ernst Han(n)s Brauer, showing he was born in Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland] on August 9, 1902
Figure 9a. Cover page for Ernst Hanns Brauer and Margareth Muenchow née Stadach (aka Herta Brauer) 1932 marriage certificate

 

Figure 9b. Page 1 of Ernst Hanns Brauer and Margareth Muenchow née Stadach (aka Herta Brauer) 1932 marriage certificate
Figure 9c. Page 2 of Ernst Hanns Brauer and Margareth Muenchow née Stadach (aka Herta Brauer) 1932 marriage certificate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I explained to readers in Post 34, after learning of my maternal great-aunt’s existence, I quickly turned to ancestry.com. There, I found a surprising number of documents and information on the Brauer family which began to fill in some temporal gaps. With information recently acquired, I am better able to partially understand the Brauer family’s movements from 1941 onwards although their length of residence during some periods is still unclear. 

One document I found for Herta Brauer was her Social Security Death Index which indicated that she died in August 1983 (Figure 10), and that her last supposed place of residence was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Aware of a Puerto Rico connection, I Googled the Brauer surname and Puerto Rico, and found a promising lead in the form of a “Till Carl Brauer Mongil”; as an aside in most Spanish-speaking countries offspring carry two surnames, that of their father and mother, thus “Brauer” and “Mongil.” Since Till Brauer once ran a fishing business in Puerto Rico (Figure 11), I was easily able to contact him via email and confirm that he was indeed related to Ernst and Herta Brauer; he was their grandson. We exchanged information and photos and have continued to stay in contact.

 

Figure 10. Herta Brauer’s Social Security Death Index indicating she died in San Juan, Puerto Rico in August 1983

 

Figure 11. Till Carl Brauer Mongil, my third cousin once removed

 

Fast forward. The source for an increasing number of my Blog stories is inspired by readers who contact me through Webmail. Typically, I’m asked for or offered information about the people whom I write about, or people ask whether we are related; often readers are curious as to the source of my information.

I was recently contacted by a Mr. Francisco Pou (Figure 12) from the Dominican Republic who is working on a documentary about the history of classical ballet in his country. It turns out that Herta Brauer is the person who introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic. Since Francis stumbled upon mention of her in my Blog, he was curious whether I could provide additional background information about Herta since she disappeared from the country’s records “almost mysteriously,” according to Francis. I sent him some ancestry.com documents, as well as copies of the letters written by Ernst and Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca to my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck in East Berlin in the mid-1960’s; I also sent Francis a few family photos obtained either from Till Brauer or found among my great-aunt Elsbeth’s personal papers archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. However, the tale that Francis related is much more compelling, the telling of which will allow me to share lesser-known history about the Dominican Republic’s role during WWII offering to save Jewish refugees.

 

Figure 12. Francisco Pou, documentarian from the Dominican Republic, chronicling the history of classical ballet in his country, including the role that Herta Brauer played

 

Let me provide some context for the Dominican Republic’s role in offering Jews safe haven during WWII and the direct impact this had on Herta Brauer and her family.

In July 1938, delegates from 32 countries met in Evian, France to try and address the issue of German-Jewish refugees caused by the Nazis’ aim to make Germany judenrein (cleansed of Jews). This international conference was in response to the mounting political pressure on the United States and other nations. Most Jews from Germany and elsewhere wanted to go to the United States but were unable to obtain visas needed to enter. Even though the violent pogroms in Germany of November 1938 were widely reported on in the news, Americans were unwilling to welcome Jewish refugees; amid the Great Depression, Americans feared these displaced persons would compete with them for jobs and social programs set up to help them.

Rather than sending our Secretary of State to the Evian Conference, President Roosevelt instead selected a businessman and close friend of his to attend, Myron C. Taylor. During the nine-day meeting, while nation after nation expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews, most nations including the United States refused to accept any refugees. One notable exception to this position of refusing to allow more Jewish refugees was the tiny nation of the Dominican Republic. Astonishingly, they offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees.

The Dominican Republic Settlement Association Inc. (DORSA) acquired 22,230 acres on the north coast of the country in a place called Sosúa from the Dominican President Rafael Trujillo; the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corp. (Agro-Joint) heavily subsidized the project. The agreement ultimately negotiated and signed by DORSA and the Dominican Republic assured the immigrants freedom of religion and eased immigration by offering tax and customs exemptions.

While the Dominican Republic had agreed to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees, it is estimated that only about 5,000 visas were issued and that barely 700 Jews made it there. The reality is that while the visas would have allowed the recipients to escape the Holocaust, most of the refugees receiving them never reached the Dominican Republic since transatlantic travel proved to be extremely difficult, especially for Jews from occupied countries.

When WWII started, there were only about 40 Jews in the Dominican Republic. The first immigrants arrived in the middle of 1940, and it is estimated that by 1942 the Jewish population was 472. Jews continued to arrive in the Dominican Republic after WWII ended so that by 1947, they numbered 705. The project to bring Jews to Sosúa was intended to promote agricultural development along the Dominican Republic’s northern coast though most refugees were not inclined towards agriculture and preferred to work as businessmen and artisans. Each refugee family was given 82 acres of land, 10 cows plus one additional cow per child, and a $10,000 loan at one percent interest. The number of Jews in the Dominican Republic gradually continued to decline in the decades after WWII. By the 1980’s, most of the Jewish refugees in Sosúa had sold their land to tourist developers and left the country to pursue economic opportunities elsewhere. According to the estimates of Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola’s “World Jewish Population, 2016,” the Dominican Republic is home to between 100 and 300 Jews. 

The motivation for Jews to escape to the Dominican Republic during WWII is obvious but readers may wonder what motivated President Trujillo to offer to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. As previously stated, Trujillo hoped that these refugees could contribute to the country’s agriculture and consequently donated land in Sosúa in anticipation of a Jewish agricultural settlement. It is also believed that he supported letting Jewish refugees into the country as part of his strategy to encourage European rather than Haitian immigration. Trujillo was reputedly extremely racist and wanted Jewish immigrants as a way of “whitening” the Dominican Republic. Additionally, Trujillo personally profited by pocketing the “processing fees” that immigrants (or their sponsors) had to pay to be allowed in.

Trujillo used this same approach with refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Japanese migrants. In the case of the latter, the Dominican Republic signed a treaty with Japan in 1956. The Japanese motivation was to use emigration policy to improve the country’s international image following WWII by having the Japanese contribute to the development of foreign countries. Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, by contrast sought to use Japanese migrants as a buffer against black Haitian squatters by settling them along the country’s western border with Haiti.

There is a tragic side note to Trujillo’s decision to accept Jewish refugees during WWII. In 1937, the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who share the island of Hispaniola, was the scene of a mass slaughter in which historians estimate between 9,000 and 20,000 Haitians were killed in the Dominican Republic. It earned the name the “Parsley Massacre” because Dominican soldiers carried a sprig of parsley. When the soldiers encountered people suspected of being Haitian, they would ask them to pronounce the Spanish word for it, “perejil.” Haitians whose first language was Haitian Creole found it difficult to say it correctly, which cost many of them their lives.

In any case, the U.S. administration regarded Trujillo as a staunch ally but after the scale of the massacre emerged, President Roosevelt’s administration made the Dominican Republic pay reparations to the victims’ families, money which ultimately never reached them. Regardless, it is believed that by agreeing to take in Jewish refugees Trujillo was trying to get back into the good graces of the United States.

Let me turn now to discussing Herta Brauer and her family’s arrival in the Dominican Republic, and the specific role she played there insofar as it is known. Shortly after Francis Pou contacted me, he sent me copies of the Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit in accordance with law no. 95” for Herta and her family. (Figures 13-16) It shows they arrived at Ciudad Trujillo (https://www.encyclopedia.com/…/ciudad-trujillo), as Santo Domingo was known from January 1936 until November 1961, on the 25th of March 1941. Herta was accompanied by her husband Ernst, their son Till Brauer, and Herta’s daughter by her first marriage, Yutta Maria Muenchow.

 

Figure 13. The Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit” for Herta Brauer showing she arrived there on the 25th of April 1941

 

122-Figure 14. The Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit” for Ernst Hanns Brauer showing he arrived there on the 25th of April 1941

 

Figure 15. The Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit” for Yutta Maria Muenchow, Herta’s daughter by her first marriage, showing she arrived there on the 25th of April 1941

 

Figure 16. The Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit” for Till Brauer showing he arrived there on the 25th of April 1941

A ”List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” shows the family left Lisbon, Portugal on the 22nd of February 1941 aboard the ship the “S.S. Marques de Comillas” (Figure 17); this same form shows their last previous address was in Rome, Italy. The “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” form shows the family arrived in New York City on the 12th of March 1941 (Figure 18), so a little less than three weeks later. A handwritten note on this form indicates they “Transshipped to Santo Domingo” on the 20th of March 1941 aboard the “S.S. Cosmo.” Another “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” confirms the family sailed from New York City on the 20th of March 1941. (Figure 19) The family appears to have briefly made landfall in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the 25th of March before sailing onto Santo Domingo the same day; the nautical distance between these two spots is 252 miles. Prior to receiving the Brauer’s Dominican immigration forms from Francis, I had mistakenly assumed the family had ridden out the war in Puerto Rico. It’s now clear to me that by the 25th of March 1941, Herta and her family were in fact in the Dominican Republic.

 

Figure 17. ”List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” showing the Brauers left Lisbon, Portugal on the 22nd of February 1941; form shows they previously lived in Rome

 

Figure 18. “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” form showing the Brauers arrived in New York City on the 12th of March 1941; notation shows they “Transshipped to Santo Domingo” on the 20th of March 1941 aboard the “S.S. Cosmo”

 

Figure 19. “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” confirming the Brauers sailed from New York City on the 20th of March 1941

 

The Dominican immigration forms sent to me by Francis Pou show the family resided at “Calle Socorro Sanchez #9” in Ciudad Trujillo upon their arrival. However, according to Francis, the family did not stay in Ciudad Trujillo, nor did they relocate to the Jewish community of Sosúa. Instead, they moved to the town of Jarabacoa, located in the Central Mountain Range of the Dominican Republic at an elevation of more than 1700 feet; Francis characterizes this as the “Switzerland of the Caribbean.” (Figures 20-21) Francis believes that Herta and her family moved to this mountain town because it was in a safe and remote place, and only later relocated to Ciudad Trujillo when they realized the Dominicans were no threat to them as Jews and because her work required her to be in a larger city.

 

Figure 20. The picturesque setting of Jarabacoa in the Dominican Republic’s Central Range

 

Figure 21. The town of Jarabacoa in the Dominican Republic’s Central Range where the Brauers lived for a year after arriving

 

The name Jarabacoa comes from Taino indigenous people who spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. Notably, the Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492.

I recently stumbled on a 2015 paper by Jorge Mendoza entitled “Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia,” translated as “Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde.” This paper includes numerous references to Herta Brauer and explains the political and cultural context in which she worked; it rounds out my understanding of Herta’s involvement in the Dominican Republic. I will highlight some of the author’s findings.

The dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was sworn in as head of the Dominican Republic on the 16th of August 1930. A devastating cyclone hit the island 18 days later that is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 8,000 people, a significant percentage of the capital’s 50,000 inhabitants. Trujillo’s emergence and the rapid reconstruction he instigated in the wake of the devastating cyclone resulted in the emergence of lower-class workers and peasants and middle- and upper-class civil servants, intellectuals, and businessmen who supported the dictatorship. Herta Brauer arrived in the country amid Trujillo’s 31 years in office when the life of Dominicans revolved around his image and that of his family.

Jorge Mendoza uncovered information on Herta in an article published on the 9th of October 1944 in the defunct Dominican newspaper “La Nación” entitled “Nace el ballet en República Dominicana,” “Ballet is born in the Dominican Republic.”; the article was based on an interview conducted with her by a journalist identified only by the initials “R.M.A.” Curiously, the news story noted that Herta and Dr. Ernst Hanns Brauer apparently received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI himself to marry while they were living in Rome. This notation is a bit puzzling since Herta and Ernst are known to have gotten married in Berlin on the 12th of March 1932 and self-identified as Jewish. Could this marriage exemption mean they had converted to Catholicism after they arrived in Italy whenever that was? If I’m interpreting things correctly, it was around the same time Pope Pius XI granted the Brauers a special marriage release that they decided to emigrate to the Dominican Republic. Whether the Pope interceded on their behalf to facilitate this or whether they obtained visas under the terms negotiated at the Evian Conference is unknown.

The idea of creating a dance school came to the Brauers while they were living in Jarabacoa. According to the journalist R.M.A., the Brauers “. . .became intoxicated with the light and color of the tropics,” and listening to the typical merengue imbued them with the rhythmic sense of “the simple people of the mountain.” The Brauers lived for a year in Jarabacoa before relocating to a house in Ciudad Trujillo located a block away from the ocean that still stands today.

While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo, through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo, Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou, Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978 reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.

Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house probably beginning in early 1943. (Figure 22) Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while other donors apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.

Figure 22. A photo sent to me by Francis Pou believed to be Herta Brauer surrounded by her ballet students

 

It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.

During Trujillo’s rule, art and culture became a means of propaganda and a distraction from the regime’s brutal excesses. Trujillo imposed merengue as the national dance in Dominican society, and in his honor, merengues were written extolling his virtues. Herta Brauer was the first dance teacher to bring merengue to ballet. Taking the basic steps of this popular dance, she combined them with the techniques of ballet to favorable review. In the first merengue ballet she choreographed, Herta named the musical piece “El general llegó,” “The General Arrived,” a clear reference to Trujillo. There can be little doubt that Herta had taken note of the price she had to pay for the privileges she was granted by the Trujillo regime, which included being “untouchable” by any competitors wishing to diminish her cultural influence.

Francis believes that Flor de Oro’s cultured lifestyle may have drawn her to Herta and that introducing her father to ballet may have given Flor an entrée into his government.

Herta Brauer will be prominently featured in the documentary Francis is currently developing. She is important because she introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic, because she was the first person to blend Dominican folk music with ballet, and because she created choreographies for public events where Trujillo was in attendance. Significantly, coming from a country of a little more than ten million people, Herta trained a generation of accomplished ballet dancers that continue to be over-represented in some of the world’s major ballet companies, such as Martha Graham, the Washington Ballet, etc.

Regardless, in around 1947 Herta decided to take leave of the Dominican Republic leaving everything in the hands of a Hungarian dance teacher, a Magda Corbett, another Jew. (Figure 23) The reasons for Herta’s departure are not entirely clear, although a negative review may have angered her, or she may simply have accepted a better offer from the University of Puerto Rico.

Figure 23. The Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit” for Magdalene E. Starr de Corbett, the Hungarian Jewish teacher who replaced Herta Brauer after she left for Puerto Rico in around 1947; the form shows that Magda Corbett arrived in the Dominican Republic on the 16th of December 1947

 

A “Passenger Manifest” for Pan American Airways shows that Ernst Brauer arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico alone from the Dominican Republic on the 7th of October 1947 (Figure 24), roughly coinciding with the time the Brauers are believed to have left the country. As with historic documents that provide temporal information, the passenger manifest includes another interesting fact. It shows that at the time that Ernst Brauer departed the Dominican Republic he was still deemed to be “Stateless” and had only ever been issued a Dominican residence permit; he never received Dominican citizenship even though he had lived there for almost seven years. It may be that only Ernst and Herta’s youngest son, Oliver Brauer (Figure 25), born in the Dominican Republic on the 24th of January 1942 ever obtained Dominican citizenship. (Figure 26) What is known about Oliver is that he along with the rest of the Brauers became American citizens, likely in Puerto Rico. To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War Oliver left for Germany, where he is believed to have died.

 

Figure 24. A Passenger Manifest for Pan American Airways showing that Ernst H. Brauer arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic on the 7th of October 1947

 

Figure 25. Undated photo of Till Brauer (right) with his younger brother Oliver Brauer, born in the Dominican Republic in 1942

 

Figure 26. Herta Brauer’s 1949 USA “Petition for Naturalization” showing that Oliver Brauer, her youngest son with Ernst Brauer, was born in the Dominican Republic on the 24th of January 1942

 

It’s unclear how long Herta and Ernst Brauer resided in Puerto Rico. However, an undated newspaper article about Ernst and Herta Brauer’s continued balletic work in Mallorca, Spain after their arrival there unequivocally states they remained in Puerto Rico for eight years. (Figure 27) Assuming they arrived there from the Dominican Republic in 1947, that would mean they stayed until around 1955; this would also coincide with their arrival in Mallorca, Spain. The “Report of the Death of an American Citizen” was completed for Ernst showing he died on the 19th of May 1971 in Calvia, Mallorca, where he is interred. (Figure 28) As previously mentioned, Herta’s Social Security Death Index indicates she died in August 1983 and claims her address at the time was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (see Figure 10) For this reason, I erroneously assumed she had left Mallorca and rejoined her children in Puerto Rico following her husband’s death. Till Brauer, however, confirms that Herta Brauer died in Mallorca and is buried in the same cemetery alongside Ernst Brauer.

 

Figure 27. Undated newspaper article discussing Herta & Ernst Brauer’s work with the Palma de Mallorca’s ballet company

 

Figure 28. U.S. State Department Form for “Report of Death of An American Citizen,” showing Ernst Hanns Brauer died on May 19, 1971, in Mallorca

 

In reading the undated news article discussing Herta and Ernst’s continuing work in Mallorca, it’s clear that Herta taught dance while her husband oversaw the business aspects of running the dance studio. Why Ernst and Herta came to Mallorca is another unanswered question, but Francis directed me to a 1954 video on YouTube showing the close relationship that Trujillo had with Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain. Is it possible that Flor de Oro Trujillo recommended Ernst and Herta to Franco? Like in the Dominican Republic, according to Francis, it appears that their school in Mallorca was also subsidized and that free ballet lessons were offered. Regardless, it seems that Ernst and Herta could not avoid living in yet a third totalitarian country.

 

 

REFERENCES

ANU Museum of the Jewish People. “The Jewish Community of the Dominican Republic.” https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e250705/Place/Dominican_Republic

Davis, Nick (2012, October 13). The massacre that marked Haiti-Dominican Republic ties. BBC.

“History of the Jews in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Dominican_Republic

“Japanese Settlement in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_settlement_in_the_Dominican_Republic

Johnson, Rudy (1978, February 17). Flor de Oro Trujillo, Whose Father Led Dominican Republic. New York Times, Section D, Page 12.

Mendoza, Jorge (2015, January-December). Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia (Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde). Istimica, pp. 99-130. 

Museum of Jewish Heritage A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. “Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic (Sosúa: Un Refugio de Judíos en la República Dominicana),” https://mjhnyc.org/exhibitions/sosua-refuge-jews-dominican-republic-sosua-un-refugio-de-judios-en-la-republica-dominicana/

R.M.A. (1944, October 9). Nace el ballet en República Dominicana (Ballet is born in the Dominican Republic). La Nación. 

“The Jews of the Dominican Republic.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ysm2cqydwwE

“Trujillo Y Franco 1954.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JO_f-OZsg

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Evian Conference,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-evian-conference

World Jewish Congress. “Dominican Republic.” https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/about/communities/DO

 

 

 

VITAL STATISTICS OF MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & SELECT FAMILY & DESCENDANTS

 

NAME EVENT DATE PLACE SOURCE
         
Auguste Margareth Berliner (self) Birth 19 March 1872 Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] Margareth Auguste Berliner’s birth record (LDS Microfiche 1184449, p. 101); 1891 marriage certificate
Marriage 14 July 1891 Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland] 1891 marriage certificate
Death 25 November 1942 Theresienstadt Ghetto [today: Terezín, Czech Republic] Memorial Book (Victims of the Persecution of Jews under National Socialist Tyranny in Germany, 1933-1945)
Siegfried Brauer (husband) Birth 29 November 1858 Biskupitz/Hindenburg Oberschlesien (Upper Silesia), Germany [today: Biskupice (Zabrze), Poland] 1891 marriage certificate
Marriage 14 July 1891 Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland] 1891 marriage certificate
Death 5 February 1926 Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland] 1926 death certificate
Ernst Hanns Brauer (son) Birth 9 August 1902 Cosel, Germany [today: Koźle, Poland] 1902 birth certificate
Marriage (to Herta Münchow née Stadach) 12 March 1932 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany 1932 marriage certificate
Death 19 May 1971 Calviá, Mallorca, Spain Department of State form “Report of the Death of an American Citizen”
Herta Margarete Leonore Stadach (Herta Brauer) (daughter-in-law) Birth 4 February 1904 Neumünster, Germany 1925 marriage certificate; 1950 “Declaration of Intention” form to become a U.S. citizen
Marriage (to Karl Ferdinand Hermann Münchow) 3 October 1925 Kolberg, Germany [Kołobrzeg, Poland] 1925 marriage certificate
Marriage (to Ernst Hanns Brauer) 12 March 1932 Wilmersdorf, Berlin, Germany 1932 marriage certificate
Naturalization 16 May 1955 San Juan, Puerto Rico U.S.A. “Petition for Naturalization”
Death March 1983 Mallorca, Spain Till Brauer (oral communication)
Yutta Maria Münchow (daughter of Herta Brauer by her first husband) Birth 30 August 1926 Koslin, Germany [today: Koszalin, Poland] Herta Brauer’s U.S.A. “Petition for Naturalization”
Death 26 October 1986 San Juan, Puerto Rico Puerto Rico Death Certificate
Till Brauer (grandson) Birth 7 November 1932 Berlin, Germany Herta Brauer’s U.S.A. “Petition for Naturalization”
Death 11 December 2001   Till Brauer (oral communication): Information attached to photo with his brother Oliver found on ancestry.com
Oliver Domingo Frederic Brauer (grandson) Birth 24 January 1942 Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic [today: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic U.S.A. “Petition for Naturalization”
Death   Germany Till Carl Brauer Mongil (oral communication)

 

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.