Note: This post is the result of a recent contact with a Dr. Dominik Gross who is developing an encyclopedia of dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who worked during the Nazi era as either perpetrators or enablers or victims of the regime’s policies. Evidence provided by Dr. Gross has allowed me to identify the Jewish dentist in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] with whom my father apprenticed after obtaining his dental license from the University of Berlin in 1930.
I was recently contacted by a Dr. Dominik Gross who is a German bioethicist and historian of medicine. (Figure 1) He is Professor and Director of the Institute of History, Theory and Ethics in Medicine at the RWTH (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule) Aachen, the North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Germany. His research focuses on medicine under National Socialism and the professionalization of the medical and dental profession. From 2017 to 2019 he headed the national project to review the role of dentists under National Socialism.
Dr. Gross has been working on a “lexikon,” in essence an encyclopedia or dictionary, on dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who worked or emerged during the time of the Third Reich as well as before 1933 or after 1945. It is titled “Lexicon of Dentists and Oral Surgeons in the ‘Third Reich’ and in Post-War Germany: Perpetrators, Followers, Members of the Opposition, Persecuted, Uninvolved Volume 1: University Teachers and Researchers.” As his publishing house describes the work it “. . . brings together ‘perpetrators, followers, members of the opposition, persecuted’ and politically ‘uninvolved,’ whereby the relationship of the individual to National Socialism is . . . a central part. Further focal points are the professional achievements as well as the personal network structures in which the individual specialist representatives were involved.”
As we speak, Dr. Gross is working on Volume 2 of his lexikon, specifically on biographies for dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who had private practices or worked under the auspices of academically trained dentists.
It is worth pointing out a distinction in terminology that once existed in Germany with respect to dentists. Two German words, “zahnarzt” and “dentist” both translate into English as “dentist.” However, a German “dentist” was a job title for dentists without academic training that existed in Germany until 1952 alongside academically trained dentists. “Dentisten” (plural) were essentially dental technicians who, after successfully completing relevant training, were allowed to treat patients. In Germany, the term “dentist” is now used as a derogatory title.
As a related aside, I remarked the following in Post 31 about Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke: “Dr. Blaschke would today be called a ‘zahntechniker,’ a non-academically trained dental technician primarily responsible for producing bridges and dentures, or ‘zahnbehandler,’ dental practitioner. A ‘zahnarzt’ in today’s parlance is an academically trained dentist.” Hitler elevated Blaschkle to the status of a zahnarzt though he was not academically trained as one.
I digress. Among the biographies that will be included in Dr. Gross’s Volume 2 lexikon are ones for my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 2), and my uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck. (Figure 3) Since some of the information about both was drawn from posts on my family history blog, Dr. Gross asked me to review his drafts. While I anticipated learning new things about my uncle’s professional life since he never told me his life’s story, I had more modest expectations regarding my father’s dental career in Germany. Still, I learned that my father had apprenticed for a Dr. Paul Herzberg in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] after taking his dental examination at the University of Berlin in May 1930 and being licensed as a zahnarzt. What I was most surprised to learn was that as part of being certified prior to 1935 as a Dr. med. dent., a Doctor of Dental Medicine, he wrote a dissertation; to date, Dr. Gross has not been able to track it down nor discover the subject of my father’s dissertation.
Dr. Gross sent me a copy of the source of the information on my father’s apprenticeship to Dr. Herzberg, specifically, the “Deutsches Zahnärzte-Buch. 17. Ausgabe Des Adresskalendars der Zahnärzte Im Deutsches Reich Freistaat Danzig und Im Memelland 1932/33,” translated as “German dentist book. 17th edition of the address calendar of dentists in the German Reich Free State of Danzig and in Memelland 1932/33.” According to this address book, Dr. Herzberg’s office was located at Langer Markt 25 (Long Market 25) In Danzig, known today as Długi Targ. (Figure 4a-b)
My father’s photo albums include several taken in Danzig including one with his close friends Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 5) Regular readers will recall Posts 67, Parts I & II where I discussed the particularly brutal deaths of these companions. Like my father, Gerhard Hoppe was a dentist; he worked in the town south of Tiegenhof called Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland]. In the 1932/33 address book sent to me by Dr. Gross, readers will note the Hoppe surname under Neuteich. (see Figure 4b)
The only previous reference I had found that my father was a dentist in the Free City of Danzig was in a 1934 Danzig Address Book. Quoting what I wrote in Post 1: “Danzig Address Books can be accessed on-line at the following site: http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Kategorie:Adressbuch_f%C3%BCr_Danzig. ‘Teil III’ (Part III) in the back of the directory is like our Yellow Pages, listing people by occupation. In the 1934 Danzig Address Book, there is a separate listing of dentists which includes Tiegenhof and the other towns in the Free City of Danzig. Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland] includes two listings, a woman by the name of Dr. Zeisemer, for which no address is provided, and a DR. HEINZ BRUCK, located at Markstrasse 8, the address corresponding exactly to my father’s dental office . . . Clearly, this is a reference to my father, although why his first name is incorrectly shown is unclear. (Figure 6) Unfortunately, no separate listing of dentists in the Danzig Address Books exists for before or after 1934 that specifically includes Tiegenhof and the towns surrounding Danzig, so it is not possible to further track my father.” Clearly, in writing the last line, I was obviously unaware of the address calendar of dentists from 1932/33 that Dr. Gross sent me.
I suspect the reason no early 1930’s Danzig residence address books include my father’s name is because he was living with his aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck, and two of her three children, Jeanne and Heinz Löwenstein, two of my father’s first cousins.
Curious whether I might uncover any information about Dr. Paul Herzberg, I turned to ancestry.com. There, I unearthed Paul’s 1925 marriage certificate to a Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck; clearly, Mathilde was divorced or widowed when she remarried. At the time they married they were living at Langer Markt 9/10, a stone’s throw from Dr. Herzberg’s office. (Figures 7a-d)
The marriage certificate, as I suspected, established that both Paul and Mathilde were Jewish. Checking Yad Vashem, I can find neither of their names as Holocaust victims so there is a good possibility they emigrated to an unknown destination. Expectedly, Dr. Gross confirmed there is no record of Dr. Paul Herzberg in post-WWII German phone directories.
Among my father’s surviving papers are two letters of recommendation from dentists he briefly apprenticed with prior to training with Dr. Herzberg. From the 1st to the 15th of July 1930 my father worked under a Dr. Franz Schulte from Königsbrück in the German state of Saxony (Figures 8a-b), then from the 17th of July until the 16th of August he trained with a Dr. Heinrich Kruger from Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. (Figures 9a-b) Neither of these dentists is included in Dr. Gross’s lexikon. Given the timing of the two brief stints my father served as a novitiate in 1930, and the opening of his own practice in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland] in April 1932, I surmise that he worked as Dr. Herzberg’s assistant in the intervening period.
In closing because I found a picture of a Dr. Fritz Bertram and other friends of my father sailing in the Bay of Danzig (Figure 10) and knew Fritz through Danzig address books to be a zahnarzt, in Post 6 I mistakenly concluded him to be the dentist with whom my father apprenticed; I now assume he was a professional colleague and friend. With new evidence to the contrary, it seems my father apprenticed rather with Dr. Paul Herzberg when living in Danzig.
Gross, Dominik. (2022) Lexikon der Zahnärzte & Kieferchirugen im “Dritten Reich” und im Nachkriegsdeutschland: Täter, Mitläufer, Oppositionelle, Verfolgte, Unbeteiligte Band 1: Hochschullehrer und Forscher. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich.
Note: In this lengthy post, I provide further details about the life of my uncle’s friend, the German Baron Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, and the tangential role he played in the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944. Much of this information is derived from Sieghard von Pannwitz, Wolfram’s first cousin once removed who stumbled on my Blog, and on sources he directed me to.
Students of WWII military history may recognize July 20, 1944, as the day that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and other military and civilian officials attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf’s Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia [today: Kętrzyn, Poland]. The plot’s apparent aim was to wrest political control of Germany and its armed forces from the Nazi Party (including the SS) and to make peace with the Western Allies as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the coup failed which resulted in the Gestapo arresting more than 7,000 people, of whom 4,980 were executed.
I recently discovered that my uncle’s friend, Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, subject of three previous Blog posts, played a secondary role in these events. While I was generally aware that Wolfram went into hiding following the July 20 Plot on Hitler, I was never entirely clear what role he played. Let me explain how I came to learn more details of Wolfram’s involvement in the failed attempt to eliminate Hitler, the facts of which were revealed mostly in his own words.
My family history Blog not only provides an opportunity to relate stories about my Jewish ancestors including the social milieu in which they lived, the political climate at the time, and the historical events they witnessed, but it has a side benefit of allowing the descendants of people who interacted with members of my family to occasionally find me. Invariably, when this happens, I find out more about the people my ancestors were connected to and come away with fodder for more Blog stories. Case in point.
In October 2022, I received an email through my Blog’s Webmail from a Mr. Sieghard von Pannwitz (Figure 1–REMOVED), Wolfram von Pannwitz’s first cousin once removed as it turns out. Prior to this message, I’d wondered after posting three articles about Wolfram whether any of his descendants might eventually stumble on my Blog. My patience was rewarded.
For intermittent readers of my Blog, let me briefly review how my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (Figure 2) and Wolfram von Pannwitz met. The full details can be found in Post 84. Following the Fall of Berlin in early May 1945, my uncle who had miraculously survived 30 months in hiding made to his way to the apartment of Käthe Heusermann, a friend of 20 years who had once been his dental assistant when he had his own practice in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland]. (Figure 3) After Hitler came to power on the 30th of January 1933, and legislation passed in April 1933 that sharply curtailed “Jewish activity” in the medical and legal professions and resulted in the closure of my uncle’s practice, both he and Käthe made their way to Berlin. Käthe Heusermann landed a position as dental assistant to Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s dentist. (Figure 4) Inasmuch as I can tell, my uncle would occasionally shelter in Käthe’s apartment during his time in hiding. In any case, after the end of the war, Käthe suggested that he apply to the Russians to take over Dr. Blaschke’s intact dental office (Figure 5); my uncle’s request was granted. Käthe and Blaschke’s dental technician, Fritz Echtmann (Figure 6), were eventually spirited away by the Russians because of their knowledge of Adolf Hitler’s fate, a fact the Russians sought to conceal. Warned by the Americans that a similar fate awaited him, he abandoned Berlin in early 1947 and made his way to America.
The precise date on which my uncle left is unknown to me. However, he wrote an affidavit in November 1966 in the matter of a probate hearing on behalf of the estate of Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, the German Baron he met in June 1947 in West Berlin, providing a general timeframe for when he departed Germany. My uncle and Mr. von Pannwitz befriended one another that month in a displaced persons camp where they had been assembled awaiting passage to the United States. Both left for America on the 8th of July 1947 aboard the “Marine Marlin” from Bremen, Germany, and arrived in New York City on the 17th of July 1947; the two remained friends until von Pannwitz passed away in New York City in January 1966.
My uncle, known in America as Theodore A. Brook, and my aunt Verena H. Dick were married in New York on the 4th of March 1958. (Figure 7) Pannwitz was invited, and prior to my contact with Sieghard, the only picture I had of Wolfram was a side view of him at the far end of the dining table. (Figure 8) Immediately after hearing from Sieghard, I asked whether he had any photos of Wolfram and he graciously shared a few. In the process Sieghard also passed along other information which partially rounds out my understanding of Wolfram’s life.
Long before connecting with Sieghard von Pannwitz, on ancestry.com I had found the certificate for Wolfram’s marriage to his first wife, Argentinian-born Clara Virginia Rhode, showing they were wed on the 18th of October 1920 in Berlin. (Figures 9a-c) A notation in the upper righthand corner of the certificate indicates the union lasted only briefly until the 28th of February 1922 when they were officially divorced.
In any case, one photo Sieghard shared was of Wolfram’s 1920 marriage to Virginia Rhode. (Figure 10) Seated second and third from the left in this picture are Wolfram’s parents, Gertrud Pannwitz née Scholz (1869-1957) and Eberhard von Pannwitz (1861-1923), in his military attire. Meanwhile, seated third and second from the right are Wolfram’s younger sister, Elsa Petrea and her husband Martin Reymann. More on Petrea later.
In 1931, Wolfram got remarried to a woman named Frida Mueller, who by the time his niece wed in 1934 had already died from cancer earlier that same year. Neither of Wolfram’s marriages produced any children.
Another picture sent to me by Sieghard is dated to 1934 and shows the wedding of Wolfram’s niece and Petrea and Martin Reymann’s daughter, Gabriele Reymann to Joachim von Harbou. (Figure 11) A slightly older Petrea is seated in the front row next to the groom, while Wolfram is seated to the far right next to his sister’s husband, Martin Reymann. Readers will note that in both the 1920 and 1934 pictures, as well as in the photo taken at my uncle’s 1958 wedding, Wolfram stands out because he is distinctly bald. Sieghard explained this was the result of being contaminated by poison gas during WWI. Wolfram was a decorated fighter pilot and Captain during the “great war.” (Figure 12)
Sieghard also sent me a photo of a gold ring that once belonged to Wolfram that he inherited and had restyled for his wife to wear. (Figure 13) A story accompanies how he came to possess this ring. Sieghard currently lives in Osnabrück, a city in the German state of Lower Saxony, and attended school in Göttingen, a nearby university city in the same state; following his studies he immigrated to South Africa in 1966 and lived there in two stints for about 20 years. Around the time he first immigrated there in 1966 one of his female cousins married a Jürgen von Berkholz in Singapore. The couple apparently planned to spend their honeymoon in New York at the invitation and expense of Wolfram. Unfortunately, upon docking in New York they learned that Wolfram had died on the 28th of January 1966, thus a few days earlier, so, lacking funds they immediately returned home. Sieghard’s South African cousin inherited Wolfram’s ring and bequeathed it to Sieghard upon her own death. The ring is solid gold and has the von Pannwitz family coat of arms etched on it.
During our very amiable conversations, Sieghard, who has written extensively about the 820-year history of his illustrious family, mentioned in passing that about 20 years ago he was in contact with a historian from the University of Hanover. At the time, this researcher sent Sieghard an article based on an interview with Wolfram discussing, among other things, his time in Paris until July 20, 1944, and his whereabouts in the immediate aftermath of the plot to assassinate Hitler, the failure of which forced him to go into hiding. Sieghard was unable to relocate the article though he thought it had been published in the New York Times. Eventually he remembered the historian’s name, Dr. Ines Katenhusen, retrieved her email, and we were able to obtain a copy of the article in question. As it turns out, the article appeared in “The Providence Sunday Journal” on the 28th of September 1947 and was titled “Underground Baron: Wolfram Von Pannwitz Was in Plot to Assassinate Hitler.” (Figure 14)
At the time Dr. Katenhusen originally contacted Sieghard she was researching the emigration to the United States of many of the famous people associated with Germany’s Bauhaus. According to Wikipedia, “The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus (German for ‘building house’), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.”
Dr. Katenhusen is specifically interested in Dr. Alexander Dorner, a German American art historian and museum reformer, ergo the connection to people associated with the Bauhaus. According to German Wikipedia, since 2013 Ines has been working on a monograph and a documentary film about him. As it so happens, Dr. Dorner and his wife Lydia sponsored Wolfram von Pannwitz’s immigration to the United States and are the couple in whose home Wolfram lived during his years in Providence, Rhode Island.
Dr. Dorner, for his part, immigrated to the United States in 1937 because of his opposition to National Socialism. In Rhode Island, he was museum director of the Rhode Island School of Design from 1937 to 1941. From 1941 to 1948 he was professor of art history and aesthetics at Brown University in Providence. Dorner became a United States citizen in 1943, and from 1948 he taught at Bennington College in Vermont.
The article from “The Providence Sunday Journal” clarifies some episodes in Wolfram’s life. Regarding the events during WWI and how he came to be gassed, he tells the following:
“‘I learned aviation in 1912,’ he said, ‘I was among the first fliers, and when I was mobilized for the war, I was quickly promoted because there weren’t many fliers.’ Aviation was not secure then. I became a captain and a squadron commander. In 1916 I was shot down by French anti-aircraft fire. My observer was killed by the first fire, but I came down safely. However, I landed between the second and third French lines, and it happened that they withdrew the infantry and put out poison gas. Being an aviator I had no gas mask, of course, and I lay in a coma from 2 o’clock in the afternoon until 6 o’clock. How I am alive I do not know. But how I am alive several times I do not know.
They came with a stretcher and picked me up. I was nine months in a hospital in Lyons and two years a prisoner, finally exchanged through Switzerland as a badly wounded prisoner.’”
Regarding his life after the First World War until the Nazis came to power and how he knew the Dorners, Wolfram reveals the following:
“‘After the war I became an engineer, specializing in special fuels for automobiles, and for 25 years I was head of the biggest gasoline enterprise in western Berlin. When the Nazis came into power, I was not interested in joining them or their Arbeitsfront, an organization of workers and managers. I refused to join. Nothing happened for a while until the Gestapo found out that I was concealing anti-Nazis in my apartment; I had a cook who was a chatterbox. I helped some of my friends get to Switzerland and some to France. Finally the Nazis came and said I was either to join the party or give up my job. I had very good earning, but I gave up my job. That was in 1937. I went to Italy. I wrote to the Dorners ad asked them how to get to the United States, but I never got an answer. Perhaps the Italian Gestapo caught my letters. I knew the Dorners would answer. I was best man at their wedding. Mrs. Dorner was a close friend of my late wife.’”
Regarding how he wound up in Paris:
“‘I waited months and then I went to Berlin and then to Paris. I had passports and visas. There was no difficulty getting there. In Paris I imported gasoline pumps and compressors from Germany and had a wonderful time without much competition. I stayed until 1939. Several days before war broke out, France began to intern Germans. I went to the United States embassy to try and get a visa, but I was refused because I had no money there or anything else that would give an excuse. I didn’t want to go to Italy. Spain was full of troubles. So I went back to Berlin. I had kept a flat there all the time. My friends took care of it.’”
On how Wolfram wound up getting involved with the anti-Nazi opposition and assigned a role in the planned plot:
“‘I was walking one day when I happened to meet Field Marshall Erwin von Witzleben [EDITOR’S NOTE: Erwin von Witzleben was a German field marshal in the Wehrmacht during WWII. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was designated to become commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht in a post-Nazi regime had the plot succeeded.] He was an old friend from the first war. He was captain of artillery then. We spoke of the Nazis, and finally he invited me to come to tea the next day. There were several men in his flat, and we developed ideas about eliminating Hitler and the Nazis. We knew we had a long way to go and would need help. They asked me whether I would go back to Paris. I said I would: They procured a passport, and everything all legitimatized. Of course von Witzleben was able to do such things. It was all secret. “Don’t do anything until you are summoned,” I was told.
I go back. I wait one year. I wait two years. There is no communication. Then General Otto von Stülpnagel [EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of the article or Wolfram von Pannwitz has erroneously identified Otto von Stülpnagel as the German general with whom he collaborated in the July 20 Plot. The correct Stülpnagel was Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel who served as the military commander of German-occupied France. Increasingly unable to reconcile his military duties and his moral objections to the regime’s ideology, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel joined the resistance. He was a member of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, overseeing the conspirators’ actions in France. After the failure of the plot, he was recalled to Berlin and attempted to commit suicide en route but failed. Tried on 30 August 1944, he was convicted of treason and executed on the same day.], commander in Paris, summoned me for the first time. That is in 1943. He directed me to take voyages about France. My work was to investigate the Gestapo! I was to find out what they were doing against the German army and French civilians. Everything was at cross purposes, you understand, the army opposing the Gestapo, the SS against both, and so on.
I had no official position. I always went as a civilian. Sometimes I even went into Gestapo headquarters to ask questions. I used my own name. I picked up information in restaurants and places like that. The Gestapo never suspected anybody would dare do things like that. . .
I moved about in France as I wanted to and nobody ever said anything. It was very dangerous, but if one has resolved to go against scoundrels for the sake of one’s country, one must risk his life. He must know it in advance.’”
“On July 15, 1944, Baron von Pannwitz was summoned to the office of General von Stülpnagel in Paris, and without preliminaries, was acquainted with the proposed attempt against the life of Hitler. ‘Stülpnagel developed the whole plan for me. My duty was to arrest SS General Oberg [EDITOR’S NOTE: General Carl Oberg was the senior SS and police leader (HSSPF) in occupied France, from May 1942 to November 1944, during the second world war, who came to be known as the “Butcher of Paris.”], the head of the Gestapo who was residing in the Gestapo palais on Avenue Foch. First, he showed me a plan of Oberg’s office. Then he said, “On the day—I will tell you what day later on—two companies of the army will be sent before the Gestapo building. The you go behind the right wing of the soldiers, and if the company commander lifts his arms and regards his wrist watch, go into the building and up to the second floor and go into Oberg’s office and arrest him.” He gave me a pair of manacles and a revolver. I went home and slept well. I was glad to think of the finish of the Nazis and the end of the war.
On July 18, Stülpnagel sent for me again. He said, “Tomorrow at 11 o’clock. You know everything, Good bye. Get out. Good luck.” That was all.
The next day I punctually was there. It was like a performance on a stage. The two companies of the army march up. I stand behind the right wing. I watch the commander. He looks at his watch, like this. At once I enter the building and go to the second floor. There are two SS guards at the door, but they are so interested in the troops in the yard that they do not notice me. I knock at the door.
“Come in.”
I go in. General Oberg is standing behind his desk. He comes towards me. He does not suspect anything. I put out my hand and say, “I come with the regards of General von Stülpnagel. Heil Hitler!” He puts out his hand. Suddenly I seize his wrist, take out the manacles, and snap them on. Everything goes perfectly. At that moment, in come the soldiers and I deliver Oberg to them.
Then I go to the offices of Stülpnagel to report. “Well done” he says. “Many thanks. Everything runs after the plans” He is rubbing his hands, like this.
Then he says, “You are to go to Cologne.”’”
According to Wolfram von Pannwitz, he was tasked by Stülpnagel with taking a letter to the commander of the German home troops in the Rhineland telling him to mobilize his troops and march against the front troops. Stülpnagel had cut off all communications with Germany to do what he wanted in France so failed to learn that Hitler was not killed. Upon his arrival in Luxembourg aboard the night train, Pannwitz overheard travelers talking about the failed attempt on Hitler’s life. He nonetheless continued to Cologne and headed to the house he was ordered to go to, but quickly realized the plot had unraveled when he saw two SS guards patrolling the premises. Instead, he headed back to the railroad station, and spent the next four days in Cologne, Bonn, and Aix-la-Chapelle [Aachen, Germany]. (Figure 15)
On the 25th of April, it eventually occurred to Pannwitz to turn to the Catholic Church for help, specifically Bishop Van Dar Valdan of Aix-la-Chapelle. The Bishop had him admitted to St. Johannes Hospital in Bonn where he was hidden for three months under the guise of having had a hernia operation. Pannwitz credited the Catholic Church for saving his life which is undoubtedly why he left the Catholic Church and Cardinal Spellman in New York half his wealth upon his death.
While no longer in the hospital at the time, Pannwitz was in Bonn when the Americans bombed the city on October 18th and destroyed half of it. He took advantage of the confusion to claim his apartment had been destroyed and requested that the magistrate allow him to travel to Potsdam, outside Berlin, where his sister could take him in. It took Pannwitz four days to reach Potsdam, the bombing of the railroads having made travel almost impossible. Pannwitz didn’t tell his sister anything about his adventures, apparently seeking to protect her in case the Gestapo came looking for him, which they never did. Pannwitz stayed hidden in his sister’s free room until the Russians arrived.
After things had quieted down some, Pannwitz returned to Berlin hoping to rebuild his life. He lived in his former five-room flat that had been reduced to two rooms on account of Allied bombing. After two months Pannwitz realized it would be impossible to make a living there because no raw materials and tools were then available. By April 1946, postal communication abroad had been restored, so he was able to liaise with the Dorners. Through them he reached the United States under a special program established by President Truman that placed Pannwitz in the class of the persecuted; his role in the July 20 Plot no doubt helped his cause.
By the end of his life, Wolfram von Pannwitz had amassed a fortune of $500,000 which he bequeathed in equal portions to Cardinal Spellman of the Catholic Church in New York and to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Pannwitz had made it explicitly clear in his will that none of his family members should inherit any part of his estate. Nonetheless, his sister Petrea contested the will, and apparently reached an out-of-court settlement with the Catholic Church awarding her some money. Inasmuch as my Uncle Fedor knew, Wolfram apparently had been cheated out of his share of his mother’s inheritance upon her death causing him to become estranged from his German family.
Of particular personal interest in “The Providence Sunday Journal” article is the following written about my uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck. I will quote the entire passage, then qualify and amend it based on my understanding of actual events:
“He [Pannwitz] said he was convinced that Hitler is now dead, and he related that a Jewish dentist, Fedor Bruck, had identified a skull as that of Hitler. Bruck and von Pannwitz were passengers on the same boat from Bremerhaven to New York.
‘Bruck took over the office and laboratory of Hitler’s dentist,’ Baron von Pannwitz said. ‘One day Bruck was summoned by the Russian military governor and told to bring the sketch of Hitler’s denture that his dentist had kept on file. In Bruck’s presence the sketch was checked with a dead body. There was something uncommon about Hitler’s teeth, cavities, or fillings in them. The sketch checked with the body. That is what Bruck said.’”
Dr. Hugo Blaschke was Hitler’s American-trained dentist. According to an account written by my uncle after the war and discussed at length in Post 31, the dental techniques Dr. Blaschke used on Hitler were “old fashioned,” ergo very distinctive. The knowledge that my uncle possessed as to Hitler’s fate and the identification of Hitler’s dental remains was derived exclusively from my uncle’s conversations with Käthe Heusermann, Blaschke’s dental assistant, immediately after the war. The sketch of the dental work done on Hitler was recreated from memory by Ms. Heusermann and the identifications of the remains hers; the original X-rays of Hitler’s teeth were either at the Reich Chancellery or had been taken by Blaschke when he fled to Obersalzberg. At no time did my uncle claim to have handled nor verified dental remains as belonging to Hitler, though it is true that he was visited by Russian authorities at Blaschke’s dental office looking for X-rays and people who could identify the dental work performed on Hitler. This ultimately led to Fritz Echtmann and Käthe Heusermann both being interrogated and detained in Russia for many years.
Finally, notwithstanding the coverage in “The Provience Sunday Journal” of Wolfram von Pannwitz’s self-described role in the July 20 Plot, according to Sieghard there is no mention in relevant literature of Wolfram’s involvement in the events. So, Sieghard is left to wonder whether this is an omission on the part of historians and/or what role, if any, Wolfram actually played in the leadup to the 20 July Plot? Also, curiously, Wolfram seems not to have told my uncle about his connection to the plot nor made him aware of the 1947 newspaper article describing his role. What to make of all this is unclear.
Note: In this post, I discuss “stashes” of family photos I’ve uncovered, and the efforts I’ve undertaken with the help of near and distant relatives to identify people in some of those images even absent captions. In a few instances the photos are significant because they illustrate individuals renowned or notorious in history. In other cases, a good deal of sleuthing was required, including comparing the pictures of people in captioned versus uncaptioned images. On other occasions, I recognized portrayals of family members I knew growing up. And, in rare instances, I was able to determine a photographed person based on an educated guess.
The antisemitic and racist laws enacted by the Nazis short-circuited my father’s career as a dentist. Pursuant to his formal training at the University of Berlin, followed by an apprenticeship in Danzig (today: Gdansk, Poland), my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1), opened his own dental practice in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in April 1932; by April 1937, my father was forced to flee Tiegenhof, and by March 1938 he had left Germany altogether, clearly seeing the handwriting on the wall. As an unmarried man with few family ties, this was an option open to him. My father would never again legally practice dentistry.
My father considered the five years he spent in Tiegenhof to be the halcyon days of his life. Judging from the numerous photos of his days spent there, including those illustrating his active social life, his professional acquaintances, and recreational pursuits, I would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise.
I originally intended in this post to briefly discuss with readers the history of Polish Mennonites because Tiegenhof, the town where my father had his dental practice, was largely Mennonite when my father lived there. The Mennonites arrived in the Żuławy Wiślane region (i.e. “the Vistula fens,” plural from “żuława”), the alluvial delta area of the Vistula in the northern part of Poland, in the 17th century. They came to escape religious persecution in the Netherlands and Flanders. I have instead decided to devote the subsequent Blog post to discussing the history of Polish Mennonites, and briefly explore how the Mennonites, who are committed to pacifism, inexplicably, became strong adherents of Hitler. I intend in the following post to use photos from my father’s collection to focus on one Mennonite family, the Epp family, with whom my father was acquainted and friends with. They have a dark history related to their connection to the Nazi regime.
Getting back on track. Curious whether the office building where my father had both his dental practice and residence still existed (Figure 2), in 2013 my wife Ann Finan and I visited Nowy Dwór Gdański. We quickly oriented ourselves to the layout of the town, and promptly determined that his office and residential building no longer stands. I would later learn that the structure had been destroyed by Russian bombers when Nazi partisans shot at them from this location.
During our initial visit to Nowy Dwór Gdański, we were directed to the local museum, the Muzeum Żuławskie. The museum docent the day we visited spoke English, so I was able to communicate to her that my Jewish father had once been a dentist in the town and had taken many pictures when living there of Tiegenhof and the Żuławy Wiślane region. I offered to make the photos available, which I in fact did upon my return to the States.
In 2014, my wife Ann and I were invited to Nowy Dwór Gdański for an in-depth tour and a translated talk. Naturally, during my presentation, I used many of my father’s photos. There was a question-and-answer period following my talk, and one Polish gentleman of Jewish descent commented on how fortunate I am to have so many photographs of my father, family, and friends. I agreed. In the case of this gentleman, he remarked he has only seven family pictures, which I think is often true for descendants of Holocaust survivors. In my instance, my father’s seven albums of surviving photos, covering from the 1910’s until 1948 when my father came to America, are the reason I started researching and writing about my family.
Given the importance pictures have played in the stories I research and write about, and the development of this Blog, I thought I would highlight a few of the more interesting and historically significant pictures in my father’s collection, as well as discuss other “stashes” of photos I’ve uncovered. Obviously, it’s impossible and would be of scant interest to readers to discuss all the photos.
My father was a witness to the rise of National Socialism from the window of his dental office in Tiegenhof. On May 1, 1933, my father photographed a regiment of “SA Sturmabteilung,” literally “Storm Detachment,” known also as “Brownshirts” or “Storm Troopers,” marching down the nearby Schlosserstrasse, carrying Nazi flags, framed by the “Kreishaus” (courthouse) on one side. (Figure 3)
Again, a year later to the day, on May 1, 1934, my father documented a parade of veterans and Brownshirts following the same path down Schlosserstrasse led by members of the Stahlhelm (“Steel Helmet”), a veterans’ organization that arose after the German defeat of WWI. (Figures 4a-b) In 1934, the Stahlhelme were incorporated into the SASturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.
Then again, the following year, on April 5, 1935, there was another Nazi parade. On this occasion Field Marshall Hermann Göring visited and participated in the march through Tiegenhof. The day prior, on April 4, 1935, Hermann Göring had visited the Free City of Danzig to influence the upcoming April 7th parliamentary elections in favor of Nazi candidates. The visit to Tiegenhof the next day was merely an extension of this campaign to influence the Free City’s parliamentary elections. In the photos that my father took on April 5th there can be seen a banner which in German reads “Danzig ist Deutsch wenn es nationalsozialistisch ist,” translated as “Danzig is German when it is National Socialist.” (Figures 5a-b) It appears that along with everyday citizens of Tiegenhof and surrounding communities, members of the Hitler Youth, known in German as Hitlerjugend, also lined the street in large number.
Students of history know about Hermann Göring but for those who are unfamiliar with him, let me say a few words. He would evolve to become the second-highest ranking Nazi after the Führer. Unlike many of Hitler’s sycophants and lieutenants, Göring was a veteran of WWI, having been an ace fighter pilot, a recipient of the prestigious Blue Max award, and a commander of the Jagdgeschwader a fighter group that had previously been led by the renowned Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. Göring was drawn to Hitler for his oratorical skills and became an early member of the Nazi Party. He participated with Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, during which he was wounded in the groin. During his recovery he was regularly given morphine to which he became addicted for the remainder of his life.
Göring oversaw the creation of the Gestapo, an organization he later let Heinrich Himmler run. He was best known as the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, although after the Nazi victory over France, he was made Reichsmarschall, head of all the German armed forces. He amassed great wealth for himself by stealing paintings, sculptures, jewelry, cash, and valuable artifacts not only from Jews and people whom Nazis had murdered but also by looting museums of defeated nations.
Towards the end of the war, following an awkward attempt to have Hitler appoint him head of the Third Reich and thereby drawing Hitler’s ire, he turned himself in to the Americans rather than risk being captured by the Russians. He eventually was indicted and stood trial at Nuremberg. The once obese Göring, who’d once weighed more than three hundred pounds, was a shadow of his former self at his trial. Expectedly, he was convicted on all counts, and sentenced to death by hanging. His request to be executed by firing squad was denied, but he was able to avoid the hangman’s noose by committing suicide using a potassium cyanide pill that had inexplicably been smuggled to him by an American soldier.
My uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, has been the subject of multiple previous posts (i.e., Post 17, Post 31, Post 41). My uncle, like my father was a dentist. He was educated at the University of Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland) and had his dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany (today: Legnica, Poland) until around 1933 when he was forced to give it up due to the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” passed by the Nazi regime on the 7th April 1933, two months after Adolf Hitler had attained power. My uncle’s life is of interest because he miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin by friends and non-Jewish family members. His story has also been of interest because he counted among his friends a woman named Käthe Heusermann-Reiss, who had been his dental assistant in Liegnitz.
Following the loss of his business my uncle relocated to Berlin hoping the anonymity of the larger city would afford him the possibility to continue working under the auspices of another dentist, which it did for a time. Käthe Heusermann also moved to Berlin and opportunistically landed herself a job as a dental assistant to Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke. In this capacity, she was always present when Dr. Blaschke treated Hitler. Following the end of the war, she was interrogated by the Russians and asked to identify dental remains which had been recovered in a burn pit outside the Reichstag. The bridgework performed by Dr. Blaschke on Hitler was outmoded so Käthe was easily able to recognize Blaschke’s work and Hitler’s teeth, a fact Stalin kept hidden from the world. Following Russia’s capture of Berlin at the end of the war, my uncle who’d temporarily been hiding in Käthe’s apartment learned from her that Hitler had committed suicide. This dangerous information resulted in Käthe being imprisoned in the USSR for many years, and my uncle barely escaping the same fate. Surviving among my father’s photographs is a noteworthy picture taken in Liegnitz of my uncle and Käthe Heusermann. Though uncaptioned, I have been able to compare it to known pictures of Käthe to confirm it is her. (Figure 6)
As I have told readers in multiple earlier posts my father was an active sportsman, and an excellent amateur tennis player. Among my father’s belongings I retain multiple of the prizes he was awarded for his achievements, including many newspaper clippings documenting his results. In August 1936, my father attended an International Tennis Tournament in Zoppot, Germany (today: Sopot, Poland), located a mere 32 miles from Tiegenhof. During his attendance there, he photographed the great German tennis player, Heinrich Ernst Otto “Henner” Henkel (Figure 7), whose biggest success was his singles title at the 1937 French Championships. Interestingly, Henkel learned to play tennis at the “Rot-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin. My father was a member of the “Schwarz-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin, so perhaps my father and Henner played one another and were acquainted. Henner Henkel was killed in action during WWII on the Eastern Front at Voronezh during the Battle of Stalingrad while serving in the Wehrmacht, the German Army.
As I mentioned above, my father left Germany for good in March 1938. He was headed to stay with his sister Susanne and brother-in-law, then living in Fiesole, a small Tuscan town outside Florence, Italy. During his sojourn in Italy, before eventually joining the French Foreign Legion later in 1938, my father visited some of the tourist attractions in Italy, including the Colosseum in Rome. One of the images that my father took there has always stood out to me because of the paucity of people around what is today a very crowded and visited venue. (Figure 8)
My father’s collection of photos number in the hundreds but I’ve chosen to highlight only certain ones because they illustrate a few personages or places that may be known to readers. My father’s collection is merely one among several caches of images I was able to track down through family and acquaintances. I want to call attention to a few pictures of family members that grabbed my attention from these other hoards.
In Post 33, I explained to readers how I tracked down the grandchildren of my grandfather’s brother, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck (1872-1952). Based on family correspondence, I knew my great-uncle Willy wound up in Barcelona after escaping Germany in the 1930’s and theorized his children and grandchildren may have continued to live there. Official vital documents I procured during a visit there convinced me otherwise, that at least his son returned to Germany after WWII. I was eventually able to track down both of my great-uncle’s grandchildren, that’s to say my second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck, to outside of Munich, Germany. (Figure 9) I have met both, and they’ve shared their family pictures, which again number in the hundreds.
The cache included many images of family members, but there are two pictures I was particularly thrilled to obtain copies of. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), previously discussed, fought in WWI on the Eastern Front. (Figure 10) Among the family memorabilia I retain is a postcard he sent to his aunt Franziska Bruck on the 3rd of September 1916 coincidentally from the Ukraine announcing his promotion to Sergeant. (Figures 11a-b) The ongoing conflict between the Ukraine and Russia makes me realize how long the Ukraine has been a staging area for wars.
Regular readers may recall that my father was born in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), in Upper Silesia. The family hotel there, owned through three generations between roughly 1850 and the early 1920’s, was known as the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Among my second cousins’ photos is a rare image of the entrance to this hotel, which no longer stands. (Figure 12)
I introduced readers to two of my grandfather’s renowned sisters, my great-aunts Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, way back in Post 15. Their surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, the westernmost of the twelve boroughs of Berlin; these files have been another source of family photographs. Franziska Bruck was an eminent florist, and it is reputed that one of her clients was the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II (1859-1941). One undated photograph taken in my great-aunt’s flower shop shows Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886-1954), the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, who was married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, Wilhelm, the German Crown Prince. (Figure 13)
My second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck introduced me to one of my third cousins, Andreas “Andi” Pauly, also living part-time in Munich, Germany. (Figure 14) The Pauly branch of my extended family, which originally hailed from Posen, Germany (today: Poznan, Poland) has been the subject of multiple blog posts, including Post 45 on Pauly family Holocaust victims and reflections in Post 56 by the paterfamilias, Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916), Andi Pauly’s great-grandfather. Josef Pauly and his wife Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927) had eight daughters and one son born between 1870 and 1885; thanks to photos provided by Andi Pauly, not only was I able to obtain images of all nine children but also some of Pauly cousins I knew of by name.
Again, it is not my intention to boggle readers’ minds by showing all these photos but I want to focus on one particular picture I originally obtained from Andi Pauly that was the subject of Post 65. The photo was taken in Doorn, Netherlands on the 28th of May 1926, and shows a then-unknown Bruck family member standing amidst a group that includes the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, his second wife, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), and the Royal Family’s entourage. (Figure 15) At the time I wrote Post 65, I was unable to determine who the Bruck family member was, nor whom the initials “W.B.” stood for.
Fast forward. In early 2021, I was astonished to receive an email from a Dr. Tilo Wahl, a doctor from Köpenick in Berlin, who stumbled upon my Blog and contacted me. He shared copies of the extensive collection of personal papers and photographs he had copied from the grandson of one of my esteemed ancestors, Dr. Walter Bruck (1872-1937), from Breslau, Germany (today: Wrocław, Poland) Again, this relative and my findings related to Dr. Walter Bruck have been chronicled in multiple earlier posts. The very same image discussed in the previous paragraph I had obtained from Andi Pauly was included among Dr. Bruck’s images. It was then I realized the unidentified Bruck family member standing with Kaiser Wilhelm II, his family, and his entourage was none other than Dr. Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963). (Figure 16) I discussed these findings in Post 100.
Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection of papers and photos yielded images of multiple family members about whom I was aware, including one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s three siblings. However, one that stands out amongst all these photos was the one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s grandfather Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883). (Figure 17) Dr. Jonas Bruck is buried along with his son, Dr. Julius Bruck, in the restored tombs at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland. (Figure 18) Dr. Jonas Bruck was a brother of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) I previously discussed.
In various places, I found fleeting references that Dr. Walter Bruck and Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch had both previously been married. I eventually found historic documents, my gold standard, confirming this. Using educating guesses based on incomplete captions and estimating the timeframe a few pictures in Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection were taken, that’s to say during WWI and before, I was even able to find pictures of both of their previous spouses among his photos.
Dr. Walter Bruck’s album also contain multiple pictures of his daughter, Renate Bruck (1926-2013). She was married three times, with images of two of her husbands included. Thanks to Post 99 Renate’s twin daughters, whom I knew about but had no expectation of ever finding since they’d left England years ago, instead found me. From this, I learned that Walter Bruck’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in Sydney, Australia.
I suspect the story I’m about to relate may resonate with some readers, the topic of missing or incomplete captions on pictures of one’s ancestors. Let me provide some context. During the time that my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck was a dentist in Liegnitz, Germany he carried on an illicit affair with a married non-Jewish woman, Irmgard Lutze (Figure 19), with whom he had two children, my first cousins Wolfgang (Figure 20) and Wera Lutze. During the Nazi era time when it was prohibited and dangerous for an Aryan to have an affair with a Jew, the cuckolded husband nonetheless raised the children as his own. Therefore, they had the Lutze rather than the Bruck surname.
I knew both first cousins well, though both are now deceased. In any case, included among my cousin’s photographs was one that left me perplexed. It showed three generations, the eldest of whom was identified as “Tante Grete Brauer (mother’s sister).” (Figures 21a-b) The “Brauer” surname reverberated only because when perusing my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s papers at the Stadtmuseum I discovered multiple letters written by Brauers. At the time I had no idea this represented another branch of my extended family.
As I discussed in Post 34, I would eventually work out that “Tante Grete Brauer” was my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner’s sister, Margarethe Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942) who was murdered in the Holocaust. Prior to finding this isolated picture of my great-aunt, I was completely unaware of her existence. I’ve repeatedly told readers that my father had scant interest in family and rarely spoke of them to me growing up, so I was not surprised by this discovery.
I will give readers one last example of caches of family photos I’ve been able to recover by mentioning my third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser (Figure 22), who very sadly passed away in 2021 due to complications from Covid. Over the years, Larry and I often shared family documents and photos. Several years ago, he borrowed and scanned a large collection of photos from one of his cousins named Michael Maleckar which he shared with me. As with any such trove, I found a few gems, including one of my own parents at a party they attended in Manhattan the early 1950’s. My father literally “robbed the cradle” when he married my mother as she was 22 years younger than him. This age difference is particularly pronounced in the one picture I show here. (Figure 23)
I will merely say, in closing, that I am aware of other caches of family photos that unfortunately I have been unable to lay my hands on. I completely understand that some of my cousins are busy leading their lives and don’t share my passion for family history, so they are excused. One other thought. The longer I work on my family’s history, the more I realize how much I regret not talking with my relatives when they were alive about some of our ancestors as my stories would be broader and would then be grounded in truths rather veiled in so much conjecture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sussman, Jeffrey. Holocaust Fighters: Boxers, Resisters, and Avengers. Roman & Littlefield, 2021.
Note: In this post, I discuss a German Baron my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck befriended in a displaced persons camp in West Berlin while awaiting passage to America in 1947, a gentleman with whom my uncle had much in common and who went on to parlay a small investment in the stock market into more than $500,000 by the time he died. I also review the circumstances that led my uncle to immigrate to the United States after spending 30 months in hiding in Berlin eluding the Nazis, then being permitted to take over Hitler’s dentist’s office following WWII.
My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck has been the subject of multiple earlier posts which are among my most popular chronicles. I encourage interested readers to peruse these earlier written accounts to familiarize themselves with the broad outlines of my uncle’s life. For the purposes of this post, however, let me provide a brief review.
My uncle owned his own dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland] (Figure 1), in the Prussian province of Silesia, until April 1936, when he was forced to shutter his business by the Nazis. He relocated to Berlin, where he was able to resume work for a time, initially working for himself (Figures 2a-b), then later working under the auspices of a non-Jewish dentist. In October 1942, my uncle was ordered by the Nazi authorities to report to an age transport; realizing this meant deportation to a concentration camp and eventual death, he went into hiding. With the help of non-Jewish relatives and acquaintances, “silent heroes,” my uncle survived underground for 30 months until the fall of Berlin in early May 1945. It is estimated that fewer than 5,000 Jews survived concealment in Germany during WWII.
When my uncle had his own dental practice in Liegnitz, one of his dental assistants was Käthe Heusermann née Reiss (Figure 3), a woman of some later recognition; after my uncle Fedor was forced to close his business, she too relocated to Berlin and wound up obtaining a similar position as dental assistant for Adolf Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke (Figure 4), an early member of the National Socialist party. As Dr. Blaschke’s assistant, Käthe Heusermann was always in attendance when der Führer had very distinctive yet outdated dental work performed on him at a special private office Dr. Blaschke was assigned in the Reich Chancellery; Dr. Blaschke’s private business office was located at Kurfürstendamm 213 in the district of Charlottenburg, the boulevard considered the Champs-Élysées of Berlin; this building still stands today. (Figure 5)
As I explained to readers in Post 31, there is very clear evidence that because of their previous relationship and friendship Käthe Heusermann sheltered and hid my uncle for brief periods during his 30 months underground during WWII; she also gave him special rations and extra food vouchers she received as a member of the Führer’s extended staff, at great personal danger. Thus, throughout my uncle’s time in hiding during the war, he was periodically in touch with Käthe. This becomes relevant after the Russians occupied Berlin, and, by my uncle’s own account, he made his way to her apartment at Pariserstrasse 39-40 (Figures 6a-b):
“On April 26, 1945, Steglitz, in the southwestern part of the city [Berlin], was occupied by the Russians. Behind the advancing troops, I arrived, on May 4th, in the apartment of my former assistant Käthe Heusermann. This apartment was situated at Pariserstrasse 39-40 near Kurfürstendamm. A friendship of twenty years tied my person and the family of Käthe Heusermann. Käthe was alone in the bomb-damaged apartment and was very upset and confused. She had only returned to her apartment the day before, May 3rd, having spent the time before that in the Air Shelter in the Reich Chancellery.“
Käthe Heusermann related the events to my uncle of what had occurred at the Reich Chancellery as the Allies encircled Berlin in the waning days of the war, and how Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had committed suicide (see Post 31 for the complete account in my uncle’s words). Following the fall of Berlin, Käthe Heusermann advised my uncle to obtain permission from the pertinent authorities to take over Dr. Blaschke’s dental practice. His dental office was intact, and Dr. Blaschke had already fled to Obersalzburg, so was unlikely to return. As a person persecuted by the Nazis, my uncle had a right to make this claim. The authorities did in fact grant my uncle permission to take over Dr. Blaschke’s apartment and practice at Kurfürstendamm 213 in Charlottenburg; as discussed in Post 17, post-WWII Address Directories from 1946 (Figure 7), 1947, and 1948 locate my uncle at this address. My uncle’s knowledge of the events surrounding Hitler’s fate stem primarily from his friendship with Käthe Heusermann, but also from his occupancy of Dr. Blaschke’s dental office following WWII.
According to my uncle’s account, following his tenancy of Dr. Blaschke’s dental premises, he was visited on a few occasions by Russian counter-intelligence agents:
“. . .On Wednesday, May 9th, 1945, I met a Russian Lieutenant Colonel in the building, as well as woman in uniform and a gentleman in mufti, as they inquired from the Superintendent as to the whereabouts of Blaschke. As I learned later, they were the deputy military governor of Berlin, a female agent of the Russian secret police, and a certain Doctor Arnaudow, who had been assistant at the Berlin Charité with “Geheimrat Sauerbruch” [“Geheimrat Sauerbruch” is a successful and respected physician]. The latter was a Bulgarian and had brought the Russians who were looking for Hitler’s dentist . . .; furthermore, he acted as interpreter, although the agent of the Russian Secret Police, who called herself “Lola,” spoke a little German.”
As I eventually learned, “Lola,” was a 26-year-old Jewish woman named Yelena Rzhevskaya (Figure 8), born Elena Moiseyevna Kagan in Belarus in 1919, who was travelling with the Soviet vanguard when they entered the center of Berlin on April 29, 1945. She was a military interpreter for SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency. Like my uncle, she was a witness to events and findings about Hitler’s fate, corroborating much of what my uncle knew and later reported. As the Soviet forces advanced through Berlin, Rzhevskaya’s unit was tasked with finding people who could provide information on Hitler’s whereabouts. It is only in 2018 that an English version of Yelena Rzhevskaya’s memoir, “Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker,” was published and that mention of her role in helping identify Hitler’s teeth was made.
Thus, in 1945, what led “Lola,” Yelena Rzhevskaya, to visit my uncle Fedor at Dr. Blaschke’s former dental offices was her search for information about Hitler’s fate. While questioning my uncle, Elena and the Russian authorities would learn about and eventually interrogate Käthe Heusermann and Fritz Echtmann, Blaschke’s dental technician, about their respective roles during Hitler’s dental procedures and their knowledge of his whereabouts; Käthe identified Hitler’s dental bridge for the Russians confirming his death, a fact the Soviets kept hidden for many years. Käthe and Fritz’s familiarity with Hitler’s fate would eventually result in both being abducted by the Russians and imprisoned in Russia until around 1955, a few years after Stalin died in March 1953. It served Stalin’s expansionist goals to have the world believe that Hitler had survived WWII and was an existential danger to the world, thus the need to remove from the scene anyone who could refute his narrative. It is precisely for this same reason that my uncle was in danger of being spirited away by the Russians, namely, because of his indirect knowledge of Hitler’s fate.
My uncle was alerted by the American post-war occupation forces who now controlled Charlottenburg, the Berlin district where Dr. Blaschke had once had his dental practice and where my uncle now lived and worked, that he was in danger of being snatched by the Russian intelligence services. Realizing they would eventually track him down wherever he hid and having already received a visa for the United States, my uncle abandoned his profession. Like my father, he would never again practice dentistry. Thus, began the next phase in my uncle’s life.
The precise date on which my uncle left Berlin is unknown to me. However, he wrote an affidavit in November 1966 in the matter of a probate hearing on behalf of the estate of Wolfram E. von Pannwitz, a German Baron he met in June 1947 in West Berlin, providing a general timeframe for when he departed Germany. My uncle and Mr. von Pannwitz befriended one another that month in a displaced persons camp where they had been assembled awaiting passage to the United States. Both left for America on the 8th of July 1947 aboard the “Marine Marlin” from Bremen, Germany, and arrived in New York City on the 17th of July 1947 (Figures 9-10a-b); the two would remain friends until von Pannwitz died in New York City in 1966. (Figure 11)
Wolfram E. von Pannwitz was born on the 7th of July 1889 in Botzanowitz, Prussia [today: Bodzanowice, Poland], approximately 84 miles northeast of Leobschutz, Prussia [today:Głubczyce, Poland], where my uncle was born in 1895. Beyond both having been born in Upper Silesia, my uncle and von Pannwitz shared other things in common; they were close in age, only six years separated them; both were from the upper class; both were veterans of WW; both were victims of the Nazis; and both were anti-fascist.
Von Pannwitz was a Lutheran member of the Prussian nobility, who had been a captain in the German Army during WWI. In the early 1930’s, von Pannwitz operated a large garage business and dealt in fuel in Berlin. Not wishing to join the Nazi party, he went to Paris to live between 1937 and 1939. He was forced to return to Berlin, having been declared an “enemy alien” by the French, although he was able to use family influence to return to Paris. Once returned, he became involved with the movement that attempted to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, an ultimately unsuccessful effort that forced him to go into hiding.
Wolfram von Pannwitz had a younger sister, “Else Petrea, Magda, Ernestine, Ottilie, Leonie, Gertrud,” born on the 19th of February 1893, also in Botzanowitz, Prussia. (Figure 12) He married Clara Virginia Rohde on the 18th of October 1920 in Berlin, a short-lived marriage that ended on the 28th of February 1922 and produced no children. (Figures 13a-b) He remarried Frida Mueller in 1931, who died of cancer in 1934, another childless marriage.
Let me briefly digress. During this Covid-19 pandemic we are currently living through that requires most of us to self-quarantine, I have spent countless hours listening to webinars on an investment service to which I am subscribed. In this context, an interesting fact about Mr. von Pannwitz caught my attention. Investing largely in aircraft stocks, he parlayed $15,000 he saved in 1948 and 1949 into $500,000 by the time he died in 1966. I find this interesting on multiple levels. He was heavily invested in the stock market long before this was commonplace, and seemingly followed a path to building his wealth by buying and holding stocks, a strategy the investment service I follow also subscribes to. He was also invested in a segment of the market, airlines, which have largely fallen out of favor, for obvious reasons, during the current pandemic.
Wolfram von Pannwitz died on the 28th of January 1966 in St. Vincent’s Hospital. At the time he lived modestly in a $23-a-week 9-by 12-foot room in the Hotel Seville on Madison Avenue (Figure 14), known today as the “James New York-NoMad.” His death made the news (Figure 15), including the New York Times, because he left his $500,000 estate equally to Cardinal Spellman of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, “HIAS.” While Mr. Pannwitz was not Jewish, his bestowal to HIAS was his way of showing gratitude to his Jewish friends for their professional and personal help during his life. His bequest to the St. Patrick’s Cathedral was, in his own words, to thank them for the “. . .strength and power [they gave him] to accomplish the hard struggle for this life.”
Interestingly, Mr. von Pannwitz typed his will, dated the 4th of September 1958, on a conventional printed form. In the will, he stated “all my relatives, near or remote, shall be excluded from my inheritance, there being special reasons for this direction.” While none of the contemporary newspaper accounts discuss these “special reasons,” I know from my uncle’s November 1966 affidavit that upon Mr. von Pannwitz’s mother’s death, Gertrud von Pannwitz née Scholz in 1957, he was cheated out of his inheritance by his younger sister.
Based on surviving correspondence in my possession, sadly, Cardinal Spellman and the Catholic Church reached an out-of-court settlement with Wolfram’s sister, Elsa Petrea Reymann née von Pannwitz, after she contested the will. In the back-and-forth correspondence between my uncle Fedor and one of Mr. von Pannwitz’s friends in California, both expressed outrage that she managed to obtain any part of her brother’s estate.
This would likely have been particularly galling to Mr. von Pannwitz given that he was estranged from his sister and because of his family’s connections to the Nazi regime. A certain Helmuth von Pannwitz (14th October 1898-16th January 1947) (Figure 16), also born in Botzwanowitz, Prussia and likely one of Wolfram’s cousins, was a German general; he fought in both world wars. In WWII, he was in command of a battle group assigned to cover the southern flank in the battle of Stalingrad, where he wiped out a Soviet cavalry brigade, a Soviet cavalry division, and an enemy infantry division. Later, Helmuth von Pannwitz established a Cossack volunteer force, the 1st Cossack Division, which fought against freedom fighters in the Ukraine and Belorussia, before eventually fighting partisans commanded by Tito in Yugoslavia. During punitive operations in Serbia and Croatia, the Cossack regiments under Pannwitz’s command committed several atrocities against the civilian population, including mass rapes and routine summary executions. In 1947, the same year that Wolfram immigrated to America, Helmuth was executed by the Russians for these war crimes.
REFERENCE
Rzhevskaya, Yelena. “Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler’s Bunker.” 2018. Greenhill Books. London.
NOTE: The last two Blog posts have dealt with three of my grandfather Felix Bruck’s sisters, two renowned personages and a third who gave birth to a well-known artist. My grandfather had two additional surviving siblings, both of whom fled Berlin during the Third Reich never to return, and their stories will be the subject of upcoming posts. However, in this Blog post, I will talk about my father’s oldest brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, and, tell his life story and relate his compelling tale of survival in Berlin during the era of the National Socialists. This is a story I’ve looked forward to relating to readers on account of some of the historic figures who played a direct and indirect role in my uncle’s life.
As a child, my Uncle Fedor was interested in hot-air balloons. Among my father’s surviving personal papers, there exists a postcard sent by my uncle to his maternal aunt’s sister on his 14th birthday, that’s to say on August 17, 1909, when his aunt and uncle, Alfred & Charlotte (“Lotte”) Berliner, took him on a hot-air balloon ride in Breslau, Germany (today: Wrocław, Poland). (Figures 2a & 2b) By researching the names on the postcard, I was able to entirely reconstruct a branch of my family I had previously been unaware using the “Eastern Prussian Provinces” database cited above.
Beyond the names, however, the postcard is interesting for multiple reasons. It came from an association (“des Artillerie-Vereins 1908, Ratibor und Umgegund”) founded in 1908 by former artillery soldiers from Ratibor and the surrounding area; the club’s stamp appears in the upper right-hand corner of the card. The artillery association partially supported itself by offering hot-air balloon rides, and the balloon pilots, Ulrich Gaebel and Hans Zynwi (?), signed their names. The oval cancellation mark, “Breslau-Oderberg,” specifically indicates the postcard was stamped and postmarked aboard a mail train, traveling the 256 miles between these locations; such mail trains were apparently common in Germany until 1945. The photo was taken from a hot-air balloon at a height of 150 meters, and shows the new Town Hall in Leipzig, a city in Saxony 231 miles to the west of Breslau. “Luftschiffer,” printed on the backside of the postcard, refers to German airship (balloon) units.
My Uncle Fedor fought for the German Army in World War I, and was assigned to the 89th Infantry Division as part of their fire brigade. (Figure 3) For a time in 1916, he was stationed in the Ukraine on the Eastern Front. A postcard written by my Uncle Fedor during his deployment there also survives among my father’s personal papers. This one is one dated September 3, 1916, and was written by my uncle to his Aunt Franziska Bruck in Berlin, the famed florist, in which he proudly tells her he has been promoted to the rank of a non-commissioned officer. (Figures 4a & 4b) My uncle’s duties on the Front ended when he was wounded, wounds from which he fully recovered.
By 1921, my Uncle Fedor had obtained a dental license from the University of Breslau. He owned his practice in Liegnitz (today: Legnica, Poland) (Figure 5) from November 1924 through April 1936 (Figure 6), when he was forced out of business by the National Socialists. Already, by March 1932, they had relieved my uncle of his responsibilities as municipal school dentist (“Schulzahnarzt”) for schools in small communities surrounding Liegnitz (Figures 7 & 8); a Schulzahnarzt merely examined pupils‘ teeth, advising them on whether a followup with a dentist was required. There was widespread support among German dentists for the National Socialist ideology, so in expectation of their rise to power many dental organizations displaced their Jewish colleagues as a sign of “anticipatory obedience.“ Since my uncle could no longer practice dentistry in Liegnitz, he left for Berlin in 1936.
Figure 9-My Uncle Fedor with Irmgard Lutze, the married lady with whom he had two children
During his time in Liegnitz, my uncle had an illicit love affair with a married non-Jewish woman (Figure 9) by whom he fathered two children, my first cousins. As offspring of a Jewish man, this could have been dangerous to the children and their mother, but because the cuckolded husband never betrayed them both children survived into old age.
After leaving for Berlin, for a period of time at least, my uncle could still work there, though under very trying circumstances. He continued to have his own practice at Fasanenstraße 20 in Berlin-Charlottenburg for a while. However, as a result of the “Regulation for the Elimination of the Jews from the Economic Life of Germany,” after February 1939, my uncle had his dental license revoked. Only in November 1939 was he again certified, but then only as a “Zahnbehandler,” which meant he could only treat Jews and relatives.
Interestingly, the archives at the Centrum Judaicum Berlin show that during this period, specifically on June 11, 1939, he converted from Judaism at the Messiah Chapel in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, Kastanienallee 22. My Uncle Fedor must still have believed even at this late date that conversion from Judaism would alter his fate.; my theory is that as a wounded veteran of WWI, it was totally inconceivable to him that the Germans would incarcerate or murder him.
Figure 10-My Uncle Fedor’s “Holocaust Badge” of the specific design that Jews living in Germany, Alsace, Bohemia and Moravia were required to wear during the Nazi era
For several months starting in March 1941, my uncle had the good fortune of managing the practice of a colleague preparing to emigrate, and then, again, in June 1941, he took over a well-equipped practice located in the Kürfurstendamm. As a result, for a period of time he was better off economically than other Jews still in Germany, although by January 1942, he had been permanently displaced from this last office by a National Socialist colleague. (Figure 10)
Eventually, in a letter dated October 12, 1942, my uncle was summoned by the Gestapo to present himself to an “age transport.” Realizing this was a death sentence, he fled to a friend in Berlin-Dahlem and went underground. Roger Moorhouse, in his book entitled “Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital 1939-1945,” estimates that of the 11,000 Jews who went underground in Berlin during the war years of 1939-45, only about 1400 survived the war, of which my uncle was one. Time and again, Uncle Fedor had good fortune. When his friend, Dr. Sieber, was arrested on February 15, 1943, by the Gestapo in his presence, he miraculously escaped. In the ensuing months, my uncle found refuge with a cousin or hid in “green belts,” coal cellars, and parks.
Most helpful to him during his underground odyssey was a dentist by the name of Otto Berger, a right-minded individual who was adamantly opposed to National Socialism. (Figure 11) Berger somehow was able to illegally procure papers for Fedor in the name of Dr. Friedrich Burkhardt, matching my uncle’s own initials; without these papers, it is certain that Fedor would not have survived the war. In March 1944, both Berger and Fedor were among nine survivors from a group of 44 people who had sought refuge in a basement destroyed by Allied bombers. Following this narrow escape, for a short period Fedor again hid with his cousin before returning to live with Berger, first in Berlin-Zehlendorf, then in Berlin-Steglitz. The last apartment was destroyed by fire on the eve of the Russian capture of Steglitz on April 26, 1945.
The capture of this part of Berlin marked the beginning of the next phase of my uncle’s life. When Fedor had his own practice in Liegnitz, he trained as one of his dental assistants a woman named Käthe Heusermann, née Reiss. (Figure 12) After Fedor was forced to close shop in Liegnitz and move to Berlin, she too moved there, and from 1937 on, she was in the employ of Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s American-trained dentist. (Figure 13) Following the Russian capture of Berlin, on May 4, 1945, Fedor visited his former dental assistant Käthe Heusermann in the Pariserstraße in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, and she encouraged him to apply to take over Dr. Blaschke’s dental office, which had only been lightly damaged. As a victim of National Socialism, he was entitled to such consideration.
Figure 13-Dr. Hugo Johannes Blaschke (1881-1959), Hitler’s American-trained dentist from 1933-1945
Dr. Blaschke’s dental office was located at Kürfurstendamm 213 (Figure 14), and was at the time situated in the Russian sector of Berlin. With the approval of the Russian commandant, Fedor Bruck was assigned Blaschke’s office and living quarters. Post-war Berlin phone directories for both 1946 (Figure 15) and 1948 list Fedor Bruck as a “Zahnarzt” (dentist) occupying these premises, as indeed he did until he left for America in 1947 (his name continues to show up in the 1948 phone directory even though he was no longer in Berlin).
My uncle’s former close association with Käthe Heusermann allowed him to become a “witness” to history. As Dr. Blaschke’s dental assistant, Käthe had always been present when Hitler was undergoing dental treatment. Because the dental records describing the work performed on Hitler had been lost or destroyed, Käthe Heusermann was questioned by the Russians and asked to give her opinion on the basis of memory whether the parts of the jaw found in the Reich Chancellery garden were those of Hitler. She recognized the dental work and affirmed they were indeed Hitler’s remains. Several days later, she conveyed this information to my uncle, which inadvertently placed him at risk.
Eventually, both Käthe Heusermann, and Dr. Blaschke’s dental technician, Fritz Echtmann, were captured by the Russians and imprisoned for some years. Stalin seemingly did not want any witnesses who could confirm Hitler’s fate, perhaps wishing to perpetuate the myth that Hitler had survived the war and was an ever-present danger. Since my uncle also knew of Hitler’s death, he too was in jeopardy of being kidnapped by the Russians, so, forewarned by the Americans, he decided to emigrate to the United States in July 1947.
Fedor Bruck never met Dr. Blaschke because he had already fled to the southern part of Germany by the time Fedor was assigned his dental practice. Blaschke was eventually captured and interrogated by the Americans, and imprisoned for a period of time. Fedor was able to salvage the abandoned dental records of some Nazis treated by Dr. Blaschke, although the records dealing with more prominent figures such as Himmler, Ley, Göring, Goebbels, and others were taken away by the Russians when they searched the premises. The salvaged records survive in the estate of Fedor’s grandson. (Figures 16a & 16b)
The events described above, including Fedor Bruck’s knowledge of some of these happenings, are documented in at least three books and one newspaper account. These include H.R. Trevor-Roper’s “The Last Days of Hitler,” Lev Bezymenski’s “The Death of Adolf Hitler,” and Jelena Rshewskaja’s German-language book “Hitlers Ende Ohne Mythos.”
Trevor-Roper’s book was initially published in 1947, and this edition makes no mention of Fedor Bruck. However, in the Third Edition of this book published in 1956, a lengthy introduction was added by the author. This was made possible by the release, in that year, of Russian prisoners whom Trevor-Roper had been unable to question during his initial inquiries in 1945. Fedor Bruck’s name and witness to the events described above are discussed on pages 32-33. In Lev Bezymenski’s book, the events are described on pages 53-57, and my uncle Dr. Bruck’s name is cited on page 53. Ms. Rshewskaja’s book mentions Dr. Bruck on page 120 and following. In addition, Fedor Bruck was visited on July 7, 1945, in the former office of Dr. Blaschke by three British correspondents, including William Forrest of the “News Chronicle.” Relying on the account provided by Fedor Bruck, William Forrest chronicled in an article published on July 9th the positive identification of Hitler’s remains.
Figure 17-My Uncle Fedor and my Aunt Verena Bruck, née Dick, on their wedding day on March 4, 1958
Like my father, my Uncle Fedor never again practiced dentistry after he arrived in America. In December 1952, Fedor Bruck became a citizen of the United States, and legally changed his name to Theodore A. Brook. He married for the first time on March 4, 1958. (Figure 17)
For a period of time after his arrival in American, my uncle worked as a night watchman in a church in the Upper Westside of Manhattan, although he eventually landed a job with the State of New York as a toll-collector on the Tappan Zee Bridge. (Figure 18) Unlike many Jews who’d been professionals in their countries of origin, my uncle never bemoaned the fact he’d had to change his vocation in America; I remember my uncle as a boundless optimist for whom the glass was always half-full. He loved his job as a toll-collector because it allowed him to engage in another of his lifelong passions, namely, coin collecting. His wife, my Aunt Verena, once recounted to me the time my uncle approached her about buying a coin book to identify valuable coins and estimate their worth. While she initially balked at the “extravagance“ of such an expense, she quickly changed her tune when my uncle regularly came home from his job with valuable coins exchanged for those of lesser value.
Figure 19-My Uncle Fedor on September 12, 1981, five months before he passed away
My Uncle Fedor passed away in Bronxville, outside New York City, in February 1982. (Figures 19, 20 & 21)
Figure 20-My Uncle Fedor astride a horse in Liegnitz in 1926 dressed as an “English Gentleman”
Figure 21-My Uncle Fedor astride a horse in Liegnitz in 1926 dressed as “Frederick the Great”
REFERENCES
Bezymenski, Lev
1968 The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York.
Brook, Richard
2013 Prinz von Preußen—Hotel rodziny Bruck. Almanach Prowincjonalny 1/2013 (17) (p. 58-73).
Lutze, Kay
2006 Die Lebensgeschichte des jüdischen Zahnarztes Fedor Bruck (1895-1982) Von Liegnitz nach New York. Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen 96, Nr. 10, 16.5 (p. 124-127)
Moorhouse, Roger
2010 Berlin at War. Basic Books. New York
Rshewskaja, Jelena
2005 Hitlers Ende Ohne Mythos. Neues Leben, Verlag. (120 ff.)
Trevor, Roper, H.R.
1947 The Last Days of Hitler. The Macmillan Company. New York.
1987 The Last Days of Hitler (Sixth Edition). The University of Chicago Press. Chicago (p. 32-33)
