Raciborz, Poland Archives - Page 4 of 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HEINZ LUDWIG BERLINER & HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Name (relationship)	Vital Event	Date	Place

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

POST 67: THE SUSPICIOUSLY BRUTAL DEATHS OF MY FATHER’S PROTESTANT FRIENDS FROM DANZIG, GERHARD & ILSE HOPPE (PART I)

Note: This post is about two of my father’s former friends, non-Jews, from his time living in the Free State of Danzig in the 1930’s, and information I recently uncovered about their peculiar deaths.

Figure 1. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, in Winter 1930-1931 in Danzig

Figure 2. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, as a young dentist in Tiegenhof

My father, Dr, Otto Bruck, received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31st of May 1930. This was followed by two brief dental apprenticeships, first in Königsbrück, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, then in Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. These lasted until about mid-August 1930 according to letters of recommendation written by the two respective dentists. My father did not open his own dental practice in Tiegenhof, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] until April 1932, so inasmuch as I can surmise from surviving letters and photos, my father spent the intervening period apprenticing in the Free City of Danzig. (Figures 1-2) He may have been mentored by a Dr. Fritz Bertram, a dentist whom he took pictures of (Figure 3) and who is identified by name in his surviving pocket calendar (Figure 4), the subject of Post 6.

Figure 3. Zahnarzt (dentist) Dr. Fritz Bertram sailing in the Bay of Danzig with friends on the 18th of April 1931; Dr. Bertram may have mentored my father

Figure 4. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar listing a few names and phone numbers of business associates, notably, Dr. Fritz Bertram and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe

As a brief aside, my father’s decision to relocate to Danzig from Berlin may have been prompted by the fact he had an aunt and uncle who lived there, and that he was close to at least two of their three children (Figures 5-6), who interestingly I met when I was a young boy.

Figure 5. One of my father’s first cousins, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Loewenstein (1902-1986), on the 8th of March 1929 in Danzig, a cousin he may temporarily have stayed with while he was apprenticing there

Figure 6. Another of my father’s first cousins from Danzig, Heinz Loewenstein (1905-1979), brother of Hansi Goff

In any case, a gentleman whom my father befriended in Danzig was named Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 7) As I discussed in Post 6, I learned from a 1934 Danzig Address Book that, like my father, he too was a dentist, in the adjacent town of Neuteich, Free State of Danzig [today: Nowy Staw, Poland] (Figure 8), 8.8 miles southwest of Tiegenhof. Possibly, Gerhard, who appears from pictures to have been about the same age as my father, may also have been a dental apprentice when he and my father became friends. (Figure 9)

Figure 7. The earliest of my father’s pictures of his former friend from Danzig, Dr. Gerhard Hoppe, with whom he may have apprenticed

Figure 8. Page from the 1934 Danzig Address Book listing dentists in the Free State of Danzig with both my father and Dr. Gerhard Hoppe from Neuteich listed; my father’s first name is erroneously listed as “Heinz” when his actual first name was “Otto” although the address of his dental practice, Markstrasse 8, is correct

Figure 9. Dr. Gerhard Hoppe as a young man

Figure 10. My father with Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe walking along Wollwebergasse in Danzig during the Winter of 1931-1932

Gerhard and his girlfriend Ilse (Figure 10) are among a group of my father’s former friends whose fates I’ve so far been unable to determine; pictures exist of all of them in my father’s surviving photo albums. These friends were non-Jewish, and I refer to them as “former” friends since during the Nazi era they would have been under enormous pressure to disassociate themselves from any Jews and any businesses they might have run. So, in the case of my father, I know that while he still had a few non-Jewish friends who whom he socialized, he no longer had any dental clients by the time he shuttered his practice and left Tiegenhof for good in 1937. The relationship he had with these erstwhile friends may have been more nuanced, but I don’t know this for a fact. Judging from the dates on my father’s pictures, after mid-1936, his circle of friends had narrowed considerably.

I’ve told readers that I periodically recheck these one-time friends’ names in ancestry.com and other ancestral databases. I recently did this again with Gerhard and Ilse, and, astoundingly, uncovered historic documents related to both. I tell myself I should perhaps be less surprised I discover new documents, and more bewildered I did not find them during earlier searches. Regardless, my recent finds have allowed me to sadly put to rest the fate of Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. But, like most of the mysteries I seemingly resolve, they are like the mythological hydra, lop off one head and two grow in its place.

The search parameters I entered in ancestry.com were simply Gerhard’s first and last name, a place he might have lived, Danzig in this case, and the year I estimated he was born, so 1907, the same year my father was born. I immediately discovered his marriage certificate (Figures 11a-c), and the marriage register with he and his wife’s names, and their respective parents’ names. (Figure 12a-b)

Figure 11a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate showing they were married on the 30th of July 1932 in Marienburg

Figure 11b. Page 1 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate

Figure 11c. Page 2 of Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s marriage certificate with the names of witnesses

Figure 12a. Ancestry.com cover page of marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

Figure 12b. Marriage register listing for Gerhard Hoppe & Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky

The two-page marriage certificate, among other things, provides Gerhard’s complete name: “Gerhard Ludwig Rudolf Otto Hoppe”; his date of birth: 18th of February 1908; the date and place he was married: 30th of July 1932, Marienburg [today: Malbork, Poland] (Figure 13); his wife’s complete birth name: “Frida Charlotte Ilse Grabowsky” (also ending in “i” in some documents); his wife’s date of birth: 3rd of August 1907; and Gerhard’s profession: “Zahnarzt,” dentist. Three things instantly confirmed I had found the “right” Gerhard Hoppe: his date of birth off by one day from the date listed in my father’s pocket calendar (Figure 14), his wife’s name, Ilse, and his profession, dentist. Very likely, my father would have attended Gerhard and Ilse’s 1932 wedding. The second page of German marriage certificates typically list witnesses, but unfortunately my father’s name is not among them.

Figure 13. Photo taken by my father of the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Marienburg, today Malbork, the town where Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe were married in 1932

Figure 14. Page from my father’s 1932 Pocket Calendar showing Gerhard’s Hoppe birthday was on the 17th of February when in fact it was on the 18th of February

I would eventually locate documents for three generations of Gerhard and Ilse’s ancestors.

Now, here’s where things began to seriously stray from my preconceived notion of Gerhard and Ilse’s fates. With Ilse’s maiden name in hand, “Grabowsky,” I was now able to search entries for her. The first document I found for her was her death certificate showing she’d died on the 15th of April 1940 in the Langfuhr borough of Danzig (Figures 15a-b), known today as Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, the most upscale of Danzig’s boroughs, then and now. This document shows she died at less than 33 years of age, somewhat surprising but perhaps not so unusual given wartime realities. Shortly after discovering Ilse’s death certificate, I found Gerhard’s death record, showing he’d died on the 27th of July 1941 (Figures 16a-b), a little more than a year after his wife, also in Danzig-Langfuhr; at the time of his death he was 33, only slightly older than his wife had been. To say I was stupefied learning Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe had died so young, so soon after one another, and outside the theater of war would be an understatement.

Figure 15a. Ancestry.com cover page of Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate identifying her parents, whom she pre-deceased, as Richard Grabowky(i) & Else Grabowsky(i) née Ehmer

Figure 15b. Ilse Hoppe née Grabowsky’s death certificate showing she supposedly committed suicide on the 15th of April 1940 in Danzig (her cause of death is circled)

Figure 16a. Ancestry.com cover page of Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate, listing his parents, whom he pre-deceased, as Otto Hoppe & Anna Hoppe née Birkholz

Figure 16b. Gerhard Hoppe’s death certificate showing he died on the 27th of July 1941 in Danzig (his cause of death is circled)

Immediately curious as to whether the death certificates listed their causes of death, I turned to Mr. Peter Hanke. He is a German gentleman from “forum.danzig.de” with whom I’m in touch and who’d recently offered to ask the Polish archive in Malbork, Poland for death certificates for some of my father’s former friends, including Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe. I wanted to let him know I’d found their death certificates and ask if the records stated how they died. The answer left both of us horrified and saddened.

Ilse Hoppe’s cause of death was listed as:

“Todesursache: Durchschneiden der Halsschlagader (Selbstmord)” (Figure 15b)

Cause of death: cutting through the carotid artery (suicide)

And, Gerhard Hoppe’s death was caused by:

“Todesursache: Schädelbruch und komplizierter Oberschenkelbruch links- und rechtsseitig” (Figure 16b)

Cause of death: skull fracture and complicated thigh fracture on the left and right sides

Gerhard and Ilse Hoppe’s deaths leave us with more questions than answers given their extreme violence; they seem more like murders than suicides or health-related deaths.

According to Peter Hanke, an implausible but not impossible explanation as to the cause of Gerhard’s death may relate to the location of his apartment. I mentioned above that a 1934 Danzig Address Book indicates Gerhard was a dentist in Neuteich, Free State of Danzig, although by 1940-1941, a Danzig Address Book shows he’d relocated to Danzig proper and lived at Karrenwall 5 (Figure 17); he is not listed in the 1939 Address Book (Figure 18), suggesting he moved to Danzig in 1940 before Ilse’s death (i.e., Ilse commits suicide in Danzig, not Neuteich). Old German Address Books list people alphabetically as well as by street address and occupation, and, interestingly, in 1940-1941, Karrenwall 5 shows that not only did Gerhard Hoppe reside there but so too did numerous bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (Figure 19), a trend that continues into 1942. (Figure 20) Could it be that the Nazi Party wanted Gerhard’s apartment, and was not squeamish about asserting its interests? We may never know. Unfortunately, contemporary Danzig newspapers have not yet been digitized, although by 1941 the news outlets were most assuredly controlled by the Nazis and are not likely to provide an accurate portrayal of what might have happened to Gerhard.

Figure 17. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book showing Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s dental office was located at “Theaterplace 30” while his apartment was at “Karrenwall 5”

Figure 18. Page from 1939 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year

Figure 19. Page from 1940-1941 Danzig Address Book listing tenants at Karrenwall 5 that year, including Dr. Gerhard Hoppe and various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

Figure 20. Page from 1942 Danzig Address Book, the year following Dr. Gerhard Hoppe’s death, showing Karrenwall 5 still housed various bureaus of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP

There exists a database of displaced Germans refugees from the former province of Danzig-Westpreußen, Germany, now Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz provinces in Poland, referred to as “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” that include images of a civil register (handwritten and printed works); more than 20 million persons are included in these card files arranged by the town of origin. I discussed this database in Post 38. Peter Hanke checked the name “Hoppe” for Danzig, and, incredibly found HOK cards for Gerhard and Ilse’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939 in Danzig (Figure 21), and for Gerhard Hoppe’s parents, Otto Hoppe and Anna Hoppe née Birkholz (Figures 22a-b), who raised Gisela after her parents’ deaths. The timing of Ilse Hoppe’s supposed suicide less than a year after her daughter’s birth makes the cause of her death even more suspicious.

Figure 21. “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe’s daughter, Gisela Hoppe, born on the 24th of November 1939, showing that in 1958 she lived in Bad Harzburg, Germany

Figure 22a. Front side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Gerhard’s father, Otto Hoppe, showing his granddaughter Gisela Hoppe’s address in 1958

Figure 22b. Back side of “Heimatortskartei, (HOK)” (File of Displaced Germans) card for Otto Hoppe listing his wife, Anna Hoppe née Birkholz, and granddaughter, Gisela Hoppe

Gisela is shown living in Bad Harzburg, Germany in May 1958. As I prepare to publish this post, just this morning I learned that Gisela, who is about to turn 80 years of age towards the end of November, is still alive. As we speak, I’m trying to establish contact with her and share the multiple images I have of her parents. (Figures 23-24) Watch this space for Part II of the story!

Figure 23. Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe on the beach in Zoppot, Germany [today: Sopot, Poland]

POST 61: THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART IV-GRUNDBUCH (LAND REGISTER))

Note: In this post, I explore some of the information Mr. Paul Newerla, the Racibórz historian, was able to find related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) in what is called the “Grundbuch,” or land register, discuss where this information currently resides, and how it rounds out my understanding of the history and ownership of the sugar plant over the years. I also explain to readers that even had I been able to access the land register and backup files on my own, I would have been hard-pressed to make much sense of the materials without the intercession of a lawyer familiar with German real estate law. Mr. Newerla happens to be a retired Polish lawyer who, by virtue of his profession and current study of Silesian history, is well versed in such matters.

Mr. Paul Newerla, my friend from Racibórz, Poland, is a retired lawyer who now specializes in studying and writing about the history of Silesia. Regular readers will recognize his name as I’ve mentioned him in numerous posts related to Ratibor, Germany, the town in Upper Silesia where my father was born in 1907. Perhaps, one of the biggest unintended benefits of having a family history Blog is that Paul stumbled upon it in the course of doing research and reached out to me through Webmail to offer supplementary historical information on the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel which I’d written about. This family establishment was owned through what I’ve determined to be three generations, from roughly the mid-19th Century through the early 1920’s. Our initial exchanges involved the Bruck’s Hotel but have far transcended this subject.

Figure 1. Silesian historian, Paul Newerla, and me in 2018 standing by the historic statue of John of Nepomuk, located in the middle of a parking lot in Racibórz

I had the pleasure of personally meeting Paul in 2018 on a visit to Racibórz. (Figure 1) As an aside, I realize many fellow genealogists may never have the opportunity nor resources to visit the places one’s ancestors hail from, but I can’t emphasize enough the value of “having boots on the ground,” so to speak, to further one’s ancestral investigations, as this post will illustrate. It’s worth mentioning that Paul does not speak English, nor do I speak German, so we are compelled to use a few on-line translators to communicate, which presents its own challenges but is far better than nothing.

Figure 2. The Woinowitz sugar factory as it looked in the early 1900’s

As I began to research the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 2), I naturally turned to Paul to ask him about the sugar plant’s history. He sent me numerous maps and visuals and provided valuable context for understanding the extent of the sugar industry in Silesia and its influence on the development of railroads; I’ve discussed these topics in earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. I was specifically interested in what Paul might be able to tell me about the sale by or confiscation of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from its Jewish owners, the timing, the names of the sellers, and the price for which the business was sold. While he knew little about these matters, coincidentally, during his lawyering days, Paul had handled the legal sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik between Polish parties. For this reason, he knew that while the sale of the sugar plant may well have been compelled by the Nazis, the later Polish owners had valid legal rights. Likely, the Nazi overlords wanted to handle the forced sale with a veneer of “legality” by paying the Jewish owners something for their business, even if that payment was vastly below fair market value.

Figure 3. Entrance to the “Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach Oddział w Raciborzu”

By virtue of Paul’s previous involvement with the sale of the former Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, he knew that the “Grundbuch,” that is the land register, is archived in the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”). (Figure 3) The Grundbuch in Germany, including former parts of Germany that are now within Poland, shows the names of the current and previous owners, third party rights in rem (e.g., mortgages), and the description of the property. Land registers were kept for real estate or land, and included, as will be discussed below, the buildings and structures found on the land.

The land registry is a special division of the local German district court (i.e., Grundbuchamt beim Amtsgericht), and land registers are kept in Poland’s counterpart courts even today. Changes of rights to land do not go into effect until they have been recorded in the land register, although some exceptions apply (e.g. an heir becomes owner of a property even if he or she is not registered in the land register). Unless proven otherwise, the correctness of all titles recorded in the Grundbuch is assumed and a buyer can rely on its accuracy.

The old German land registers have been continued by the Polish court, naturally in Polish, and slightly modified in concept. The basic German land register was a thick book with sections for: I. Directory of Properties, II. Owner(s), III. Rights of other persons (e.g., rights of use, real burdens), and IV. Mortgages. The land registers were kept in court in case they were needed there. The documents justifying the individual entries in the land register were in the so-called “files to the land register,” and were held in the archives of the court; notes were made in the files but in the event of a discrepancy between the land register and the files, the former took precedence. In the 1960’s, Polish land registers were introduced that were organized differently; sections I-IV above were retained except they were kept in individual volumes, and in the back of each volume, the documents justifying the entries were maintained. As a result, files to the land registers in the court archives were no longer needed there so were turned over to the State Archives after several years.

There is one other distinction Paul brought to my attention I need to mention. There is also a “Handelregister,” or commercial register, that is maintained by what are called “Registergerichten,” Commercial Register Courts, that’s to say, regional courts above district courts. The Handelregister records “legal persons” of a company, including Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH), a limited liability company, or LLC. The name of the GmbH emphasizes the fact that the owners (Gesellschafter, also known as members) of the entity are not personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts. GmbHs are considered legal persons. The Handelregister for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik is not available today for reasons that are unclear.

All the above is just background information that will understandably be of scant interest to most readers. Let me continue.

Prior to my queries, Paul had tried for some time to access the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. He was aware that German land registers, Grundbucher, are archived at the State Archives in Racibórz. The status of these registers is they have not yet been catalogued and therefore are not available to researchers. My interest in the sugar plant renewed Paul’s attempt to gain access to the plant’s Grundbuch, and, as Paul characterizes it, he finally “was allowed into the camp” to search for it; this was only possible because of his longstanding relationship with the State Archives in Racibórz. Paul found it under the number “Woinowitz Sheet 161.” (Figure 4) Fortunately, the land register includes the supporting files or documentation turned over by the Polish court.

Figure 4. Cover of the Woinowitz Grundbuch Paul Newerla found at the State Archives in Racibórz

Paul photographed and sent me copies of the documents he deemed of greatest value and spent a good deal of time explaining their content and significance. I want to believe that in describing some of what Paul found in the Grundbuch and the auxiliary files, I’ve mostly done justice conveying this to readers, although I welcome readers’ input if I’ve failed in this regard.

Figure 5 shows the size of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik under the column “Größe.” It was 5.44.10 hectares in size, or 13.44 acres.

Figure 5. The size of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik shown under the column “Größe, as 5.44.10 hectares, or 13.44 acres

As alluded to earlier, a Grundbuch is kept for land and shows the structural components located on the property. In the case of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, the extent of the property and the current value of the structural components is shown on Figure 6. The left-hand column of the table below is a German transcription of the structures listed and the right-hand column provides a rough translation and in a few instances some explanation in brackets:

Figure 6. Page from the Woinowitz Grundbuch listing the structural components of the sugar plant corresponding to the table below

GERMAN	ENGLISH
1. Acker, Weide, Graben, Weg, sowie Hofraum“ – was vom Grundbuch “Polnisch Woinowitz” [der früher Ortsnamen] Blatt 60 abgezweigt wurde. Dieses Blatt 60 umfasste Grundstücke des “Dominiums Woinowitz.”	1. Field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space—which were diverted from the land register “Polish Woinowitz” [the former place name] Sheet 60. [Sheet 60 included plots of land of the “Dominium Woinowitz”]
a. Zuckerfabrik mit Maschinen und Kesselhaus	a. Sugar factory with machine and boiler house
b. Gasanstalt	b. Gasworks
c. Eisenbahnwaagehaus	c. Railway scale house
d. Comptoir (Büro) mit Waagehaus	d. Office with scale house [another scale house where incoming sugar beets and outgoing processed sugar were weighed]
e. Rohproduktionshaus mit Wohnung	e. Raw production house with apartment
f. Rohproduktionshaus	f. Raw production house
g. Stall mit Remise und Werkstätten	g. Stable with drawer and workshops

The table below corresponds to the text on Figure 7, and shows the various names for the sugar factory over time, the owners, and the reason for the acquisition or name change:

Figure 7. Page from the Woinowitz Grundbuch showing the name changes of the sugar plant over time corresponding to the table below

GERMAN	ENGLISH
1. Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. zu Woinowitz — Auf Grund der Auflassung vom 24-ten eingetragen am 30-ten Mai 1881 Der Name der Firma ist geändert und lautet jetzt „Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung zu Woinowitz bei Ratibor O/S.“ [O/S = Oberschlesien] — Eingetragen am 21. Oktober 1910 Nr. 2 statt Nr. 1 nach dem Rezess vom 29. Dezember 1923 eingetragen am 20. Februar 1925. Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor — Auf Grund der Firmenänderung eingetragen am 13. August 1938.	1.Woinowitz’er Sugar Factory Adolph Schück & Comp. to Woinowitz — On the basis of the 24th injunction on 30th May 1881 The name of the company has been changed and is now “Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. Gesellschaft with limited liability to Woinowitz near Ratibor O/S.” [O/S = Upper Silesia] — Registered on 21st October 1910 [FIGURE 8] No. 2 instead of No. 1 registered on 20th February 1925 after the recess of 29th December 1923. Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, limited liability company Weihendorf district Ratibor — Due to the change in the company registered on 13th August 1938.
2. Die Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in Ratibor — Aufgelassen am 26. Februar 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.	2.The Ratibor Sugar Factory, limited liability company in Ratibor — Abandoned on 26th February 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.
3. Die Landwirtschaftliche Warenzentrale Oberschlesien /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Oppeln — Aufgelassen am 11 Dezember 1942 und eingetragen am 25. Februar 1943.	3. The Agricultural Goods Centre Upper Silesia /Raiffeisen) eGmbH in Opole — Abandoned on 11th December 1942 and registered on 25th February 1943.

Figure 8. Letterhead from the time the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was known as the “Woinowitz’er Zuckerfabrik Adolf Schück & Co. GmbH”

Paul provided some additional explanation about the land register and the auxiliary files. He’d hoped to find documents there about the possible expropriation of the sugar plant from the Schück family. However, Paul discovered the files relate only to the actual entries in the land register, and because no mention of the forced sale of the plant by the Nazis is found in the original land register, therefore, no documentation exists in the land register’s backup files.

The land register recorded changes of ownership; in the case of private sales, the purchase contract would be found in the files of the land register. However, because the Zuckerfabrik was a GmbH or an LLC, changes in ownership were recorded in the Handelregister, the commercial register, and the courts notified of such changes via a letter. The change in the name of the LLC could result from new ownership or possibly new shareholders that came into a company. Regardless, a change in the company’s name in the commercial register of the GmbH (LLC) also caused a change in the name of the company in the land register.

Let me provide an example as this may be confusing to readers. If Adolph Schück individually owned a plot of land, it was recorded in the land register under his name. If, on the other hand, Mr. Schück formed a GmbH, which he eventually did and could do even as a single person, he could transfer that property as a non-cash deposit into the GmbH which would then be recorded in the Handelregister. Adolph Schück’s name was also then deleted from the Grundbuch and the GmbH registered in place of his name as the owner of the property. The obvious advantage, as previously mentioned, was that Mr. Schück was no longer personally liable or responsible for the company’s debts.

From earlier posts on the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, readers may recall that Sigmund Hirsch was Adolph Schück’s partner in the sugar plant. I was even able to read his name on several pages Paul sent from the State Archives in Racibórz, so asked whether he was an equal partner. Paul reminded me this information and the size of Sigmund’s investment would be found in the commercial register, which we don’t have access to. However, Paul drew my attention to a four-page document he found at the State Archives, dated the 15th of January 1908, which indirectly answers my question. (Figures 9a-d) Initially, the capital shares owned by Schück and Hirsch were unequal. According to this document, Sigmund Hirsch was obliged to use his annual dividends, which exceeded 27,000 Reichmarks (RM), to increase his capital share of the business until they were equal partners. Additionally, because there was such a large difference in the number of shares owned by the two men, Sigmund Hirsch obtained a security mortgage in the amount of 400,000 RM payable to Adolph Schück.

Figure 9a. First page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9b. Second page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9c. Third page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

Figure 9d. Last page of four-page document last dated January 15, 1908 spelling out the terms of payments to bring Sigmund Hirsch’s shares in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik equal to those of Adolph Schück

In addition to official partners, Paul explained there were also “silent” partners. They invested their money, presumably reaped a portion of the sugar plant’s profits, but were not recorded in the commercial register. Often, these silent partners were members of the Board of Directors or agents of the company.

Naturally, I was curious whether the land register and/or the backup files indicated in which year the Nazis forced the sale of the Zuckerfabrik and was reminded this information would also be found in the Handelregister. Yet again, however, one document from the State Archives gives an indirect clue; it shows that on the 26th of September 1938, the company name changed to “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik GmbH” without “Adolf Schück & Co.” (Figure 10), likely corresponding to the end of the Schück family’s stake in the sugar plant. To remind readers, less than three months later December 18, 1938, Erich Schück, Adolph’s son and probable managing director of the sugar plant, killed himself in Berlin. I don’t think the timing is coincidental.

Figure 10. Letterhead from the time the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was known as the “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik GmbH” without the name “Adolf Schück & Co.”

As to the value of the sugar plant in 1938, I remarked to Paul that its value of 189,800 RM seemed low. (Figure 11) He pointed out that while a 1943 letter from the tax office used roughly this same value for that plot of land, it also showed “assets and working capital” of 2,269,351 RM minus unspecified “deductions” of 1,247,223 RM. (Figures 12a-b) To remind readers, in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30. Clearly, the income generated by the Zuckerfabrik was significant, and it’s very likely the Jewish owners sold at a significant loss and the heirs never adequately compensated.

Figure 11. Letter dated 30th of August 1938 indicating the “unit value” of the then-named “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik” as 189,800 Reichmarks

Figure 12a. First page of letter from the “Finanzamt Ratibor,” Ratibor Tax Office, dated the 22nd of January 1943

Figure 12b. Second page of letter from the “Finanzamt Ratibor,” Ratibor Tax Office, dated the 22nd of January 1943, showing the value of the sugar factory, as well as its “assets and working capital” (i.e., 2,269,351 RM) minus unspecified “deductions” (i.e., 1,247,223 RM)

Suffice it to say, at the risk of presenting information that would be of no interest to most readers, there are many more documents in the files to the land register that seemingly relate to contracts and financial matters.

I’ve previously alluded to the fact that knowing someone who is familiar with the “landscape” of archival and documentary resources available for an area one’s ancestors originated from can significantly expand one’s understanding of things. I erroneously assumed the land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik from the State Archives in Racibórz was the extent of documentary information available; what I initially failed to comprehend is that the original land register for the sugar plant still exists and is retained by the local district court in Poland.

Paul accessed the original Grundbuch and was able to glean additional information not available from the copy of the land register and files in the State Archives. He confirmed that Adolph Schück originally purchased in 1881 only arable land and meadows where the sugar plant, gas station, etc. would eventually be built. (Figure 13) The ownership titled was recorded in the land register on the 27th of March 1881 as “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. in Woinowitz.” (Figure 14) At the time, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik was not yet a GmbH or LLC. On the 21st of October 1910, the name of the company changed to “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Co. Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung [Gmbh] zu Woinowitz” (Figure 14), at which time the company became an LLC. Then, on the 13th of August 1938, the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik underwent an ownership change becoming the “Weihendorfer Zuckerfabrik, Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Weihendorf Kreis Ratibor.” (Figure 14) Presumably, this corresponded to the time the Schück and Hirsch heirs were forced to sell the sugar plant.

Figure 13. Page from the original land register at the District court confirming that Adolph Schück originally purchased arable land and meadows where the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik would eventually be built

Figure 14. Page from the original land register at the District court showing the ownership title was recorded on the 27th of May 1881 as the “Woinowitzer Zuckerfabrik Adolph Schück & Comp. in Woinowitz”; subsequent name changes are also shown

Subsequent changes are also noted in the Grundbuch. On the 26th of February 1942, the factory was taken over by the “Ratiborer Zuckerfabrik GmbH in Ratibor,” and later that year, on the 11th of December 1942, the factory named changed to “Raiffeisen.” (Figure 14)

Thus, the original land register for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik clarifies a few things: we learn the year Adolph Schück purchased the land (1881); the fact that he purchased land and meadows with no structures on them; the year the firm became a GmbH or LLC (1910); and the date the Schück family ceased to be owners (1938).

Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for the Woinowitz estate (i.e., “Polnisch Woinowitz“) from which Adolph Schück purchased the land in 1881, so no conclusions can be drawn about the previous property owners. Just to be crystal clear about this, Figure 6 above, the page from the files of the Woinowitz Grundbuch, indicates that Adolph Schück purchased a “field, willow, ditch, path/way, courtyard space” which was “detached” from what was referred to as the Polnisch Woinowitz and this sale was noted in the land register for that estate. Paul was unable to find the Grundbuch for this estate at the District court, although possibly it may eventually turn up at the State Archives in Racibórz.

Let me apologize to readers for the ponderous nature of this post. I’ve gone to such lengths to understand and explain the source of the data related to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik and the timeline for the benefit of a select audience. As explained, because the Grundbuch’s auxiliary files are not catalogued, they are basically inaccessible to the average individual. However, even if they were generally available, it would still require comprehension of German and an understanding of German land law to make sense of their contents and its significance. This said, for the few readers whose Jewish ancestors may have held property in Germany they were compelled to sell during the Nazi era, there may be a few tendrils of useful information in this post.

POST 60: 200 YEARS OF THE ROYAL EVANGELICAL HIGH SCHOOL IN RATIBOR & A CLUE TO THE BRUCK FAMILY

Note: In this post, I talk about the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium (High School) in Ratibor, celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2019, and briefly discuss a contemporary publication from 1820 confirming my family’s connection to the city at that time.

Figure 1. Cover of the 1820 publication entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819” written by Dr. Carl Linge, first director of Ratibor’s Gymnasium

This year Racibórz, Poland celebrates “200 Jahre der Königlichen Evangelischen Gymnasium zu Ratibor,” 200 Years of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium (High School) in Ratibor. Around Easter, my friend Mr. Paul Newerla, retired lawyer and current Silesian historian, presented a lecture at the Muzeum w Raciborzu on this subject. In researching the school’s history, Paul discovered an old book published in Ratibor in 1820 upon the school’s opening, archived at the British Museum, entitled “Denkschrift über die feierliche Eröffnung des Königl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819. . .,” “Memorandum on the solemn opening of the Royal Evangelical High School in Ratibor on June 2, 1819. . .” (Figure 1) Prior to Paul’s discovery, this publication was unknown to local historians.

This 1820 book contains an alphabetical listing of the students enrolled at the time the Gymnasium was opened, that, interestingly, includes two of my earliest ancestors (Figure 2):

“J. Bruck, aus Ratibor”
“S. Bruck, aus Ratibor”

(J. Bruck and S. Bruck from Ratibor)

Figure 2. Page from Dr. Linge’s 1820 publication with the names of my ancestors “J. Bruck” and S. Bruck” shown as enrolled in Ratibor’s Gymnasium when the school first opened in 1819

Figure 3. A photo believed to be of my great-great-granduncle, Jonas Bruck (1813-1883)

Figure 4. My great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel

These ancestors were brothers Jonas Bruck (1813-1883) (Figure 3) and Samuel Bruck (1808-1863) (Figure 4), sons of Jacob Nathan Bruck (1770-1832). In Post 11, I told readers the original owner of the family hotel in Ratibor, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, had been my great-great-grandfather, the Samuel Bruck who attended the Ratibor Gymnasium. Previously, I’d known my family’s connection to Ratibor extended back to at least 1850, which corresponded to the approximate time when Samuel Bruck purchased the family hotel. However, Mr. Newerla brought to my attention information proving the Bruck family’s association with Ratibor in fact extended back at least one more generation to Samuel’s father. In Post 11, I reported that according to land registers from the city of Ratibor from the time of Jacob Bruck, he had been an arrendator, a leaseholder, on two properties within Ratibor. These were located, respectively, on Jungfrauenstraße and Stockhaus-Gasse, shown on an 1812 city map sent to me by Mr. Newerla. (Figure 5) How much earlier my Bruck family may have arrived in Ratibor, and from which Silesian town, remains unknown. Regardless, the list of the students enrolled at the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in 1819 confirms an early 19th century connection to Ratibor by my ancestors.

Figure 5. 1812 map of Ratibor showing location of parcels owned by Jacob Bruck along Jungfrauenstraße & Stockhaus-Gasse, and location of “Odertor,” the city gate atop which the Bruck’s Hotel was built after the city walls were demolished

Let me provide some brief historical background on the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium in Ratibor to help readers better understand the origins of the school, its locations, the age of the students, and their religious makeup.

Following a decision by the Royal Prussian Government on the 1st of October 1817, Ratibor became the seat of the Higher Regional Court of the Province of Upper Silesia. This coincided with the arrival of about twenty lawyers who discovered that Ratibor, then the largest city in Upper Silesia, had no grammar school for their children. Notably, those high schools that existed elsewhere at the time in Upper Silesia were all run by Catholic institutions or were in monasteries and were Catholic. The judges of the Higher Regional Court, as well as many other representatives of the intelligentsia, however, were Protestant. Thus, the President of the Regional Court of the Province of Upper Silesia appealed for the establishment of an Evangelical grammar school in Ratibor, which the King of Prussia granted on the 5th of June 1818. He appropriated 2,500 Reichtalers from the treasury for the maintenance of the new school and gave it the very spacious monastery of the Holy Ghost Dominican Church (Figure 6), which had been secularized in 1811. The monastery was located adjacent old city walls at the end of Jungfrauenstraße, coincidentally along the very street where Jacob Bruck leased property. Because the monastery buildings had to be renovated for school purposes, the Gymnasium was housed for a time in the former Franciscan monastery along Brunken (Figure 7), then located outside the city walls. Ratibor’s city walls, towers and gates, surrounding the town, were only demolished in 1828, after which the Prinz von Preußen was constructed at the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße, eventually becoming the Bruck’s Hotel in the mid-19th Century.

Figure 6. A line drawing of Ratibor’s Gymnasium as it looked in 1820 with the adjacent tower of the former Holy Ghost Dominican Church; at the time, the entrance to the school was located on its south side

Figure 7. 1933 plan map of Ratibor showing Brunken, the Gymnasium’s location between 1819-1827; the Gymnasium’s current location; and the location of the Protestant church after 1909

When the Ratibor Gymnasium first opened its doors in the former Franciscan monastery, 114 students had passed an entrance examination and been admitted. Even though the high school was Protestant, paying students from all religious denominations could attend. The first class consisted of 40% Protestants, 50% Catholics, and 10% Jews. After only a few years the percent of Jewish students was at 20%, and never dropped much below this level, even though Ratibor’s Jewish population never exceeded 10%. This attests to the importance Jews attached to education.

The renovation of the grammar school on Jungfrauenstraße was not completed until 1827; the renovation included demolition of the east and north wings of the monastery, along with the removal of the city wall near the west wing, as it darkened the school rooms in this wing. Between 1819, when the grammar school opened, and 1827, when renovations were completed, the King of Prussia had issued an edict on January 16, 1821, giving the monastery church adjacent the Gymnasium to the Protestant parish (Figure 8) because their church located elsewhere in Ratibor was in danger of collapse on account of an unstable foundation.

Figure 8. On the right the tower of the Protestant Church located adjacent Ratibor’s Gymnasium between 1821 and 1909

By 1904, the Protestant parish had purchased a plot of land elsewhere in Ratibor on which to erect a new church. The plan had been to sell the former monastery church next to the Gymnasium to the Prussian State, dismantle the church, and use the parcel for the expansion of the grammar school. Even though essential components of the monastery dated to the 14th Century, the Conservator of the Provincial Burgermeister, essentially the Province of Silesia’s executive council, deemed the monastery to be of “insignificant monumental value.” This decision highlighted the power of Ratibor’s Protestants even over the General Conservator of the Province. It was only the refusal by the Prussian State to purchase the monastery that prevented its destruction and allows the facility to exist today as part of the Muzeum w Raciborzu. As a historic preservationist, I find it fascinating how serendipitous the survival of this noteworthy structure is.

Figure 9. View of the north side of Ratibor’s Gymnasium after a western extension was added

By the 1870’s Ratibor’s Gymnasium numbered in excess of 700 students, so an approval and allocation of funds for an extension was obtained that was completed by 1881. (Figure 9) A third floor was eventually added to the high school. (Figure 10)

Figure 10. 1925 view of Ratibor’s Gymnasium after a third level was added and the entrance moved to the western side of the school

Attendance in kindergarten was optional. At the age of six one was admitted to elementary school. Schools were denominational until 1873, after which such religious schools were abolished. Compulsory education existed in Prussia since 1765, although unconditional compulsory education for boys and girls was not introduced until 1907. The school year started on the 1st of April, effectively after Easter. Following the fourth grade of elementary school, one could be admitted to high school with passage of an entrance exam, thus around the age of ten.

In the case of Samuel and Jonas Bruck who show up in 1819 as enrolled students in Ratibor’s Gymnasium, their attendance was no doubt due to passage of the entrance exam. Still, Jonas’ attendance at the precocious age of only six, he was born in 1813, seems early. There is no doubt, however, as to the year Jonas was born because he is buried along with one of his renowned sons and their respective wives in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and his headstone provides his date of birth. (Figures 11a-b) Paul Newerla sent me one page of the register of students admitted to Ratibor’s Gymnasium along with their ages, and most were between 9 and 13 years of age. (Figure 12) This log still exists today, and, as we speak, Paul is working on having it donated to the Archiwum Państwowe W Katowicach Oddzial W Raciborzu (“State Archives in Katowice Branch in Racibórz”). Regardless of whether Paul is successful in this endeavor, he is working to access the log to check for other Bruck relatives who may have attended Ratibor’s Gymnasium over the years.

Figure 11a. The large, stately Bruck Family tomb at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland where Jonas Bruck, his renowned son Julius Bruck, and their respective wives are all interred

Figure 11b. A closeup of Jonas Bruck’s headstone showing his birth and death dates

Figure 12. One page from the log of students admitted to Ratibor’s Gymnasium

The names of the classes in the 9-year high school were taken from Latin. The lowest class was labeled “Sexta” (sixth), the next “Quinta” (fifth), then “Quarta.” The next three classes, “Tertia” (third), “Sekunda” (second), and “Prima” (first), each consisted of lower and upper grades, for example, “Untertertia” or “Obersekunda” (“unter” means lower, “ober” means upper). After completing the “Oberprima,” you could take the matriculation exam, the “Abitur,” that if passed allowed you to attend a university.

One other thing of passing interest regarding the Ratibor Gymnasium were its collections. In 1938, these consisted of a teacher’s library with 17,000 books, a student library with more than 2,000 volumes, as well as more than 200 books printed before 1600, and 28 incunabula, that is, books printed before 1501. The Ratibor Gymnasium also preserved collections considered useful such as minerals, plant specimens, seeds, mollusks and birds, as well as valuable numismatic collections. (Figures 13-14) When the Museum Raciborzu was founded in 1927, these collections were handed over to the museum. Unfortunately, the museum’s natural science collection, which was in the former Protestant rectory, burnt down in 1945 and has been completely lost.

Figure 13. Collections of the Gymnasium in their museum (1936)

Figure 14. More collections of the Gymnasium in their museum (1936)

Figure 15. Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-1874) who donated the Egyptian mummy to the Ratibor Gymnasium in 1864

One unusual exhibit, given to the Royal Evangelical Church in 1864 by the wealthy Jewish banker baron Anselm von Rothschild (Figure 15), lord of Chałupki and Szilerzowice, survives today in the Muzeum Raciborzu. As an archaeologist, I find this story fascinating. Around 1860, Anselm von Rothschild went on a journey to Egypt and brought back numerous souvenirs, among them a complete burial of an Egyptian woman which he intended as a wedding gift for his fiancée. The peculiar gift was rejected. Oddly, in Rothschild’s palace in Szilerzowice, in the presence of invited dinner guests, the two sarcophagi were opened, the cartonnage undone, and the embalmed corpse unwrapped from its bandages.

In 1864, the baron decided to rid himself of the mummy and donated it to the Antiquity Department of the Royal Evangelical Gymnasium. Along with the other collections preserved by the Gymnasium, the mummy was formally taken over by the Muzuem w Raciborzu when it was founded in 1927. The half-bandaged mummy, sarcophagi, and richly ornamented cartonnage as well as three canopic jars to keep the viscera of corpses, purchased from the Museum of Antiquity in Berlin before the war, today are the greatest attraction of the Muzeum w Raciborzu. (Figure 16) Scientific analysis on the mummy revealed it was an Egyptian woman who lived during the 12th Dynasty (946-722 B.C.) named Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch, meaning “goddess Amonet said she would live.” She was a wealthy married woman, probably the daughter of a priest and barber from Thebes, who apparently died of complications from pregnancy.

Figure 16. The mummy of Dzed-Amonet-ius-anch from Egypt’s 12th Dynasty (946-722 B.C.) on display at the Muzeum w Raciborzu

The Ratibor Gymnasium is still standing today and is currently used as an economic middle school. (Figure 17) According to Paul Newerla, this middle school is where the volume with the names of students enrolled in the former Gymnasium was once kept, along with portfolios of graduation certificates. As we speak, Paul is trying to track down the current provenience of these materials to access their contents and see what more they can tell us about my Bruck relatives.

Figure 17. The Ratibor Gymnasium as it currently looks, now an economic middle school

REFERENCE

Linge, Dr. Carl

1820 Denkschrift ueber die feierliche Eroeffnung des Koenigl. Evangel. Gymnasium zu Ratibor am 2. Juni 1819 nebst den dabei gehaltenen Reden des Consistorialrath Dr. Wachler und des Dr. Linge und anderen Beilagen, Ratibor.

POST 59: THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART III—HEIRS)

Figure 1. The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik as it looked in the early 1900’s

Figure 2. The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik in 2014, seen from roughly the same angle as Figure 1

Remark: I’ve relabeled the titles of the two previous posts dealing with the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) (Figures 1-2), Posts 36 and 55, to make clear to readers this post is merely another part of a story that continues to evolve and grow. Woinowitz [today: Wojnowice, Poland], is located outside Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town in Upper Silesia where my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, was born in 1907. Lately, I’ve acquired multiple new documents and photographs from family, friends, and archives about the factory and its heirs, and anticipate receiving more in coming weeks, possibly enough materials to expand the story to five or six separate posts.

In Post 36, including the Postscript, I provided some historical background and maps, including information on the original family owners of the sugar plant. I fully anticipated the original post, now Part I, would be a “one-and-done” publication. This unexpectedly changed when I was contacted earlier this year through my Blog by a Danish gentleman, Allan Grutt Hansen, with documentation on the compensation paid by the then-West German government in 1966 to his ancestors for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik by the Nazis around 1937. I detailed this surprising development in Post 55, now Part II of the tale. Suspecting the German government has indemnified what amounts to only one-sixth of the heirs propelled further forensic investigations and resulted in findings that provide the basis for this Blog post.

One additional point I want to emphasize to readers. I have “no skin in this game,” that’s to say, I am not entitled to any compensation that may eventually be meted out for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. While I hope the rightful heirs eventually receive reparations for harm done to their ancestors and will strive to facilitate this outcome, this post is primarily a story describing the scientific technique I applied to uncover relevant ancestral evidence that may buttress the family’s claims.

Note: In this post, I identify the first-generation heirs of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, and briefly return to the topic of compensation for the forced sale of the sugar plant. I also discuss the historic documents obtained since publication of Post 55, alluded to in that post, that lead to some unexpected discoveries.

Following publication of Post 55, now Part II of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik saga, I pursued other avenues of investigation to identify the first-generation heirs of the sugar factory and learn who, if any, among them was indemnified for the forced sale of the plant. With the help of living next-of-kin, I’ve compiled the following table of the two original owners and their immediate descendants, along with their vital statistics:

Figure 3. Adolph Schück (1840-1916), co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik

Figure 4. Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920), Adolph Schück’s brother-in-law and partner in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik

Figure 5. Dr. Erich Schück (1878-1938), an heir of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, who supposedly committed suicide after the forced sale of the sugar plant

ORIGINAL OWNER	FIRST-GENERATION HEIR	RELATIONSHIP TO OWNER	EVENT	DATE & PLACE
ADOLPH SCHÜCK (Figure 3)			Birth	5 Jul 1840 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	3 Nov 1916 Ratibor, Germany
	Auguste Leyser née Schück	Daughter	Birth	26 Jan 1872 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	28 May 1943 Theresienstadt
	Elly Kayser née Schück	Daughter	Birth	7 Sep 1874 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	28 Apr 1911 Berlin, Germany
	Erich Schück (Figure 5)	Son	Birth	13 Apr 1878 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	18 Dec 1938 Berlin, Germany

SIGMUND HIRSCH (Figure 4)			Birth	18 Nov 1848
			Death	14 Oct 1920 Ratibor, Germany
	Helene Goldenring née Hirsch	Daughter	Birth	25 Mar 1880 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	12 Jan 1968 Newark, NJ
	Robert Hirsch	Son	Birth	31 Oct 1881 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	7 Oct 1943 Valparaiso, Chile
	Frieda Mamlok née Hirsch	Daughter	Birth	8 Feb 1883 Ratibor, Germany
			Death	29 Jul 1955 Montevideo, Uruguay

Figure 6. Allan Grutt Hansen (b. 1962) from Denmark, grandnephew of Erich and Hedwig Schück

Figure 7a. Front page of the 1966 restitution agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik showing the estimated value; the number of “shares”; the date of Hedwig Schück’s death; and the “Landkreis” where the case was administered

Figure 7b. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik indicating how individual shares of 75,000 RM were “adjusted” to 142,500 RM and showing only 2,500 RM was disbursed to Hedwig Schück’s heirs

Several things are worth noting. First, I presume from the Woinowitz compensation package provided to me by Allan Grutt Hansen (Figure 6) that when the West German government indemnified Allan’s ancestors in 1966 they were aware of six possible heirs. This presumption is based on the total compensation calculated at the time, 450,000 Reichmark (RM), which was divided by six, with each “share” worth 75,000 RM. (Figure 7a) For reasons possibly having to do with how much was paid out in the 1930’s by the Nazi overlords to the factory’s owners, this 75,000 RM was multiplied by a factor of 1.9 theoretically entitling each heir to 142,500 RM (Figure 7b) (i.e., in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30). Second, the six first-generation heirs likely correspond to those identified in the table above. The original owners of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, along with their wives, died well before the Nazis came to power and the sugar plant’s sale was forced. Third, we can see that apart from first-generation heir Helene Goldenring née Hirsch, all other first-generation heirs were deceased by 1966 when some compensation was paid out. Fourth, we know that Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s descendants, as a result of her marriage to Dr. Erich Schück, received some minimal compensation, 2,500 RM split unequally four ways (Figure 7c); Hedwig’s relatives would have been second- and third-generation heirs. And, finally, based on conversations I’ve had with third- and fourth-generation heirs of the factory’s original owners, Adolph Schück and Sigmund Hirsch, it appears that five-sixth of the compensation was never meted out, despite concerted efforts by several of the descendants.

Figure 7c. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik listing Erich and Hedwig Schück’s four heirs, and the fraction they each received of the 2,500 RM compensation doled out

Figure 7d. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement showing that the case was adjudicated by the “Kreis Oldenburg (Holstein) Der Landrat,” the District Administrator for Oldenburg in the German State of Holstein

The package provided to me by Allan Grutt Hansen identifies the German office that handled the compensation case, namely, the “Kreis Oldenburg (Holstein) Der Landrat,” the District Administrator for Oldenburg in the German State of Holstein. (Figure 7d) After a few failed attempts to establish contact with the administrative office in Holstein that may have handled the proceedings, I was directed to the Bundesarchiv in Beyreuth, Germany, the Federal State Archives in the city of Beyreuth, in northern Bavaria. I’ve provided them with the list of all the possible heirs to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, requested they tell me about indemnification they may have received, and now await a reply; oddly, the archive can only research by individual names, not by the name of the Woinowitz factory, so it’s unclear what, if any, documentation I may eventually obtain.

Towards the end of Post 55, I told readers about having found the death register listings for Dr. Erich Schück and his wife Hedwig Schück née Jendricke in the online Landesarchiv Berlin database, the latter of which was the subject of Post 49. To remind readers, I found Hedwig’s date and place of death in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik compensation package given to me by Allan Hurst Hansen; it showed she died on the 9th of June 1960 (Figure 7a) in the Wilmersdorf Borough of Berlin, making locating her in the Landesarchiv Berlin database relatively straight-forward. Finding her husband Dr. Erich Schück in the database was slightly more involved. I’d been told growing up he’d committed suicide sometime after the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. Operating under the assumption he’d moved to Berlin after selling the sugar plant, further assuming he’d lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, where his wife died in 1960, and finally theorizing he’d died in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s, I scoured the death register for Wilmersdorf and eventually discovered his name listed under the year 1938.

As explained in Post 49, finding names in the death register listing does not give you immediate access to the underlying death certificates; these must be ordered from the Landesarchiv Berlin, and since publication of the Post 55, I’ve received these documents.

Figure 8. Dr. Erich Schück’s death certificate highlighting his dates and places of birth and death, his cause of death, the attending physician, his birth certificate number, and his marriage date

Figure 9. Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s death certificate highlighting her dates and places of birth and death, her birth certificate number, and her marriage date

The death certificates for Erich and Hedwig, as readers can observe for themselves, are typed, thus easily decipherable even though written in German. (Figures 8-9) I learned several interesting things from these certificates. In the case of Dr. Erich Schück, his death certificate identified his cause of death, “todesursache,” as “Kranzaderverkalkung, Zuckerkrankheit, Herzschlag,” that’s to say, as arteriosclerosis, diabetes and heart disease. As mentioned above, Dr. Schück’s relatives had always maintained he committed suicide. Notwithstanding the stated causes of death, I still believe his death was self-inflicted. Let me explain why. The attending doctor who signed his name to the death certificate was a Dr. Alfred Mamlok, who it so happens was Dr. Schück’s first cousin. Perhaps mindful of the need for decorum or financial necessity, Dr. Mamlok opted to state natural causes as the reason for his cousin’s death. We may never know.

Figure 10. Co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik Sigmund Hirsch with his wife Selma Hirsch née Braun with their three children, Frieda, Robert and Helene

I’d been aware for some time that Sigmund Hirsch, co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, had three children with his wife Selma Hirsch née Braun, two daughters, Helene and Frieda, and one son, Robert. (Figure 10) I knew both daughters had been born in Ratibor but had never found any concrete evidence of when and where the son had been born, though I’d known for some time he’d died in Valparaiso, Chile in 1943. Then, recently, I again searched Robert Hirsch in ancestry.com, and came upon a promising lead for a person by that name who once lived in an unexpected place at some remove from Ratibor called Mittweida, Germany, promising only because it showed this person was born in Ratibor on the 31st of October 1881. (Figures 11a-b) The year comported with the timeframe his two siblings had been born, respectively, in 1880 and 1883. Still, uncertain what to make of this, I asked Mr. Paul Newerla, my historian friend from Ratibor, whether he could check in the civil register in Racibórz for the Robert Hirsch born in 1881, which he graciously agreed to do. Paul located this person’s birth certificate and confirmed that he was indeed Sigmund and Selma’s son, born, like his sisters, in Ratibor. (Figure 12) Another mystery solved. A side benefit of this request to my friend Paul is that he also found and sent me the birth certificate for Erich Schück, who it turns out was born in 1878 in Ratibor only three years before Robert Hirsch. (Figure 13)

Figure 11a. Mittweida, Germany (State of Saxony) 1904 Residence Register listing a Robert Hirsch born on the 31st of October 1881 in Ratibor (cover)

Figure 11b. Mittweida, Germany (State of Saxony) 1904 Residence Register highlighting the Robert Hirsch born on the 31st of October 1881 in Ratibor (register)

Figure 12. Robert Hirsch’s Ratibor 1881 birth certificate highlighting his parents’ names, Sigmund and Selma Hirsch née Braun (partners Sigmund and Adolph’s wives were sisters)

Figure 13. Erich Schück’s Ratibor 1878 birth certificate highlighting his parents’ names, Adolph and Alma Schück née Braun (partners Adolph and Sigmund’s wives were sisters)

Erich and Hedwig’s respective death certificates indicated their date and place of birth, but more importantly provided the certificate numbers of their birth certificates. (Figures 8-9) Erich was born on the 13th of April 1878 in Ratibor, Germany, while his future wife Hedwig Jendricke was born on the 6th of December 1890 in a place called Gollantsch, Germany [today: Gołańcz, Poland]; On the off chance that familysearch.org might have the birth records automated for Gollantsch, I checked their online catalog, and, amazingly, found Hedwig’s birth certificate matching the number shown on her death certificate. (Figures 14a-b)

Figure 14a. Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s 1890 birth certificate from Gollantsch, Germany, matching Certificate Number 129 found on her 1935 Berlin marriage certificate

Figure 14b. Translation of Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s 1890 birth certificate

Both Erich and Hedwig Schück’s death certificates indicate they were married on the 25th of June 1935 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. (Figures 8-9) This was a source of potential new information, so naturally I ordered their marriage certificate from the Landesarchiv Berlin; it arrived several weeks later, but unlike Erich and Hedwig’s death certificates, it was handwritten. (Figures 15a-c) I asked one of my German cousins for a translation, which he happily provided. The marriage certificate included one new piece of information whose significance I had no reason to fully appreciate at the time, namely, Hedwig’s “middle” name, “Lange.” Often, in the Landesarchiv Berlin marriage registers, a widowed or divorced spouse who remarries has her first husband’s surname recorded. Such was the case with Erich and Hedwig’s 1935 marriage certificate, which showed Hedwig’s first husband had been someone with the surname Lange (i.e, Hedwig Lange née Jendricke).

Figure 15a. Erich Schück and Hedwig Lange née Jendricke’s 1935 Marriage Certificate 622 (page 1)

Figure 15b. Erich Schück and Hedwig Lange née Jendricke’s 1935 Marriage Certificate 622 (page 2)

Figure 15c. Translation of Erich Schück and Hedwig Lange née Jendricke’s 1935 Marriage Certificate 622

Figure 16. My third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser

It took my third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser (Figure 16), to fully unravel the significance of this new piece of information. Briefly, some background. In recent years, Larry has had the opportunity to scan a large collection of family photos and documents from his deceased great-aunt now in the possession of his second cousin. As occasionally also happens with me, even with labeled photos, neither of us is immediately able to recognize all the names nor ascertain a possible family connection; the photos go into what I term my “back-burner” file for future contemplation. Once I shared the translation of Erich and Hedwig Schück’s marriage certificate with Larry, it triggered an “aha!” moment to the previously unknown “Lange” name. In Larry’s own back-burner file, he discovered four labeled photos of Hedwig Lange from 1930, including one of Larry’s father, Kurt Leyser, with two of Kurt’s first cousins. (Figures 17-18) Beyond now knowing what Hedwig Schück looked like, it confirms that Hedwig was known to her future second husband Erich while she was either still married to, divorced or widowed from her first husband. Also, it was known that Hedwig was an aspiring actress or singer, and two of the photos do indeed appear to have been professionally staged. (Figures 19-20) It is beyond amazing that Larry was able to relate photos of a previously unfamiliar Hedwig Lange to the broader story of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik.

Figure 17. Hedwig Lange née Jendricke on the 20th of September 1930

Figure 18. Hedwig Lange née Jendricke with three children, Larry Leyser’s father, Kurt Leyser, and two of Kurt’s cousins

Figure 19. May 1930 stage photograph of Hedwig Lange née Jendricke, an aspiring actress

Figure 20. May 1930 stage photograph of Hedwig Lange née Jendricke

Figure 21. Franz Kayser, one witness at Erich and Hedwig Schück’s 1935 marriage, in 1945 atop Rockefeller Center in New York City

Figure 22. Franz Kayser’s son, John Kayser, in 2014, in front of the apartment building in Berlin near where his parents lived at the time they fled to America in 1938, shown in Erich and Hedwig Schück’s marriage certificate as Kaiserdammstrasse 82 (not 22)

One final thing I found on Erich and Hedwig Schück’s marriage certificate of great personal interest were the names and addresses of two witnesses, specifically, “Franz Kayser” and “Fritz Leyser.” (Figure 15b) Readers should refer to the table at the outset of this post to see that Adolph Schück’s two daughters’ married names were, respectively, Leyser and Kayser. Franz Kayser (Figure 21), whom I met once as an adolescent in New York, was the father of my third cousin John Kayser (Figure 22), while Fritz Leyser (Figure 23) was Larry Leyser’s grandfather. It was astounding to find the surnames on one historic document from Berlin of three families, Schück, Leyser and Kayser (Figure 24), all connected to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik outside Ratibor.

Figure 23. Larry Leyser’s grandfather, Friedrich “Fritz” Leyser, the second witness at Erich and Hedwig Schück’s 1935 marriage

Figure 24. Franz Kayser and Fritz Leyser, the two witnesses at Erich and Hedwig Schück’s 1935 marriage, as adolescents on horseback in the Tiergarten in Berlin

The point of telling readers about these discoveries is not to bore you senseless, but rather to emphasize that reconstructing one’s own family tree and finding relevant certificates and clues can be a painstaking process that sometimes requires taking baby steps to make progress. Occasionally, a single name or document can open a plethora of opportunities.

Figure 25. Dr. Alfred Mamlok with his wife Frieda “Henrietta” Mamlok née Hirsch

Figure 26. Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s grandson, Dr. Robert Mamlok

Figure 27. Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s son, Dr. Erich Mamlok (1913-1991), who attempted to obtain compensation on behalf of his family during the 1950’s for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik around 1937

Regular readers know how much I like uncovering “connections” in my forensic investigations, so beyond finding photos of Hedwig Lange-Schück, I discovered one other serendipitous association. I previously mentioned the physician who signed Dr. Erich Schück’s death certificate was his first cousin, Dr. Alfred Mamlok. (Figure 8) It so happens that Alfred Mamlok (Figure 25) was the son-in-law of Sigmund Hirsch, co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. After publishing Post 55, Part II, of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik story, Larry Leyser put me in touch with Alfred Mamlok’s grandson, Dr. Robert Mamlok (Figure 26), living in Texas. I alluded to this at the outset. It turns out that Dr. Erich Mamlok (Figure 27), Dr. Alfred Mamlok’s son, coordinated with two other second- generation heirs of the sugar plant and corresponded extensively with the German government on the issue of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik compensation in the 1950’s but, apparently, they were never successful in being indemnified. The correspondence is in German, Polish, and Spanish, and eventually I hope to obtain a copy of the complete file from Robert Mamlok and translate it to learn why compensation was never meted out to his family. It’s odd that some of the sugar plant owners’ heirs failed in their efforts to be compensated during the 1950’s but that some heirs were eventually indemnified in 1966. I hope to eventually learn why.

POST 56: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AND FAMILY BY THE PATERFAMILIAS, DR. JOSEF PAULY

Note: In this post, I present some of my great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly’s observations on his life and family. I also discuss the challenges of relating an ancestor’s story even when their written words are available.

Figure 1. My great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916)

Some years ago, my third cousin Andi Pauly sent me a 17-page memoir by Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 1), his great-grandfather, written by his ancestor on his 25th wedding anniversary, the 8th of June 1894. Dr. Pauly’s reflections were neatly handwritten in German Kurrent (Figures 2a-b), an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift. Given the fact that many modern-day Germans can’t even read this old script, I had scant hope I would learn what Dr. Pauly had to say about his life and family.

Figure 2a. Cover page of Dr. Josef Pauly’s remarks delivered to family and friends on his 25th wedding anniversary on the 8th June 1894

Figure 2b. First page of Dr. Josef Pauly’s remarks delivered to family and friends on his 25th wedding anniversary on the 8th June 1894

Still, as regular readers know, I’ve learned never to say “never” as, occasionally, an unexpected opportunity presents itself to further my ancestral research. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned Mr. Paul Newerla, my elderly Polish friend from Racibórz, Poland, the town where my father was born when Upper Silesia was still German (Figure 3); Paul first contacted me through my Blog and has been enormously generous in sharing documents, maps, and photographs and educating me about the history of Silesia, a topic on which he’s an expert. Knowing Paul is fluent in German, I became curious whether Dr. Pauly’s handwriting was even legible, so I sent him the first two pages of the document asking whether he could decipher them. Paul returned a German transcription of these pages, telling me the text was quite readable but was deeply philosophical and not easily translated (Paul does not speak English). With great hesitancy, I asked Paul whether he’d be willing to transcribe the entire 17 pages of Dr. Pauly’s memoirs, and he graciously agreed to do this. I will readily admit to readers that, at times, I’m unabashedly shameless when it comes to requesting help with transcriptions or translations. The result was a neatly typed German transcription. Notwithstanding Paul’s admonition that the memoirs were profound, I naively assumed I could get the gist of them using Google Translate; suffice it to say, this was not the case.

Figure 3. 1893 map of Silesia with the towns mentioned in the text circled (Tost, Breslau, Glatz, Ratibor); Posen, where Josef and his family lived, is off the map to the north

Figure 4. My distant cousin Ronny Bruck (left) with his cousin Michael Bruck in 2014, Germany

Realizing I was part way to understanding what Dr. Pauly had written, I next brazenly approached my distant cousin, Ronny Bruck (Figure 4), asking whether he could translate the typed transcription into English. Much to his regret, he agreed to my request and some weeks later, after many late evenings and much agonizing, Ronny produced the translation I present below, promising never again to undertake such a difficult translation.

It goes without saying that without Paul and Ronny’s gracious and generous assistance, this post would not be possible. I was interested in a translation of Dr. Pauly’s memoirs for what he might have to say about his family. While the memoir told me told me less about Dr. Pauly’s kin than I’d hoped, it revealed a lot about his personal character and human values he esteemed.

I’ve tightened up the English reading of my cousin Ronny’s translation; my friend Paul’s transcription is included here for any German readers who wish to determine whether I’ve done justice to Dr. Pauly’s original remarks. I’ve taken some liberties conveying what Dr. Pauly may have been trying to communicate; I acknowledge I may have misinterpreted the meaning of certain colloquialisms.

Given my familiarity with Dr. Pauly’s lineage, I was not only able to identify all the family members he mentioned by name, but I was also able to find pictures or portraits of all of them. Dr. Pauly’s words are included in their entirety below in Italics, with some capitalized identifications in brackets. There are a few breaks in the italicized text where I provide some brief commentary, although for the most part Dr. Pauly’s words speak for themselves.

Figure 5. One of Dr. Josef Pauly’s daughters, Helene Guttentag née Pauly (1873-1942), who, along with her husband Adolf Guttentag, committed suicide in Berlin in October 1942 after being told to report for deportation

On Dr. Josef Pauly’s 25th wedding anniversary on 8th June 1894, he delivered prepared remarks to his gathered friends and family. In 1916, one of his daughters, Helene Guttentag née Pauly (Figure 5), resurrected his comments from 22 years earlier for the first Christmas family gathering following Josef Pauly’s death the previous month.

Memories of our father Dr. Josef Pauly
Born: 10th August 1843 in Tost, Germany [today: Toszek, Poland]
Died: 7th November 1916 in Posen, Germany [today: Poznan, Poland]

a sisterly greeting
Christmas 1916
from Helene Guttentag née Pauly

Written by Josef Pauly

On our silver wedding anniversary on the 8th of June 1894

Figure 6. Dr. Josef Pauly’s father, Dr. Zadig Pauly (1810-1884)

Figure 7. Portrait of Dr. Josef Pauly’s mother, Antonie Pauly née Marle (1820-1893)

Festive days in the family, especially those we celebrate in the autumn of our lives, give reason for backward contemplation, and then you thankfully wonder how everything began. I am thinking of my parents’ home in the little Upper Silesian village [TOST, GERMANY, Figure 3]. There life was given to me, there I saw the father [DR. ZADIG PAULY, Figure 6] whom I am similar to in disposition, even though I consider him morally superior to me. There was also the temperamental and undemanding and imaginative mother [ANTONIE MARLE, Figure 7]. Both were in truth assiduous in nature. From there, from the house of my step-great aunt [THERESE GRÄTZER NÉE MOCKRAUER, Figures 8a-b], separated at an early age from my good father, I got my wife. Religious feelings, sympathy for Catholicism, poetry and romance, and finally for the monarchy, all come from the family home and the Upper Silesian village.

Figure 8a. Portrait Dr. Josef Pauly’s step great-aunt, Therese Grätzer née Mockrauer (1809-1883), as a young woman

Figure 8b. Dr. Josef Pauly’s step great-aunt, Therese Grätzer née Mockrauer (1809-1883), in her later years

Dr. Pauly was clearly raised Catholic, so the irony that multiple of his “racially Jewish” daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, whom I’ve written about in earlier Blog posts, were murdered or committed suicide during the Nazi era is not lost on me. Josef’s reference to Therese Grätzer née Mockrauer as his “step-great aunt” is puzzling since my knowledge of the Pauly lineage suggests she was a full-fledged great-aunt.

Figure 9. Dr. Josef Pauly’s wife, Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927)

Figure 10. Rosalie Pauly’s uncle Geheimrat Grätzer, Privy Councillor Dr. Med. Jonas Grätzer (1806-1889)

I left my parents’ home at the age of 9 ½, too early for such an impressionable one. After an unhappy, unmonitored youth and high school days, I also came too early to the University of Breslau, and, later, after a few semesters, to the military academy in Berlin. The latter, however, was my luck. It was an encouragement for my fantastic nature. Thankfully I remember my teachers, especially Traubes. The bedside, not science, healed me of confusion. I lacked the peace, rules and concentration to be truly scientific in nature. Fresh from my exams, I went to war via Glatz [GLATZ, GERMANY, Figure 3]. A certain demeanor, brashness, and good nature made me useful in the various circumstances of life; but irritable to the point of exaltation, I did not find mental and physical security until I got married. This was luck again. I have three persons to thank besides God: my wife [ROSALIE PAULY NÉE MOCKRAUER, Figure 9]; her guardian and uncle Geheimrat Grätzer [PRIVY COUNCILLOR DR. MED. JONAS GRÄTZER, Figure 10], whose personality seems more and more respectable to me the older I get, because he has always proven himself wise and honorable; and, professor W.A. Freund [DR. WILHELM ALEXANDER FREUND, Figure 11] from Strassburg [STRASBOURG, FRANCE], who was intellectually far superior to me, the doctor of my body and soul, the latter more valuable.

Figure 11. Portrait of one of Dr. Josef Pauly’s professors at the University of Breslau, Dr. Wilhelm Alexander Freund (1833-1917)

Josef Pauly left home as a lad and attended the University of Breslau when he was still young, suggesting he was very precocious. He ultimately turned what he characterized as unhappy days to his advantage after his time in a Berlin military academy and the army.

Josef identifies the three most influential people in his life, including his wife and her uncle, whom he refers to only as “Geheimrat Grätzer.” I discovered I had his portrait before learning his full name, Privy Councillor Dr. Med. Jonas Grätzer. Use of the term “Geheimrat” was confusing. I was initially under the impression that it referred to a trusted advisor, perhaps in a governmental position, until Andi Pauly explained that it is an abbreviation for “Geheimer Sanitätsrat,” a honorary title for merited doctors in Prussia.

One of Josef’s professors and mentors was a well-known German gynecologist, Dr. Wilhelm Alexander Freund (1833-1917), who earned his degree at the University of Breslau, and afterwards practiced gynecology in the same city. In 1879 he relocated to Strasbourg, France, where he served as a professor of gynecology and obstetrics.

Figure 12. Dr. Josef Pauly’s brother-in-law, Max Kantorowicz (1843-1904)

Figure 13. Dr. Josef Pauly’s sister, Rosalinde Kantorowicz née Pauly (1854-1916)

In 1868, I came to Posen, and in 1869 I got married. All the other things you know already, partly from us, partly from uncle Max [MAX KANTOROWICZ, Figure 12] and aunt Rosa [ROSALINDE PAULY, Figure 13], and partly because you have experienced it. You will agree, if I confess gratefully, that until now the good has prevailed, luck was not lacking. Illness and errors have been overcome as far as possible, good will better than one dared hope for. Distress has never knocked on our door, and, so, I would like to say the following as my confession today:

I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, in an immanent consciousness, in a moral world order; to the invisible God of the world, as first revealed by the Jewish religion, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.

I believe that human nature has a propensity for evil and an instinct for good, that it is up to education and the family to lead the latter to victory over the former, so the conscience prevails.

I consider the family to be the natural group in the necessary struggle for existence, which must co-exist however different their civic designs are.

I think parents are the first officials of the family. Everything that man possesses is entrusted to him for administration.

Death is a necessity; suicide is a mortal sin, more seldomly a disease.

I don´t think the earth is a vale of tears but a workplace with occasional and not too abundant leisure, and I don´t think people are angels, however, amongst a few there is no good to be found. A statistic of the good qualities of men would give salvation. I firmly believe, given the enormous capacity of human nature to develop and adapt, that good can be developed through favorable influences. Distress, illness and misery can democratize people. I think it is my duty and that of every wealthy person that they help alleviate these social difficulties, which have been exacerbated by modern conditions, and I measure my respect for rich people according to how much of their wealth they give away to others.

I believe everything has its history, and that being aware that one is living in a certain time is important. I believe that nothing is lost in this world, and that humanity progresses slowly in a zigzagging way. I strive out of war and storm to hear the sounds of peace and recovery from sickness and madness. I try to understand the tasks of the present time with my weak power of insight, and understand it as follows: the current education is real, you must protect the body and the soul. One directs the child’s gaze towards nature; one teaches not only beauty but also lawfulness; one must fill children’s souls with the joy that in toto there exists a body of goodness for everybody. But because everything that a man does is buried in the tablets of his brain, and because one’s own ego only feels at ease in the coexistence of another man’s ego, one must exercise the power of self-control and the power to forget oneself. For that is and remains the greatest glory for man: respect for the connection with the whole. Therefore, the highest pleasure of serving the whole is forgetting oneself.

Whether you conceive of man as a single entity or view body and mind separately is immaterial to me. The individual is the soulful body with natural necessity and happiness. One must differentiate between higher and lower impulses; culture is based on controlling baser impulses to have them serve the greater good.

Between the individual’s own ego and the other’s ego, the individual man steers his frail boat; even though the urge may be dark, man is always conscious of the right path.

I consider work to be the most important part of oneself. Self-knowledge and self-criticism are paramount. Every person can learn it, it does not help to lie to yourself.

It’s wrong to accept one’s innate temperament. Just as a sculptor chisels the hard marble, everyone must form his own temperament. This is not the realm of education but rather religion. It can be awakened in every human being. Within the family dissolves the contrast between one’s necessary selfishness and the necessary sublimation of one’s interest. Just as a mother’s love is the highest revelation (epiphany) of nature so is the love between relatives the highest of culture. When I personally experience the good that happens to my brother or sister, that sensation satisfies me, so I am a happy and fulfilled person.

Figure 14. Dr. Josef Pauly’s only son among his nine children, Wilhelm “Willy” Pauly (1883-1961), as a young boy

The parents, whose children have such a prevailing attitude, don´t believe this is rare. You know about the three sisters who renounced their own ambitions for the sake of their brother’s study [WILHELM PAULY, Figure 14]. The beautiful fire of such a sacrifice raises the hearth of the family like an inviolable sanctuary. Such an attitude can be educational, if one is honest. How terrible it would be if every intemperate remark uttered within the family went unpunished, so that instead of contributing to the greater good, personal considerations and selfishness prevailed, rather than striving to do right by one’s blood relatives in material and non-material ways.

Here, Dr. Josef Pauly highlights the sacrifice that three of his unnamed daughters made for the benefit of the only one of his nine children who was a male, namely, Wilhelm Pauly. For Josef, renouncing personal aspirations for the benefit of family exemplified the most high-minded ideal.

In a thoughtful bourgeois family, the older sister who raises her brother seeks to influence the younger sibling spiritually as a matter of course. This duty, which is not difficult to practice and understand, creates the most beautiful and secure relationship.

“What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it to own it.”

Ennoble the blood relationship by making a sacrifice for the other, strive for spiritual influence on one another, then you will be closer together and you will permanently ally yourselves.

I hear only partially this sentiment at this social event which you have dedicated to us today. With gratitude to the Almighty, I see you all gathered here, blood relatives by birth and by fortune; many but not excellently talented, but all sufficiently gifted for the good and simple.

And so I should like to hear, above all else, a quiet vow from this event, of humor and casual mood, that you want to be mindful not only of the vicissitudes of life, but also in everyday life by the commitment placed on you by God and nature which the dying Johannis and his great interpreter Gotthold Ephraim Lessing [Figure 15] summed up in the words:

“Children, love each other with that pure love which is a ray of God´s love”

Figure 15. Portrait of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) from the art collection at the University of Leipzig

Given the moral turpitude I see among some of my contemporaries, I find great comfort in reminding myself this was not always so. Many of Dr. Josef Pauly’s words and beliefs resonate with me though I recognize his values are not always congruent with my own nor relevant to the modern age. Despite the steps involved in bringing Dr. Josef’s words to light, first transcribing the German text, then translating them into English, and finally rewriting his words to try and capture their “true” meaning, highlights the challenge a biographer faces even when the subject’s own words are available to them. Still, where a subject’s words are available, it is preferable to presenting them to readers even if in a slightly distorted manner and even if the meaning is not always entirely obvious.

POST 55: THE WOINOWITZ ZUCKERFABRIK (SUGAR FACTORY) OUTSIDE RATIBOR (PART II-RESTITUTION FOR FORCED SALE BY THE NAZIS)

Note: In this post, I describe a recent contact I had with a reader of my Blog who was able to partially answer the question of whether the German government ever paid restitution to the heirs of the Woinowitz sugar plant for the forced sale of the factory by the Nazis during the 1930’s. I also discuss some of what I’ve learned about the heirs, detail some of the documentary evidence I’ve uncovered, and raise new questions now that earlier ones have been answered.

When I launched my family history Blog two years ago, I expressed hope readers would contact me with information about people and topics I would write about over time and/or establish ancestral connections between our families based on these accounts. This has happened on various occasions, and this Blog post is about one such encounter. It is a particularly satisfying story because it relates to several earlier posts, resolves a few mysteries I was never previously able to unravel, and establishes connections between events and people I earlier viewed as unrelated. Yet, like the Lernaean Hydra, one question gets answered and two “grow” in its place.

Figure 1. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck, in February 1948, the year he came to America

This story really begins when I was a youth. My father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1), came to America in 1948, at the age of 41. He never again worked as a dentist because the American authorities wanted him to completely reestablish his dental credentials, something he felt he was too old to do. Instead, he went to work for one of his cousins, Franz Kayser (1897-1983) (Figure 2), who ran an import business. When this cousin’s wife left him and got remarried with Curt L. Sterner, who similarly ran an import business, my father became part of the “package.” For the remainder of his working days, my father worked for Mr. Sterner.

Figure 2. My father’s second cousin, Franz Kayser, in 1945 atop Rockefeller Center in New York City

Figure 3. Mrs. Catherine “Ulrike” Sterner, the former Mrs. Kayser, in October 1992 in Hackettstown, New Jersey

Both Franz Kayser and Curt Sterner were Jewish and escaped Nazi Germany, as did Mrs. Catherine “Ulrike” Sterner (1908-2005) (Figure 3), the former Mrs. Kayser, also German though not Jewish. Growing up, my family would occasionally socialize with Mr. and Mrs. Sterner. On various occasions over the years, Ulrike would tell the story of her first husband’s uncle who had refused the Nazis offer to leave Germany in the 1930’s with 80 percent of his wealth intact. This was contrary to Ulrike’s advice, which was rejected on account of her juvenescence and presumed naivety. She maintained the uncle and his family could have lived very comfortably on the remaining money. Instead, he wound up committing suicide when it was no longer possible for German Jews to leave, with or without their money. Whether Ulrike ever mentioned this uncle’s name, I can’t recall.

Figure 4. Franz & Catherine Kayser’s son, John Kayser, in 2014, in front of the apartment in Berlin at Kaiserdam Strasse 22, where his parents lived at the time they fled to America

Ulrike and Franz Kayser had one son together, John Kayser. (Figure 4) Ulrike was prescient and could see what awaited Jews who stayed in Germany. She traveled to England to give birth to John in 1938 so that he would have a British passport; while the family briefly returned to Berlin following John’s birth, they quickly fled to America after Kristallnacht. John and I are third cousins, and he provided the name of his father’s uncle, Dr. Erich Schück, Uncle Schück as he was familiarly known. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Dr. Erich Schück (1880 (?)-1938), Franz Kayser’s uncle who committed suicide in Berlin in 1938

Figure 6. Allan Grutt Hansen (b. 1962) from Denmark, grandnephew of Erich & Hedwig Schück

Fast forward. Through my Blog, I recently received an email from a gentleman in Denmark, Mr. Allan Grutt Hansen. (Figure 6) He explained that his great-aunt, his grandmother’s sister that is, Hedwig Schück née Jendricke, had been married to Dr. Erich Schück. I have Dr. Schück in my family tree, though I never knew he’d been married. While this obviously expands my family tree, I was more interested in what it might reveal about the Schücks who once co-owned the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik outside Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] that I wrote about in Post 36.

Figure 7. The still-standing Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, outside Racibórz, Poland, as it looked in May 2014

Mr. Hansen is an avid genealogist and visits places associated with his family in Germany and Poland. This year he and his wife visited Upper Silesia, including Ratibor. As he’s done in the past, he did an Internet query on the still-standing Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Figure 7) outside Ratibor before his trip but, unlike earlier searches, this time landed upon my recent Blog post on the subject. Ergo, his email to me. As an aside, I learned, to my pleasure, that Allan used my Blog posts as a guide to some places he visited in Silesia.

Figure 8. Adolph Schück (1840-1916), co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik

Figure 9. Henrietta and Helene Hirsch, the two daughters of Sigmund Hirsch, Adolph Schück’s partner in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, who may have inherited their father’s shares following his death in 1920

In Post 36, I explained that Dr. Erich Schück’s father, Adolph Schück (Figure 8), had been partners with one of his brothers-in-law, Sigmund Hirsch, in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik; I’m unsure whether they were equal partners. Adolph died in 1916 and seemingly his shares passed into the hands of his three children, including his only son Erich. It’s unclear who inherited Sigmund’s stake in the business when he died in 1920, although it’s likely his two married daughters, Henrietta and Helene Hirsch (Figure 9), did. Though the factory was shuttered sometime in the 1920’s for economic reasons, the families retained ownership. To remind readers, I was never previously able to resolve the question of whether the Schück and Hirsch families were compensated by the German government for the sale or confiscation of the property after the Nazis came to power in 1933. My friend Mr. Paul Newerla (Figure 10), Silesian historian, however, affirmed that during his days working as an attorney he transacted a legal sale of the sugar factory from rightful owners. This is where things stood until I was contacted by Mr. Allan Grutt Hansen from Denmark.

Figure 10. My friend, Silesian historian Paul Newerla, and me standing by the statue of John of Nepomuk in Racibórz in 2018

Allan was not only able to answer the question of German restitution, but he provided documentation on how monies were meted out to his ancestors; he sent me the eight pages of the restitution agreement, naturally in German, detailing how his branch of the family was indemnified for sale of the sugar factory. There are specifics I’m still trying to understand and additional records I’m currently working to obtain, but the broad outline is becoming clearer.

The written materials Allan sent me deals only with the one-sixth of the estate involving his ancestors. The West German government ostensibly compensated all eligible heirs in 1966 for the forced sale of the sugar factory in September 1936. If my understanding is accurate, compensation paid out in 1966 was based on what the factory would have sold for in 1936 had the sale been voluntary. It appears the value of the factory in 1936 was estimated in 1966 to have been about 450,000 Reichsmark (RM) (i.e., in January 2017, a 1937 Reichsmark would have been worth approximately $4.30). This figure was divided into six equal shares of 75,000 RM, which likely represented the number of eligible heirs and/or “estates.” (Figures 11a-b)

Figure 11a. Front page of the restitution agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik showing the estimated value; the date of Hedwig Schück’s death; and the “Landkreis” where the agreement was handled

Figure 11b. Page from 1966 restitution agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik with Hedwig Schück’s address shown as Fasanenstrasse 38, where I would later find her listed in a 1954 Berlin Address Book

This figure was “adjusted” upward in 1966 by multiplying the 75,000 RM by 1.9 “boosting” the value of Dr. Erich Schück’s shares to 142,500 RM; perhaps this was done to offset the ridiculously high “wealth tax” assessed in 1936 by the Nazis that reduced the amount he actually received. However, Dr. Schück’s heirs only reaped 2,500 RM in 1966 because 140,000 RM had already been disbursed in 1936. (Figure 11c) This only makes sense to me if Erich was the only heir to receive monies from sale of the sugar plant in 1936. If so, the West German government may have attempted to rectify this “oversight” in 1966 by paying out equal portions of 142,500 RM to each of the five other heirs or their descendants. Until the complete restitution package is in hand, it’s unknown how much was paid out in 1936 and to whom, and how much in 1966 and again to whom. Watch this space for further explanation.

Figure 11c. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik indicating how individual shares of 75,000 RM were “adjusted” to 142,500 RM but showing only 2,500 RM was disbursed in 1966 to Hedwig Schück’s heirs

Examining the documentation provided by Allan Grutt Hansen, formal compensation proceedings were apparently initiated in the early 1960’s in Hansestadt Lübeck (Figure 11a), the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Hedwig Schück was probably no longer alive at the time, having passed away on the 9th of June 1960, at a then-undetermined location. I’ve already told readers Dr. Erich Schück committed suicide, place and date also then-undetermined. I’ll discuss below how details in the restitution package allowed me to track down the place they died, and, in the case of Dr. Schück, the year he died.

The documentation on the one-sixth of the compensation doled out to Allan’s family lists by name all the heirs and their shares. These included: Anna Johannsen née Brügge (1/12th share); Sophie Dalstrand née Brügge (1/12th share); Christian Brügge (1/24th share); and Helmuth Brügge (1/24th share). (Figure 11d) Let me briefly explain how these people are related to Dr. Erich Schück.

Figure 11d. Page from 1966 West German compensation agreement for the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik listing Erich and Hedwig Schück’s four heirs, and the fraction they each received of the 2,500 RM compensation doled out

As previously mentioned, Dr. Erich Schück was married to Hedwig Schück née Jendricke. Hedwig’s mother, Anna Pelagia Jendricke (1873-1953), had her out-of-wedlock in 1889 when she was only 16 years old. Possibly, because the family came from a small town in Poland, Gołańcz, with conservative values they pretended Hedwig was Anna’s sister rather than her illegitimate daughter, thus the maiden name “Jendricke.” Anna would eventually get married to a Christian Brügge (1853-1926) with whom she had four additional children. (Figure 12)

Figure 12. Hedwig Schück “née” Jendricke’s mother, Anna Pelagia Brügge née Jendricke (center), with two of her daughters, Sophie Dalstrand née Brügge (left) and Anna Johannsen née Brügge (right)

In any case, Anna Johannsen and Sophie Dalstrand were sisters-in-law of Dr. Erich Schück, while Christian and Helmuth Brügge were two of his nephews. All four of Dr. Schück’s heirs were related through marriage to Hedwig Schück née Jendricke.

Allan provided some historical background to clarify where his Brügge and Jendricke lineages came from and how, after WWI, geo-political factors influenced why the Brügges wound up in Denmark and the Jendrickes ended up in Germany. This is important for understanding why some members of Allan’s family were so German-minded, and how it influenced their actions during WWII. I’ll return to this shortly. While not directly relevant to restitution for the forced sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik, it establishes some context for understanding the present-day borders of Denmark, Germany, and Poland, and by extension other European countries. (Figure 13)

Figure 13. Map of Europe between WWI and WWI, with date “1920” circled, showing the northern part of Schleswig regained by Denmark after WWI, and Germany border town of “Flensburg”; the eastern part of Poland that became part of Ukraine and Belarus following WWII is also shown (source: “Putzger: Historischer Weltatlas”)

Allan’s Brügge ancestors come from the Danish-German border region of Schleswig, divided today between Germany and Denmark. His Jendricke family comes from the Polish-German border region of western Poland. Schleswig was originally entirely Danish, while western Poland was Polish, but after several hundred years of German influence and pressure from German authorities in both areas, western Poland (as well as northern Poland) and southern Denmark became German. A war was fought between the Danes and the Germans in 1864 when the Danish government sought to reunite the whole of Schleswig under Danish control; the Danes were defeated and wound up losing 40 percent of their land and population. Denmark only recovered the northern half of Schleswig in 1920 following a plebiscite asking the residents whether they wanted to be Danish or German.

Figure 14. Allan Grutt Hansen’s great- grandfather, Christian Brügge, on 10 July 1920 shown waving the Danish flag, following the plebiscite where Denmark regained the northern part of Schleswig

In the 1890’s, Allan’s Danish-minded great-grandfather, Christian Brügge (1853-1926) (Figure 14) apparently traveled to western Poland and found his wife, Anna Pelagia née Jendricke, in Gołańcz, Poland; they settled in Flensburg in south Schleswig, which today is in Germany, on the German-Danish border. When south Schleswig was not restored to Denmark in 1920 (Figure 15), Christian Brügge immediately moved his family to Copenhagen in Denmark. Allan’s great-grandfather wrote an article for a Flensburg newspaper promising to return once south Schleswig again became part of Denmark. It never has.

Figure 15. King Christian X of Denmark astride his white steed crossing the newly established border between Germany and Denmark on 10 July 1920

Western and northern Poland had already been incorporated into German Prussia, when Prussia, Austro-Hungary and Russia divided the rest of Poland among them, and Poland ceased to exist for 123 years between 1796 and 1919. Following WWI, between 1919 until 1939, Poland regained its independence until Hitler and Stalin started WWII by again dividing Poland. Following the war, Poland never regained its eastern half (now a part of Belarus and Ukraine), and instead Poland was “parallel-shifted” westward, and Poland was compensated by regaining western and northern Poland. This redrawing of the map resulted in 7 million Poles being deported from the former eastern part of Poland to western and northern Poland, and 12 million Germans from the latter areas being deported to Germany. This was ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.

Figure 16. The Nazi collaborators, Anni (née Jendricke) & Bende Johannsen, in the 1950’s in Germany

Let’s return to the story of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik. According to Allan, Lübeck, where compensation proceedings were initiated, may not have been an accidental location. Let me explain and tell readers at the outset this involves “skeletons in the closet,” so to speak. Anna “Anni” Johannsen née Brügge, who received 1/12th of the compensation that was meted out in 1966, was married to a Bende Johannsen. (Figure 16) Because both were German-minded and eager to make Denmark German, they supported the Nazis. They worked at the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen during WWII, a place called the “Shell House” because it had been confiscated from Shell Corporation during the war. Anni translated forced confessions from captured Danish freedom fighters, while her husband worked in an administrative position. While neither was ever convicted of directly torturing or killing anyone, Anni as a German citizen was expelled from Denmark after the war, and her Danish husband Bende left with her, with both eventually settling in the Holstein-Oldenburg- Lübeck area, in a town called Neustadt. If Anni initiated the compensation proceedings after her sister’s death in 1960, as seems likely, this may explain why it was handled by the “Landesrat Oldenburg (Holstein).” Regardless, it’s an irony the ardent Nazi Anni benefited from the expropriation of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik.

Regular readers know I always try to track down historic documents to bolster my account of events. Immediately after establishing contact with Allan, I asked him for a picture of his great-aunt Hedwig and vital data about her. I quickly learned he had no photos of her, no idea where she’d died, and no letters or personal papers belonging to her; if Hedwig maintained a relationship with her mother and half-siblings, it appears it was at best a casual one. My question, however, prompted Allan to re-examine the compensation documents, and there he discovered Hedwig had lived on one of the poshest streets in Berlin.

In Post 49, I described to readers how to use the challenging Landesarchiv Berlin database to search for vital records, and the importance of knowing which of Berlin’s 12 boroughs a vital event took place. In the absence of knowing for certain which borough an event took place, I ALWAYS begin by looking at records for the well-heeled borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, where virtually all my Jewish ancestors lived and/or worked. Knowing the exact date Hedwig Schück died and knowing she had lived in a “posh” Berlin district, I used this same approach, and lo-and-behold, I discovered her name in the Wilmersdorf death register listing for the year 1960. (Figures 17a-b)

Figure 17a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin Book 2142 for the year 1960 for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, with Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s death register listing

Figure 17b. Landesarchiv Berlin Book 2142 for the year 1960 for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf with Hedwig Schück née Jendricke’s name circled

The search for her husband Dr. Erich Schück was more challenging since I had no idea when or where he’d killed himself. John Kayser, Erich’s grandnephew, assumed he’d died in Ratibor, while I’d always assumed, he’d committed suicide in Berlin. Knowing from the restitution file the Nazis had forced the sale of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik in 1936, I could see no reason why Erich would have stayed in Ratibor following the sale of the sugar plant. Most of my relatives, living in smaller communities, who lost their positions or businesses in such places after the Nazis came to power, quickly moved to Berlin; there, at least for a time, they could get “lost” in the relative anonymity of a larger city. Both my father and uncle relocated to Berlin from smaller towns after they lost their dental practices during the 1930’s.

I began by searching for Dr. Erich Schück in ancestry.com, and was rewarded by finding him listed in three Berlin Address Books, respectively, for 1936, 1937 and 1938, living at Landhausstrasse 37 in the Wilmersdorf borough of Berlin (Figure 18); the 1936 Address Book also lists a “Frau Dr. Schück,” Erich’s wife, living at the same address. I did not find him listed in any Berlin directories after 1938 but didn’t automatically assume he’d died that year. Most of my Jewish ancestors living in Berlin told to report for deportation were ordered to do so in 1942 and killed themselves that year.

Figure 18. 1938 Berlin Address Book with Dr. Erich Schück’s name and Wilmersdorf address circled, the last year he is listed

Having narrowed Dr. Schück’s residence to Berlin-Wilmersdorf in 1938, I began scouring the Landesarchiv Berlin death listings for that borough from that year forward; in short order, I discovered his name in the 1938 register. The only surprise is while I’d been told by family that he was a medical doctor, I discovered he was actually a “Dr. jur.,” Doctor juris. (Figures 19a-b)

Figure 19a. Cover of Landesarchiv Berlin Book 2126 for the years 1937-1940 for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf with Dr. jur. Erich Schück’s death register listing under year 1938

Figure 19b. Landesarchiv Berlin Book 2126 for the years 1937-1940 for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf with Dr. Jur. Erich Schück’s name circled

Now knowing both Dr. Schück and his wife died in Berlin, I’ve requested copies of their death certificates from the Landesarchiv Berlin. They currently have a several month-long backlog so it will be some time before I can report to readers any new information these documents may contain.

I also searched Dr. Schück’s wife in ancestry.com. I found a “Heddy Schück” listed in a 1954 Berlin Phone Directory living at “Fasanenstrasse 38, Charlottenburg” (Figure 20), which matched her address in the compensation package. Reminded that Hedwig was listed as “Heddy,” Allan’s mother later recalled that she in fact went by this diminutive.

Figure 20. 1954 Berlin Address Book with Heddy Schück shown living at Fasanenstr. 38 in Charlottenburg, matching her address in the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik compensation package

Readers will correctly surmise that my conversation with Allan Grutt Hansen has partially answered the question of whether the Schück family was compensated for the forced sale of the sugar factory located in Woinowitz. But, like the Hydra of mythological renown, I may have raised several new questions for the one I’ve answered, namely, who, if anyone beyond Dr. Schück, received monies paid out in 1936; who initiated the compensation proceedings in the 1960’s; and which heirs were indemnified in 1966? There may be other new questions based on the answers to the ones enumerated. Because the restitution was only resolved in 1966, it’s possible that Germany’s privacy laws may prevent release of the complete compensation package for many years to come. Time will tell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figure 4. One of Mr. Świetliński’s images, showing the “kindergräber,” or children’s graves, in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz

Figure 5. Close-up of the headstone of Ernst Tichauer who died at two years of age and was buried in the former Jewish Cemetery in Racibórz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POST 11, POSTSCRIPT: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN” HOTEL

Note: This postscript discusses additional information obtained about the Bruck’s “Prinz Von Preußen” Hotel from a Polish gentleman who has written a book on the history of Ratibor.

Figure 1-Cover of Paul Newerla’s book entitled “Ratibor einst und jetzt”

Following publication of Post 11, Mr. Paul Newerla from Raciborz, Poland, author of a book on Ratibor, entitled “Ratibor einst und jetzt” (“Ratibor, then and now”) (Figure 1), contacted me. He shared a lot of information and visuals from his book and other sources, including historic maps, to round out my understanding of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, the inn owned by my family for three generations. Mr. Newerla also made me aware that my family’s connection to Ratibor extends a generation earlier. According to land registers from the city of Ratibor, Jacob Bruck (1770-1832), father of the original owner of the Prinz von Preußen, Samuel Bruck, was an arrendator, a lease-holder, on two properties within Ratibor. Jacob owned properties on Jungfernstrasse and Stockhaus-Gasse prior to construction of the family hotel; interestingly, an 1812 city map sent to me by Mr. Newerla shows the exact parcels owned by Jacob. (Figure 2)

Figure 2-1812 map of Ratibor showing location of parcels owned by Jacob Bruck along Jungfernstrasse & Stockhaus-Gasse, and location of “Odertor,” the city gate atop which Bruck’s Hotel was built

Figure 3-The only preserved tower of Ratibor’s fortifications, along with a fragment of Gothic defensive wall

Ratibor’s city walls, towers (Figure 3) and gates, surrounding the town, were only demolished in 1828, after which the Prinz von Preußen was constructed at the corner of Oderstraße and Bollwerkstraße. (Figures 4, 5, & 6) The same 1812 map just alluded to shows the city walls and gates. Approximating the position of the family hotel, it appears it was built almost atop where one Odertor, city gate, once stood.

Figure 4-1933 plan map of Ratibor showing location of Bruck’s Hotel at the intersection of Oderstraße & Bollwerkstraße

Figure 5-The Bruck’s Hotel at the time it was owned by Ernst Exner, located at the intersection of Oderstraße & Bollwerkstraße

Figure 6-View up Oderstraße looking at the Bruck’s Hotel

A historian, Ms. Katrin Griebel from Zittau, Saxony, who has studied the surviving personal papers of two of my great-aunts, Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck, archived at the Stadtmuseum in Berlin, has gleaned some anecdotes about the family hotel. According to Ms. Griebel, the building occupied by the Bruck’s Hotel was the former palace of a marquis. Upon the nobleman’s death, the palace became known as the “Prinz von Preußen.”

Figure 7-Advertisement for Johann Strauss the Junior’s orchestral performance at the “Prinz von ***Preußen***” on October 17, 1850

By 1850, the marquis’s palace was assuredly a hotel. Mr. Newerla sent me notices related to two orchestral performances given by Johann Strauss the Younger at the “Prinz von Preußen.” In October 1850, Johann Strauss had plans to perform in front of the Russian Czar, and on his way to Russia he performed at the hotel the evening of October 17, 1850, spending the night. (Figure 7) On his return from Warsaw, he again stopped in Ratibor, giving an orchestral performance “im Saale des Prinzen von Preußen,” the “Hall of the Prince of Prussia,” on the afternoon of November 17, 1850 (Figure 8), leaving that same evening for Vienna.

Figure 8-Advertisement for Johann Strauss the Junior’s encore performance at the “Prinz von ***Preußen***” on November 17, 1850

The Bruck’s Hotel’s “Saale des Prinzen von Preußen” (Figure 9) served other community functions. Mr. Newerla has found records indicating that on October 31, 1859, Ratibor’s fire department held a large carnival ball there; the fire department also organized a theatrical performance, the proceeds of which were earmarked for the assistance of an injured fire brigade colleague.

Figure 9-Location of the “Saale des Prinzen von Preußen”

Several pages from Mr. Newerla’s book discuss the founding in Ratibor of the “Peace Lodge XVII No. 361” of the “Independent Order B’nai B’rith” on May 9, 1886, which met at the “Prinz von Preußen.” B’nai B’rith was originally founded in 1843 in New York, and became established in Berlin, Germany in 1882. My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck, was a member of Ratibor’s Lodge. Even though the statute of the Lodge specifically excluded politics from its field of activities, they were under police surveillance. While the Lodge continued to meet at the Bruck’s Hotel until at least April 1934 and steered clear of political matters, they appear to have been under pressure to disband.

Figure 10-Cover of Ratibor’s 1889 Address & Business Book

Page 39 from Ratibor’s 1889 Address & Business Book (Figure 10), sent to me by Mr. Newerla, lists residents along Oderstraße, including number 16. Both my great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck, and grandfather, Felix Bruck, are listed at this address. Fedor is the “Besitzer,” or owner, and Felix Bruck the “Geschäftsführer,” the Managing Director (Figure 11); by 1892 Fedor Bruck was deceased. Under business listings, there are none for hotels, but Fedor Bruck is listed under “Gasthöfe 1 Classe,” first-class inns, and, oddly, under “Bade-Anstalten,” or bathing establishments. (Figure 12)

Figure 11-My great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck, and grandfather, Felix Bruck, listed in Ratibor’s 1889 Address Book at Oderstraße 16

Figure 12-Listing for Fedor Bruck under “Gasthöfe 1 Clasße,” first-class inns, and under “Bade-Anstalten,” or bathing establishments

Mr. Newerla sent me a series of advertisements for the Bruck’s Hotel. (Figures 13-19) They appear to extend from the time the hotel was owned by my great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck, possibly through the 1930’s and later. Throughout its existence, it was known as the “Bruck’s ‘Prinz von Preußen’ Hotel,” even though it was no longer owned by my family.

Figure 13-Advertisement for Fedor Bruck’s Hotel

Figure 14-Advertisement for the “Prinz v. **Preußen**” when my great-grandfather, Fedor Bruck, owned the establishment

Figure 15-Advertisement for the Bruck’s Hotel when it was owned by Max Kunzer

Figure 16-Advertisement for the Bruck’s Hotel was it owned by Hugo Eulenstein

Figure 17-Another advertisement for the Bruck’s Hotel when it was owned by Hugo Eulenstein

Figure 18-Advertisement for the Bruck’s Hotel when it was owned by Ernst Exner

Figure 19-Advertisement for the Bruck’s Hotel when it was owned by H. Koeppe

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

Figure 1-1927-1928 plan map of Ratibor showing location of former Jewish Cemetery along **Leobschützerstrasse**

After my wife and I examined the records at the Polish State Archives in Racibórz, our English-speaking research guide, Ms. Malgosia Ploszaj, suggested we visit the site of the former Jewish Cemetery once located on Leobschützerstrasse [today: Wilczej Górze and Fojcik głubczycki streets] on the outskirts of Raciborz. (Figure 1) Knowing family members had

Figure 2-Fragment of headstone with Hebrew script

once been buried here, I was particularly intrigued to see their final resting place. Malgosia had already warned my wife and me that the Jewish Cemetery no longer exists as such but consists merely of ivy-covered pathways meandering through a forested area scattered with fragmentary pieces of headstones (Figure 2), a cemetery originally 5 acres in extent. Beyond the occasional piece of headstone, the only original element of the former Jewish cemetery is the front entrance gate.

According to the International Jewish Cemetery Project (IJCP), this cemetery served the Jewish Community from about 1817 until the last two burials were placed here, respectively, in 1940 and 1941; by their estimate, no more than 200 Jews remained at the time of the “Final Solution” in Ratibor in 1942. While it may ultimately have been the intention of the Nazis to systematically destroy all Jewish cemeteries, by the end of the Third Reich some were still left intact, including the one in Ratibor. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, although its location on the outskirts of town may partially explain why it was not destroyed. However, with no surviving postwar Jewish community to tend the graveyard, nature was in effect gradually reclaiming it. Consequently, by 1973, a decision was taken by the Communist authorities to, in the words of the IJCP, “decommission the cemetery [and allow] masons from the surrounding area . . .to reuse them [the headstones] in Catholic cemeteries.” IJCP describes the gravestones dating from the second half of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as “. . .black, white or pink marble or granite and sandstone. . .in traditional shapes or obelisks, boulders and more artistic forms with a wide array of decoration.” The inscriptions were a combination of Hebrew and German. Supposedly, following the Jewish cemetery’s decommissioning, it was used as a community garden.

Tangentially, I became intrigued about the destruction of Jewish culture. There is a widely circulated notion that once having exterminated the Jews, the Nazis planned a “Museum to an Extinct Race”; in 2015, while on a walking tour of WWII sites in Prague, our tour guide in fact brought this up. Prague is widely associated as the place where this museum was to be located because upwards of 100,000 Jewish liturgical, religious, historical, and archival objects were archived there at the Central Jewish Museum. Suffice it to say, the idea of such a museum is a myth and there never existed a Nazi plan to create such a museum. The phrase “Museum to an Extinct Race” was in fact coined by Jews following WWII. For readers interested in reading about this myth, I direct them to a video of a fascinating lecture given by Dale Bluestein, former Director of the “Memorial Scrolls Trust”: https://vimeo.com/120373842

Figure 3-Cover of booklet entitled “Vergessene Geschichte der Juden aus dem Ratiborer Lande”

In recent years, the Polish schools have apparently taken an interest in re-discovering their Jewish history. Malgosia showed me the product of one such endeavor, a booklet prepared by local students and published by the European Union, written in both Polish and German. This booklet is entitled in German “Vergessene Geschichte der Juden aus dem Ratiborer Lande,” which translates roughly as “Forgotten history of the Jews from the land of Ratibor.” (Figure 3) The cover page includes a hand-tinted drawing of the former Jewish synagogue, along with additional pictures inside showing the conflagration as it was destroyed on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938.

Figure 4-Moorish-style Jewish synagogue as it looked in 1889 when it opened

Following Kristallnacht, the Moorish synagogue (Figure 4), which had originally been built in 1889, survived as a ruin until 1958, when Communist authorities demolished it.

Figure 5-Headstone of my great-grandparents, Hermann & Olga Berliner, in former Ratibor Jewish cemetery

Inside this publication are multiple photographs of the headstones of the former Jewish cemetery, amazingly, including one of my great-grandparents grave, Hermann Berliner (1840-1910) and Olga Berliner, nee Braun (1853-1920). (Figures 5, 6) Malgosia graciously obtained an original copy of this booklet for me, and explained that the majority of the headstones from the former Jewish cemetery were photographed before the gravestones were disposed of. It remains unclear whether these photographs were taken by a well-intentioned individual

Figure 6-My great-grandfather Hermann Berliner (1840-1910)

interested in documenting history, or by the Polish Security Services with some nefarious purpose in mind to further “torment” dead Jews and their descendants come back to reclaim stolen Jewish property.

The most remarkable thing, I came to discover, is that the original photographs of all the headstones from the former Jewish cemetery are archived at the Muzeum Raciborzu. (Figure 7) My wife and I learned of their existence too late to actually schedule a visit there in 2014, but immediately upon my return to the States that year, I contacted one of the curators at the museum and asked

Figure 7-Curator Adam Knura at entrance to Muzeum Raciborzu

if we could examine these photos on a subsequent visit; the archivist indicated this would present no problem. So, upon our return to Raciborz in 2015, again in the company of Malgosia, we examined and photographed all the pictures. (Figures 8, 9)

Figure 8-Example of plan map of Jewish Cemetery with colored highlight indicating section where photos in each of seven albums were taken

Figure 9-Page from one album with three pictures of headstones

The curators at the museum have created an Excel spreadsheet with the names of all the people once interred at the Jewish cemetery, along with their dates of birth and death, where this information can be gleaned from the pictures. A copy of this database was given to me. Over the years, I’ve had occasion to compare the birth and death information obtained for a few individuals from the headstones with comparable information obtained from original birth or death certificates for these same people, and, interestingly, I’ve found some discrepancies not owing to archival errors but, ironically, to incorrect dates being inscribed in stone. One can only wonder whether surviving relatives “lost track” of the year their ancestors had been born. In any case, the Excel spreadsheet with the names of the entombed has provided a wealth of useful family history information.

Figure 10-Headstones from section of former Jewish Cemetery with graves of children

The previously discussed booklet included a touching photo of “small” headstones once belonging to the graves of children who’d perished at birth or shortly thereafter. (Figure 10) I knew that my great-grandparents on my grandfather’s side had eight children but had only been able to track the fate of six of them. I was hoping these headstones would shed some light on the fate of the other two, but this was not to be.