Schlesische Jüdische Familien Archives

POST 44: A TROVE OF FAMILY HISTORY FROM THE “PINKUS COLLECTION” AT THE LEO BAECK INSTITUTE

Note: In this Blog post, I discuss how I inadvertently uncovered vital records information for several people in my family tree and talk about leaving open the possibility of discovering evidence of ancestors whose traces appear negligible.

Post 40: Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, One of Germany’s Silent Heroes

In the prologue to my family history blog, which I initiated in April 2017, I conceded there are some ancestral searches which are bound to end up unresolved during my lifetime. While I never actually close the book on these forensic investigations, I place them on a back-burner in the unlikely event I discover something new or make a new connection. This Blog post delves into one recent find that opened the door to learning more about several close ancestors whom I’d essentially given up hope of unearthing anything new.

Given my single-minded focus over the last two years on writing stories for my family history blog, I’ve woefully neglected updating my family tree which resides on ancestry.com. An opportunity recently presented itself to piggy-back on a friend’s membership to ancestry and review the hundreds of “leaves” associated with the roughly 500+ people in my tree. Typically, at the top of the list of ancestry clues are links to other family trees that may include the same people as found in one’s own tree. While I systematically review these member trees, I only “import” new ancestral information if source documents are attached to the member trees and I can confirm the reliability of the details; I may occasionally make exceptions if trees or tree managers have been trusted sources of information in the past, and/or I otherwise can confirm the origins of the data. Over the years I’ve seen multiple trees replicate the same erroneous information, and this is a path I choose to avoid.

The family ancestral information I happened upon came from a family tree I discussed in Blog Post 39, entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” “Silesian Jewish Families.” Regular readers may recall this tree has an astronomical 52,000+ names in it, so it should come as no surprise that it is often the source of overlapping or new information for individuals found in my own modest-sized tree. That said, I still apply the same rigorous principles in assessing the information found in this larger tree. I rarely take anything at face-value when it comes to vital records (e.g., births, baptisms, marriages, deaths) given the multiple reasons, often inadvertent or negligent, why data may be incorrect or divergent (e.g., illegible or unintelligible writing on source documents; transcription errors). With these caveats in mind, however, I came across some vital record information on the Silesian Families tree that seemed credible given the specificity of birth and death dates for a few individuals in my tree. The information related to my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer; while I’d previously found Gerhard’s birth certificate mentioning his parents, I had never found precise birth and death dates for Ernestine or Gerhard, so this was particularly intriguing.

Having previously established contact with the manager of the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree, a very helpful German lady by the name of Ms. Elke Kehrmann, I again reached out to her. I acknowledged that remembering the source of data for 52,000+ people is unrealistic but thought I should still ask. Initially, Ms. Kehrmann could only recall the information came from a manuscript prepared by an American Holocaust survivor who’d wanted to memorialize his lineage; with numerous computer upgrades over the years, Elke expressed the likelihood the document was digitally irretrievable. Disappointed, but not surprised, I was prepared to accept the vital records information at face-value.

Figure 1. Screen shot of the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994),” archived at the Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI), highlighting Series VII where my family’s ancestral materials were found

Then, much to my delight, a day later Elke told me she’d located the source document from a larger collection entitled the “Pinkus Family Collection 1500s-1994, (bulk 1725-1994).” (Figure 1) It was too large to email, but she opined I might be able to locate it on the Internet, and, sure enough, I immediately learned the collection is archived at The Leo Baeck Institute—New York/Berlin (LBI) and can be downloaded for free. For readers unfamiliar with this institute, according to their website, “LBI is devoted to the history of German-speaking Jews. Its 80,000-volume library and extensive archival and art collections represent the most significant repository of primary source material and scholarship on the Jewish communities of Central Europe over the past five centuries.”

The Pinkus Family Collection is enormous. From the “Biographical Note” to the collection, I learned the Pinkus family were textile manufacturers. Their factory, located in Neustadt, Upper Silesia [today: Prudnik, Poland], was one of the largest producers of fine linens in the world. Joseph Pinkus became a partner in the firm S. Fränkel when he married Auguste Fränkel, the daughter of the owner. Their son Max Pinkus (1857-1934) was director until 1926. Subsequently, Max Pinkus’s son Hans Pinkus (1891-1977) managed the family company from 1926-1938 until he was forced out after the company’s total aryanization in the wake of Kristallnacht. Both Max and Hans Pinkus were very active in civic and cultural affairs and interested in local history; they amassed a large library of books by Silesian authors. In their spare time, they devoted themselves to genealogical research, the basis of the family collection archived at LBI. Hans Pinkus left Germany at the end of 1938, emigrated to the United Kingdom with his family in 1939, and died in Britain in 1977.

In reviewing the index to the collection, I had no idea where to begin. Fortunately, Elke came to my rescue and pointed me to “Series VII” (Figure 1), described as encompassing not just close Pinkus family relations but the broader array of families in Upper Silesia. Within this series I located pages related to my family, although, unlike other portions of the collection, ancestral information is recorded in longhand, in Sütterlin, no less. Even so, I was able to decipher most of the numerical data, and enlisted one of my German cousins to translate the longhand.

Here is where I discovered the source of the birth and death dates for my great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer’s first wife, Esther Ernestine Lißner, and their son, Gerhard Mockrauer. A summary of vital information for Josef Mockrauer, his two wives, and their children follows:

Figure 2. My great-great-uncle Josef Mockrauer (1845-1895)

Figure 3a. First page of Josef Mockrauer’s 1895 death certificate

Figure 3b. Second page of Josef Mockrauer’s 1895 death certificate

Figure 4a. Plan map of the Jüdischer Friedhof in Berlin Weißensee (East Berlin) showing section Q1, where Josef Mockrauer is interred

Figure 4b. Headstone of Josef Mockrauer’s grave

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
Josef Mockrauer (Figures 2, 3a-b, 4a-b)	Birth	18 June 1845	Leschnitz, Oberschlesien, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland]
Josef Mockrauer (Figures 2, 3a-b, 4a-b)	Death	9 February 1895	Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany
Esther Ernestine Mockrauer, née Lißner (Josef’s first wife)	Birth	30 October 1854	Dresden, Saxony, Germany
	Death	24 May 1934	Berlin, Germany
	Marriage	Unknown	Unknown
Elly Landsberg, née Mockrauer (Figure 5)	Birth	14 August 1873	Berlin, Germany
Elly Landsberg, née Mockrauer (Figure 5)	Death	15 May 1944	Auschwitz, Poland
Gerhard Mockrauer (Figure 6)	Birth	25 January 1875	Berlin, Germany
Gerhard Mockrauer (Figure 6)	Death	21 September 1886	Freienwalde, Märkisch-Oderland district, Brandenburg, Germany
George Mockrauer (Ernestine’s out-of-wedlock child) (Figure 7)	Birth	16 April 1884	Dresden, Saxony, Germany
	Death	Unknown	Unknown
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Josef’s second wife) (Figure 8)	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
	Death	1965	Stockholm, Sweden
	Marriage	18 March 1888	Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Franz Josef Mockrauer (Figure 9)	Birth	10 August 1889	Berlin, Germany
Franz Josef Mockrauer (Figure 9)	Death	7 July 1962	Stockholm, Sweden

Figure 5. Josef Mockrauer and Esther Ernestine Mockrauer née Lißner’s daughter, Elly Landsberg née Mockrauer, in 1902

Figure 6. Birth certificate for Josef and Ernestine Mockrauer’s son, Gerhard Mockrauer, indicating he was born on January 25, 1875

Figure 7. Birth certificate for Georg Mockrauer, Ernestine Mockrauer’s out-of-wedlock son, who carried the “Mockrauer” surname even though he was not Josef Mockrauer’s son

Figure 8. Josef Mockrauer’s second wife, my great-aunt Charlotte Mockrauer née Bruck

Figure 9. Josef and Charlotte Mockrauer’s son, Franz Josef Mockrauer

Figure 10. My great-great-grandfather Fedor Bruck

Figure 11. My great-great-grandmother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer

I made other surprising discoveries in the Pinkus Collection. Briefly, some context. The second-generation owners of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preussen” Hotel in Ratibor were my great-grandparents, Fedor Bruck (Figure 10) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer. (Figure 11) As the table below shows, Fedor and Friederike Bruck had eight children, only six of whom I’d previously been able to track from birth to death; Elise and Robert remained wraiths whose existence I knew about but assumed had died at birth, a not uncommon fate in the 19^th century. This was not, in fact, what happened. Elise lived to almost age 4, and Robert to age 16. While Elise expectedly died in Ratibor, mystifyingly, Robert died on December 30, 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, more than 450 miles from Ratibor. Why here is unclear. Their causes of death are a mystery, though childhood diseases a real possibility.

Figure 13. My great-aunt Franziska Bruck

NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
Felix Bruck (Figure 12)	Birth	28 March 1864	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Felix Bruck (Figure 12)	Death	23 June 1927	Berlin, Germany
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Figure 8)	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Charlotte Mockrauer, née Bruck (Figure 8)	Death	1965	Stockholm, Sweden
Franziska Bruck (Figure 13)	Birth	29 December 1866	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Franziska Bruck (Figure 13)	Death	2 January 1942	Berlin, Germany
Elise Bruck	Birth	20 August 1868	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elise Bruck	Death	19 June 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (Figure 14)	Birth	22 March 1870	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck (Figure 14)	Death	15 January 1949	Nice, France
Robert Bruck	Birth	1 December 1871	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Robert Bruck	Death	30 December 1887	Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany
Wilhelm Bruck (Figure 15)	Birth	24 October 1872	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Wilhelm Bruck (Figure 15)	Death	29 April 1952	Barcelona, Spain
Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 16)	Birth	17 November 1874	Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland)
Elsbeth Bruck (Figure 16)	Death	20 February 1970	Berlin, Germany

Figure 14. Another great-aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck

Figure 16. Yet another great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck

With respect to the tables above, I don’t expect readers to do anything more than glance at them; for me, they’re a quick reference as to what I know and where it came from, a form of metadata, if you will. The italicized information in the tables was new to me and originated from the Pinkus Collection.

As a related aside, Friederike Mockrauer and Josef Mockrauer were siblings. Interestingly, Josef Mockrauer would go on to eventually marry one of his sister’s daughters, his niece, my great-aunt Charlotte Bruck. Incestuous, I would agree.

Figure 17. Page from the Pinkus Family Collection showing Fedor and Friederike Bruck’s eight children, including birth and death dates for my great-aunt Elise and my great-uncle Robert, both of whom died as children. Towards the bottom right my father’s name is shown (Otto Bruck). [Citation: Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Page 293; Leo Baeck Institute]

Remarkably, on the very same page where I discovered Elise and Robert’s dates and places of death, I found my father and his three siblings listed! (Figure 17) Inasmuch as I can tell, the detailed family information was recorded by either Max (Max died in 1934) or Hans Pinkus around the early- to mid-1930’s, at which time my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, would have been a dentist in Tiegenhof in the Free State of Danzig, and this is precisely what is noted: “Zahnarzt im Tiegenhof (Freistaat Danzig)”; “Freistaat Danzig” was the official name of this former part of the Deutsches Reich after World War I.

Figure 18. Page from the Pinkus Family Collection identifying Oscar Pincus and Paula Pincus née Pauly’s two children (“kinder” in German), Franz Pincus and Lisselotte “Lilo” Pauly. Here can also be seen that Franz Pincus married Lisa Krüger. [Citation: Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Page 307; Leo Baeck Institute]

Finally, from the Pinkus Collection, I was also able to confirm that Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, discussed in Blog Post 40, one of the “silent heroes” who hid my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck during his 30-months “underground” in Berlin during WWII, was indeed married to Franz Pincus (Figure 18); Franz Pincus, readers may recall, died in 1941 as Franz Pauly, having taken his mother’s maiden name as his own surname. While the Pinkus Collection shed no additional light on exactly how Franz Pincus/Pauly died, I discovered Franz was the older rather than the younger of two siblings, contrary to what was in my family tree. This comports with a photo, attached here, showing Franz and his sister, Charlotte “Lisselotte or Lilo” Pauly, as children, found since I published Post 40; readers can clearly see Franz is the older of the two children. (Figure 19)

Figure 19. Franz and Lilo Pauly as children in 1902

Tracking down the Pinkus Collection with its relevant family history is admittedly noteworthy, but the real service was rendered by Max and Hans Pinkus. Their detailed compilation of ancestral data from related Silesian families was gathered while running a full-time business and in the days before genealogical information was digitized, when most of the painstaking work had to be undertaken manually through time-consuming letter-writing, and perhaps occasional phone calls and family gatherings. So, while I take obvious pleasure in having discovered the Pinkus Collection, I acknowledge the true forensic genealogists for amassing this valuable trove of family history.

Let me conclude by emphasizing that well-done family trees to which ancestry.com leads genealogists can often be the source of valuable forensic clues but should be closely scrutinized and delved into to before accepting the data prima facie. And, finally, I have no idea how many “cold cases” I can eventually solve but the challenge is what motivates me.

CITATION

Series VII: Genealogical and historical materials on the Fraenkel family and others, undated, 1600s-1971; Pinkus Family Collection; AR 7030; Box 20; Folder 3; Leo Baeck Institute

POST 40: ELISABETH “LISA” PAULY NÉE KRÜGER, ONE OF MY UNCLE FEDOR’S “SILENT HEROES”

Note: This post is about Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, one of my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s “silent heroes,” who hid him in Berlin during WWII for periods of his 30-month survival “underground.” Having learned she was married to my uncle’s cousin, I discuss how I worked out their exact relationship in what was on my part a clear case of over-thinking their consanguinity.

Figure 1. My Uncle Fedor in 1940, two years before he fled “underground”

Among my uncle’s surviving papers are two declarations, pledged under oath, identifying people who provided life-saving support to my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (Figure 1) during the 30 months he lived “underground” in Berlin during WWII. My uncle’s trying ordeal began in October 1942 when friends warned him the Gestapo was preparing to pick him up for “questioning,” detainment which would have led to his deportation to a concentration camp and certain death; straightaway, he went into hiding to avoid arrest. The declarations written, respectively, on January 19, 1947 and February 3, 1947, were basically intended as letters of reference for the Americans. They attested to my uncle’s “good character” and provided a brief chronology of how and with whose help he’d survived underground. A little context is necessary.

Figure 2. Entrance to Kurfürstendamm 213, in Berlin’s Charlottenburg borough, where Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Blaschke, once had his office, as it looks today

As discussed in previous Blog posts, almost immediately after the war ended, my Uncle Fedor applied to what he described as the “pertinent authorities,” presumably the Russians in this case, for permission to take over the office and apartment of Hitler’s former dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, which had survived the war unscathed. (Figure 2) Permission was granted in early May 1945. While my uncle’s situation may have seemed comparatively secure at the time, he’d apparently been warned by the Americans that he was at risk of being kidnapped by the Russians on account of his knowledge of Hitler’s fate, which Stalin sought to conceal. My uncle no doubt realized his danger since both Blaschke’s dental assistant, Käthe Heusermann, and Blaschke’s dental technician, Fritz Echmann, both of whom he knew, had been taken away by the Russians in 1945, not to reappear again in the West for many years. While my uncle maintained his dental practice in Blaschke’s former office until around July 1947, the declarations written in January and February 1947 strongly suggest my uncle was, so to speak, working on an exit strategy earlier.

Figure 3a. Affidavit written by Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger on February 3, 1947, on behalf of my Uncle Fedor, intended for the American Embassy

Figure 3b. Translation of affidavit written by Lisa Pauly

One of the two affidavits provided to the American authorities on behalf of my Uncle Fedor was written by Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger. (Figures 3a-b) She mentioned how she hid him in her home for brief periods during the war and described her kinship as the wife of my uncle’s cousin; Lisa did not provide her husband’s name but only wrote he died in 1941, cause unknown. I first came across Lisa Pauly’s name in 2014 when I visited the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, outside Berlin, to examine the archived papers of two of my renowned great-aunts, Elsbeth Bruck and Franziska Bruck. There, I discovered a letter written by my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, on February 2, 1947, mailed from Fayence, France to my great-aunt Elsbeth in Berlin care-of Lisa Pauly living at Maßmannstraße 11 in the Steglitz borough of Berlin. (Figure 4) Ultimately, this address proved to be useful for learning how long Lisa Pauly may have lived; more on this later.

Figure 4. Envelope containing letter my grandmother Else Bruck wrote in February 1947 to my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck sent to her care-of Lisa Pauly living at Massmannstraße 11 in the Steglitz borough of Berlin

Let me digress for a moment. In Post 33, I discussed the extraordinary lengths to which I went to finding two of my second cousins, born in Barcelona, but living outside Munich, Germany. Once I had established contact with one of these second cousins, Antonio Bruck, he connected me to a third cousin, Anna Rothholz, who in turn put me in touch with yet other third cousins, brothers Peter and Andreas “Andi” Pauly. This was a fortuitous development. Peter and Andi gave me a detailed hand-drawn Pauly family “Stammbaum,” family tree, developed by their father years before these could be created on-line. While I was still a long way from figuring out the hereditary connection between Lisa Pauly’s husband and my Uncle Fedor, this Stammbaum eventually paved the way for working this out, although not without some missteps.

Figure 5. Section of Pauly “Stammbaum,” family tree, with “Franz” and “Lisa” circled; Franz is shown as Dr. Oscar Pincus and Paula Pauly’s son

Figure 6. Page from “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” Silesian Jewish Families tree, with Lisa Krüger’s name showing she was married to Franz Pincus, born in Posen on October 23, 1898, with notation that he went by the surname “Pauly”

As readers can see in Figure 5, a “Lisa” is highlighted, shown married to a “Franz” who died in 1941. Based on the affidavit Lisa Pauly had written in 1947, logically, I knew this was she and her husband. My confusion stemmed from the fact that Lisa’s husband was the son of Dr. Oscar Pincus and Paulina Charlotte Pauly, presumably named Franz Pincus. I continued my search, convinced there had to be a different Lisa who’d married a Pauly. After many fruitless months, I eventually began looking for her in Family Trees in ancestry.com. I finally found her on a tree listed as “Lisa Krüger,” born in the year 1890. (Figure 6) As discussed in Post 39, the tree is entitled “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” Silesian Jewish Families. There is a notation in German on this tree that Lisa Krüger was married to a Franz Pincus, born in Posen [today: Poznan, Poland] on October 23, 1898, and that he went by the surname “Pauly.” I then realized my Uncle Fedor and Franz Pauly were second cousins, grandsons of sisters (Figures 7 & 8), and understood how badly I’d misconstrued their kinship. This was clearly a case of my over-thinking things and ignoring what the Pauly Stammbaum had clearly indicated.

Figure 7. Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927), Franz Pincus/Pauly’s grandmother, sister of Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer

Figure 8. Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924), Fedor Bruck’s grandmother, sister of Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer; Friederike Bruck is my great-grandmother

Why Franz Pincus decided to change surnames and take his mother’s maiden name is unknown. Since both names are clearly Jewish and neither would have afforded an advantage in the Nazi era, I assumed Franz’s decision was made before the Nazis ever came to power. And, I was able to prove this using Berlin Phone Directories available on ancestry.com. Franz Pincus apparently changed his surname to “Pauly” between 1928 and 1930. A 1928 Berlin Phone Directory (Figure 9) lists a “Franz Pincus” living at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau in the southwestern suburbs of Berlin, but by 1930 “Franz Pauly” is living at this address. (Figure 10)

Figure 9. 1928 Berlin Phone Directory showing “Franz Pincus” living at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau, a southwestern suburb of Berlin

Figure 10. 1930 Berlin Phone Directory listing “Franz Pauly” at Deidesheimer Str. 25 in Friedenau

As mentioned earlier, I knew from the affidavit Lisa had written and the letter my grandmother had written to my great-aunt in 1947, addressed to Lisa, that she resided at Maßmannstraße 11 in the Steglitz borough of Berlin. I searched both Lisa and Franz’s names in ancestry.com and found him listed at this address in Berlin Phone Directories between 1936 and 1940 (Figure 11), the year before he died. Beginning in 1966 and continuing through 1977 (Figure 12), Lisa’s name appears at the same address, suggesting the apartment building survived the war and that Lisa had lived there continuously, possibly from 1936 onwards. The disappearance of Lisa Pauly’s name from Berlin Phone Directories after 1977 may coincide with her approximate year of death. As we speak, I’m working to obtain Lisa’s death certificate from the Bürgeramt Steglitz to confirm when she died.

Figure 11. 1940 Berlin Phone Directory listing Franz Pauly living at Maßmannstr. 11 in Steglitz

Figure 12. 1977 Berlin Phone Directory listing Elisabeth Pauly living at Maßmannstr. 11

I’ve been able to learn almost nothing more about Lisa and Franz Pauly. While Peter and Andi Pauly have numerous Pauly family photos, they have none of either of them. It’s an enduring mystery to me how Lisa Pauly avoided deportation to a concentration camp given that at least three of her husband’s Pauly aunts were murdered in the camps along with their husbands and some of their children.

In the subsequent post, I will tell readers about other silent heroes who enabled my uncle to survive his 30 months underground in Berlin during WWII, inasmuch as I’ve been able to work this out.

POST 39: AN IMPERFECT ANALOGY: FAMILY TREES AND DENDROCHRONOLOGY

Note: In this post, I discuss a vague similarity between some family trees and an archaeological dating technique, known as dendrochronology, that is, tree-ring dating.

Regular readers may recall me mentioning how my formal training as an archaeologist, which is what I did professionally, has been enormously useful in doing forensic genealogy. The inspiration for this story is drawn from archaeology, specifically, an archaeological dating technique known as dendrochronology, that’s to say, tree-ring dating. Admittedly, with slightly flippant intent, in this Blog post, I touch on a parallel between family trees and dendrochronology, and briefly explain the technique to provide the necessary context. Regardless of whether readers accept the notion of any connection between these matters, perhaps, they may come away with a better understanding of how this technique is used in archaeology.

For some time now, I have been researching one of my Uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s cousins, Elisabeth “Lisa” Pauly née Krüger, who will be the subject of the subsequent post. Lisa Pauly helped my Uncle Fedor survive during his 30 months “underground” in Berlin during WWII. I have a copy of a letter of recommendation she wrote on behalf of my uncle in 1947, along with a separate letter of reference written by a couple who also assisted my uncle during his years in hiding that mentions Lisa Pauly. Despite having these letters and having found Lisa Pauly listed in Berlin Phone Directories between 1966 and 1977 at an address she is known to have lived at in the Steglitz borough of Berlin, I had until recently been unable to learn anything more about her.

Faced with this hurdle, I turned to “Family Trees” in ancestry.com, and, finally, found her on a tree listed as “Lisa Krüger,” born in the year 1890. The title of the family tree in which I discovered her name is “Schlesische Jüdische Familien,” translated as “Silesian Jewish Families.” Because I utilize the free institutional version of ancestry at my local library, it is not possible for me as a non-member to contact family tree managers; only members can send messages to other ancestry affiliates. Consequently, I asked a friend of mine who volunteers at the Los Angeles Jewish Genealogical Society whether she could send an email on my behalf. She graciously agreed to do this, and within a day, the family tree manager responded and invited me as a “Guest” to the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien.” I was thrilled with this development.

I immediately opened the tree, and, to my amazement, discovered it includes 52,000 plus names!! To provide some context, my family tree has about 500 names. While seemingly faced with the daunting challenge of deciphering the connection between specific people in the larger tree and my own, I rationalized I might finally be able to discover the relationship between myself and people whose names I recognized if I could somehow find the names of one or more people on both trees. I naively assumed all the names on the Silesian family tree would be bound together like tango partners on a dance floor. I was sadly mistaken. Instead, I discovered that what I thought was one large tree with all people interrelated was instead branches of discrete Jewish families from Silesia. It was at this moment that a less-than-perfect archaeological analogy came to mind, namely, “dendrochronology.”

Dendrochronology, literally the study of tree time, is a multi-disciplinary science that provides accurate and precise dating information based on the analysis of patterns of tree rings, also known as growth rings. It burst into the national consciousness with the publication in December 1929 in National Geographic of an article by an astronomer from the University of Arizona, Andrew Ellicott Douglass, detailing his 15-year endeavor to date archaeological sites in the American Southwest. In the first half of the 20^th Century, Douglass had established the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona with the intent of better understanding cycles of sunspot activity; he had reasoned that changes in solar activity would affect climate patterns on earth, which would subsequently be recorded by tree-ring growth patterns.

Prior to publication of Douglass’ article, archaeologists had no idea, for example, how old Puebloan archaeological sites and cliff dwellings found in the Four Corners region of the United States were; archaeologists had estimated they were 2000 years old when tree-ring dates later confirmed they were only about 800 years old. When archaeologists realized sites were younger than previously thought, they were forced to change their interpretations about the rate of development of prehistoric societies in the American Southwest.

Tree rings or annual rings are the result of new growth in the vascular cambium, the layer of cells nearest the bark. Each year trees create a layer of new wood under the bark. In temperate climates, generally, one ring marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree. Critical to tree-ring dating, trees of the same species from the same region tend to develop the same patterns of ring width during any given period. Thus, researchers can compare and match these patterns ring-for-ring with patterns from trees of the identical species which have grown at the same time in the same locale (and therefore under similar climatic conditions). Chronologies can be built up when one can match tree-ring patterns of the same species from one tree to another in the same geographic area. It is this pattern that can be used for dating purposes whenever a piece of wood is preserved, such as in an archaeological site; matching wood from prehistoric and historic structures to known chronologies developed from tree-ring data is referred to as “cross-dating.” [NOTE: “Cross-dating” refers BOTH to “a method of establishing the age of archaeological finds or remains by comparing them with other finds or remains which sometimes have known dates” as well as to “a method of pattern matching a tree’s growth signals of unknown age (floating chronology) to that of a known pattern that is locked in time (master chronology).”]

Critical to the imperfect analogy I am drawing between family trees and tree-ring dating is this concept of a “floating chronology” versus a “fully anchored and cross-matched chronology.” A floating chronology is a tree-ring sequence whose beginning and end dates are not known. Thus, in the case of the Silesian family tree, the 52,000 plus individuals in it cannot directly be connected to one another in any linear sense, they’re “floating,” so to speak, branches of distinct Jewish families from Silesia. This contrasts with what’s dubbed a “fully anchored chronology,” where the beginning and end dates of a tree-ring sequence that has been established are known. In this instance, my own family tree where every person can linearly be connected to every other person in the tree would be so characterized.

In the case of trees and tree-ring sequences, a fully anchored chronology extends back 8500 years for the long-lived bristlecone pine in the western United States, and for the oak and pine in central Europe going back 12,460 years. Just as archaeologists are frustrated when they can’t cross-date a piece of wood from an archaeological site to a fully anchored chronology, genealogists are similarly disappointed when they are unable to connect branches of seemingly related families from the same general area with identical or familiar surnames. In the case of my own family, I know multiple living people with the Bruck surname whose linear connection to myself can’t be drawn. While, admittedly, not a perfect analogy, I argue there is some parallel between family trees where all individuals cannot be connected and floating chronologies that cannot be anchored in time.

In closing, I would emphasize one final point. Lisa Pauly, my uncle and father’s cousin who I began this post discussing, appears in both my family tree and the “Schlesische Jüdische Familien” family tree. However, because I can’t directly connect her on the Silesian tree to people with recognizable surnames, such as other Brucks, Berliners, Holländers, etc., I’m unable to determine how she is related to them, and, by extension, how I’m related to them. More forensic work is necessary.