Note: Having been told of the existence of a photograph of Dr. Walter Lustig by Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of the book on Berlin’s Jewish Hospital that inexplicably survived the Nazi onslaught, in this postscript I describe how I managed to track down this image.
Regular followers may recall that while working on Post 110, I contacted Mr. Daniel B. Silver, author of “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis” to share some new information I had uncovered about the hospital’s wartime director, Dr. Walter Lustig. During our exchanges, Mr. Silver mentioned in passing that following the publication of his book in 2003, he’d attended a traveling exhibit in around 2007 on Berlin’s Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community. He recalled the exhibit was developed by students from the University of Potsdam who, while assembling materials, had uncovered a photograph of the elusive Dr. Walter Lustig, something Daniel Silver had been unable to find during his extensive research. He eventually obtained a copy of this image, although at the time I contacted him, he was unable to relocate it.
I write this postscript mostly as an example to readers who may find themselves in a similar predicament, wanting to obtain a photo or information about a widely known individual, such as Dr. Walter Lustig, that one has learned exists or instinctively thinks should exist. In my instance, I was armed only with information that a traveling exhibit had been put together by students from the University of Potsdam, located on the outskirts of Berlin, and set about trying to track down the image of Dr. Lustig I was told survives.
The obvious starting point was the University of Potsdam’s website to whom I sent two emails, followed up with phone calls by a friend and relative, respectively; in both instances I was advised to wait though nothing came of my patience. Next, through a contact form I found online for the still-in-existence Jüdisches-Krankenhaus, Jewish Hospital, I reached out to them hoping them might have a photo of Dr. Lustig. In this instance, I received the very gracious following reply:
“During the first half of the last century the hospital was still in the hands of the Jewish Community of Berlin. Only in the 1960s did the hospital become a foundation under civil law. Thus, we do not have any archival material from the time before. We suggest getting in touch with the Jewish Community of Berlin. They might still have documents in their archives from that time.”
The Jewish Hospital provided a link to the Jewish Community of Berlin, known in German as the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin. I sent them an email in early February of this year, and as of this writing, have not received a reply.
Not yet quite willing to give up, I asked a different German cousin, a historian by training, if he could again try and contact the University of Potsdam, which I still believed was my best chance of tracking down the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig. I provided the background information, but before calling the university, my cousin did a Google query and stumbled upon a reference I’d failed to discover on my own that included a picture of the difficult-to-find Dr. Walter Lustig.
It turns out that as part of its Oral History Project, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum interviewed a Ms. Ruth Bileski Winterfield, a Forced Laborer during WWII who was compelled to work as a secretary for Dr. Lustig at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital from March 1943 onwards. Included as part of the documentary information related to Ruth Bileski, the St. Louis Holocaust Museum included a photo of Dr. Walter Lustig, whose provenance is the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum, New Synagogue Berlin Centrum Judaicum Foundation.
A little background explaining how Ruth Bileski wound up working for Dr. Lustig is relevant. As the “Aryanization” of Germany society ramped up during the Nazi era, among healthy Jews of employable age who chose to remain in Germany, increasing numbers of Jews were forced out of public employment and professions. As Daniel Silver notes, “Once unemployed, Jews were required to register with a special Jewish Labor Bureau and had to perform forced labor wherever they were assigned. By 1941, most able-bodied Jewish men and women, including teenagers, were at forced labor, primarily in the many war-related industrial plants in and around Berlin” (2003: 34)
While Ruth Bileski and her sister Eva were technically mischlinge, half-Jewish, under Nazi racial laws, they were treated as equivalent to full Jews, referred to as Geltungsjuden. Both were working at an I.G. Farben factory and were rounded up by the SS in the Fabrikaktion. To remind readers, the Fabrikaktion, literally “factory operation” or “factory raid,” took place in Berlin in February 1943 when Berlin Jews were picked up by the SS primarily at their places of work. Following their arrest Ruth and Eva were transferred to Rosenstrasse. Again, as a reminder, this was the site of what is called the Frauenprotest, literally “women’s protest” or “wives’ protest.” This is the name given to the successful demonstration in February and March 1943 by Aryan wives and relatives of detained Jewish spouses and part-Jewish children arrested in the Fabrikaktion, an action that eventually resulted in the interned Jews and half-Jews being released.
Upwards of 35,000 Berlin Jews were rounded up during the Fabrikaktion, most of whom were deported to Theresienstadt or Auschwitz and murdered there. The only ones who given a reprieve because of the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, a reprieve always intended by the Nazis to be temporary, were some 5-6,000 intermarried Jews and their offspring. Ruth and Eva Bileski were among this group.
During their detention at Rosenstrasse, a Gestapo officer came to the door one day looking for someone who could type. While Ruth Bileski had secretarial training, she chose to remain silent, but her sister Eva offered her up. She was taken out of the room and made to wait all day before being reincarcerated with no explanation. The following day the Gestapo repeated the process again looking for a typist; Ruth’s sister anew volunteered her against her wishes, but on this occasion, she was put to work typing lists of people who were being detained in the building. She typed for thirty-six straight hours before falling asleep at the typewriter. Following the completion of this odious task, she was questioned by a Gestapo office about her secretarial skills, and eventually offered up to Dr. Lustig as his secretary at the Jewish hospital. In no position to make demands, Ruth nonetheless told her jailers she would not go anywhere without her sister. To her surprise her sister was allowed to accompany her. (Silver 2003: 134-136) Like many Jews and half-Jews who were released following the Rosenstrasse Frauenprotest, Ruth and Eva Bileski survived the Nazi Holocaust. Readers interested in learning more about Ruth’s time at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital should listen or peruse the script of the oral interview the St. Louis Holocaust Museum conducted.
Not having obtained permission from either the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin-Centrum Judaicum or the St. Louis Holocaust Museum to use Dr. Walter Lustig’s image in this Blog post, I provide the link here so readers can view the photograph for themselves. As readers can observe, the photo of Dr. Walter Lustig shows him seated and dressed in a white laboratory coat. His distant cousin, Mr. Roger Lustig, whom I contacted while writing Post 110 thought no photos existed of Dr. Lustig because he was self-conscious of his short stature. Obviously, seated as he is, it is difficult to make out his height which may explain why he allowed this photo to be taken.
As a brief aside and conclusion, in Post 107, I mentioned that Ms. Kathy York née Powell’s grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, when Dr. Walter Lustig was the Director. Kathy thought letters from her grandmother’s experiences there might exist, but recent contact with one of her cousins who retains many of her family’s ancestral documents regrettably has not yet turned up these missives.
REFERENCE
Silver, Daniel B. Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis. Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Note: In this post, I examine a previously unknown to me episode of English “enemy aliens” interned in the Australian Outback during WWII. The principal character of this post was born Harro Hans Carl Paul Wundsch, who following his release from detention and his return to England changed his name to Harold John Powell. He is a distant ancestor related by marriage through the Pauly branch of my family. Under the Nuremberg Laws Harro was considered a mischling of the second degree because one of his grandparents was Jewish; his mother, who has appeared in two earlier Blog posts, was half-Jewish. This publication allows me to bring together various strands of family history to make what I consider some fascinating connections that span several continents.
This story is inspired by a reader of my Blog, an English lady by the name of Katherine “Kathy” York née Powell, granddaughter of Dr. Maria Wundsch née Pauly (1891-1978) and Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch (1887-1972). (Figure 1) Kathy stumbled on my Blog when she found reference to her grandmother. Maria’s name has appeared in two previous Blog posts, Posts 48 and 50, and she is someone I hold in high regard because of her courage during WWII. There are several threads I will follow as I relate a story about Kathy’s father, born Harro Wundsch (1920-2006) (Figure 2), who changed his name to Harold Powell when he returned to England following his internment in Australia. He apparently selected the name Powell because it was easy to remember and sounded like “Pauly,” his mother’s maiden name. Maria Wundsch is the person that links much of the following story together.
In Post 50, I chronicled in his own words Dr. Adolf Guttentag’s (1868-1942) and his wife Helene Guttentag née Pauly’s (1873-1942) (Figure 3) final few months in Berlin before they committed suicide together on the 16th of October 1942 after being told by the Nazis to report to an “old age transport,” effectively, a concentration camp. For context, Helene Pauly was my first cousin twice removed. Having seen many of their friends and family deported or commit suicide, there was no doubt what fate awaited them as the Nazis accelerated their pace of deportation of Jews to extermination camps in 1942. As detailed in Post 50, Dr. Guttentag decided to document those final months and reflect on his life. Beginning on the 22nd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag recorded the following:
“. . . Rather large transports now occur at a rapid pace. A farewell letter to Otto and Dorothee [NOTE: his son and daughter-in-law], which I have deposited with Maria Wundsch, describes in two notebooks, the general development of my family. In addition, I have decided to start making diary-type entries which show how we are, i.e., how our health is, how we spend our time, what else is going on, what we must expect, and what our plans are.”
It is clear from this opening paragraph that Dr. Guttentag trusted Dr. Maria Wundsch to do what she could to ensure that his diary got into the hands of his son in America, Otto Guttentag (Figure 4), after he and his wife died. Maria is mentioned several times in Adolf’s diary, as is her husband, Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch, though he is never identified by name. Because Maria Wundsch’s father, Carl Pauly (1854-1918), was from a Jewish family, according to the Nuremberg Laws Maria was considered a mischling of the first degree (i.e., half-Jewish), though there is no evidence she was raised Jewish. Her husband was not Jewish, and this may have afforded her some level of “protection.” More on this later.
On the 23rd of August 1942, Dr. Guttentag noted the following about Hans Helmut Wundsch:
“Maria Wundsch’s husband had sent us a number of papers concerning his fishery work. They are of zoological as well as economic importance. I have read them carefully because I had no idea what there is in the world outside of medicine. We have sent those papers to Mutti’s brother [NOTE: Helene Guttentag’s brother, Wilhelm Pauly] who, like another friend, is very much interested in the development and utilization of fish in the lakes of the Havel River in the province of Brandenburg. A few days from now Maria’s husband will inspect a lake there. As for us, we cannot initiate any such contacts because they would endanger others and ourselves.”
It so happens that my uncle Dr. Franz Müller (1871-1945) (Figure 6), married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck (1904-1942) (Figure 7) who was murdered in Auschwitz, was also a professor at Humboldt University at the same time as Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch. My uncle, who converted to Christianity on the 25th of November 1901, nonetheless was fired from the university in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry. Though Franz and Hans Helmut worked in different departments, Kathy and I surmise they may have known one another. According to Kathy, her grandfather lost his job at Humboldt University in 1937 for making jokes about Hitler to his students.
On the 22nd of September 1942, Dr. Guttentag again mentions Maria Wundsch giving us some slight insight into her religious convictions:
“Yesterday Maria Wundsch was here for almost the entire day in order to help Mutti [NOTE: Helene Guttentag] She is the only person who has been of help and assistance to Mutti in our many moves: 1. From Stettin to Hirschberg; 2. H(irschberg) move from No. 70 to No. 32; 3. From H. to Berlin-Kurfürstendamm; 4. from there to here; and 5. now for the evacuation. What a person! Other friends or relatives had failed us. Her convictions are strange, but one must respect her. Details of her religious point of view perhaps at some later time. Incomprehensible to me: even though she cannot adopt the Christian dogma, she nevertheless does not have to conform to certain rules of the Jewish religion, as for instance the total, 24-hour fasting on their highest holiday, Yom Kippur. So, she had come to discuss with Mutti how best to pack the modest number of authorized articles for the transport.”
It is clear from this entry that while other of Adolf and Helene Guttentag’s friends and family had largely abandoned them during the Nazi era, Maria Wundsch continued to stand by them, probably at great personal risk. Her religious views, though not altogether clear to me, seem to meld Christian and Jewish values.
Respectively, on the 1st through the 3rd of October, then again on the 10th of October, Dr. Guttentag noted his brother-in-law Dr. Adolf Neisser’s (Figure 8) suicide attempt, eventual death, and memorial service:
“Now fate has caught up with Uncle Ernst [Ernst Neisser]. Yesterday afternoon he was informed that he was to be ready tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. on; he would be picked up and evacuated, together with his relative, Miss. Lise Neisser (who has kept house for him). It is never divulged where they are going, probably somewhere in Bohemia. He had always been determined not to go; he wanted to end his life because of his more and more frequent and painful heart troubles that can only be interpreted as angina pectoris.”
October 2-3:
“Miss Neisser had already died last night, but Uncle Ernst had not. He was taken to the hospital (we may be taken only to the Jewish Hospital) and was still alive this morning. He had injected himself with 2% morphine and taken 5 tablets of Veronal. . . He died on October 3, 1942.”
October 10:
“Yesterday was the memorial service for Uncle Ernst. As Mutti reported it was very dignified through the music of a quartet, which at first . . .[sentence not finished]. We stayed together for a while: Susel and Hans [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser’s daughter and son-in-law], Uncle Willi [NOTE: Willy Pauly, Dr. Ernst Neisser’s brother-in-law], Maria Wundsch, Mutti and I. . . .(whom the family reached?).”
Adolf and Helene Guttentag too committed suicide barely two weeks later, on October 16th.
In Post 48, I discussed the final days of Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942). As noted in Dr. Guttentag’s diary, Luise Neisser died immediately, but Ernst Neisser lingered in a coma for three or four days before succumbing to his trauma.
Because Luise died immediately her death was recorded in the Charlottenburg borough of Berlin (Figures 9a-b) where she lived with her cousin. Ernst Neisser, however, was taken to the Krankenhaus der Jüdischen Gemeinde, the Hospital of the Jewish Community, the only hospital in Berlin where Jews could be admitted and cured, if possible, during WWII, before once again being thrown into the maws of death. For the Nazis, it was not enough for Jews to die but they had to die on Nazi terms, in extermination camps. Regardless, Ernst Neisser denied the Nazis this satisfaction and he passed away on the 3rd or 4th of October 1942 at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, located in Wedding, a neighborhood in the borough of Berlin-Mitte. His death was therefore recorded here. (Figures 10a-b)
So much for the lengthy background which partly covers material discussed in earlier posts.
Kathy York initially contacted me through my Blog on the 26th of August 2021, and between this email and ensuing ones, several things she said grabbed my attention. The first was that, according to Kathy, throughout the war, her grandmother Dr. Maria Wundsch worked as a chemist at the Jüdische Krankenhaus, the Jewish Community Hospital, where Dr. Ernst Neisser died. As a related aside, Maria studied for her PhD. in Berlin at the “Royal Friedrich-Wilhelms University” from 1910 to 1914, and was awarded her PhD. in 1915. The title of her thesis “Der Mundwerkzeuge der Caraboidea,” that’s to say, the working mouthparts of caraboides, a group of ground beetles.
The concern among family of Jews who attempted suicide and didn’t immediately succumb was that they would be revived only later to be deported to a concentration camp. Dr. Guttentag’s diary entry recorded on the 1st of October 1942 voices this concern:
“Since it has been 15 hours since he [NOTE: Dr. Ernst Neisser] took the medicines, it can be assumed the result will be absolutely fatal, and any revival, which everybody fears, is impossible.”
The unanswerable question I have is whether Dr. Maria Wundsch, by dint of working at the Jewish Hospital where Dr. Neisser was a dying patient, made sure he was never revived following his suicide attempt since, clearly, they knew one another?
Kathy York assures me a letter exists among the family papers in which Maria Wundsch describes her time working at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, and her efforts trying to protect fellow Jews during WWII. If Kathy can locate this item of family memorabilia, I hope to discuss it in a future post.
Kathy theorizes that because her grandfather’s family included Prussian military men this may have saved her grandmother from the fate of some of her relatives. A much more controversial explanation may be that because Maria was married to a non-Jew, this may have contributed to her survival during the Holocaust.
The story of how the Jüdische Krankenhaus survived relatively unscathed during the entire war is compelling and fascinating. It has been the subject of a book by Daniel B. Silver, the former general counsel to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, entitled “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” I refer any readers interested in the topic to this book.
Dr. Hans Helmut Wundsch and Maria Wundsch had four children born between 1919 and 1929, Renate (1919-1997), Harro (1920-2006), Josef (1922-1989) (Figures 11-12), and Stefan (1929-1967). Not wanting the children to grow up under the Nazi regime, and likely also fearing their children’s status as mischlinge of the second degree (i.e., one-quarter Jewish) would endanger them, they sent the three oldest ones to the United Kingdom, respectively, in 1933, 1935, and 1937; the youngest one, Stefan, was sent to Switzerland but sent back to Germany at the outbreak of hostilities. This was a fateful decision. Harro Wundsch, Kathy York’s father, would see his father at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, then not again until 1958 (Figure 13), since his parents were stuck in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) following the war and were unable to emigrate. And, sadly, Stefan, the youngest of Hans Helmut and Maria Wundsch’s children, was never able to join his siblings in the United Kingdom, so grew up apart from them and died relatively young. Maria Wundsch was only able to rejoin her surviving children in England following her husband’s death in 1972 when she was allowed to emigrate from the GDR; Maria died on the 14th of January 1978 and is buried in Leicester, England. (Figure 14)
Almost as an afterthought, Kathy mentioned that her father Harro Wundsch had been a “Dunera Boy.” This was the second thing that caught my attention during my conversations with Kathy. Having no idea what Dunera Boys were, I did a Google query, which I will briefly summarize for readers as it represented to me an entirely unknown episode of WWII history.
At the time Britain declared war on Germany on the 3rd of September 1939, more than 70,000 Germans and Austrians living there became “enemy aliens.” According to tribunals established to determine the threat these people posed to Britain three classifications of aliens were decided on: “Class C” consisted of approximately 66,000 people who were deemed to pose the least danger and were exempt from internment or restrictions; “Class B” included about 6,600 people, and these people were carefully monitored by the police; and “Class A” was made up of 569 people classified and interned as enemy aliens.
By May 1940, with Germany advancing through Belgium and France and the increasing possibility that Britain would be invaded, the British Government reassessed the enemy alien population and incarcerated an additional 12,000 Germans, Austrians, and Italians.
The dramatic increase in the number of detainees led to severe overcrowding causing the British Government to ship 7,500 internees to Australia and Canada between the 24th of June and the 10th of July 1940. Tragically, the transport bound for Canada, the Arandora Star, carrying more than 1,000 internees and 300 crew, was torpedoed and sunk, resulting in the death of 835 people.
The detainees bound for Australia left England on the 10th of July 1940 aboard the Hired Military Transport (HMT) Dunera; they consisted of 2,542 internees, including Harro Wundsch. While the group included about 450 German and Italian prisoners of war and a few dozen fascist sympathizers, most of the deportees were anti-fascist and two-thirds were Jewish; it also included some survivors from the Arandora Star. Conditions and treatment of the deportees aboard the Dunera were appalling, so much so that that the British Government eventually agreed to pay £35,000 to the group.
Harro Wundsch would occasionally joke to his family that he was on the last convict ship to Australia without ever mentioning that it was the Dunera.
After a 57-day journey under ghastly conditions, on the 3rd of September, the Dunera docked in Port Melbourne where 344 internees disembarked. The remainder of the detainees were taken to Sydney, arriving there on the 6th of September. (Figure 15) From there they boarded trains bound for the central New South Wales town of Hay, in the Australian Outback. The Hay camp held most of the internees. As many of them consisted of Jewish inmates who’d been forced to leave successful careers in Germany, Austria, and England, the group included a high percentage of professionals, tradesmen, and artists. Remarkably, the internees established an unofficial university, library, and orchestra, and even minted a currency for use inside the camp.
Within weeks of the Dunera’s departure, the British Government altered their alien classification system once again. They acknowledged that under the revised system, most of the Dunera deportees would not have been interned. In early 1941, the British Home Office sent Major Julian Layton to Australia to investigate the situation and study possible repatriation; he recommended the internees be reclassified as “refugee aliens,” so that by the end of 1941 most of them had been released. About 900 of the original “Dunera Boys” remained in Australia, many joining the Australian army’s 8th Employment Company. Those who stayed in Australia wound up making enormous contributions to the cultural, academic, and economic life of the country. (Figure 16)
Harro Wundsch was among the group of Dunera Boys who decided to return to England. He arrived in the United Kingdom two days before his 21st birthday and was allowed to enlist in the British Army. He had intended to join the Parachute Regiment but broke his ankle so wound up in the Royal Engineers. He was involved in the D-Day landings and spent some time in Japan. According to his wife’s niece, Harold Powell, as he was by then known, was enroute to Japan when the war in the Pacific ended. It turns out he was aboard the SS Missouri in Tokyo Bay with the British Army on the 2nd of September 1945, when Emperor Hirohito signed the peace treaty. Following the war, Harold Powell went on to obtain a degree in Civil Engineering.
The final thing Kathy mentioned that attracted my attention was that her grandmother’s sister and brother-in-law, Elisabeth “Lily” Kretschmer née Pauly and Fritz Kretschmer (Figures 17-18), escaped to the Shanghai Ghetto, living in the Jewish community there. (Figures 19a-b, 20-22) Unlike my father’s first cousin, Fritz Goldenring, subject of Post 25, who also escaped to Shanghai but perished there, Kathy’s great-aunt and -uncle survived and wound up in San Francisco after the war.
So, it can be no accident that Kathy discovered my family Blog, and we find that our family’s histories overlap across the European, Asian, Australian, and North American continents.
“I am terribly afraid, but nevertheless I will go with them. Possibly God actually needs me now for the first time in my life.”—an elderly Jewish lady on the eve of her deportation to a concentration camp
(The above was said to Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a German theologian and Lutheran Pastor, one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. For his opposition to the Nazis’ state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted poem “First they came …” The poem has many different versions, one of which begins “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Communist,” and concludes, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”)
Note: In this post I discuss first-hand wartime accounts written by my distant cousin Susanne “Suse” Vogel née Neisser (Figure 1), mother of my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel, that I unveiled in earlier chronicles. I detail how I was able to get these German narratives transcribed and translated, and further elaborate on some of Suse’s tragic narrative.
Following publication of Post 64 on Dr. Hans Martin Erasmus Vogel (1897-1973) (Figure 2), my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel’s father, my friend Ms. Madeleine Isenberg, affiliated with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, forwarded the post to Ms. Julie Drinnenberg from Hofgeismar, Germany. Julie is the educational director of the Jewish department at the museum there which, as it so happens, is 45 minutes away from Kassel, Germany, where Dr. Vogel was the director of the art museum from 1946 to 1961. Prior to reading my article, Julie was unaware of Dr. Vogel’s importance to the Kasseler Museumlandschaft and conceded in an email that his contributions to the museum have not been appropriately acknowledged and promised to research this.
This was the beginning of a very lively and productive email exchange. At the time Julie first contacted me in October 2019, my wife and I had just returned from a cruise to Alaska that originated in Vancouver, Canada, where we had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Vogel’s daughter and granddaughter, Agnes (Figure 3) and Nicki Stieda. (Figure 4) Agnes’s personal papers and family photographs are in Nicki’s possession, who organized and graciously allowed me to peruse and take pictures of all of them. Among Agnes’s family documents is her mother, Suse Vogel née Neisser’s diary (Figure 5), which I would later learn was written roughly between the start of 1944 and April 20, 1945. The handwriting is crabbed in German, and for this reason I only photographed the first few pages of what amounts to perhaps 35 full-length sheets of paper, never anticipating I could get it transcribed and translated.
Prior to connecting with Julie Drinnenberg, and ever meeting Agnes and Nicki Stieda, I had stumbled upon a 34-page letter archived in the “John Henry Richter Collection” at the Leo Baeck Institute written by Agnes’s mother. This letter was written as a tribute to her father, Dr. Ernst Neisser, who committed suicide in 1942 after being told by the Nazis to report to an “old age transport,” a euphemism for being deported to a concentration camp, tantamount to being murdered. The letter, typed in German on the 28th of March 1947 (Figures 6a-b), was sent from Kassel, Germany to Suse Vogel’s first cousin in St. Louis, Missouri, Liselotte “Lilo” Dieckmann née Neisser. (Figure 7)
Fast forward. After establishing contact with Julie Drinnenberg, I mentioned Suse Vogel’s 1947 letter, telling her she might be interested in it to obtain more background on Dr. Vogel’s family. It was at this moment that Julie offered to translate the letter into English for me, an offer I immediately and unabashedly accepted. Below, I will quote some of the more poignant passages from this letter, so readers can get a sense of what a dreadful and horrific time people of Jewish background experienced during WWII.
As an afterthought, after Julie had translated Suse Vogel’s letter, I mentioned I had photographed the first few pages of her diary and sent her the images. Julie passed them along to one of her colleagues, Gabriele Hafermaas, who astonishingly reported she could decipher much of the crabbed handwriting. Julie again offered to help, by having her workmate transcribe Suse’s journal. I forwarded this proposal to Agnes and Nicki, who accepted it and soon sent Julie a PDF of the entire memoir. Gabriele provided a remarkable transcription. Inevitably, some words and sentences in the diary are illegible. Often, when specific people were mentioned, Suse used nicknames or letter abbreviations in the event her diary fell into the wrong hands; thus, not all people are identified by name. Using an online application, entitled “DeepL,” I translated the text; this sometimes resulted in awkward sentences that were nonetheless generally comprehendible. I highlight some passages below having taken some liberties in rewording phrases to capture what I think Suse may have been trying to say, while fully conceding I may be off the mark.
While Suse Vogel’s 1947 letter to her first cousin postdates her 1944-1945 diary, chronologically, it deals with events that took place in September-October 1942, so I begin with the more recent document.
COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Suse Vogel’s parents were Dr. Ernst Neisser (1863-1942) and Margarethe Neisser née Pauly (1876-1941). (Figure 8) Margarethe was institutionalized in a sanatorium for the last few years of her life and committed suicide there in 1941. Prior to her father’s suicide in 1942, Suse Vogel was attempting to obtain exit visas for her father and aunt, ergo the reference to Sweden.
“My father who would never give up in his life, whose whole character was insistence and steadfastness, who loathed any kind of running away, who perceived life anyhow as good as he was good himself – he did not throw it away, although he was consumed by the longing for my mother. But the old doctor who of course assessed his fast progressing heart disease, knew that should he be ripped out of tender and loving care, he would not survive in the hangmen’s hands. He saw clearly that it would not only be an agonizing and awkward death for himself but would be also for me a poisoned memory forever if I had been forced to let him die in the hands of those murderers. Indeed, I accepted it, as I was under no illusion. Also, I had far too much respect for his decision. Still, deep inside, I did not accept anything at all, did not think seriously of such a terrible option. I believed in Sweden, his rescue, and his recovery there. Discussions about suicide—what a horrible word for the forced act in desperate misery—had been the daily fare in those times.”
_________________________________________
COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: “Aunt Lise” was Dr. Ernst Neisser’s cousin, although to date I have been unable to determine how many degrees of separation existed between them. At the time of their suicide, they resided together. Dr. Ernst Neisser had multiple nicknames, including “Ernstle.”
“In a confidential talk Aunt Lise had advised me of her resolution. ‘I am going with Ernstle,’ she told me in a determined and conclusive tone. And, almost off-handedly, she had added, ‘I should like to be buried in German soil. Berlin is my home.’ And once Aunt Lise who always had disliked heroics told me unexpectedly: ‘Whatever will happen, you can always say to yourself one thing, that you did everything possible that a human being can do for another, remember that!’ At that moment I was almost embarrassed by those exaggerated words—but how much I was comforted by these loving words later, when second thoughts and misgivings, which never abandons survivors, tortured me.”
COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Dr. Ernst Neisser and his cousin Luise “Lise” Neisser lived together at Eichenallee 25 in the Charlottenburg District of Berlin. (Figure 9) Suse and her husband Hans Vogel lived in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. Two other nicknames for Dr. Ernst Neisser were “Väterchen,” affectionate term for father, and “Bärchen,” or “little bear.” The “honorable privy councilor” referred to below was a principled lawyer, Mr. Karl von Lewinsky (1872-1951), who worked tirelessly on behalf of his Jewish clients to help them obtain exit visas to leave Germany before and during WWII. As followers can read, Ernst and Lise Neisser were ordered to report for deportation at 8 a.m. on the 1st of October 1942, and both likely attempted suicide in the early morning hours on that day. “Mundi” is Ernst Neisser’s granddaughter (Figure 10) and Suse Vogel’s daughter, Agnes Stieda née Vogel, my 93-year old third cousin.
Suse alludes to what can only be referred to as “mob or herd mentality,” when otherwise “rational” Germans spotted Jews on the street during Nazi rallies and heaped abuse or worse on them.
“I told myself, I would go home [the 30th of September 1942] and only the following day go to Eichenallee. The unrest surely was an understandable reaction of my nerves. But I heard this voice – not any voice, but ‘that’ voice, the mysterious companion of my life. I heard it very rarely, but if I heard it, it was distinct, irresistible—’I had to obey!’ I jumped off the tram and went to Eichenallee.
Despite the inner instruction I was in a good mood, full of hope, like I hadn’t been for a long time. Now everything had to go well. The honorable privy councilor surely was the sign from heaven that everything would go well. My beloved Väterchen would be happy, too. Oh, I was looking forward to finding him working at his writing table, to seeing his meaningful dark eyes shining towards me. The usual thoughts of worries touched me only hazily. . . I walked through the cellar entrance, passed the flat of the friendly caretaker-family, and went upstairs to the flat. No need to ring the bell, the good deaf aunt never heard it anyway. Strange, she was not in the kitchen—though it was time for the evening meal. And, there was no light in the living room—though it was already dusk.
I knocked at the door and entered. In the room was silence, the two old ones were sitting next to the window, their silver-white heads leaned towards each other. My heart grew frozen—something had happened. ‘What happened?’ I whispered. Only then did they notice me. Quickly my father came towards me, serious, changed and without the tenderness that had connected us our entire lives. ‘You, my child, where are you coming from at this time? I have no use for you now!’ he said firmly, with the authority that he surely had used with other people often enough but never with me. I didn’t answer but only said startled: ‘Aunt Lise, what’s the matter?’ Silently she pointed to the table. There was laying the order of deportation. I don’t know what was written on it, I never read it. Only the words were burnt into my mind. . . transport to Terezín tomorrow October 1st, 1942. Tomorrow at 8 o’clock in the morning, not in three weeks or eight days, or at least three days, like it used to be with other people. No, tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. This could only be a mistake. It had never happened before, only perhaps as revenge—I was thinking ‘it must, it had to be a mistake!’ It was the only moment that I remember when I implored my father not to act immediately. Indeed, I knew why he was so serious, so determined. We did not talk much, ‘Please. Please, wait! For your sake, yes!’
I hastened away. The phone box was empty. It was like in a nightmare, only much worse. I said to myself, ‘Lord help me that I get the connection to Potsdam, hope that Hans is at home, hope that he hears the ringing.’ He answered, terrified—we had always anticipated something bad happening. We had a conversation most taciturn: ‘You have to come immediately!’ ‘Something bad?’ he asked. ‘Yes!’ ‘I am coming!’ ‘But please eat something first!’ ‘Yes!’ Reading these words, you might think, ‘How can someone think of eating in a situation like this?’ I thought like this in former times, but by now I know. You can think of eating even in the hour of death, you can think about drinking, a warm blanket, a piece of bread during a bitter farewell.
By now I know that simple people were way ahead in this regard and in many other respects. They are connected to the simple truths of life in a deep and confident way, without those superficial feelings, the over-refined sensibilities, the cluttered idealisms that the sophisticated citizen dwells on for a long time. All this, the daily bread, a shroud, money to pay with, a roof above one’s head and a warm room. . .if it is also blessed with love, it is enough.
After my call to Potsdam I wanted to call the director of the sanatorium where my mother had been for many years and died. My father, too, had been living there, where we believed him to be secure and safe. And now the number—I could’t remember the telephone number! I had used it a thousand times, believed it to be etched in my mind – and now I’d forgotten it! The phone box was in darkness—I have no matches, and time was racing, racing—I had to get hold of the professor on the phone—’help heavenly host!’ And on its own my hand dialed the right number. ‘Herr Professor, it is life-endangering! Do you think, you could help once again?’ He understood at once. Paused. In a suppressed voice he said, ‘Please come immediately, I am waiting here for you!’
I returned to my father. ‘Poor beloved Bärchen—please wait!’ He was nodding: ‘But child—tomorrow morning at 8:00—there’s not much time—look, what’s the use of it?!’
At the sanatorium, there was the professor and his employee. It was the same one who went to bat for us exactly one year and a day before. It was when they even wanted to tear my mother out of the coffin for testing to see if a suicide ‘was in doubt.’ The professor and his employee—they also had been angels in the valley of the shadow of death. When at that time my mother should have been buried without a pastor in an unknown grave, they offered us their morgue cellar where we were able to celebrate a small catacomb obsequy with some friends. Of course, this was absolutely forbidden. The staff was believed to be reliable, but of course, you never knew. What if someone had denounced us? But nobody did so. People toddled into the cellar and wanted to have a look at my mother. She had been in a psychiatric sanatorium where there was so much anguish and awfulness. A beautiful dead like a Gothic image of saints. They all stood in front of her in silence and whispered to each other, shook our hands shyly. If there had been need for proof of immortality, looking at this beautiful, consummate face it became clear: such a conversion after three years of an awful soul-wrecking illness and bitter end—God was creating something new where we saw only death and destruction.
The professor and Ms. Sch. were talking to me, but I only heard their voices from afar. I thought to myself, ‘Does it make any sense to take my father back to the sanatorium? The henchmen will come tomorrow at 8:00—they will not find my father—then what? And what will become of Aunt Lise?’ Also, in former times she did not go outside with us: ‘It’s impossible, I look too Jewish’—and we kept silent or said in a dry manner, ‘you are right.’ The consequences for looking Jewish were the usual hysteric inferno, typically when many people congregated officially. Privately, the same people were helpful and attentive, be it on the street or in a shop. The ‘fission of the souls’ was incredible and scary. But that also belonged to the dreadful humiliation, the vulgar unworthy grotesque dissimulating. Only the superior and dignified smile of the Jewish-looking ones, their smiles of subtle irony, comforted the less Jewish-looking ones or even the Aryan-looking ones for their shameful and pitiful misery.
Everybody in our house and in the neighborhood knew where the trail would lead; everybody knew the nearby sanatorium as well as our address in Potsdam. Therefore, a flight to there or to us made no sense. And, it made no sense and could not be, to rob my father’s time—his only freedom—to dissipate it by powerless rescue attempts for the hundredth time.
I thought to myself, ‘Why not call the Jewish community again one last time? All the orders of the Gestapo were going through it. Possibly my young friend [Hanni] would know what to do?’ The professor agreed—just this was a courageous act. Hanni herself was on the phone. ‘Hanni, what can be done?!’ I understood how she was feeling. ‘What is it?’—I kept silent as an answer. She said, ‘When?’ ‘Tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock.’ ‘What is he about to do?’ ‘Go.’—She paused, then in a stifled whisper said, ‘I can do nothing more. Please let him!’ ‘Hanni. . .’ Loudly and coldly and nearly threateningly a voice repeated: ‘I beg you, let him. It will be better for him!’ Then, a pleading helpless voice whispered my name, ‘Please let him—it will be better—do you understand?!’ And the receiver was put down. This had been my last hope.
I came to myself when the professor called me. There was no time to lose. It was the time to have my wits about me. ‘I’ll take you along in my car. Has your father everything he needs?’ ‘Not enough for both of them.’ ‘I’ll take everything with me. May I come with you?’ A short silent ride. I don’t remember anything about it. But I remember the professor taking my hands firmly in his good warm hands—a doctor’s hands—like those of Bärchen.
My father came up to meet us, earnest and somehow disconnected from reality, but calm and friendly, as always. The room was full of people. My husband pale and perturbed, my beloved heart. I didn’t dare touch him—I didn’t want to lose my composure then. Hildegard v. W. was present, the young doctor, she had been in my father’s home as a child. She had wished to visit my father. She was crying in silence. Another friend from the house was there. Accidentally? No, not accidentally. She too had felt anxious for him. She was Otto Hahn’s wife, the world-famous nuclear scientist. She and her husband always had belonged to the ‘good angels’—fearless, faithful, loving. Aunt Lise was scurrying about, whipping away her tears furtively. She smiled, prepared some food, packed things up for us, ‘You have to save these things, you may need them!’ We were not able to deter her from it.
I drew Hans aside. ‘I am going to the Gestapo now. I am aware that everything could be bungled—even for us—you know it!’ He didn’t need a second to think about it, ‘That’s nothing to think about at a moment like this!’ Suddenly Bärchen was standing by our side, ‘What are you going to do? How can you do such a thing to me at the end of my life—to ruin yourselves? Susel, Susel I forbid it!’ Beloved Bärchen. He never in my whole life had forbidden me something in such a severe tone. And I obeyed. And for years I blamed myself for having done so, that I did not go trusting in God’s help. I know, I know it would have been madness—yet still it was and remains against my conscience and against God’s commandment!
Bärchen said almost gaily, ‘Dear children, we don’t want to mope about. I am happy that so many dear friends are here just now. Let’s drink a good bottle of wine as a farewell.’ A ‘harmless’ drop [i.e., an ordinary wine] was standing in the corner ‘illegally’ [i.e., during the Nazi era, Jews were prohibited from buying alcohol, which was moot since they were not issued ration cards for purchases of liquor]. We all drank. We were all in a state of lethargy and paralysis, but my father was stronger than us. He thanked the professor for bringing along the poison. ‘This was a friendly turn, dear colleague. You are taking a huge risk for me.’ We were talking in our normal voices; the women were smiling with tear-stained eyes. I, too, was smiling, holding Bärchen’s hand all the time. ‘I have had a good life, I heard him say. Only my husband was silent and deathly pale. He reached for my free hand. ‘Do not move, do not loose lose self-control!’ ‘I had it good—undeservedly,’ my father says, ‘at first my mother cared for me, then I had my Gretel and, in the end, my faithful children and you, dear Lise. Come and sit with us!’ But she didn’t want to, she was writing a couple of letters. She gave this and that to me, contemplating everything, though tears were running down her face relentlessly. Oh, don’t believe that such a voluntary dying was easy! Perhaps, for someone who does not love anything in this world anymore. Maybe for my mother’s darkened heart, especially as she did it under the delusion of sheltering my father from the Nazis, because she believed he would follow her at once. Such a dying is possibly—I don’t know—easy. But for someone, though being old and sick, who was full of life and love, it remained hard to die voluntarily—without the Grim Reaper present.
Whoever has stood next to a deathbed knows that death really ‘enters the room.’ I saw how my young brother sank towards him from one second to the other. But here death was not among us—nothing in this room, in our being together had been touched by him! Yes, my father was right. It was against nature. And woe to anyone who brings to his fellow men such terrible hardship to be forced to die! But in my father’s heart there was nothing like woe or bitterness, hate or malediction. Later when we three were alone and the friends were gone, Aunt Lise was writing next door, he answered to my cry: ‘I don’t believe it! It is impossible! It is really unbelievable’—and for a moment the fire of youth flashed in his eyes. And immediately he added, ‘You must see it like this. I kind of succumb to the enemy.’ And when I was going to lose my composure, he said tenderly but firmly, ‘Susel, don’t begrudge me going to my Gretel—I want so much to do so, I am so sick, sicker than you may know.’ From then on, his will was stronger than my pain. It was like him holding us all with his strong will. Once we even joked and laughed all three of us. Then my father talked about Mundi full of love and care, ‘Take your time with her. She is developing slowly but safely.’ We could not overload her small heart with the manner of his death. Not before she was old enough to understand and accept his motivations would she know about it.
Then, he said I should not worry about his funeral. As nice as my mother’s funeral was last year it wouldn’t be possible this time. He pleaded with me not to worry about his funeral. My husband later freed me from my promise. Bärchen himself would have allowed me to find my peace by looking at his wonderful and glorified expression.
We sensed that we had to go now. There were no more words, no tears—a short farewell from Aunt Lise—she smiled, stroked my hair, I kissed her hand, and we departed the residence. And at the front door in darkness only one embrace, a kiss on his hand. And I went away, left him. . . I never will forgive myself for it! Though it was him who compelled us to do so, his will was above ours that night, but not God’s will, I felt it. That must be said. God left me alone. And perhaps I did not call out loudly enough for Christ who had performed so many miracles within my life.”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Ernst Neisser and Lise Neisser poisoned themselves, likely in the early morning hours of October 1, 1942. Lise Neisser died immediately, but Ernst Neisser lingered for several days. He was taken to the Jewish Hospital in the Wedding District of Berlin where he succumbed on October 4, 1942. Suse Vogel’s worry was that he would be resuscitated.
“. . .when Hans and I came to the Jewish hospital to hear how my father was doing, my only prayer was, ‘Dear God don’t let him come back to life again.’ But the young and tender nurse did not give me a terrified look when I said objectively that hopefully no attempt at resuscitation would be made, and hopefully there was no danger of a return to consciousness. In response, she comforted us by saying ‘he would sleep towards death.’ She spoke briefly and soberly like me, but her eyes told me something entirely different. This is what I experienced many times. . .a dry harshness of conversation without any obligation in the tone, but a glance in the eyes and a pressing of the hand, this had a deeper meaning. And, from this sign I drew comfort. After Hans had looked in on my father where he lay with other sleeping persons, we had to leave quickly. At that time, each night old and sick people who had gotten the order for deportation took their own lives. The number of them was frighteningly high.”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: “Kafkaesque” is suggestive of Franz Kafka, or his writings, and is defined as “having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.” In reading Suse Vogel’s description of meeting the Nazi inspector at her father’s apartment in Eichenallee following his suicide, the unreal characterization of events reminded me of Kafka’s writings. I’ll let the readers draw their own conclusions, but the narrow-minded, vulturous and rapacious nature of the Nazi overlords boggles the mind.
“Now I had to go to the detective squad. For my husband it was awful to await again without being able to help and stand by me. We separated in a Café. There everything was business as usual. It was not advisable to catch somebody’s attention by perturbed behavior or whispering. We even did not even shake hands. ‘Farewell! I will pick you up here.’ The short way to the police station seemed endless. I felt petrified from complete exhaustion. At the same time, I felt that anxious wakefulness and cold determination that had helped me time and again. An officer received my report. ‘Oh. I see, it’s because of the Jew in the Eichenallee?’ he said leisurely. I did not answer. He looked at me and suddenly nodded to me. ‘A good sign.’ Then he came nearer and said in a low voice: ‘Just go to the Eichenallee, Madame, the inspector will be there too,’ and again he nodded to me encouragingly and alarmingly all at once—oh, I understood. I nodded back in silence and disappeared as shadowy as I had come. Thank God, no interrogation before a Nazi-commissar. They sent an inspector to the Eichenallee, possibly well-intentioned, ‘perhaps everything would go well.’
I waited in front of the sealed door of my father’s apartment until the inspector came. A small blond man, middle-aged, a vacuous face, sharp and wary light blue eyes. A pinched hard ass, not quite likeable. I stepped towards him without offering my hand (Jews were not allowed to shake hands). And I came to the point immediately, ‘Mr. Inspector, I am so grateful that you came here. You know how hard the situation is for me.’ He looked at me wonderingly. A shadow of condolence flashed over his unreadable face. ‘The concierge shall come.’ He questioned her in my presence. She behaved gorgeously, told him without timidity how much she had loved and admired the ‘Herr Professor’ (I was thinking, ‘How could she say, “Herr Professor!” That was strictly forbidden!’) and how she had loved ‘Fräulein Lise.’
The inspector unlocked the door. I entered the room that I had left last night—not 24 hours ago. No time for feelings, he was observing me sharply. A broken off morphine syringe was on the table. ‘Why was it broken off?’ My heart was tensing up. Very quickly he turned to me, ‘With what did your father poison himself?’ My answer came calmly, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘When were you here last?’ ‘The day before yesterday in the evening.’ ‘There it was the lie!’ And now I anticipated he would ask me who else had been here and I would have to mention Hans. I looked at him and he looked at me. I was sure he did not believe me, but he wanted to help me. Therefore, he was no Nazi, I was skilled at that! He was only a ‘dog in service’ (expression for somebody who only pretended to be a Nazi).
It looked desolate in my father’s room. The henchmen had rioted here—not a stone was left unturned. The bed was rumpled, the books were pulled out, the desk’s content spread all over the ground. Thank God they could not find any addresses of friends and acquaintances, nothing that would have incriminated others. We had destroyed everything. In a strained voice the inspector said, ‘Where is your father’s identity card? We were not able to find it. The relevant department was upset. He must have an identity card. Otherwise you will not get the corpse for burial. And there will be endless trouble for you and me. You must have it!’ ‘I don’t have it. I don’t know what my father has done with it.’ ‘Why have all the papers disappeared? I cannot understand. I do not understand your father! Unfortunately, I must deal with things like this every day. One at least leaves behind his papers in an orderly state. Nothing was to be found. He did not even have a watch with him—strange!!’
‘Aha, that was the reason for the rage of the relevant department.’ My father wanted so much that my husband got back his watch. It was Hans’ watch, a gift from his confirmation. Years ago, he had given it to my father because we did not want to leave his golden watch to the robbers—a gift from his grandfather. So, we hid it. None of us had thought of the covetousness and rapacity of the pursuers. But despite the threatening ‘strange!’ the inspector did not continue asking. I felt he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be the hangman. Yet still he had protocols to follow. ‘You seem to be rather harassed by the occurrences,’ he grunted and looked at me meaningfully. And I seized the rescuing hint. And he wrote on his paper confused, impossible, stupid answers of a flustered wife. ‘How smart of him!’ I was aware of the Nazi’s obstinacy—if they ever got something official, a document, they were often content with it.
The concierge, a silent shadow and witness, was looking at me stunned, so well was I ‘playing’ my role. Oh, if she only knew what this was all about! He did not even ask for my address. The watch and the identity card that was all he was harping on about. ‘Could you at least procure the identity card?’ ‘No, I am sure I don’t know.’ I never confessed that my father gave it to us. That would have been the greatest foolishness! My father had hoped that the card, this ‘piece of evidence,’ could be useful. That perhaps this could save his small residual assets for Mundi. This meant a lot to him.
Before me I saw several photographs showing my parents, my late brother, pictures of our voyages. My father’s favorite books were still there. ‘Oh, if I only could take some with me.’ I begged the inspector. He refused. I tried once again. He clasped his hands together. ‘Please don’t!’ he said harshly, ‘I cannot allow it, do you understand! People ask me daily to do this. I am not allowed!’ And he looked at me angrily. Then suddenly he became rude, snapped at the concierge and me, finally laughed and sent the concierge away, snapped at me once again and said, ‘You will accompany me!’ My heart sank. ‘Was it all comedy?’ But as soon as we were alone, he took his bicycle, and shouted loudly, ‘As soon as your father is dead, you will report!’ And simultaneously his left hand reached for mine, pressing it firmly as he muttered, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get you father under the soil even without his identity card.’ And, with that he departed, leaving me feeling released.
I thought, ‘Oh, it had come to that! Anxiety and every day’s horrors had become so commonplace that stupid and falsely contrived situations got weight and importance. On the other side hand, wasn’t this like reality, when this narrow-minded clerk who combined Prussian blind obedience with his personal honor, who had at least freedom of choice, chose lies and foolishness rather than word-for-word-accuracy?’ He himself knew better than me what would have happened if he had had examined everything exactly and if he had found the identity card and the watch. Only the connivance of a ‘forbidden’ suicide would have been to blame. There would have been interrogations about the origin of the poison, our statements would have been scrutinized for deviations from each other, possibly under the Nazis’ infamous interrogation methods. Once again, the ‘moral inferiority of the Jews and their comrades’ would have been affirmed. It would have resulted in deportation to a labor camp in Poland as a natural consequence. Moreover, friends and enemies would have shaken their heads about our incomprehensible stupidity and our lack of consideration, and that’s what the inspector knew definitively, and I knew it as well. Now you possibly understand why I met the grey face of my husband with a beaming smile. You understand that we went home by tram arm-in-arm and became human beings for a short while.”
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SECTIONS FROM SUSE VOGEL’S 1944-1945 DIARY
Suse Vogel’s diary includes numerous literary and religious references. I quote a few of these along with short passages from Suse’s diary to round out what I related above or in earlier posts.
COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Suse Vogel had multiple nicknames for her relatives. She alternately referred to her husband, Dr. Hans Vogel, as “Hase” (=rabbit), Fiddie, Eukuku, Schieperle, Kuchenmännchen (= “cake mate”), Hanschen. Among their daughter Agnes’s surviving papers are numerous pencil drawings Hans did. He typically depicted himself as a rabbit, Suse as a dachshund, and Agnes as a bunny. (Figure 11)
“On Christmas I got a pencil drawing from Fiddie showing his little castle room in Seitenberg; in the background sits ‘Hase.’ Hanschen, smoking his pipe. The expression of his somewhat sublime, clever bunny face is collected, serious and as ‘bright’ as I had hoped ever to see again after those infernal years.”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Suse Vogel had multiple nicknames for her father, Dr. Ernst Neisser, including Bär, Bärchen and Igilchen (=hedgehog). Among her father’s personal items she had salvaged was his armchair, which retained his contour, enveloped her when she sat in it, and gave her a sense of comfort and well-being.
4th January 1944
“In Igelchen’s armchair I believed I felt it like a gentle closeness.”
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COMMENT ON SECTION BELOW: In multiple passages in her diary, Suse recalls visits with her father and aunt in Berlin before they were summoned for deportation and opted to commit suicide together.
12th January 1944.
“Often, I am attacked by images of the past when Hans and I lived in Potsdam, outside Berlin—up early around 6am, breakfast heated, tidied up, dinner pre-cooked, everything prepared, nothing forgotten—11am already! Getting out of the Westend, rushing up the stairs, is the 54 and 154 coming straight (train numbers)? Of course not straight. Waited. Rushed up Kastanienallee, Branitzer Platz, around the corner from Eichenallee—is everything still standing? Is there nobody in front of the door—can I still find everything? Waited outside the door for hours, no one hears–then finally Aunt Lise’s touching but exhausting welcoming speech past the door; there he sits at his desk, so small and wilted, old, angry, with signs of pain, but the black eyes shine towards me, oh, what I would give to see his old hedgehog face shining like that again!—‘Hush, my soul, it’s over.’- And the walks, small and grey by my side—and always fear—and always fear—but that sat only in the innermost depths of his heart and in his eternally watchful gaze—but only loving and benevolent eyes looked from father to daughter and back, and we smiled so clearly at the resemblance, and we had so much to tell each other—never did we run out of material to tell one another.”
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COMMENT ON SECTION BELOW: As previously mentioned, “Mundi” was an affectionate name for Suse and Hans Vogel’s daughter, Agnes Stieda née Vogel. In 1944, when Suse humorously remarked the following, Agnes was 17 years old and already had strong opinions about what type of a husband she wanted.
“Mundi says she’d rather marry a pussy, ‘I want the upper hand with my husband!’”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: In her writings, Suse made frequent exaltations to God, alternating between feeling He had answered her prayers and forsaken her. Clearly, while Suse and both her parents were of Jewish descent, in the past, their ancestors had converted to Protestantism; nonetheless, in the eyes of the Nazis, they were Jewish. In the later stages of the WWII, Hans Vogel was hounded by the Gestapo for his “mixed marriage” status to a Jew.
Regarding the Prince’s palace in Seitenberg [today: Stronie Śląskie, Poland], for a time castles were deemed “off-limits” to bombing by the Allies.
6th January 1944
“Fiddie writes [he received] news from Berlin that the castle is now secured as a place to stay! Thank God.”
31st August 1944
“Tomorrow begins the 6th year of the war. ‘Keeper, is the night almost over?’”
30th November 1944
“‘My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken us!’. . . at the moment I don’t even have a longing to die—just fear and pain and fear and need and fear, fear, fear—and God is silent!”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: “Schieperle,” as mentioned above, was another affectionate name Suse had for her husband. Suse, Hans and Agnes lived in a small town in Silesia called Baitzen, which was just outside of Kamenz [today: Kamieniec, Poland]. Hans worked for Friedrich Heinrich Prinz von Preußen at his estate in Seitenberg [today: Stronie Śląskie, Poland]. While Kamenz and Seitenberg are only 22 miles or 35km apart (Figures 13a-b), Hans had his own room at the castle where he lived during the work week.
Hans Vogel had been seriously injured during WWI, making him unfit for service during WWII. The term in German for badly wounded is “schwer verwundet.” His status as a seriously injured veteran of WWI afforded his Jewish wife Suse and his “mischling“ daughter Agnes a measure of protection, at least until the later stages of the war, when the Nazi noose began to tighten around any people of Jewish descent. For Suse and Agnes, it never came down to a decision to take their own lives as it had with Suse’s parents and Aunt. While Agnes was no longer permitted to attend school within a year of her grandfather’s death, ironically, she was for a time a member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädel (B.D.M.),” the female section of the Hitler Youth.
In the passage below, Suse is voicing her consternation at the fact that her husband was shanghaied into shoveling snow for Kamenz.
18th September 1944
“My Schieperle is gone! They took him for snow shoveling—oh, it’s like a bad dream—oh, he will come back—he can’t shovel at all! And in the Seitenberg employment office they had promised him that he would work in an office. But Kamenz took him.”
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COMMENT ON SECTION BELOW: Suse Vogel made frequent mention of her debilitating menstrual periods, referring to them by the initials “EW”; interestingly, this stands for “das Ewig-Weibliche,” the concept of the “eternal feminine” from Goethe’s “Faust.” For Goethe, “women” symbolized pure contemplation, in contrast to masculine action, parallel to the eastern Daoist descriptions of Yin and Yang.
“But I am also particularly disparaged by EW.”
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COMMENT ON SECTION BELOW: “Wafi” is a reference to Suse Vogel’s mother, Margarethe Neisser née Pauly, who was confined to a sanatorium for the last several years of her life and eventually committed suicide there in 1941, a year before Ernst and Luise Neisser took their lives. At moments, Suse Vogel felt she too was slipping away like her mother had.
“I think I’m already mentally ill like Wafi!”
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COMMENTS ON SECTION BELOW: Suse and Agnes Vogel left Silesia as the Russians were approaching and made their way to Potsdam, bordering Berlin, arriving there around the 11th of April 1945. In February, possibly earlier, Hans Vogel, while handicapped from an injury he sustained during WWI, was nonetheless conscripted to a military unit and assigned responsibility for taking the unit’s mail to the train. When he noticed one train was headed to Berlin, he jumped aboard and went AWOL, making his way to Potsdam, where he miraculously reunited with Suse and Agnes. The family barely survived a massive bombing of Berlin in the waning days of the war in an underground bunker.
20th April 1945, written in a basement in Potsdam under the terrible thunder of gunfire
“. . .the eve of the battle, after the horrible attack on Berlin two days after our arrival here[Potsdam]. I cannot write much, only that we decided to go to him very quickly on the 11th of April. Everything worked out. After a 26-hour drive, we managed to arrive behind the Front. The longed-for, longed-for reunion was given to us! So wonderfully sweet, so wonderfully lovely, but amid rising hell and fear. . .”
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In conclusion, while I fail to do justice and adequately capture the depth and nuance of Suse Vogel’s words, I hope I have conveyed at least a small part of her wrenching story and the constant misgivings and survivors’ guilt she felt for not having saved her father from the Nazis.
Note: In this post, I relate the forensic work I undertook to learn the fate of Franz Pincus/Pauly, husband of Lisa Pauly, one of Germany’s “silent heroes” during WWII. Franz Pincus and my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck were second cousins, and though Franz died in 1941 before my uncle was forced “underground” in 1942 by the Nazis, Franz’s widow sheltered my uncle for periods during his 30 months in hiding.
On February 3, 1947, Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, one of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s protectors in the course of his thirty months spent “underground” eluding the Nazis in Berlin during WWII, wrote a letter of reference for him. (Figure 1) In this recommendation, Lisa Pauly mentioned that her husband had died in 1941, without naming him or specifying a cause of death. By referring to the Pauly Stammbaum, family tree (Figure 2), I was able to figure out her husband was Franz Pincus, although for a very long time I was uncertain this was really Lisa Pauly’s spouse. As I explained to readers in the original post, I was only able to confirm “Franz Pincus” and “Franz Pauly” were the same person by systematically going through 1920’s and 1930’s Berlin Address Books checking both names residing at the same address. Employing this approach, as discussed in the original post, I eventually found a “Franz Pincus” living at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau in 1928 (Figure 3), and by 1930 discovered a “Franz Pauly” residing at that same address. (Figure 4) For whatever reason Franz changed to using his mother’s maiden name, though both Pincus and Pauly were Jewish.
Having uncovered Lisa Pauly’s husband’s name from the Pauly Stammbaum, I next turned to ancestry.com to see what more I might learn. As alluded to in the previous paragraph, I found Franz Pincus/Pauly listed in multiple Berlin Address Books in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I also found a family tree on ancestry.com providing his purported place and date of birth, in Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland] on the 23rd of October 1898 (Figure 5a); this same tree showed that Franz Pincus’s sister, Charlotte Lieselotte “Lilo” Pincus, had been born in Posen on the 30th of December 1895. (Figure 5b)
When I stumbled upon a picture of Franz and Lilo as children, attending the 1901 wedding of their aunt Maria Pauly to Alexander “Axel” Pohlmann [see Post 57], where Franz looks decidedly older than his sister (Figures 6a-b), I knew Franz and Lilo’s year of births were incorrect. This allows me to reiterate a point I’ve repeatedly made to readers to question vital data found in family trees on ancestry and elsewhere unless you have the original documents to corroborate dates. So, while I was able to conclude Franz and Lilo Pincus were not born, respectively, in 1898 and 1895, I had not yet resolved in what year they’d been born.
I then remembered the Pinkus Family Collection [See Post 44] archived at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York which is accessible online. Thinking this might include a chart with Franz and Lilo Pincus’s names, along with that of their parents, I scoured the online documents, and eventually stumbled on a page with all their names. (Figure 7) This page confirmed what I had suspected, namely, that their years of birth had been transposed. It turns out, Franz Pincus was born in 1895, and his sister Lilo in 1898; the family tree on ancestry.com, however, correctly noted their respective dates of birth, the 23rd of October for Franz, and the 30th of December for Lilo. This same page also noted Lisa Pauly née Krüger’s place and date of birth, in Berlin on the 20th of December 1890. With the help of Mr. Peter Hanke, affiliated with “forum.danzig.de,” I was able to track down copies of both Franz and Lilo Pincus’s original birth certificates. (Figures 8-9) So far, however, I’ve been unable to pinpoint which borough in Berlin Lisa Pauly was born so have not found her birth certificate.
Having located Franz Pincus’s birth certificate, I now set out to try and find his death certificate. From the 1947 letter of recommendation his wife Lisa had written for my Uncle Fedor, I only knew he’d died in 1941, and assumed to begin with that he had died at Maßmannstraße 11, where he and Lisa Pauly resided at the time in the Steglitz Borough of Berlin. I erroneously assumed locating his death register listing in the Landesarchiv Berlin database would be relatively straight-forward; I was sorely disappointed.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, let me explain to readers how and where I was eventually able to locate Franz Pincus’s death register listing. This requires reviewing findings I discussed in Post 48, the publication describing Dr. Ernst Neisser’s final days in September-October 1942 in Berlin after he and his cousin Luise Neisser, with whom he lived, were told to report to an old age transport. To remind readers, the elderly Ernst and Luise Neisser opted to commit suicide rather than report for deportation. Because Luise died immediately after taking poison, I easily located her death register listing under the records of Berlin-Charlottenburg, but I was unable to find Ernst’s name listed in the records of this Berlin borough. Ernst, I later learned from a letter his daughter wrote in 1947, lingered for several days before dying, so I reckoned he might have died in another borough. I eventually figured out the only place in Berlin where Jews could still receive medical attention by 1942, or where they were brought to die in case of “failed” suicide attempts, was the Jüdisches Krankenhaus Berlin, the Berlin Jewish Hospital, in the Wedding Borough of Berlin. Having worked this out, I was then able to find Ernst Neisser’s death register listing under records for 1942 in the Wedding Borough and order his death certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin.
In trying to track down Franz Pincus’s death register listing, I decided to apply the same logic and “assume” he might also have died in the Wedding Borough of Berlin for unknown reasons. Obviously, I had no way of knowing then whether Franz Pincus’s death ultimately was from a “failed” suicide attempt, war wounds, fatal disease, or natural causes. Nonetheless, my logic turned out to be sound, and, as in the case of Ernst Neisser, I located Franz Pincus’s death register listing under 1941 in the Wedding Borough. (Figures 10a-b) Naturally, I ordered a copy of Franz’s original death certificate uncertain what new information it might include.
Franz’s typed death certificate arrived several weeks later. (Figure 11a) My cousin translated the form and it included several new pieces of information. (Figure 11b) Franz had been given the added middle name of “Israel” as was required of all Jewish-born males during the Nazi era. It confirms he died on the 2nd of August 1941 in the Berlin Jewish Hospital of a ruptured appendix. And, at the bottom of the certificate, it shows he’d gotten married on the 12th of May 1928 in Berlin’s Friedenau Borough, or so my cousin and I both read.
Armed with a new vital event to check out, I again immediately turned to the Landesarchiv Berlin database trying to locate Franz Pincus and Elisabeth Krüger’s marriage register listing. Surprisingly, I was unable to find it even though the precise date and number of the certificate, Nr. 241, were furnished. I’ve previously encountered this situation, even with exact dates and specific Berlin boroughs in hand, where it is not always possible to track down listings of vital events. The reason for this is not clear to me.
Just in the last few days, collecting and organizing newly acquired information for this post, I reexamined Franz’s typed death certificate hoping something new might reveal itself, and indeed it did. While the marriage year clearly seemed to be 1928, I began to question whether the typed “8” might not be a “3,” so checked the marriage listings under “K” (for Krüger) for 1923 and was rewarded by finding Elisabeth Krüger and Franz Pincus’s names in the Berlin-Friedenau Landesarchiv database. (Figures 12a-b) I’ve now ordered and await the actual marriage certificate but detected a notation in the register that Franz Pincus changed his surname to Pauly, a footnote obviously made some years after Franz got married.
A recent check in MyHeritage for Franz Pincus yielded a “German Minority Census, 1939” form which corroborates some of the aforementioned information, namely, Franz’s dates of birth and death, and he and his wife’s ages and residence in Berlin-Steglitz in 1939. (Figure 13) The information from MyHeritage was late in coming and might have short circuited other searches I did.
Franz Pincus’s sister, Charlotte “Lilo” Pincus, I discovered from ancestry.com rode out the war in Scotland; as a German foreigner, she was briefly interned before being released and allowed to teach. (Figure 14) She returned to Berlin after the war. A small metal sign bearing her name has been placed at the Christus-Friedhof in Mariendorf, Berlin, showing she died on the 6th of September 1995. (Figure 15)
From time to time, I stumble across a family letter or diary mentioning the people about whom I write. In writing this post, I recalled a brief mention of Franz and Lilo Pincus in a letter Suse Vogel née Neisser, daughter of the Dr. Ernst Neisser discussed above, wrote in 1972 to her first cousin, Klaus Pauly. (Figure 16) Klaus developed the Pauly Stammbaum, and he asked Suse Vogel’s assistance in identifying some of the people in the picture taken at Maria and Axel Pohlmann’s 1901 wedding. This included Franz and Lilo Pincus (Figure 17), and translated below is what Suse Vogel wrote about them:
“. . .The remaining little dwarfs bottom left: the upper one is obviously Franz Pincus-Pauly, below probably his sister Liselotte (is she calling herself Charlotte now?) I confess that I disliked her since childhood contrary to the nice ‘Blondel,’ her brother. And I was in agreement about that with bosom friend Aenne. Later, but long before Hitler-times, I declared to myself that Franz and Lilo were raised by their father strictly positivist. To my childish horror they did not ‘believe’ in anything. So, they were a priori ‘without faith, hope and love’ – sounds very presumptuous, but that’s how I felt as a young girl.”
While Suse Vogel’s words are not particularly complimentary, the mere fact I could find anything written about Franz and his sister, provides a fleeting glimpse into these long-gone ancestors and brings them to life in a small way.
Note: This post provides the answer posed to readers in Post 49 challenged to find the death register listing of my grandfather among the civil registry records of the Landesarchiv Berlin.
Most readers will never have any reason to access the Landesarchiv Berlin civil registry records (i.e., births: 1874-1907; marriages: 1874-1937; deaths: 1874-1987), so I expect few if any of you attempted to locate the name of my grandfather Felix Bruck in Berlin’s Sterberegister, death records, unless you enjoy challenges. That said, this turned out to be more difficult than I intended. Let me review for readers the information I provided in Post 49, then explain why ferreting out my grandfather’s death listing was not as straight-forward as I may have led readers to believe.
Figure 1 is the scan I provided of my grandfather’s death certificate (the archaic German word “Todesschein” is used, but the modern German term is “Totenschein”). The Todesschein includes the following information:
Death Register Nr. 971 of the year 1927 First name and surname: Felix Bruck Husband of Else née Berliner from Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Düsseldorfer Straße 24 Profession: pensioner, 63 years old, born in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] Died on the 23rd of June 1927 in Berlin IX Recorded Berlin on 22nd of July 1927 The Registrar.
Theoretically, all the information readers needed to locate my grandfather’s death register listing was provided, so no sleight-of-hand was perpetrated. Some readers may have assumed that because my grandfather lived with my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Düsseldorfer Straße 24, his death would have been registered in the Standesamt, civil register office, that today encompasses the Berlin boroughs of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf; this would be a reasonable assumption, and where I myself started. Unfortunately, I did not find my grandfather listed in the 1927 Sterberegister for the neighborhood of Wilmersdorf.
I remind readers of the situation I discussed in Post 49 of Dr. Ernst Neisser, husband of my first cousin twice removed, who attempted to commit suicide on October 1, 1942 with his first cousin, Luise Neisser; while Luise was successful and died that day, Ernst lingered in a coma until October 4th. Luise’s death was registered in the Standesamt -Charlottenburg where she and Ernst shared an apartment, but since Ernst was taken to the Jüdische Krankenhaus Berlin, Berlin Jewish Hospital, and succumbed there, his death was recorded in the neighborhood of Wedding in the Berlin borough of Mitte where the hospital is located, in an altogether different civil register office, in Standesamt-Wedding.
I began to suspect a similar circumstance may have arisen with my grandfather Felix Bruck, that he died in a different Berlin borough than he lived; thus, I re-examined his Todesschein, death certificate, which I fortunately have a copy of. The stamp on the certificate, which I’ve circled, reads “Berlin IX.” (Figure 2) If readers noticed this, like me, they may have shrugged it off as being irrelevant since it does not correspond with the name of any Berlin borough, either past or present. However, in fact, this is the key to solving “the challenge.” By typing in “Berlin” in the search box Standesamt on the Landesarchiv Berlin portal page, a pull-down menu listing 13 Berlin neighborhoods, plus additional subdivisions within some, appears. Here you select “Berlin IX” and Sterberegister, press “Suchen (i.e., Search),” and the death register for year 1927 is among those listed. Scroll down to the surnames beginning with the letter “B,” and here’s where you’ll find my grandfather’s name recorded under the month of June. (Figures 3a-b)
I can hear readers asking themselves two questions, “how would I have known to check for the ‘borough’ Berlin when no such named borough existed?” and “what records do the listed Berlin civil registration offices ‘I-XIII’ contain?” These, at least, are the two questions I asked myself. Not knowing the answers to them, I turned to one of my German cousins, and his explanation allowed me to understand the significance of these records and make connections between historical events I’d previously failed to see as related.
To understand the meaning of “Berlin IX” found on my grandfather’s death certificate, it is necessary to briefly review the history of Prussia and Berlin between 1874 and 1920. The German Empire was established in 1871, and Prussia was by far the largest and most influential state in the new German Empire; Berlin was the capital of Prussia, and henceforth became the capital of the German Empire. As previously discussed, in 1920, the “Greater Berlin Act” incorporated dozens of suburban cities, villages and estates around Berlin into an expanded city; the act increased the area of Berlin from 66 to 883 km2 (25 to 341 sq. mi). Between 1874 and 1920, the old city of Berlin was composed of 13 districts (Figure 4), each of which had a Standesamt, civil register office, including Berlin IX. The old Berlin corresponds roughly to the current borough of “Mitte.” (Figure 5) The civil register offices for these original, older Berlin districts recorded vital events until 1937-38, whereupon they were recorded by Standesamt offices in the then newly constituted boroughs of Mitte, Tiergarten, and Wedding, until the latest reorganization of the Berlin boroughs in 2001 that established the present, expanded borough of Mitte.
“Berlin IX” meant the so-called “Spandauer Vorstadt” (Figure 6), a suburb of Berlin with the name Spandau, or “Spandau Revier” (“revier” means territory) as is written on my grandfather’s death certificate. Spandauer Vorstadt (“vorstadt” means suburb) should not be confused with the outlying Berlin borough of Spandau, of which it was never a part.
The year 1874 was important in the history of Prussia. As discussed in the original Post 49, this year saw the establishment of the Standesämter, civil registration offices, for recording births, marriages, and deaths. These registry offices were the result of the Kulturkampf, the conflict between the German imperial government and the Roman Catholic Church from about 1871 to 1887, predominantly over the control of educational and ecclesiastical appointments. The German imperial government had the dream of breaking the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the school system and in everyday life of individuals, and thereby compelled that births, marriages and deaths be registered as civil rather than religious “events.” With the establishment of the civil registration offices, the churches and other religious entities lost these functions.
I don’t expect readers to recall this but I discussed the Kulturkampf in a much earlier post (Post 12) in the context of explaining how I was finally able to locate the birth certificates for my father, born in 1907 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] and his sister, born there in 1904, only when I examined the civil records at the “Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz),” where these are archived. The important thing for interested readers to understand is that after about 1874, one must turn to civil registration offices to find vital records for one’s ancestors who resided in the German Empire.
For readers who have a need to search the Berlin civil register records, you will find it challenging, time-consuming, and frustrating. Still, it can be rewarding. In recent months, I’ve discovered 12 historic certificates involving 14 individuals related or connected to my family. In five other instances where I have credible knowledge a vital event took place in Berlin, I’ve been unable to find any record of the event. For births, I would expect them to have occurred in the city, village or estate where the parents resided, but with marriages and deaths, they could easily have taken place in a different town or borough than where the people resided, making them much more difficult to track down.
Since publishing Post 49, I was contacted by a woman from Mexico City whose Jewish father fled Germany in the 1930’s and had his citizenship revoked by the Nazis; the father is trying to re-establish his German citizenship and needs to track down vital documents for himself and his deceased parents to bolster his claim. Despite having very precise knowledge where in Berlin-Wilmersdorf her father and grandparents lived and when the grandparents got married, I’ve been unable to help this lady find relevant historic documents. Because of privacy laws, birth certificates after 1907 are only available to immediate family, so the family will need to contact the civil register office for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf to obtain this document for the father born in 1931; since I was unable to locate the grandparents’ 1930 marriage register listing, the family will also be compelled to request a search for this document by this office.
Remark: This post marks two milestones, my 50th Blog post (not including postscripts) and two years since I launched the Bruck Family History Blog. I apologize to readers for the length of this Blog post but since it is a diary of roughly the last two months of my relatives’ lives during the Nazi Era, I want to present it in its entirety without interruption.
Note: This is the moving story of Dr. Adolf Guttentag and Helene Guttentagnée Pauly (Figure 1), my first cousin twice removed and her husband, describing their final months in Berlin in 1942 before they were ordered by the Nazis to present themselves for deportation to Theresienstadt but instead elected to end their lives.
For the benefit of their son, Dr. Otto Guttentag (Figure 2), who had managed to immigrate with his first wife Dorothee Guttentag née Haken (Figure 3) to America in December 1933 after the Nazis rose to power, my first cousin twice removed and her husband , Dr. Adolf Guttentag and Helene Guttentag née Pauly, who were unable to escape wrote a diary for their son. (Figure 4) Not wanting the story to be exclusively about their final months, they also captured in writing things they wanted their son to remember about them and memories of their earlier lives. Given their fate—they committed suicide together in October 1942—the story is tinged with bitter-sweetness.
In the course of updating my family tree on ancestry.com, I learned about Adolf and Helene’s son, Otto Guttentag, and discovered he came to America. I located his obituary and found out he passed away in 1992, leaving three grown children behind. With more forensic work, I was able to connect with one of Otto’s children, Christoph Guttentag (Figure 5), who told me about his grandparents’ diary which I was able to locate on-line.
Following Adolf and Helene Guttentag’s deaths, the diary was salvaged by one of their neighbors and eventually made its way into the hands of their son. Otto’s second wife, Erika Guttentag, lovingly and impeccably translated the document into English, and the family donated the original diary and the translation to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. What follows is Erika’s translation of Adolf and Helene’s diary along with her numerical footnotes in parentheses. I have added some alphabetically-ordered footnotes in red, shown images of and/or historic documents related to some of the people mentioned, and provided some context where I thought that was useful. For obvious reasons I’ve made a concerted effort to keep my own “footprint” as small as possible.
Briefly, for orientation, Dr. Adolf Guttentag’s wife, Helene Guttentag née Pauly, was the sister of Margarethe Neisser née Pauly, married to Dr. Ernst Neisser (Figure 6), subject of Blog post 48. To remind readers, Margarethe suffered from depression and committed suicide in October 1941, while her husband and his first cousin, Luise Neisser, took their lives in October 1942 after they were given less than 24 hours to present themselves for deportation to Theresienstadt; Adolf’s diary mentions this event, and corroborates what Ernst Neisser’s daughter, Suse Vogel, wrote about it that was the subject of Blog post 48.
DIARY OF ADOLF GUTTENTAG (1942)
ON THE COVER OF THE NOTEBOOK: IF POSSIBLE, GET THIS LAST DIARY TO ‘OTTO E. GUTTENTAG, M.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA’
August 22, 1942
Early in the summer of 1942 the possibility arose that we might be evacuated. Änne [1] has already been transported to Poland for heavy work. Now her mother [2] will be evacuated again, that is, for the third time. Rather large transports now occur at a rapid pace. A farewell letter to Otto and Dorothee [3], which I have deposited with Maria W. [4], describes in two notebooks, the general development of my family. In addition, I have decided to start making diary-type entries which show how we are, i.e., how our health is, how we spend our time, what else is going on, what we must expect, and what our plans are.
(This paper is so thin that I am using only one side so that it will be easier to read. I don’t just want to describe our misery to you but will write about other things for you to remember about your parents.)
After a lengthy pause I begin on
August 22, 1942
We were living in a pleasant boarding-house on Kurfürstendamm [A], from where we wrote to you. On October 1, 1941, we were forced by the authorities to leave this street. A colleague, who had become a friend and with whom Uncle Ernst [5] had consulted several times, had mentioned an unfurnished room where we could be housed and get our meals. (With difficulty and at emotional and material cost) we managed to get from Hirschberg[B] our basic furniture, necessary clothes and the barest mount of linens so that we could get established here. We have full board, i.e., all meals. The cleaning of the room is done primarily by us. The room is on the second floor, is about 4 x 5.5 meter squared [6] and has a balcony. In front of it is a big maple tree. We have planted beans on the balcony so that we are somewhat shielded from the rather unpleasant opposite side. In our room are my bed, a couch on which Mutti [7] sleeps, a wardrobe (our so-called “star” wardrobe because of the two inlaid stars; at Berliner Tor [8] it was in our bedroom); the big cabinet which used to be in Franz L.’s [9] study and now holds our dishes and linens; our Empire chest with the metal fittings that used to be in the dining room, and the desk which we had bought for Dorothee and then, unfortunately, were not allowed to send you. Everything is close together, but the room looks homey and the old, beautiful furniture still has its effect. In the middle of the room is a large mahogany table, 90 cm. in diameter, and around it four mahogany chairs that used to be in Frz. L.’s downstairs front room. In addition, we have two comfortable, upholstered chairs. This is how we have been living for close to 11 months. Because of the great distances all errands and visits are time-consuming, so Mutti is quite busy with errands even though she does not have to cook. However, since a number of relatives and friends are no longer here, our social contacts are getting fewer and fewer. Of course, you cannot expect that, because of increasing worry about the immediate future, we look any better, even though our nutrition is entirely adequate. With increasing age, I have become more detached and thus look at things to come with equanimity. My father was like that, I think, while the Pauly family has lost none of its spirit. It is fortunate for me that Mutti has kept her common sense (German: “Ueberlegung”) and her resoluteness. In the past several years my forgetfulness, distractibility and inability to concentrate have increased considerably. Thus, it is characteristic that I can read Homer and extract vocabulary but often cannot understand a new point of view. Thus, I can sometimes participate in a conversation and can give good medical advice, for which the others are often grateful. I have learned quite well to conceal some deficiency in comprehension. Thus, I am content, and I put up with these symptoms of old age and with my residual speech defect of 1932. How I wish that Mutti would look a little better! Her pallor surely is related to her vascular spasms which occur at every new worry and every frightening news. Her urine is free of E.u.Z. [C], as I could recently determine. She sleeps well; if only she allowed herself more rest!
As an introduction to this diary I have described to you how we live since I have not been able to write to you in many months.
While I am at home much of the time, reading, helping Mutti as best I can, Mutti runs errands. What makes it hard is the fact that we are permitted to shop for only one certain hour. [D] There is no point in describing to you all the limitations dictated to us. Should you want to know, you will be able to find out all about them later—but not now. In the beginning Mutti was able to visit with many relatives and friends, as many of the Poseners [E] had moved here. Now almost all of them are gone. Correspondence is further limited because many cannot be written to. It is painful that, for the time being, we will lose all contact with Ellchen (Figure 7), who will be evacuated within days. None of the first cousins are any longer here: one, Else [F] (Figure 8) is in Cuba, another is in Theresienstadt near the Saxonian border in Bohemia, the fortress assigned to receive evacuees. So far there are no news about them because at this time the post office does not process mail. Another cousin, Lotte M. [G] (Figure 9) lives in Sweden with her son and daughter-in-law and knows several Germans who are now living there. We are convinced that somebody, perhaps Georg, has written to you. We were told he had, but he did not receive an answer. He told us that he would write you again, perhaps some time this month, i.e., August ’42. Our Swiss friend, who sends us a note once in a while, wrote that she had received a letter from you. That was in the spring of ’42. However, she only reported—probably intentionally—that you are well and busy. So far, we have not yet tried to write via the Red Cross; we believe that you have not done so either, for good reasons. A message, which may consist of 25 words, has always taken 3 months to reach us. Through this channel it would have taken just as long, but we could have written more, if the mail goes through at all. [H]
We are home alone. A physician came in for a moment. He is a well-known neurologist who has written a comprehensive book on encephalitis, which Ernst [10] translated into English last year. He had a respected position but, as so many, had to give it up. He came to tell us, unfortunately, that he had suddenly been informed that he had to make a list of assets, etc.; that meant that he would soon be evacuated. In spite of extreme malnutrition, blindness in one eye and poor vision in the other (all probably tuberculosis), he seems to be scheduled for transport to the East!
Maria’s [Maria Wundsch] husband had sent us a number of papers concerning his fishery work. They are of zoological as well as economic importance. I have read them carefully because I had no idea what there is in the world outside of medicine. We have sent those papers to Mutti’s brother [11] who, like another friend, is very much interested in the development and utilization of fish in the lakes of the Havel river in the province of Brandenburg. A few days from now Maria’s husband will inspect a lake there. As for us, we cannot initiate any such contacts because they would endanger others and ourselves.
There s a magazine in Germany: “Research and Progress: Journal of German Science and Technology,” organ of the State Research Council. Founded and edited by Karl Kerkhof. Published three times a month. RM 3.00 quarter. Berlin-NW7, Unter den Linden 8. From bookstores through Joh. Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig. Maria’s husband gave me the 1941 issues to read, and I shall quote any articles I find. The first one: “20 Years of German Scientific Research” by Ministerialdirektor Professor Mentzel is an excerpt from a “Festrede” (i.e., speech) of the Emergency Association of German Science. However, like other papers, it is too scholarly for me because it presumes too much knowledge. About medicine it says that the State Research Council will emphasize new fields of research: heritage and race research, population politics, colonial medicine, and cancer research.
Monday, August 24, 1942
Last night, at 1:20am an attack of arrhythmia without recognizable reason. By taking ½ tablet of Theominal I slept more or less through the night, took 2 tablets Cardiotrat, without benefit. Quiet was not restored until after a bowel movement. Duration pf the attack: 7 hours. Of the drugs Landiotorin (?) contains convallaria maialis, caffeine, and . . .landiotrat, benzoicum, Miridin, Barbitursäure, Dimethylyanthin (?) After a long period of no side effects of Theominal, I observed muscle cramps after each use, again today in the tibialis anterior muscle.
Tuesday, August 25, 1942
Yesterday I stayed home and leafed through an old book. Occasionally, famous natural scientists described their travel experiences and elicited much interest. I remember, for instance, reading travel descriptions by Ernst Haeckel, before he was so famous. He could write very appealingly and vividly. This time it was a well-known botanist, Professor (Ordinarius) Strasburger of Bonn, probably working in Bonn, judging from the foreword. He published “Excursions on the Riviera” in 1895. I am quoting, among other observations, the following botanical remarks, which may be of interest to you. “In marked contrast to these fragrant plants, there is another, Lauraceae, an evergreen tree thriving here, whose name ‘Oreodaphne california,’ also states its origin. In gardens it is often called ‘Laurus regalis.’ In appearance it indeed resembles a laurel, but when one rubs one of its leaves between the fingers it gives off a volatile oil. Even the smallest amount of it greatly irritates the mucous membranes of the olfactory organs. In California, one tries not to stay close to such a tree if the wind blows from that direction, because the volatile oils with which it is laden, cause prolonged sneezing.”
I hope some day you will see these notes after all and perhaps check out those statements. I was at the Riviera once, as a student, with Alfr. B. As usual, we had laboriously saved our month allowances in order to travel. If I had known this book by Strasburger at that time I would have learned more about the beauty of this coastline, unique in Europe. With Mutti I was at the Italian Riviera only once, to Riviera di Levante (incidentally I also went once with Franz Leonhard), whose beauty is similar. But the French Riviera (according to the above-mentioned book) is charming because of the Maritime Alps shimmering to the northeast (which, to the south, turn into the Esterel Massif). We didn’t get to take this trip, or to parts of Switzerland, which I wanted to show Mutti. Of course, Mutti has been to the Mediterranean several times, the last time to Marseille when we visited Provence and stayed a while. Naturally, we have very beautiful postcards from this trip. The pictures of nature and the reproductions of the astonishing achievements of the Romans are part of my often-mentioned collection. The trip to Provence is one of our unforgettable memories. It was our last trip, I believe.
Thursday, August 27, 1942
The first hot day yesterday; so far, the summer has been mostly cool with cloudy skies. After a little walk to buy bread I was rather tired. Around 1 o’clock at night we were awakened by sirens. We dressed, got all our documents ready (copy of the testament, burial spot including receipt, wish to be cremated, etc.) as well as clothes for transport, also all medicines with morphine Entodal (?)[I] -Scopolamine syringe and sufficient Veronal, and waited. Just one hour later the all-clear signal sounded. We went to bed, slept until morning and got up at the usual time, well rested.
Friday, August 28, 1942
Goethe’s birthday. He was born at noon, as mentioned in “Truth and Poetry (Dichtung und Warheit),” I believe. The older I get the more I value Goethe, for he was a noble man which, to be sure, I am not. My shortcomings become ever clearer to me, but I also recognize much that can be explained medically. But I am not important enough to others to get into it. Goethe did not consider himself perfect either; he too recognized his faults. I can’t remember the verse he wrote about it so I can’t quote it. However, he always wanted the best; he was, in the highest sense, moral. “Whoever strives with all his might, him we can save” etc. (“Faust” end of Part II)
August 31, 1942
On August 23rd I told you about the neurologist who expected to be evacuated. He could not face the prospect of being sent to an old people’s home or to be deported to Poland, so he took his life yesterday. Like many, many others, he did not want to go on living because he would have to give up what little freedom we all still have, and he no longer had an opportunity to contribute and subordinate himself (sic). Many face this choice, especially older people, to which group we also belong—I at almost 74, Mutti correspondingly younger. This would be the decision to make: would it be possible to leave Germany at the end of the war, move in with you, without means, but perhaps able to earn a little something that could make life in your home easier. If later on that is not permitted, the best scenario would be to be put in an old people’s home, where, of course, only the most basic necessities of life would be permitted. They [the homes] are different in different areas, some are in the barracks of an old fortress in Bohemia, others in villages in Poland. Because of the uncertainty about their fate many older people decide to end their lives, especially those who cannot hope to be taken in by members of their families abroad once the war is over. These, then, are the options: During the war nobody gets out of Germany. If the outcome of the war is favorable for Germany, some [of us] will have to continue to live in a ghetto—whatever its form. Some could emigrate at the expense of others if that should be permitted after the end of war. These are the questions all face who can lose the right to stay in their apartments at any time, because in that case they have to get ready for evacuation. If we lose our room, we, too, have to make that decision. If the war ends unfavorably for Germany, nobody who is considered non-Aryan will stay here, if they should still be alive.
September 2, 1942
(This day was observed as a holiday until the World War because it was seen as the founding of the Empire after the French army, being surrounded by Molkte’s strategy, had to surrender.)
I hope that you can understand what I have written, although I have written somewhat out of sequence. The reason is that I can only write for short periods of time. Meanwhile, I get more and more sad news about others, which move us deeply. Again and again I am faced with the question: Shall I, or shall I not, take Veronal and Scopolamine-Entodal (?) and end my life on the day I receive notice of evacuation? My first concern is for Mutti; if she wanted it I would do it immediately; but if she had hopes of seeing you again some time, it would, of course, be sad if I didn’t make it too. Thus, the question gradually comes to these alternatives: If one believes that the war will end soon in a way that we can get to you unscathed, one should ride it out; otherwise at least I should terminate my life. For years heart trouble prevented me from accomplishing anything. In the past few years it has gotten somewhat better so that, with light medication, I can do more. However, in the present hot weather it is doubtful if I could stand deportation to Theresienstadt without heart trouble that could lead to other problems. For two or three weeks I have had edemas in my ankles, first in the right ankle, and eight days later, somewhat less, in the left ankle. Liver and spleen are enlarged. E in the urine 0:ZO RR 122, measured today. The edemas cause no discomfort at all. I remember that at the physical examination in the military varicose veins were noted on my instep. They were not particularly pronounced; otherwise, I have no varicose veins at all.
September 4, 1942
Two more families are gone. I knew one of them by name from Breslau. She is related to Else M. [12] and lived inKrummhübel, Riesengebirge for a few years. After she had to leave there she lived in Berlin for a few months. Now this family has been picked up and deported head over heels; they don’t tell where to. As usual, any contact with Theresienstadt is impossible. Thus, we don’t know what happened to Ellchen, either. Mail is not forwarded. What cruelty!
The other family is related to Mutti, the parents of both women were cousins, I believe. The family is still here, but the first step, the initial registration, has been taken. The family is greatly affected, since the husband is paralyzed in both legs. He suffers from stiffening of both hip joints (diagnosis not entirely clear); his wife, after gynecological changes and elongated colon, has most severe constipation, etc. All those people are in their sixties—in other words 60-70 years old—and are not up to those hardships.
September 6, 1942
Frz. L.’s [Franz Leonhard] birthday. I wrote about him earlier and mentioned how close he felt to me and also to Otto. A man of above-average intellect, sharp and critical. His conflict was: Humanitarian ideals but a desire for great comfort. That explains his psychopathic conflict of always being tired and reluctant to work. In her old age his mother had a psychological disorder; all four sons died by suicide. (Figures 10a-b) [J]
Now it has been Ernst’s [Ernst Neisser] turn to supply his records. One never knows when the next step comes. Sooner or later one has to vacate the apartment and is evacuated, whether to the above-mentioned, small, enclosed city of Theresienstadt, to an old-age home, or even to Poland nobody knows. Usually there are no news from there; one does not know whether relatives are still alive or have died. So, one will always return to the question that I have discussed above: take the Veronal or not? The number of those who have nothing to expect from life grows.
September 7, 1942
For the first time since about a year we learned a little more about you through our friend [13]. She reports as follows: You have changed apartments. Do [Dorothee] has taken beautiful care of her garden and is very busy. The patients love her.
We always knew that she would make her way because of her love of people, her devotion to her profession and to her patients, and her incorruptible reliability. Such change of one’s life into another world must be hard to cope with, especially in the beginning. “Not all dreams come true” (“Nicht alle Bluetenträume reiften”) Thus we are especially grateful to her for becoming your loyal companion and probably helper in life. It was a great joy for us to hear about the content of this letter; if only such reports came more frequently! We are writing to Lu [14] to thank her.
September 8, 1942
I went to the post office today to mail the postcard to her and had to show my identification card (Adolf Jonas Israel G.).
September 19,1942
Day after day passes, and I don’t accomplish anything. However, this morning we unexpectedly received the order to complete our personal records. At the same time, we were given a number TH (Theresienstadt) N. 341/2. That means we will soon be evacuated to Theresienstadt. Thus, I won’t be likely to make many more entries in the diary. I will give Maria [Maria Wundsch] the two notebooks about my family, as I mentioned on pp. 1 and 2. Also, three notebooks of medical notes, bound in shiny paper. Perhaps No. 3 will be of use to both of you. In No. 2 I have made a list of new and suitable (sic) medicines that have come to my attention. Leaf through them; one or the other might be of use to you. In No. 1 I have written individual abstracts that are perhaps dated and antiquated but might contain this or that. In my father’s old album, I have extracted from Homer the words I didn’t know. To read it gave me great pleasure. The farther I got the better I retained the vocabulary that I used to know.
September 21, 1942
Today we received a postcard from Sweden, from Mrs. Elsa Meyring née Bauchwitz. (Figures 11a-b, 12a-b) [K] She is the only woman who several months ago was permitted to leave Poland, where she had been evacuated to from Stettin. She was taken in by friends in Stockholm. She hasn’t heard from Georg M. for a long time.
My edemas have decreased. I have requested an additional examination to see whether I am fit to be transported to Theresienstadt. The examinations are very strict; only severe cases are exempted. Therefore, I don’t doubt that I will have to go. If I could take my Veronal with me the decision would be easy. However, there are such strict regulations about what one is allowed to take along that, for me, the decision is very difficult. Only the bare necessities of life are allowed, and everything is examined. But so many old customs will have to be given up. Mutti tackles the job energetically, separating what is necessary for us from what others may be able to use. She is tirelessly busy and has new and good ideas that might be useful to others. She is of infinite kindness and she gives her time and effort to all who need it. When, unexpectedly, the news came that we had to fill out the first form, she turned deathly pale and covered with sweat as if she were to faint. But she was so composed and controlled that nobody could notice anything; she spoke calmly and amiably to the secretary, who plopped in as we had breakfast and who had to record our data. We then received a number: 341/2, which I already mentioned earlier. Many of our people already are in Theresienstadt, above all, I hope, Ellchen; certainly Dr. Gertrud Kant. [15] (Figure 13), plus her aunt by marriage, and a fair number of Posen and Breslau friends. I already mentioned that mail is prohibited; but occasionally the news has filtered through that, given the circumstances, life in that ghetto is tolerable. In Poland it is still as bad as it was when the Stettin people were the first to be transported there, even though the dreadful transport and other circumstances have somewhat improved. I often think what Männe [16] (Figure 14), my brother-in-law once wrote: “May you be spared such things!” In spite of his many faults and weaknesses he was always a kind person, with practical gifts and intelligence. I was greatly indebted to him in the beginning of my career because I had no talent to get started in life. He always gave me good advice, which I didn’t recognize until later. In later years our paths parted because he would not change any formerly acquired convictions. Complete integrity was his first priority.
Yesterday Maria [Maria Wundsch] was here for almost the entire day in order to help Mutti. She is the only person who has been of help and assistance to Mutti in our many moves: 1. From Stettin (Figures 15a-b) [L] to Hirschberg; 2. H(irschberg) move from No. 70 to No. 32; 3. From H. to Berlin-Kurfürstendamm; 4. from there to here; and 5. now for the evacuation. What a person! Other friends or relatives had failed us. Her convictions are strange, but one must respect her. Details of her religious point of view perhaps at some later time. Incomprehensible to me: even though she cannot adopt the Christian dogma, she nevertheless does not have to conform to certain rules of the Jewish religion, as for instance the total, 24-hour fasting on their highest holiday, Yom Kippur. So, she had come to discuss with Mutti how best to pack the modest number of authorized articles for the transport. We are allowed no more than 50 kg per person, i..e., one suitcase and a so-called bread bag—no back pack. Disallowed, among other things: watch, any glass or china (thus only a tin plate, a tin cup). Forbidden: fountain pen, knives of any kind! So, we are taking clothes and bed linens, toiletries, a heavy blanket and a pillow, plus provisions. Books are permitted. Money in the amount of 50 Mark for the trip is necessary. The rest of the money goes to the State and, to a certain extent, to the Jewish Cultural Community, so that it may be in a position to support any Jews without means who might still be in Germany. In my case, that is 25% of my assets, the rest goes to the German state. While writing this down any reasonable person will ask: is it still worthwhile to go on living, if one has a painless sleeping pill to go to sleep? Again and again the question is: Won’t this spook end soon and then there is hope for better days? The answer is very different for different people, depending on their disposition. An old gentleman of 87, completely fit and unmarried, departed from life voluntarily. He used to live in the room next to ours in our boarding house. He walked for hours each day, attended the theater and concerts surreptitiously (of course forbidden because he wore no David’s star at those times). When he recently learned he was to be evacuated, he said that he had nothing more to expect from life, since he had enjoyed many good things (travel, music) for many years. So, he took Veronal and was dead after a day-and-a-half. Another couple whom I mentioned above: he has two stiff legs and prostate trouble, she wears a pessary [M] that has to be changed every four weeks, has constipation which can only be relieved by very special, hard-to-obtain medicines, has a weak heart that is not strong enough without caffeine—they both want to see it through although they know that they can expect nothing from their sons. So, everybody struggles through to make his decision. The (Aryan) wife of our colleague and friend who lives in this house says she would not go along but put an end to it. Maria says: “By all means see it through, hide! Times change!” That requires substantial secret means (which we do not have), and one has to be younger so one can find suitable quarters by walking from place to place. Although we have seen others do it, it would be impossible for us to observe the various regulations—which you cannot know exactly—like ration cards (every little detail has been worked out; admirable how everything is organized in Germany), registration with the police including controls, etc.
Sunday, September 27, 1942
Our worries mount. Constant transports are taking the older people to Theresienstadt, the younger ones capable of work, to Poland. There living conditions are supposed to be much more disagreeable. Even so I vacillate back and forth whether I should go to Th. after all. Even transportation to the local collection center, where one is retained and checked for a few days, is unpleasant. You are driven there, with your hand luggage, in a moving van. There you get food, and there your luggage is examined. Very limited necessities of life are permitted. I just noticed I have already written about it. How best to pack everything takes, of course, a lot of deliberation. We will carry the hand luggage; the bags, containing bed linen and suits, go by rail. We have to leave the keys on the bags so what we take can be controlled. Whether everything will be there when we arrive is another question! Gradually I try to imagine such a life in Theresienstadt. We take only food and the most essential clothing and bed linens. A cot will presumably be provided. But of course, we are used to certain cultural needs which we cannot readily do without; I am thinking of cleaning the living quarters and the linens. Should one continue to live under constraint of limited freedom?
We have often pondered about why such cruel regulations have descended upon us. Although my knowledge of history is modest, I personally think that populations have been expatriated before. We have just not experienced it during the many years of peace we have just had. The 19th century was considered humanitarian! Only Russia was believed to have such conditions. In antiquity they were a matter of course. Augustus gave land in Italy to 20,000 legionnaires; of course, he had taken the land from others. Populations that were conquered were sold into slavery; see Carthage, which was flattened. How often did entire populations flee when the enemy arrived. Think only of ‘Hermann und Dorothea.’ The Salzburg people left because of their faith. But that the Jews of Germany are now expelled with practically no means and forced into other activities, that is a novelty.
September 29, 1942
Mutti has trouble with her teeth. A dentist, who is a relative [N], began to make her a new prosthesis. In the present circumstances it took approximately four weeks to make, during which time she had to chew without her lower teeth. The prothesis is still painful; more filing has to be done. I myself am fairly well-off health wise (heart and prostate) and I constantly gulp small quantities of Landiotrat. My ankle edemas are minimal, but my liver is enlarged by two finger-widths. I can feel it on one spot at the curve of the rib, and the colleague here in the house has confirmed it. I am particularly bothered by the cold, although from way back I have loved washing myself daily with cold water from head to toe. Nevertheless, at night my feet are ice-cold and don’t get warm until two or three hours later (in heavy bed slippers).
October 1, 1942
Now fate has caught up with Uncle Ernst [Ernst Neisser]. Yesterday afternoon he was informed that he was to be ready tomorrow morning from 8:00 a.m. on; he would be picked up and evacuated, together with his relative, Miss. Lise N. [O] (who has kept house for him). It is never divulged where they are going, probably somewhere in Bohemia. He had always been determined not to go; he wanted to end his life because of his more and more frequent and painful heart troubles that can only be interpreted as angina pectoris. Last night he had a long talk with Susel [17], whom he had notified, and he again expressed his reasons to her. Susel was just here, told us everything, and has gone to his apartment with Hans [18] and Mutti. Presumably he injected himself and Miss N. with morphine and took Veronal. Since it has been 15 hours since he took the medicines it can be assumed that the result will be absolutely fatal, and any revival, which everybody fears, is impossible.
Miss N. [Luise Neisser] had already died last night (Figures 16a-b), but Uncle Ernst had not. He was taken to the hospital (we may be taken only to the Jewish Hospital) [P] and was still alive this morning. He had injected himself with 2% morphine and taken 5 tablets of Veronal. Susel understands that her father could not act differently, and she is quite calm about his passing on. He was unusually gifted, with a streak of originality, full of ideas and able to pursue them. He was kind, charming, and understanding of the aspirations of others. Since his complaints increased with age and at 80 his stamina had decreased, he had the right to depart from life. Susel said his favorite activity had been to teach young physicians. He died on October 3, 1942. (Figures 17a-b) I shall copy the death notice later; I have to wait until the body is released for burial by the police.
In Frz. L’s [Franz Leonhard] library I found Waldeyer’s Memoirs, which were interesting reading. On the table of contents page, I have jotted down in pencil a few things that are of interest to us. The book will be at Maria’s as soon as I finish reading it. Amazing how much this man achieved, even though he is not counted among the elite of science, as for instance Virchow. His achievements can probably be explained by his organizational talents, his temperament and his eloquence. How he could teach anatomy to about 1000 students so that each could prepare everything is amazing.
We have received a letter from Elizabeth, written on September 24. We already knew you had moved to a new apartment, and that you are well. Keep it up! Of course, we understand that we cannot learn more. A birthday telegram in April from you to Mutti has not arrived.
Yesterday was the memorial service for Uncle Ernst. As Mutti reported it was very dignified through the music of a quartet, which at first . . .[sentence not finished]. We stayed together for a while: Susel and Hans, Uncle Willi [19] (Figure 18), Maria [Wundsch], Mutti and I. . . .(whom the family reached?). Such conversations in a restaurant, where everybody talks loudly and at the same time, now always depress me. I understand but little and become more and more melancholy. How often I then have the wish not to go on living! Therefore, nobody should reproach themselves that they could have made life more pleasant for me. It is in my own personality that I tend to be moody. Since I have nothing more to expect I would be content not to have to wake up again. I have lived a happy life, long united with Mutti, and I am eternally grateful to her, so my greatest worry is how to spare her these worrisome changes.
FROM HERE ON THE ENTRIES ARE IN PENCIL, FIRST IN A JITTERY HAND, LATER BECOMING FIRM AGAIN
On October 12 the Secret Police came. They immediately took our landlady and her family with them, we didn’t know why. Then they demanded our identity cards, took them and ordered us to Burgstrasse, Room No. 308 (that is the Secret Police). They also asked why we had not been evacuated. Generally, there is no release from there. Mutti had long wanted to write you a farewell letter and say a few things, I believe. But you know her kindness, her sincerity and her insights. She would not be able to add anything new. Remember that we always wanted your best, but that our lives are complete. We had imagined it all differently, but that was not to be. That Mutti could not have a beautiful service with music is very painful to me.
Life was happy and beautiful. . . .Vati (Dad)
SCRAWLED ACROSS THE NEXT TWO PAGES
On October 16 the . . . physician Dr. A. Guttentag died. (Figures 19a-b)
[15] Gertrud Kantorowicz, sister of Else Milch née Kantorowicz and Franz Kantorowicz, and daughter of Max Kantorowicz & Rosalinde Pauly; Franz Kantorowicz gave us the “Still Life” painting by Graf von Kalckreuth as a wedding gift
[16] Hermann “Männe” Rothholz, husband of Anna Pauly, one of the Pauly sisters; father of Walter Rothholz
[17] Suse Vogel née Neisser, daughter of Ernst Neisser and Margarethe Neisser née Pauly; Margarethe was one of the eight Pauly sisters
[18] Hans Vogel, Suse’s husband
[19] Willi Pauly, Helene Guttentag’s brother and the only boy among the nine children of Josef and Rosalie Pauly
MY FOOTNOTES (ALPHABETICAL)
[A] Kurfürstendamm is located in the Charlottenburg borough of Berlin
[B] Hirschberg im Riesengebirge, Germany [today: Jelenia Góra, Poland], approximately 250 miles south of Stettin where Adolf & Helene lived previously
[C] “E.u.Z,” may stand for “E. und (and) Z.,” possibly two different bacteria the urine is checked for; “E.” may be “Escherichia”
[D] as mentioned in Post 48, Jews were only allowed to buy food between the hours of 4 and 5pm
[E] former neighbors from Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland]
[F] Else Milch née Kantorowicz, daughter of Max Kantorowicz & Rosalinde Pauly
[G] Lotte Mockrauer née Bruck, my great-aunt
[H]letters sent through the Red Cross during the war were limited to 25 words, but it appears longer letters could be written to their friend in Switzerland
[I] likely a barbiturate, a drug that acts as a central nervous system depressant, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to death
[J] this fortunate reference to Franz Leonhard’s day of birth, September 6th, allowed me to locate his death certificate on ancestry.com; Franz was born on September 6, 1867 and died in Breslau on November 11, 1938. His death certificate mentions he indeed killed himself by taking sleeping tablets
[K] this reference to Mrs. Elsa Meyring née Bauchwitz, one of Adolf and Helene’s friends from Stettin, allowed me to locate her birth certificate, as well as her certificate of marriage to Theodor Meyring; ancestry.com indicates she indeed died in Sweden
[L] a 1935 Stettin Address Directory lists Dr. Adolf Guttentag, a specialist in stomach and intestinal diseases, having an office at Kaiser Wilhelmstraße 12; a photo of Adolf & Helene Guttentag, taken at Christmas 1938 (Figures 25a-b), shows them living nearby at Kaiser Wilhelmstraße 9, probably shortly before Adolf Guttentag retired at age 70 and the Guttentags relocated to Hirschberg
[N] this is wild conjecture on my part, but possibly the dentist, the family relative, who made Helene Guttentag’s prosthesis was my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (see Post 31), who was still living and working in Berlin at the time until he went into hiding in October 1942 to avoid deportation
Note: In this Blog post, I provide a brief guide on searching the on-line registry of vital records and statistics at the “Landesarchiv Berlin,” the Berlin State Archive. This may be of interest to the small percentage of readers whose forebears are German and may once have lived in Berlin.
Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events (births, marriages and deaths) of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database has different names in different countries and even in different states in America (e.g., civil registry, civil register, vital records, bureau of vital statistics, registrar, registry, register, registry office, population register). In Berlin, the records of births, marriages and deaths are stored at the “Landesarchiv Berlin,” the Berlin State Archive, and can be accessed on-line, specifically, in registers of births between roughly 1874 and 1907; in registers of marriages from about 1874 to 1935; and in registers of deaths from around 1874 to 1987.
It is quite challenging to use this on-line database, so in this Blog post I will share a few hints with interested readers on possibly finding their ancestors’ names. I need to alert readers that finding your ancestors in a registry does not immediately give you access to the underlying historic document; this entails sending an email to the Landesarchiv, and, at present, waiting up to four months to have the historic certificate mailed to you. If you do all the research yourself, identifying the specific register, Berlin borough (see below), and document number, the Landesarchiv typically does not charge you for their services and copies of records.
At the end, for those who enjoy working through puzzles, using my own grandfather Felix Bruck, I will challenge readers to find the specific register in which his death was recorded. In a week, I will tell and walk readers through the steps that I went through to find his name. No doubt readers will be considerably more adept and quicker than I was at finding the proper register.
Before introducing readers to the civil registration database, let me provide some brief historic context. According to the Landesarchiv’s website, the establishment of the archive in the modern sense of the term is 1808. During WWII the collections of the archives were dispersed, to avoid destruction; following the war, during the 1950’s and 1960’s, the surviving collections were reunited. In 1991 the Landesarchiv merged with Stadtarchiv in Berlin; the latter was the municipal archive and the place where the civil registration records were stored until the merger. In 2000, the Landesarchiv also integrated collections from the “Archivabeitlung der Landesbildstelle” and the “Archiv der Internationalen Bauausstellung,” including audio-visual archives.
The portal to access the civil registration records on file at the Landesarchiv Berlin can be found at the following URL:
I can no longer recall how I became aware of this database, but given my family’s deep-seated connections to Berlin, it was only a matter of time before I would eventually learn of its existence. Figure 1a is a screen-shot of the portal page, very simple in its presentation; Figure 1b is the same portal page translated, although the database cannot be queried from here (i.e., queries must be done from the German-language page). There are three categories of records that can be searched in combination or individually (i.e., you can check one, two or all three boxes) for any area of Berlin: Sterberegister (Death Records); Heiratsregister (Marriage Register); and Geburtenregister (Birth Registers).
One of the keys to searching the civil registration records for Berlin is understanding Berlin’s system of boroughs. The German capital Berlin is divided into 12 boroughs (German: Stadtteile/Bezirke), that have political rights like a town but are not legally cities. (Figure 2) On January 1, 2001, Berlin instituted a reform of its boroughs reducing their number from 23 to 12 to cut down on administrative costs. Below is a table showing the old and new borough names, an understanding of which is critical to querying the civil registration records:
NUMBER
NEW BOROUGH NAME
OLD BOROUGH NAMES
I
Mitte
Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding
II
Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg
III
Pankow
Prenzlauer Berg, Weißensee, Pankow
IV
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf
V
Spandau
Spandau (unchanged)
VI
Steglitz-Zehlendorf
Steglitz, Zehlendorf
VII
Tempelhof-Schöenberg
Tempelhof, Schöenberg
VIII
Neukölln
Neukölln (unchanged)
IX
Treptow-Köpenick
Treptow, Köpenick
X
Marzahn-Hellersdorf
Marzahn, Hellersdorf
XI
Lichtenberg
Lichtenberg, Hohenschönhausen
XII
Reinickendorf
Reinickendorf (unchanged)
Each borough is made up of several officially recognized subdistricts or neighborhoods (Ortsteile in German), that can be distinguished in Figure 2. These neighborhoods typically have a historical identity as former independent cities, villages or rural municipalities that were united in 1920 as part of the “Greater Berlin Act,” which established the current configuration of Berlin; when first established in 1920, Berlin was organized into 20 boroughs, most often named after the largest component neighborhood, often a former city or municipality, sometimes named for geographic features (e.g., Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg). Today, Berlin is both a city and one of the 16 states of Germany and is referred to as a city-state (Stadtstaat in German).
On the portal page, in the box labelled “Standesamt,” one must enter the name of the borough one is seeking birth, marriage or death records from. One begins by typing the first few letters of a borough, for example “Ch” for Charlottenburg, and, often, multiple listings for that borough will come up (e.g., Charlottenburg: Standesamt Charlottenburg; Standesamt Charlottenburg I; Standesamt Charlottenburg II; Standesamt Charlottenburg III; Standesamt Charlottenburg IV, etc.); select one, then select death, marriage, and/or death records you wish to see for that borough, then do a “Suchen” (i.e., search). A new page with the list of registers available for that borough or municipality will appear (e.g., Standesamt Charlottenburg IV) (Figure 3). Scrutinize the list until you find the register covering the year(s) you’re seeking; some years may have more than one register for them, while other registers may cover multiple years.
A brief aside about “Standesamt” (German plural: Standesämter); this is a German civil registration office, which is responsible for recording births, marriages, and deaths. Readers will recall my mentioning above that in 1991, the Landesarchiv merged with the Stadtarchiv in Berlin, the latter being where the civil registration records were kept until that time. Soon after the German Empire was created in 1871 from the previous collection of German states (kingdoms, duchies, etc.), a universal system of Standesämter, register offices, was established, taking effect on January 1, 1876. The system had previously been introduced in Prussia on October 1, 1874, so it is no accident that the civil registration records at the Landesarchiv begin in this year. Today, those register offices (Standesämter) are still part of the administration of every German municipality (in small communities, they are often incorporated with other offices of the administration). Since 1876, Germans can only enter a legal marriage in a Standesamt, and every marriage takes place before the local registrar (called Standesbeamter); similarly, every birth must be registered at a register office, as must every death.
I’ve gone into detail about the history on the establishment of Berlin following the Great Berlin Act of 1920, and the organization of the civil register offices, because it partially informs us of the extent of the historic documents they contain as well as the tedious steps that must be followed when querying the civil registration database.
In the time I’ve used the Landesarchiv Berlin database, I’ve only ever found seven documents I was researching. Virtually all my Jewish relatives lived in the well-heeled borough of Charlottenburg, so I ALWAYS begin my searches here, as I would suggest readers looking for their Jewish ancestors also do. Remember that today, the borough including Charlottenburg is named Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, so the civil registers for “Wilmersdorf” should also be examined.
Regrettably, the empty box entitled “Standesamt” that you must complete does not provide a complete pull-down menu of all Berlin boroughs or neighborhoods when you start typing so I have no idea how many different boroughs, municipalities, and places are to be found in the civil register, likely dozens if not hundreds.
The first time I used the Landesarchiv database, I was searching for the register listing of my Aunt Susanne Bruck’s marriage to her husband, Dr. Franz Müller. (Figure 4) Because I have the original marriage certificate in my possession, two different ones, I knew they’d gotten married on April 18, 1931 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. (Figures 5-6) Obviously, I began searching the registers that cover this borough, and eventually found their marriage listed in “Standesamt-Charlottenburg III No. 605 (Namensverzeichnis Heiratregister 1924-1933) (name register to the marriage index 1924-1933).” (Figures 7a-b) If readers look carefully at the seal in the lower left corner of the two marriage certificates, you can see where it is stamped “Charlottenburg III.” The “Registernummer 263/1931” in the upper left-hand corner matches the number associated with my aunt and uncle’s names on the register page, so I knew I had located the correct certificate. Even though I have two marriage certificates for my aunt and uncle, I still requested a copy of the official document from the Landesarchiv, and much to my surprise it was different and included two pages, the second of which listed witnesses. (Figures 8a-b) For this reason, even if readers have originals of vital documents for your ancestors, I still recommend you request copies of any documents you may find in the Landesarchiv database; you never know what surprises may await you.
The next person I researched in the Landesarchiv database was my great-aunt Franziska Bruck (Figure 9), who I knew had committed suicide on January 2, 1942; she too had lived and died in Charlottenburg, and I found her name listed in “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942) (name register to the death index 1942).” (Figures 10a-b) I similarly requested a copy of my great-aunt’s death certificate and learned she had gruesomely committed suicide by hanging herself (Figure 11); obtaining poison to kill oneself may have been easier for Jews who were once in the medical profession, such as Dr. Ernst Neisser discussed in Post 48, unlike my great-aunt who was a renowned florist.
I’ve recently returned my attention to the Landesarchiv database in connection with writing Post 48 dealing with Dr. Ernst Neisser, who was the husband of my first cousin twice-removed, Margarethe Neisser née Pauly. (Figure 12) To quickly review. According to Susanne Vogel née Neisser, Ernst and Margarethe Neisser’s daughter, Margarethe was institutionalized for the last three years of her life and committed suicide on October 12, 1941. Ernst lived with his first cousin Luise Neisser in Charlottenburg, and the two of them committed suicide the following year after they were ordered to present themselves for deportation to Theresienstadt. In the previous Blog post, I told readers both took poison on October 1, 1942; Luise died that day, but Ernst lingered for four days and succumbed on October 4, 1942.
I was able to locate in the Landesarchiv registers, the death listings for both Margarethe “Sara” Neisser and Luise “Sara” Neisser but, interestingly, for the longest time not for Dr. Ernst Neisser. Margarethe, I found listed in “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 712 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1941)” (Figures 13a-b) and Luise in “Standesamt-Charlottenburg Nr. 713 (Namensverzeichnis Sterberegister 1942).” (Figures 14a-b) I’ve requested both of their death certificates from the Landesarchiv, and await their arrival.
Finding Dr. Ernst Neisser’s listing in the Landesarchiv involved some serious forensic work and one I worked out literally as I was writing this post. I knew that Dr. Ernst Neisser lived with his first cousin Luise Neisser in Eichenallee in Charlottenburg; as mentioned above, both Ernst and Luise tried to commit suicide on October 1, 1942, and while Luise succeeded, Ernst lingered until October 4th. Even though they died four days apart, I assumed both their deaths had been registered in Charlottenburg where they lived, but I was unable to find Ernst’s death recorded in any registers for Charlottenburg nor Wilmersdorf.
According to his daughter’s written account of his final days, Ernst died at the Jüdische Krankenhaus Berlin, the Berlin Jewish Hospital, where he’d been taken following his attempted suicide. It occurred to me that Ernst may have had his death registered in the borough where the Jewish Hospital is located; I researched this and discovered the Jüdische Krankenhaus Berlin, which still exists today, is in the borough “Mitte.” To remind readers what I illustrated in the table above, today’s borough Mitte once consisted of three independent boroughs, Mitte, Tiergarten, and Wedding; the registers for “Mitte” and “Tiergarten” yielded nothing, but finally in the last possible register where I thought his name might be listed, in the borough “Wedding,” under October 1942, I found the name “Neißer, Richard Ernst Israel.” (Figures 15a-b) Success at last!
In order to successfully navigate the Landesarchiv database, it is helpful to have at least the month and year when a vital event in an ancestor’s life may have taken place. Ernst and Margarethe Neisser’s daughter, Susanne Vogel née Neisser, noted the place and date of her own marriage to Hans Vogel in the preface to the memoir she wrote about her father’s final days; it took place on the 31st of July 1926 in Berlin. (Figure 16) Assuming, as I always do, the wedding took place in Charlottenburg, I successfully located the spouse and bride’s names in the “Standesamt-Charlottenburg I Nr. 467 (Namensverzeichnis Heiratregister 1921-1927).” (Figures 17a-b)
There is one other great-aunt whose Berlin residence (i.e., “Prenzlauer Allee 113” in the neighborhood of “Prenzlauer Berg” in the Berlin borough of “Pankow”) (Figure 18) and date of death are known to me (i.e., 20th of February 1970), my renowned Socialist ancestor, Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 19); she died in East Berlin well before the fall of the German Democratic Republic in 1990. Still, despite having very specific information for her, to date, I’ve not been able to locate her name in a Landesarchiv register. I assume East Germans were equally meticulous about recording vital statistics, so I conclude I’ve just not worked out the correct parameters as to where she died. It’s possible that, like Dr. Neisser, she died in a hospital in a different borough of East Berlin and that her death was registered in that borough. I simply don’t know.
So, to let me briefly recap some suggestions when searching through the Landesarchiv database. If you think you might have an ancestor or know of someone who was born in Berlin sometime after 1874 (but before 1905), got married there before 1935, and/or died there before 1987, it helps if you can narrow down at least one vital event to a specific year or actual date. Next, if you have any idea where your relative or acquaintance lived in Berlin, this may help you determine the borough where they resided. You may know the actual address where they lived without knowing which modern or historic Berlin neighborhood or borough the street was located, so Google the address and try and narrow it down to a borough; be aware that in Berlin there are multiple streets with the same name (e.g., Kastanienallee (=Chestnut Street)). You may be able to locate where your relative or acquaintance lived by using old Berlin Address Books available through ancestry.com. If you think you’ve finally identified the borough, you can begin your search in the Landesarchiv. As I’ve illustrated through example, Berlin boroughs must be searched by their modern names, as well as by the historic municipalities or neighborhoods that comprised that borough.
I’d be very interested in hearing from any of you who are successful in finding the names of any ancestors or acquaintances in the on-line Berlin State Archive database and obtaining copies of historic documents. Active genealogists know how valuable original vital records can be in establishing precise dates for these events and possibly uncovering another generation of ancestors.
Many readers will not have any relatives nor know of anyone who had any association with Berlin yet be interested in “testing” their skills using the Landesarchiv database to find an actual person connected to the city. For such “puzzle-masters,” I’ve created a challenge to find my grandfather Felix Bruck (Figure 20) in a Berlin register. Figure 21 is a scan of his death certificate (the archaic German word “Todesschein” is used, but the modern German term is “Totenschein”).
