Tiegenhof (Free City of Danzig) Archives

POST 183: FATE OF SOME OF MY FATHER’S FRIENDS FROM THE FREE CITY OF DANZIG

Note: This post is primarily a discussion about the fates, where I’ve been able to learn them, of some of my father’s closest friends from his time living in the Free City of Danzig. Knowing that some of these friends were Mennonites provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion begun in Post 121 on the connection of this religious community to the Holocaust, particularly to the notorious concentration camp in nearby Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland].

POST 3, POSTSCRIPT: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE “SCHLUMMERMUTTER”

POST 4: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 4, POSTSCRIPT: OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: HANS “MOCHUM” WAGNER

POST 5: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: “IDSCHI & SUSE”

POST 7: DR. OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: THE CLUB RUSCHAU

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

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

POST 76: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. FRANZ SCHIMANSKI, PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 77: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, DR. HERBERT HOLST, VICE-PRESIDENT OF TIEGENHOF’S “CLUB RUSCHAU”

POST 78: MY FATHER’S FRIEND, KURT LAU, JAILED FOR “INSULTING THE NAZI GOVERNMENT”

POST 121-MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS

POST 121, POSTSCRIPT: MY FATHER’S ENCOUNTERS WITH HITLER’S MENNONITE SUPPORTERS—FURTHER HISTORICAL OBSERVATIONS

If my father were alive, I’ve no doubt he would characterize the years that he lived and worked in the Free City of Danzig between ~1930 and 1937 as the halcyon days of his life. When he opened his dental practice in the nearby Mennonite farming community of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in April 1932, he was only 25 years old. He quickly developed a thriving business and joined various civic, community, and sports organizations in town. He had many friends and acquaintances, and an active social life. Never a practicing Jew, he nevertheless converted from Judaism to Protestantism while living there to “fit in.” Growing up, I remember my father telling me this was also the reason he drank so much during his years living in Tiegenhof.

It’s safe to say that the larger city of Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], where my father apprenticed, while still staunchly conservative was a more cosmopolitan metropolis than Tiegenhof and had a more diverse mix of ethnic and religious groups. While I’ve been able to learn little about the social and religious background of his friends from Danzig, I’m sure they came from a mix of backgrounds including Jewish. By contrast, his closest friends in Tiegenhof were mostly Mennonites.

Given the widespread support for the Nazi Party among Mennonites in the Free City of Danzig that helped them gain a majority of seats (38 out of 72) in the 1933 parliamentary elections, it’s inevitable that my father was quickly “blacklisted” following the National Socialists’ electoral victory. Periodically, I contemplate how disconcerting and upsetting it must have been for my father and many persecuted Jews to suddenly be ignored or worse by Germans who’d only the day before been cordial, if not friendly.

Among my father’s closest friends during his years in the Free City of Danzig were people he commonly referred to as “the Schlummermutter,” “Idschi and Suse” (Figure 1), “Mochum” (Figure 2), and “Gerhard and Ilse.” (Figure 3) I had to work hard to figure out their surnames since my father was typically silent on this matter.

Figure 1. My father with Suse, the “Schlummermutter,” and Idschi in Tiegenhof

Figure 2. My father with his erstwhile friend “Mochum,” probably at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland]

Figure 3. My father in Danzig with Ilse and Gerhard in the early 1930s

The Schlummermutter (Figure 4), most often mentioned to me growing up, was an enormous woman, weighing over 200kg (~440lbs). She was a revered figure and like a surrogate mother to my father. He never once referred to her by name, only by her sobriquet. Knowing her date of birth from pictures my father had taken on her birthday in 1937, thanks to the help of my friend, “the Wizard of Wolfsburg,” I eventually discovered her real identity, Margaretha “Grete” Gramatzki (1885-1942). Because of her size, she was referred to locally as “Grete dicke,” “fat Grete.” Gramatzki is considered a Mennonite surname. The Schlummermutter ran a boarding house in Tiegenhof, co-owning the building where my father had both an apartment and his dental practice, at Marktstrasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. The Schlummermutter in Spring 1933 in Tiegenhof

Figure 5. The building in Tiegenhof located at Markstrasse 8 where my father both lived and had his dental practice

The Schlummermutter, born on the 13^th of June 1885, died on the 24^th of February 1942 at 56, relatively young by today’s standards. In one of my father’s last known photos of her, taken following his departure from Tiegenhof, she appeared to have suffered a stroke, probably not unexpected given her obesity.

Two very close friends of my father, Suse (Figure 6) and Idschi (Figure 7), lived in Tiegenhof in the same apartment building owned by Grete Gramatzki. I discovered from a day planner I found among my father’s surviving papers that they were related, that’s to say, the oldest and youngest sisters in their family. Their surname “Epp” is yet another traditional Mennonite name. I discussed the sisters long-ago in Post 5, so refer readers to that publication for more background.

Figure 6. Suse Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

Figure 7. Idschi Epp in Tiegenhof in 1933 with her and her sister’s dog “Quick”

A 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book lists Ida Epp (Figure 8) as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at street level in the building then owned by the Epp sisters at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, previously known as Marktstrasse. As I discussed in Post 3, Postscript, a 1930 Tiegenhof Address confirms that one or both Epp sisters were business partners of Grete Gramatzki (Figure 9), rather than simply boarders in the building Grete owned.

Figure 8. Ida Epp listed in the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book as the owner of a “werderkaffeegesch.,” a coffee and tea shop located at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8

Figure 9. A 1930 “Kreis Grosses Werder” Address Book showing Grete Gramatzki and Epp in business together at Markstrasse 8

As the Red Army was approaching Tiegenhof in 1945, Suse and Idschi fled by ship to Denmark along with thousands of other Germans. They lived there in prison-like conditions, and that’s where Suse (1877-1948) passed away in 1948, at the age of 71. Idschi (1893-1975) eventually went to live in Munich with her nephew, Rupprecht Braun, and died there in 1975.

Given the close friendship my father had with the Epp sisters, he was naturally included in their social circle. One event he attended and took pictures at was hosted by Susie and Idschi’s brother, Gerhard Epp (1884-1959), at his home in Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland]. (Figure 10) Originally a Mercedes dealer in Russia, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Gerhard moved with his first wife, Margarete Epp, née Klaassen, to Stutthof. There, he founded and operated an engineering workshop, where among other things, he provided electricity for the village and serviced agricultural equipment. (Figures 11a-b)

Figure 10. Gerhard Epp with his first wife Margaretha Epp, née Klaassen with their Great Dane “Ajax” in Stutthof

Figure 11a. Leadership of the Mennonite-owned Gerhard Epp firm

Figure 11b. Gerhard Epp and his daughter Rita Schuetze, née Epp from the leadership team photo

Let me digress and explain to readers how a recent query from a reader led me to learning more about Gerhard Epp and his connection to the notorious nearby Stutthof concentration camp. I think readers will agree that this is far more interesting than learning about the fates of my father’s friends. The recent query came from a historian researching the background of a Mennonite man named Johannes Reimer, an SS member from 1933 and an SS guard at Stutthof from 1939 to 1944. The researcher is trying to counter a not-so-uncommon narrative by descendants that their German ancestors were “reluctant” SS members and committed no war crimes.

I’ve never previously come across the “Reimer” surname so out of curiosity did an Internet query in combination with “Stutthof.” In the process, I stumbled upon a well-researched article entitled “Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation” written by Gerhard Hempel in October 2010 with multiple mentions of Reimer; it’s not clear all references are to Johannes Reimer, though I’m inclined to think most are. The author is or was a professor of history emeritus at Western New England College.

The collaboration of the Mennonites with the Nazis and their often-brutal treatment of inmates as camp guards was previously known to me, and, in fact, I delved into this topic in Post 121, specifically in connection with Gerhard Epp. The reader who contacted me found this earlier post. The reason I’m revisiting the topic of the Mennonites and the Holocaust is that Rempel’s lengthy article mentions Gerhard Epp several times and provides more detail than I previously knew.

Let me begin by telling readers a little about the prison camp at Stutthof. This was a Nazi concentration camp established by Nazi Germany in a secluded, marshy, and wooded area near the village of Stutthof 34km (~21 miles) east of Danzig in the territory of the German-annexed Free City of Danzig. This was the first concentration camp to be constructed outside of Germany. It was established in 1939 by the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel), an armed unit of the Nazi Party under the control of Heinrich Himmler. As an early stronghold of the National Socialists, Danzig had a contingent of 6,000 SS stationed within the area as early as 1933. This was expanded following a clandestine visit by Himmler in 1939 with the creation of the so-called “SS Heimwehr Danzig” and the “SS-Wachsturmbann Eimann.” The latter organization was tasked with developing plans for prison camps to accommodate anticipated arrests.

An isolated and secluded spot surrounded by water and swamps close to the village of Stutthof near the East Prussian border was selected. The initial barracks were begun and constructed by Polish inmates from the nearby Danzig prison in August 1939, with the first 200 prisoners arriving by September. The number of barracks was quickly expanded so that by January 1940, the camp held 4,500 prisoners. Eventually, the Stutthof complex included 200 outlying camps, so-called Aussenlager, and external commando units. The camp was under the command of SS Standartenführer Max Pauly.

A brief aside. My Bruck family is related by marriage to the Pauly family. I’m in touch with several Pauly cousins, so I asked one of them how and if we’re related to Max Pauly. He does not know. Suffice it to say that when one discovers odious war criminals with a surname like one’s own, sometimes one prefers not to look too closely into possible connections.

The prisoners at Stutthof included victims from 25 countries, including many Jews. Appalling sanitary conditions prevailed in the camps, with inmates suffering extreme malnutrition, disease, and torture. Many succumbed from the living conditions and the slave-like work; others were summarily executed through various means.

As noted, some of the Stutthof camp guards were Mennonites. It is worth noting that Stutthof was in an area with the highest density of Mennonite residents of any place in the world. Some Mennonite apologists have tried to minimize the role that people of Mennonite heritage played in the atrocities committed at Stutthof, but it has become clearer over time they played a significant role in the number of people killed there. Rempel writes: “Horst Gerlach [EDITOR’S NOTE: a prolific German Mennonite writer] emphatically denies. . .that any gas chambers ever existed at Stutthof, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, his optimistic estimate that only 9,000 people were killed at Stutthof is a huge miscalculation—the most recent research concludes that at least 65,000 victims died at Stutthof.” (P. 512)

Regarding one of Stutthof’s auxiliary slave-camps, Rempel notes the following: “The SS owned the factory, and the guard contingent was made up largely of a group of ordinary criminals and rowdies, many of them recruits from ethnic German communities in Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. But the worst characters were from Germany itself, among them two Mennonites.” (p. 518)

Very briefly, the larger context for the Mennonite participation in the Holocaust stems from the fact that many had earlier joined the counterrevolutionary forces of the former Tsar in Russia. With his defeat, the “Mennonites now found themselves on the losing side of the conflict as enemies of the new communist government.” (Rempel, p. 509) Stalin’s emergence and the period known as the “Great Terror” or the ”Great Purge” brought about a campaign to rid the Soviet Union of the so-called undesirable class. Mennonites were among the first to be targeted in the late 1920s, which led to a fraying of Mennonite communal life. As Rempel notes, “A decade later this trend [“moral and lawless indifference”] blinded many to the inherent evil of the carriers of National Socialism who came to Communist Russia in German uniforms as purported liberators.” (Rempel, p. 511)

Stutthof began as a camp for political opponents of the Nazi regime and socially undesirable minorities. Since the SS organization provided no financial support for expansion of the camp, the local SS command staff was determined to profit from the incarcerated inmates. Initially, land was allotted to grow vegetables and for animal husbandry, allowing the camp to quickly become self-sufficient. However, once it began to engage in local trade it started to generate profits. It became even more profitable when the SS command began to lease out inmates to work in public and private enterprises throughout the region. This resulted in the expansion of subcamps and special command units, all whose economic activities became SS-specific enterprises.

From 1939 until December 1944, Stutthof grew from 1.2 acres to 296 acres. It goes without saying that the establishment of additional subcamps was the result of an increase in the number of inmates. By 1944 Stutthof had become the destination of choice for transport from other camps and for those arrested after the Warsaw uprising. It is estimated that between 110,000 and 120,000 prisoners passed through Stutthof between 1939 and 1945. If the estimate that 65,000 victims died at Stutthof is accurate, clearly more than 50 percent of prisoners who passed through were murdered.

Theoretically Stutthof was a political prison, that’s to say, a forced labor camp for various industries owned by the SS or other government agencies. Holocaust scholars have tended to use “slave labor” and “forced labor” interchangeably, though some make a distinction. Slave labor included Jews working in concentration camps, death camps, and other work camps with the intent by Nazis to work these Jews to death. By contrast, forced laborers included anyone “who was compelled to leave his or her home in order to work for Nazi Germany.” As Rempel notes, however, “In any case, compulsory physical labor. . .was no less deadly than mass murder by gas or poison pellets.” (p. 516)

In June 1944, Stutthof was converted from a slave labor camp to an extermination camp. Outdoor furnaces were constructed to dispose of bodies. The crematoria were justified to eliminate dead bodies, but by 1944 Stutthof was nothing less than a killing center. Proof of this could be found in barracks built to “house” Jewish men and women transferred from eastern camps overrun by the Soviet Army that were merely walls with no internal furnishings. Clearly, arriving inmates were immediately sent to the gas chambers. (Rempel, p. 515-516)

Stutthof was liberated on May 9, 1945, the first camp established outside Germany and the last to be freed. The camp was dissolved on January 25, 1945, and the inmates forced to slog west on a death march that by some accounts resulted in the death of one-third to one-half of the inmates.

I’ve told readers more about Stutthof than I planned but let me move now specifically to a discussion of Gerhard Epp’s connection to Stutthof.

The direct involvement of Mennonites as guards at Stutthof has been well established by Holocaust scholars. What has also become clearer is the extent to which Mennonite farmers and businessmen exploited the inexpensive labor available from Stutthof. The inmates were particularly in demand during the hard work associated with harvest time. They received no salaries, although they appear to have been reasonably well fed and decently housed. The farmers had to pay the camps for use of prison labor, likely at a rate less than the going rate for unskilled labor.

As to Gerhard Epp’s role, Gerhard Rempel remarks the following: “A Mennonite builder, Gerhard Epp, for example, not only leased 300 Jewish slave laborers at Stutthof to build a new factory near the camp but also served as some sort of general contractor to the SS in assuming responsibility for the construction of all buildings on the premises. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that a Mennonite built the barracks for the first concentration camp on non-German soil.”

Epp’s stepson, Hans-Joachim Wiebe (Figures 12-13), whom I once met in Lubeck, Germany, was interviewed by the Mennonite researcher mentioned earlier, Horst Gerlach, to gather information about Gerhard Epp’s industrial machine factory. Quoting: “According to Wiebe, the inmates marched the two kilometers to the building site every morning and back again at night. Meals were delivered to the site from the camp kitchens.” (p. 523)

Figure 12. Gerhard Epp’s stepson and Rita Schuetze’s half-brother, Hans Joachim “Hajo” Wiebe, in 2013 in Lübeck, Germany

Figure 13. Hajo Wiebe in 2013 surrounded from left to right by his great-niece Paula Schuetze, his partner Gunda Nickel, and his niece Angelika Schuetze

Gerhard is mentioned yet again: “Gerhard Epp’s machine factory in the village of Stutthof was certainly the largest Mennonite employer of slave labor. Epp had endeared himself to the regime by building a home for Hitler Youth in Tiegenhof. His main factory employed some 500 prisoners from at least 1942 to the end of the war and focused on the production of various kinds of armaments such as small firearms. Epp’s factory, along with others, evacuated machinery and stock supplies to the West to continue producing armaments in a place safe from the advancing Russian Army.” (Rempel, p.525) Today, Epp & Wiebe GmbH continues to be a thriving business in the field of heating and air conditioning in Preetz, Germany.

Rempel’s mention that Gerhard Epp’s armaments-producing machinery was shipped West as the Red Army was approaching is the second case that I’ve come across that this took place. I don’t mean to suggest that the evacuation of industrial equipment from West Prussia was uncommon, quite the contrary. I mention this because the other case involved a good friend of my father, Kurt Lau (Figure 14), who came to purchase the rapeseed oil production factory in Tiegenhof. I’ve come across no evidence or accounts that implicate or connect Kurt Lau to the lease or use of slave labor. In any case, prior to the arrival of the Russian Army, Kurt evacuated his machinery to Hamburg Germany which was eventually reconstructed in Deggendorf, Germany.

Figure 14. My father (right) in Koenigsberg, East Prussia [today: Kaliningrad, Russia] with Kurt Lau (middle)

Kurt Lau and his wife Käthe were lifelong friends of my father, who he first met in Tiegenhof. They were Protestants but unlike other purported friends never distanced themselves from him after the Nazis came to power. In fact, Post 78 is the story of how Kurt Lau was jailed for three months for “insulting” the Nazis. I became friends with their surviving son, Juergen Peter Lau (1923-2022), who identified many of my father’s friends and acquaintances from his pictures.

One couple who were at one time my father’s excellent friends were Gerhard (1908-1941) and Ilse Hoppe, nee Grabowsky(i) (1907-1941). My father met them in Danzig when he and Gerhard were dental apprentices. Gerhard opened his own dental practice in Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland], located a mere 13km (~8 miles) SSW from Tiegenhof, but eventually relocated to Danzig. Both tragically died young under gruesome circumstances. I wrote about their deaths in Post 67 (Part I) & Post 67 (Part II). They had a son named Rudi and a daughter named Gisela. With the help of my friend Peter Hanke, I eventually was able to track down Gisela (her brother Rudi committed suicide in 1965). She explained what she knew of her parents’ deaths, and, while tragic, they appear to have been self-inflicted in Ilse’s case and an accident in Gerhard’s instance.

Peter Lau identified another of my father’s very good friends who I knew only as “Mochum,” but whose full name was Hans “Mochum” Wagner (1909-1942). My father’s photo albums include many photos of him, and at one time they were likely extremely close. He was a physical education teacher in the primary school in Tiegenhof.

I located the Wagner family’s “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. From this I learned Mochum was killed or went missing on February 11, 1942, in Volkhov, Russia [German: Wolchow], 76 miles east of St. Petersberg, formerly Leningrad. He may have died during the Russian offensive launched in January 1942 against the Germans around the Wolchow River. I recorded his story in Post 4 and Post 4, Postscript.

My father was a member of a social and sports club called the “Club Ruschau.” (Figure 15) My father’s pictures enabled the local museum in Nowy Dwor Gdanski to locate one of the surviving structures of this club, now privately owned. I wrote about this in Post 7. My father spent many hours socializing with its members, swimming, playing pool, bowling, ice boating, drinking, and partying. His friends included the club president Dr. Franz Schimanski (?-1940) (Figure 16), the vice president Dr. Herbert Holst (1894-?) (Figure 17), as well as Herbert Kloss and Kastret Romanowski (Figure 18), and likely other club members.

Figure 15. My father recreating at the Club Ruschau

Figure 16. Club Ruschau President Dr. Franz Schimanski

Figure 17. Club Ruschau Vice-President Herbert Holst

Figure 18. My father standing alongside two of his good friends, Herbert Kloss (left) and Kastret Romanowski (middle) at the beach in Steegen [today: Stegna, Poland] in June 1932

Franz Schimanski is often pictured holding a cane. Records indicate he was wounded during WWI. He was a lawyer and notary by profession. He died in 1940 according to his HOK card. The surname Schimanski is a Germanized form of the Polish surname Szymanski, suggesting the family had a Polish cultural heritage.

Herbert Holst was a high school teacher who, according to Peter Lau’s wife, taught in the Langfuhr district of Danzig after leaving Tiegenhof. His fate is unknown, and I’ve learned little about him.

Herbert Kloss’ destiny is similarly unknown to me. “Kloss” or “Kloß” is a common enough surname that without an HOK card for him or his family, it is difficult to determine his fate. He appears to have been about the same age as my father so was likely drafted into the German army. If this in fact happened, he could easily have died in battle.

Similarly, I’ve learned nothing about Kastret Romanowski. Using names of members found in the index to the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” an annual monograph once published for former Tiegenhof residents and/or their descendants, I wrote a letter to a woman listed named Clara Romanowski; her connection was through marriage so she could offer no clues as to Kastret’s fate. Romanowski appears to be another surname of Polish origin.

As I mentioned at the outset, my father’s circle of friends and acquaintances in Tiegenhof and Danzig was extensive. I’ve chosen to highlight a few of his best mates. My father’s photo albums include pictures of other good friends, but unfortunately there are no captions to help with their identifications.

As I touched on earlier, I often ponder how his relationship with non-Jewish friends and acquaintances devolved once the Nazis applied pressure on them to sunder their social connections and business associationswith people of Jewish heritage. I can only imagine this was initially shocking to my father until he realized how personally at risk he was.

REFERENCE

Rempel, G. Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation. The Mennonite Quarterly Review, 84 (October 2010), 507-550. https://www.goshen.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/75/2016/06/Oct10Rempel.pdf

POST 182: THE JEWISH ANKER FAMILY FROM DANZIG AS THE SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY FATHER DR. OTTO BRUCK

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)

Note: This post is the result of a recent contact with a gentleman living in Los Angeles whose Anker family, like my father, once lived in the Free City of Danzig. Due to Nazi persecution, both of our families left there around the same time in 1937. Coincidentally, our ancestors were both singled out in a contemporary Nazi-era newspaper, “Zweischen Weichsel und Nogat.”

Followers of my blog understand many of my posts discussing snippets of information acquired about members of my family emanate from casual or regular readers. The previous post about the British RAF airman Joe Powell who, along with my father’s first cousin Heinz Löwenstein, escaped from a work camp connected to German Stalag VIIIB in 1943 is one such example. In that case, the particulars came from Joe’s son, John Powell; he highlighted some intriguing details about Joe’s capture after he and a fellow RAF airman were shot down by the Germans over the coast of the Netherlands, as well as facts his father told him about his and Heinz’s escape from Stalag VIIIB and recapture. It just happens they were retaken in Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland], a place my father had ties to as well the Anker family I’ll be talking about in this post.

The current post continues in the vein of presenting tidbits of family information acquired from blog readers. I was recently contacted by a Jewish gentleman from Los Angeles, George Jakob Fogelson. Having read about my father Dr. Otto Bruck’s connection to Danzig and Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig, George reached out to tell me about his own Anker family’s links there at the same time as my father lived and worked in the area. George’s mother was once a Danziger (i.e., resident of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state), as were his grandparents and great-grandparents. George’s great-grandparents were Simon and Henriette Anker, with Simon being on the Board of Directors of the Great Synagogue there for 15 years.

In conjunction with a family history George is currently writing, among his family’s papers he came across a copy of an article from a Nazi-era newspaper entitled “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937. (Figures 1a-b) This is believed to have been an insert to the “Der Danziger Vorposten,” a National Socialist journal. George’s mother donated the original paper to the Leo Baeck Institute. On page 2 (Figure 2) was an article which singled out George’s great-uncle Arthur Anker by name under a very provocative headline, “How Much Longer Will the Jew Anker Own a Farm?” As George aptly notes, the article was “. . .a striking example of the antisemitic rhetoric that had become normalized under Nazi influence.”

Figure 1a. Cover page of the Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” (“Between the Vistula and Nogat Rivers”), dated June 1937, mentioning both the Anker and Bruck families

Figure 1b. Header of Nazi-era newspaper “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Figure 2. Page 2 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” discussing Arthur Anker, George Fogelson’s ancestor

The article reads in part:

“Now that Jews and their associates, at least those living in the Grosses Werder district, have either fled or are packing their suitcases, it may be time to make the Jew Anker aware that the population expects him to return land in the village of Gnojau, which he currently calls his own, to German hands.

It is typical Jewish impudence not to have already drawn the necessary conclusions. It is a disgrace that elements alien to our land and our race are depriving native, down-to-earth German farmers of land cultivated by our ancestors—not by the Jews.”

George spells out what the National Socialists were ultimately successful in doing:

“This language—casually dehumanizing, racially charged, and threatening—illustrates how public pressure and propaganda were used to isolate Jewish citizens and drive them from economic and social life. Though phrased in the guise of communal interest, the article functions as a public denunciation, aimed at legitimizing expropriation and preparing the population to accept—or even assist in—the displacement of their Jewish neighbors.”

Continuing:

“Arthur Anker, a respected member of the community and former board member of the local synagogue, was not merely criticized; he was targeted as a symbol of everything the Nazi movement wished to remove from German soil. The article reflects the broader campaign of intimidation and exclusion that escalated in the late 1930s, culminating in deportations and mass murder just a few years later.”

Arthur Anker and his family owned the largest grain business in Danzig. In view of the deteriorating social and political climate in Danzig at the time, following a “family conference,” the family agreed to sell everything they had and take their money to America. According to a front-page New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938 (Figure 3), announcing the family’s arrival in New York headed to California, the grain elevators valued at $500,000 were sold for half of that; the family also sold all their buildings and land.

Figure 3. New York Times article, dated October 7, 1938, announcing the Anker family’s arrival in New York headed to California

Apropos the sale of property by Jews in Danzig, George notes the following: “In the final week of October [1937], a new decree was issued ordering the removal of all Jewish businesses and offices from the city’s main streets. Those who had been evicted were forbidden from reopening elsewhere. At the same time, a law was passed requiring special permission from the Senate for any Jew to sell personal property—effectively blocking any chance of a fair sale and ensuring that Jewish assets could be seized or devalued.”

I know from my father’s compensation file, a copy of which I obtained from the German Embassy in conjunction with my ongoing efforts to obtain German citizenship, that my father’s forced sale of his own dental practice, resulted in a similar devaluation of the assets, equipment, and inventory with him getting pennies on the dollar.

Readers may wonder about the relevance of the Anker family’s experience to my father’s own history. Surprisingly, on page 3 of the same newspaper targeting Arthur Anker, George found a blurb about my father (Figures 4a-b) that translated reads as follows:

“We wish to inform our readers that the Jewish dentist, Dr. O. Bruck, has left Tiegenhof. The practice has now been assumed by Dr. Erich Kendziorra, a German-born dentist.”

Figure 4a. Page 3 of the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” with the blurb about my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

Figure 4b. The blurb about my father from the July 1937 issue of “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat”

Clearly, the National Socialists felt the need to trumpet their success in forcing my father to sell his dental practice to a “German-born dentist,” though like many persecuted Jews he too was German-born.

The lead story in the issue of the “Zwischen Weichsel und Nogat” targeting Arthur Anker and my father was titled “Four years ago, the absolute majority of National Socialists, today the constitutional majority.” I won’t include the translation but will just quote from George’s family history as to what the publication effectuated:

“By singling out Arthur Anker and Otto Bruck, both Jews, the publication shifted from abstract ideological rhetoric to a direct personal attack—contributing to the broader machinery of social exclusion, economic dispossession, and ultimately, the path toward deportation and genocide. The safety and future of Danzig’s Jews were now under serious and immediate threat.”

Dr. Erich Kendziorra was previously known to me as the dentist who took over my father’s dental practice in Tiegenhof. Let me explain. The address of the office building where my father had both his dental clinic and where he lived was Markstrasse 8. Students of history know that during the Nazi era large cities as well as smaller towns and hamlets renamed their major streets as Adolf Hitler Strasse. Tiegenhof was no exception, Markstrasse became Adolf Hitler Strasse. A 1943 Address Book I have a digital copy of shows Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying my father’s former office, then named and numbered Adolf Hitler Strasse 8. (Figure 5)

Figure 5. Page from the 1943 Tiegenhof Address Book showing Dr. Erich Kendziorra occupying the dental office at Adolf Hitler Strasse 8, formerly Marktstrasse 8, that my father had formerly occupied

Curious as to Dr. Kendziorra’s fate, I turned to ancestry.com and familysearch.org. A database I’d accessed back in 2018 when I first investigated this question are referred to as “Heimatortskartei (HOK),” literally translated as “hometown index.” Heimatortskartei was set up in post-WWII Germany for the purpose of identifying and locating people in the catastrophic aftermath and destruction of the war. It helped displaced Germans to figuratively find their way back to their original home areas or connect with those from their former regions. Individuals from a particular “Kreis” (county or district) would register their names, addresses, and other relevant information with the Heimatortskartei, creating a sort of “social network” for those who shared the same origin.

While the need for the Heimatortskartei has obviously diminished over time, it continues to be an extremely valuable resource for genealogists and those interested in tracing their family history, especially in regions that were affected by displacement or significant population changes. Case in point, there is a Heimatortskartei for “Danzig-Westpreussen, 1939-1963.” Back in 2018, when checking this index, I happened upon an index card from Tiegenhof for an Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger. (Figures 6a-b) Usefully, it provides her date of birth as the 12^th of July 1911. The back of the index card confirms that she was the widow of Dr. Erich Kendziorra, whose birth date is also provided, the 12^th of September 1911.

Figure 6a. Front side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, Dr. Erich Kendziorra’s wife, showing she was born on July 12, 1911

Figure 6b. Back side of the Heimatortskartei card for Erika Kendziorra, née Ganger, identifying her husband as Dr. Erich Kendziorra, giving his date of birth as September 12, 1911, and the date and place of his death in Hungary during WWII

According to the Heimatortskartei, Dr. Kendziorra was killed in a place called Kaba, Hungary on the 17^th of October 1944. Presumably drafted into the Wehrmacht despite being a dentist, I assumed he had been killed on the Eastern Front battling the advancing Red Army. Such happens to be the case. Kaba turns out to be less than 40km (~25 miles) from a place called Debrecen, Hungary. (Figure 7) In October 1944, the same month Dr. Kendziorra was killed, the Battle of Debrecen took place. The siege of Debrecen was a significant part of the overall Hungarian campaign. The battle involved German and Hungarian forces against the Red Army, and while Debrecen was the main target, the fighting extended to surrounding areas like Kaba.

Figure 7. Map showing the approximate distance from Debrecen, Hungary to Kaba, Hungary where Dr. Erich Kendziorra was killed in October 1944

It’s unclear when Dr. Kendziorra arrived in Tiegenhof, nor where he came from. I located a fleeting reference to a dentist by that name in a 1936 address book from a place called Arendsee in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 721km (~448 miles) southwest of Tiegenhof, but am unsure whether this is the same person. (Figures 8a-b) What is certain is that his widow Erika died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried there in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf, interestingly alongside her husband. This information comes from Geneanet, and the date of birth and the name of Erika’s deceased husband confirm what I found on her Heimatortskartei. (Figures 9-10)

Figure 8a. Cover page from ancestry from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 8b. Page from a 1936 Arendsee, Germany Address Book listing a dentist named Dr. Erich Kendziorra living there

Figure 9. Information from Geneanet showing that Erich Kendziorra’s wife died in 1998 in Berlin and is buried in the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf alongside him

Figure 10. Headstone for Erika and Erich Kendziorra from the Evangelischer Friedhof Biesdorf in Berlin

Notwithstanding the fact that Arthur Anker, his siblings, and their children escaped Danzig, Leslie Anker, one of George’s cousins, estimates that no fewer than 28 descendants of Simon and Henriette’s extended family were murdered in the Holocaust.

I encourage readers to contemplate this post in the context of our ongoing political divisiveness and Martin Niemoller’s quote at the outset of this post. I don’t think any of us want to find ourselves on the wrong side of history by our descendants or future generations.

The Holocaust Encyclopedia notes three key facts about Niemoller’s statement, which begins “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out. . . “:

“(1) The quote that begins with the words ‘First they came for. . .’ continues to be used today in popular culture and public discourse. It has often been adapted to reflect current social issues and debates across the world.

(2) There are different versions of the quotation because it originated from Martin Niemoller’s impromptu public speeches.

(3) The quotation expresses Niemoller’s belief that Germans had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. He felt this was especially true of the leaders of the Protestant churches, which were made up of Lutheran, Reformed, and United traditions.”

REFERENCE

Fogelson, George Jakob (ND). “The Beginnings of Open Violence.”

POST 180: REICHSMARSCHALL HERMANN GÖRING: FROM TIEGENHOF’S MARKTSTRASSE TO PARIS’ JEU DE PAUME

Note: In this post, I draw a connection between two “encounters” my family had with the Nazi war criminal Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. This gives me an opportunity to discuss where so-called “decadent art” confiscated in France by the Nazis, including from my father’s first cousin, wound up and explore Göring’s role as leader of the “artistic underworld” during the Nazi Occupation.

From the window of his dental office (Figure 1) in Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in the Free City of Danzig, my father Dr. Otto Bruck witnessed and recorded increasingly large crowds of Danzigers (i.e., residents of the Free City of Danzig, basically a city-state) parading in support of Nazi candidates in 1933, 1934, and 1935. This culminated in the participation by Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring in the 1935 procession. (Figure 2) My father’s unique pictures of the event that took place on April 5, 1935, capture one “interaction” of my family with this psychopath who played a key role in issuing orders that led to the Final Solution.

Figure 1. The office building in Tiegenhof, Free City of Danzig where my father had his dental practice between 1932 and 1937

Figure 2. Photos my father took on April 5, 1935, when Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring paraded through Tiegenhof

I recently discovered another indirect interaction of Göring with my family, specifically to artworks that once belonged to one of my ancestors. Though a remote connection, I’ve chosen to link it to my father’s 1935 “encounter” with Göring because it represents the culmination of an almost 11-year journey to repatriate on behalf of my family artworks confiscated by the Nazis from my father’s first cousin in December 1940 at the Port of Bordeaux in France. As the closest and only surviving heir, the task of recovering the paintings in question has of necessity fallen to me. While I have finally prevailed in my quest to have the three surviving paintings returned, I grapple with the existential question of whether I’ve simply attained success at the expense of obtaining justice? I’ve not satisfactorily answered this question, though one of my lawyers characterizes my achievement as “nothing less than a miracle.” I would only say that since France is governed by a civil law system, obtaining justice would have been an impossible bar to clear and would have jeopardized the success I have achieved.

Let me provide more background. One of my father’s first cousins was named Fedor Löwenstein, the oldest of Rudolf Löwenstein and Hedwig Löwenstein, née Bruck’s three children; Hedwig Bruck was my father’s aunt and likely the one he was closest to. Fedor Löwenstein has been the subject of several previous posts. He passed away before I was born so I never met him. However, I met his two younger siblings, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein and Heinz Löwenstein as a young boy in Nice, France. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Fedor Löwenstein (seated) with his sister Hansi, brother Heinz, and mother Hedwig on the balcony of their apartment in Nice, France in March 1946, several months before Fedor’s death in August 1946

As detailed in Post 105, in 2014 I uncovered a letter at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, outside Berlin, that Hansi wrote in 1946 to another aunt, Elsbeth Bruck, following her older brother’s death earlier that year. She mentioned that one of his paintings had posthumously sold for 90,000 French Francs, a sizeable amount of money at the time. In the process I discovered Fedor had been an accomplished artist.

After further investigation, I learned that France’s ministère de la culture, the French Ministry of Culture had uncovered three paintings by Fedor Löwenstein at the Centre Pompidou in the early 2010s that had been confiscated by the Nazis at the Port of Bordeaux in December 1940 and sent to the Jeu de Paume (more on this below); the three paintings were among a cache of 25 of his works originally seized on their way to New York, the remainder presumed to have been destroyed by the Nazis as examples of so-called “decadent art.” According to the information I discovered in 2014, France’s ministère de la culture is looking to return rediscovered stolen art to surviving heirs.

Let me provide more context. In 2014 my wife and I spent 13 weeks in Europe driving from northeast Poland to south-central Spain visiting places associated with my Jewish ancestors’ diaspora. Coincidentally, that year, soon after the Centre Pompidou recognized Fedor Löwenstein’s works to be stolen art, they were exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. (Figure 4) Given our extensive travels that year, had we known about Fedor Löwenstein and the exhibition, my wife and I would certainly have detoured there to see the artworks. Regrettably, I only learned of the exposition following my return stateside.

Figure 4. Cover page of the 2014 exhibition catalog from the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux that featured Fedor Löwenstein’s three orphaned paintings

Online materials identified the curator of the exhibit, a Mme Florence Saragoza. Two days after learning about her, we were in communication. In her response, she wrote words that resonate with me to this day and probably will for the remainder of my life. Paraphrasing, she wrote words to the effect that learning that a descendant of Fedor Löwenstein survives brought tears to her eyes. While Florence and I have never met, a situation we hope to rectify at the upcoming restitution ceremony in Paris later this year, I consider her a friend who has aided and always supported my repatriation claim. I have tremendous admiration for her.

Given my background as an archaeologist, it was coincidental that at the time we first communicated Mme Saragoza was the Director of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, an archaeology, Velay crafts, fine arts, and science museum. (Figure 5) Today, Florence is the Director of the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum in Albi, France. Florence’s familiarity with Fedor Löwenstein’s art given her involvement as curator of the 2014 Bordeaux exhibition was exceedingly helpful when she offered to help me file my claim with France’s ministère de la culture’s CIVS.

Figure 5. Mme Florence Saragoza when she was the Director of Musée Crozatier in le Puy-en-Velay, France

The CIVS, now called the Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisémites (Commission for the Restitution of Property and Compensation for Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliation), has three distinct missions:

to recommend measures to compensate for material and bank-related anti-Semitic spoliations that occurred in France between 1940 and 1944, exclusively based on referrals from heirs;
to recommend measures to compensate for the anti-Semitic spoliation of cultural property in France between 1940 and 1944, at the request of any person concerned or on its own initiative;
to recommend the restitution of cultural property looted in the context of Nazi anti-Semitic persecution, including outside France, between 1933 and 1945, when this property is held in a public or similar collection.

Let me shift gears and discuss the Jeu de Paume in Paris where works of art confiscated by Nazis from Jewish painters, private collectors, gallery owners, and art dealers living in France were shipped.

According to their mission statement, today, the Jeu de Paume is “. . .an art center that exhibits and promotes all forms of mechanical and electronic imagery (photography, cinema, video, installation, online creation, etc.) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It produces and coproduces exhibitions but also organizes film programs, symposiums and seminars, as well as educational activities. Jeu de Paume also publishes a few art publications each year. With its high-profile exhibitions of established, less known, and emerging artists, this venue ties together different narrative strands, mixing the historic and the contemporary.”

The Jeu de Paume, however, did not begin as an art center. It was constructed in 1862 in the Tuileries Garden as an area in which to play an early variant of tennis, the so-called jeu de paulme, literally the “palm game.” Nowadays, this sport is known as real tennis or court tennis, while in France it is called courte paume. Originally an indoor precursor of tennis played without rackets, thus the “game of the hand,” rackets were eventually introduced.

The relevance of the Jeu de Paume for the purpose of the present post was its use from 1940 to 1944 as the place to store Nazi plunder looted by the regime’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce. This was the Nazi Party’s organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during WWII. It was under the command of the Nazi Party’s chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg. The plundered works included masterpieces from the collections of French Jewish families like the Rothschilds, the David-Weills, the Bernheims, and noted dealers including Paul Rosenberg who specialized in impressionist and post-impressionist works. As mentioned above, the works of Fedor Löwenstein confiscated in December 1940 in Bordeaux were among those that wound up at the Jeu de Paume (Figure 6), 25 pieces of art according to the information gathered by Florence Saragoza from contemporary documents and included in my repatriation claim.

Figure 6. Details from the “Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume” about Fedor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Composition (Landcape)” drawn from a list of “Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg”

Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring directed that the looted art would first be divided between Adolf Hitler and himself. Towards this end, Göring visited the Jeu de Paume twenty times between November 1940 and November 1942. (Figures 7-8) The art dealer Bruno Lohse (1912-2007), art historian and specialist in Flemish and Dutch masters of the 17th century, attracted Göring’s attention because of his art knowledge. (Figure 9) He essentially became Goring’s envoy in charge of enriching his collection by tracking down the most beautiful works in French art collections. (Polack & Prevet, 2014) In conjunction with each of Göring’s visits, Lohse staged special expositions of newly looted art objects, from which Göring is known to have selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection; the remaining pieces were destined for Adolf Hitler’s unrealized art museum, the so-called Führermuseum, in Linz, Austria.

Figure 7. Hermann Göring entering the Jeu de Paume on one of his twenty visits there (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 8. Hermann Göring inside the Jeu de Paume (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 9. Hermann Göring and Bruno Lohse seated on a sofa at the Jeu de Paume (from the Collection Archives des musées nationaux)

Figure 10 is a plan view of the Jeu de Paume. Salle 15, room 15, was specifically referred to as the “Salle des Martyrs,” the “Martyrs’ Room.” This is the room that was designated for so-called “degenerate art,” that’s to say modern art deemed “unworthy” in the eyes of the Nazis and slated for destruction. Much of the art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s professional and private collection wound up here, as did some, perhaps all, of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings.

Figure 10. General view of the Jeu de Paume including room 15, the “Salle des Martyrs”

Joseph Goebbels was the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He had privately decreed that the degenerate works of art should be sold to obtain foreign currency to fund the building of the Führermuseum and the wider war effort. Göring used this decree to personally appoint a series of ERR-approved dealers to liquidate the looted art and then pass the funds to him to enlarge his personal art collection. Much of the looted art designated as degenerate was sold via Switzerland. Unsold art, including works by Picasso and Dali, as well as my lesser-known relative Fedor Löwenstein, were destroyed in a bonfire on the grounds of the Jeu de Paume on the night of 27th of July 1942. This unparalleled vandalism was unfortunately not unprecedented; the Nazis had perpetuated a similar outrage in Berlin in 1939 when they destroyed 4,000 works of German “degenerate” art.

In a March 2014 article entitled “Bruno Lohse and Herman Göring,” the authors Emmanuelle Polack and Alain Prevet, discuss the art market in Paris under the Nazi Occupation. They characterize it as undeniably flourishing, the “. . .euphoria (being) . . .a reflection of a massive influx of goods taken from people of Jewish faith and from all opponents of the Third Reich.” The authors characterize Göring as the true leader of this “artistic underworld.” They use the French word “rabatteur” to describe essentially the “beaters” and “canvassers” Göring surrounded himself with, people such as Bruno Lohse, to flush out collections of great value.

I’ve included three photographs (Figures 7-9) in this post that immortalized at least two of the 20 twenty visits Hermann Göring made to the Jeu de Paume. They are attributed to German staff working for the ERR, either Rudolph Scholz or Heinz Simokat, both photographers at the Jeu de Paume. The one of Göring and Lohse is described as follows: “Comfortably installed on a sofa in a museum office, requisitioned for the benefit of the Parisian service of the ERR, under the satisfied gaze of Bruno Lohse, Hermann Goring carefully examines a monograph devoted to Rembrandt, most likely one of the publications of the German art historian Wilhelm R. Valentiner, a great painter’s specialist since his thesis in 1904.”

Preserved in the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FR-MAE Centre des archives diplomatiques de La Corneuve, 20160007AC/7) are 14 negatives showing the rooms of the Jeu de Paume museum taken after November 1, 1940. This date corresponds to when the museum was made available to the ERR to store the confiscated works of art plundered by this organization in France. The shots were likely also taken by the photographers working at the Jeu de Paume. The photographs have been optimized thanks to a specific digitization of the details. This has allowed for the identification of 232 works of art. Among the 14 negatives are two photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs. More on this below.

A list exists of the works present at the Jeu de Paume at the beginning of 1942. The notes were compiled by Rose Valland (Figures 11a-f) and sent to her boss Jacques Jaujard on March 10, 1942; Rose Valland was an unpaid museum employee and the only one retained by the Nazis upon their takeover of the Jeu de Paume and was a clandestine member of the French resistance. The list translated into French, most probably surreptitiously, is an inventory drawn up by the ERR staff. It has the advantage of including a description of the looted works and providing the names of the people from whom they were plundered. The comparison of this list with the works visible on the two photographs of room 15 has made it possible for museum staff to identify many works that were previously unknown or poorly attributed. Figures 11b-c include a few details of some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated works of art from Rose Valland’s list.

Figure 11a. Page 1 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11b. Page 2 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art including details on some of Fedor Löwenstein’s works

Figure 11c. Page 3 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art including details on some of Fedor Löwenstein’s works

Figure 11d. Page 4 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11e. Page 5 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

Figure 11f. Page 6 of Rose Valland’s 1942 list of Nazi-confiscated art

As confiscated art passed through the building, Rose Valland eavesdropped on German conversations and covertly kept notes on where the looted pieces were being shipped. Her records were instrumental in the recovery of tens of thousands of artworks, many of which were returned to rightful owners. Yet about 70 of the paintings belonging to the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, for example, are still missing.

Let me conclude this post by mentioning two ERR photographs of room 15, the Salle des Martyrs, where some of Fedor Löwenstein’s confiscated paintings were hung. Until recently, I was uncertain how many photographs of the Jeu de Paume existed. One picture I had stumbled upon, then lost track of, showed Rose Valland standing in the Salle des Martyrs. (Figure 12) Relocating this picture was of paramount interest because clearly visible in the background is one of Fedor Löwenstein’s paintings, the one known as “Composition (Paysage),” which happens to be one of the three paintings I’ll be repatriating. (Figure 13)

Figure 12. Rose Valland seemingly standing in room 15, the “Salle des Martyrs” at the Jeu de Paume

Figure 13. Details and photo of Fedor Löwenstein’s painting entitled “Composition (Paysage)” that I’ll be repatriating

Unable to relocate this image on my own, I asked one of my acquaintances at the CIVS if she could help me track it down. Of passing interest to readers but of great personal interest is that Rose Valland has been “photoshopped” into the Salle des Martyrs. If she was ever photographed there, such a picture does not survive; I’ve included an authentic one of Rose standing elsewhere in the Jeu de Paume. (Figure 14) The one I’d come across was based on a photo of Rose taken elsewhere where she was “inserted” into room 15. I include a copy of that original. (Figure 15)

Figure 14. Rose Valland in one of the rooms at the Jeu de Paume

Figure 15. The original of the photo of Rose Valland used to “photoshop” her into the “Salle des Martyrs”

The two contemporary authentic photos of the Salle des Martyrs both show Fedor Löwenstein paintings. So-called View 1 (Figure 16) includes two Loewenstein paintings. Photographed is a fragmentary section of an unknown painting (Figure 17), and a second one titled “La Ville Moderne,” “The Modern City.” (Figures 18a-b) Regrettably, the latter two were lost or destroyed. View 2 (Figure 19), the one where Rose Valland has been photoshopped into the image, includes the still existing painting “Composition (Paysage).” This is one of the three paintings I will be repatriating.

Figure 16. The so-called View 1 of the “Salle des Martyrs” where a fragment of an untitled work by Löwenstein and the painting known as “The Modern City” were hung

Figure 17. The description and view of the “Untitled Work” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 18a. The description and view of “The Modern City” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 18b. “The Modern City” by Fedor Löwenstein

Figure 19. The so-called View 2 of the “Salle des Martyrs” where Fedor Löwenstein painting known as “Composition (Paysage)” can be seen

Besides the painting “Composition (Paysage),” I’ll also be acquiring artworks entitled “les Peupliers” (Figure 20) and “Arbres.” (Figure 21) Neither of these paintings is pictured in the ERR photographs. Having personally seen the three paintings, it is obvious the Nazis intended to destroy them as evidenced by the fact that now faintly visible red Xs were scrawled across their painted surfaces. Whether Rose Valland played a role in saving Löwenstein’s paintings is unknown.

Figure 20. Fedor Löwenstein’s painting known as “les Peupliers”

Figure 21. Fedor Löwenstein’s painting known as “Arbres”

REFERENCES

Doré-Rivé, Isabelle. “La Dame du Jeu de Paume Rose Valland Sur Le Front de L’Art Sommaire.” “Centre d’Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation.”

plan-général-dp2

“History of CIVS.” Premier Ministère, Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations antisémites (Commission for the Restitution of Property and Compensation for Victims of Anti-Semitic Spoliation), Updated 19 April 2024.

History of CIVS | CIVS

“Jeu de Paume.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 21 May 2025.

Jeu de paume – Wikipedia

“Jeu de Paume.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 August 2024.

Jeu de Paume | Museum, History, Impressionism, Photography, & Facts | Britannica

“Jeu de Paume (museum).” Wikipedia, Wikipedia Foundation, 13 March 2025.

Jeu de Paume (museum) – Wikipedia

Ministère De La Culture. “POP : la plateforme ouverte du patrimoine”

Vue 1 de la salle 15

La Ville moderne

Titre inconnu

Vue 2 de la salle 15

Paysage

Composition

Polack, E. (March 2014). “Rose Valland à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.” “L’Historire Par L’Image.”

Rose Valland à la veille de la Seconde Guerre mondiale – Histoire analysée en images et œuvres d’art | https://histoire-image.org/

Polack, Emmanuelle & Alan Prevet (March 2014). “Bruno Lohse et Hermann Goering.” “L’Historire Par L’Image.”

Bruno Lohse et Hermann Goering – Histoire analysée en images et œuvres d’art | https://histoire-image.org/

POST 166: STATELESSNESS & MY GERMAN CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION

Note: In my most overtly political post, I discuss the Nazi decrees that led my father and a relative by marriage to become stateless. I consider this topic in the context of my ongoing German citizenship application process permitted by German law as a descendant of my father who was “deprived” of his German nationality in 1941.

Related Posts:

POST 26: “APATRIDE” (STATELESS)

POST 92: BEWARE IDENTICAL ANCESTRAL NAMES, THE CASE OF MY MATERNAL GREAT-GRANDFATHER HERMANN BERLINER

POST 165: MORE ABOUT ERNST MOMBERT, DEPORTED FROM FRANCE TO AUSCHWITZ WITH MY AUNT SUZANNE MÜLLER, NÉE BRUCK

After many years contemplating applying for German citizenship, I recently started assembling the notarized documents to make this a reality. I had always intended to do this as a practical exercise that I could then write about on my blog. However, the current uncivil body politic here in America makes this more imperative than ever. To those who say, “fascism can never happen in America,” I merely remind readers this is what many German Jews said after Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg on the 30^th of January 1933. The phrase “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” comes to mind. I choose to be prepared.

The initiation of my German citizenship application has me thinking about how my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, and Ernst Mombert, subject of my previous Post 165, came to be referred to as “apatride,” the French word for stateless. This term is used on both of their official contemporary French documents.

Some context is helpful.

Germany’s Federal Office of Administration provides information on the statutory basis for “naturalization on grounds of restoration of German citizenship after deprivation.” Pursuant to Article 116(2) of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz, GG) of the Federal Republic of Germany, persons who were “deprived” of their German citizenship by the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945 are entitled to naturalization. This means that the persons had been German citizens and were deprived of this citizenship in the National Socialist era or that a naturalization that had taken place between 1918 and 1933 was revoked.

As defined in Article 116(2) GG (Grundgesetz), persons are deemed to have been “deprived” of their German citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds whenever this citizenship was either:

lost automatically pursuant to Section 2 of the 11^th Decree Implementing the Reich Citizens Act of 25 November 1941; or

deprived on an individual basis under the Act on Revocation of Naturalizations and Deprivation of German Citizenship of 14 July 1933.

Such people and their descendants have been entitled to naturalization by the GG since 24 May 1949.

In the case of the 1933 act, individual cases of deprivation of German citizenship were published in the Reich Gazette (Reichsanzeiger). With respect to the 1941 decree, this applied to all German citizens of Jewish faith who had their habitual residence abroad when the ordinance entered into force or later resided abroad. It’s on this basis that I qualify to apply for German citizenship through descent from my father.

As a sidebar, I would note that incorporation of “revocation of naturalizations” in the title of the 1933 Act is particularly pertinent as I listen to the current vitriol being spewed from fascist-loving cultists anxious to return to the past. I’m reminded of another saying, often attributed to Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

As mentioned above, Hitler was appointed German Chancellor on the 30^th of January 1933. It’s not clear precisely when Ernst Mombert, a relative by marriage, left Germany nor what profession he was engaged in at the time. However, by November 1933, Ernst had purchased a fruit farm in Fayence (Var), France, and essentially became a farmer. Because the circumstances related to the application of the 1933 Act all related to naturalizations that took place between 1918 and 1933, this Act would not have applied to Ernst Mombert nor deprived him of his German citizenship. I think he would not have lost his citizenship until the 25 November 1941 Act was passed.

My father’s circumstances were different though I think he too became stateless under the Reich Citizens Act of 25 November 1941. In the early 1930s, my father Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1) was a dental apprentice in the Free City of Danzig, and I believe was briefly living with his aunt Hedwig Loewenstein, nee Bruck (Figure 2), and cousins in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland]. By April 9, 1932, he had opened his own dental practice in nearby Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland], also located within the Free City of Danzig. My father’s surviving 1932 Day Planner gives the precise day he arrived in Tiegenhof.

Figure 1. My father Dr. Otto Bruck in his dental scrubs in the early 1930s

Figure 2. My father’s aunt, my great-aunt, Hedwig Loewenstein, nee Bruck (1870-1949), with whom he may temporarily have lived with in Danzig while a dental apprentice

Just a brief footnote. While “Free City of Danzig” and “Free State of Danzig” are often used interchangeably, the key difference lies in the level of precision. “Free City” is generally considered the more accurate term, as it specifically refers to Danzig as a self-governing city-state under the protection of the League of Nations after WWI, whereas “Free State” implies a slightly larger, more autonomous territory encompassing the city and surrounding areas, though this interpretation is less common in historical context. Throughout this post, I use “Free City.”

By my calculation, my father lived in the Free City between ca. 1930-1932 until 1937. Theoretically, he would have had two options vis-à-vis citizenship. He could have retained his German citizenship or opted to become a citizen of the Free City, a so-called Danziger. Given that he lived and worked in the Free City, logically he would eventually have become a citizen there, but for the war. However, Free City citizenship does not appear to have been a precondition for owning and operating a business there. More on this below.

The gentleman at the German Embassy assisting me with my German citizenship application sent me a copy of a so-called “Optionsurkunde” that documented the switch from Danziger to German Reich for another individual applying for German citizenship. (Figure 3) He asked me to look for such a document among my father’s surviving papers, but if he ever switched nationality no such document survives. According to the official from the German Embassy, copies of these Optionsurkunden in the archives were likely destroyed during the war making it impossible for me to know for sure whether my father became a Danziger.

Figure 3. Example of an “Optionsurkunde” for a man who switched from being a Danzig citizen to a citizen of the German Reich

Had my father become a Danziger, I presume he could have held dual citizenship. I base this assumption on the fact that he had driver’s licenses simultaneously from both the German Reich and the Free City in 1935, the pair of which are in my possession. (Figures 4a-b; 5a-b)

Figure 4a. Cover of my father’s 1935 driver’s license from the German Reich

Figure 4b. Inside pages of my father’s 1935 driver’s license from the German Reich

Figure 5a. Cover page of my father’s 1935 driver’s license from the Free City of Danzig

Figure 5b. Inside pages of my father’s 1935 driver’s license from the Free City of Danzig

Curious whether the Optionsurkunden might have survived, I recalled a Ms. Regina Stein, a German provenance researcher of museum collections in Berlin, who’d assisted me in 2021 on another matter. I misremembered her as a forensic genealogist. Regardless, I contacted her asking whether she’d ever come across such documents. Unfamiliar with them, Regina reached out to her network of colleagues involved in genealogical research.

One of her associates, Ms. Sabine Ruks, responded. She provided information that at least in my mind clarifies my father’s situation with respect to whether he ever became a Danziger. Beyond that, however, her analysis places my father’s situation in terms of citizenship in a broader temporal and geopolitical framework. Let me explain.

My father was born in 1907 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] in Upper Silesia. Following Germany’s defeat during WWI, the terms of the Versailles Treaty mandated that a plebiscite be conducted in Upper Silesia. This referendum was intended to determine ownership of the province between Weimar Germany, the constitutional federal republic that existed between 1918 and 1933, and Poland; the region was ethnically mixed with both Germans and Poles. The outcome of the plebiscite, which was marred by violence, was that Upper Silesia was divided. The eastern part of the province went to Poland, while the western part, including Ratibor, remained German. Therefore, the question of my father opting for German nationality following the plebiscite never arose.

My Bruck family lived in Berlin from at least 1927 onwards. Clearly, this would not have raised any option (Optionsurkunde). My father’s move to the Free City of Danzig should likewise not have raised this either, although this question requires further examination.

The Free City of Danzig was ceded by the German Reich on November 15, 1920, and placed under the protection of the League of Nations. Poland took over the foreign policy representation. Therefore, passports were marked with “Citizenship: Free City of Poland.”

The Free City of Danzig ceased to exist after Germany invaded Poland on the 1^st of September 1939, followed shortly thereafter by the absorption of the Free City into the German Reich. Made up mostly of Germans and governed by a largely pro-Nazi government, Danzigers welcomed Nazi incorporation into the German Reich.

From September 1, 1939, the law on the reunification of the Free City of Danzig with the German Reich made them “Germans in accordance with detailed regulations.” As Sabine Ruks notes, “Until then, a foreigner could obtain Danzig citizenship if he or she had lived there for five consecutive years before applying (from January 11, 1920, at the earliest). Otto Bruck lived in the city-state from at least 1932 and could therefore have applied for the first time around 1938, in this case to the Danzig authorities. But even if that had been the case, he would have become German again by law on September 1, 1939.” (Sabine Ruks, personal communication)

Regardless, by September 1939, my father had long quit Tiegenhof and was in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion. While not relevant to my father since he had long-ago left Germany and had already become stateless as of 25 November 1941, the loss of Germany’s eastern territories after WWII did not affect the citizenship of Germans who’d fled from there: they continued to retain German nationality.

I want to end this post by discussing one of my father’s maternal cousins, a man named Ernst Berliner (i.e., Berliner was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name), who also became stateless. (Figures 6a-b)

Figure 6a. Cover page from ancestry.com listing Ernst Berliner in the “Germany, Index of Jews Whose Nationality was Annulled by Nazi Regime, 1935-1944”

Figure 6b. Index card showing the National Socialists’ annulment of Ernst Berliner’s German nationality, showing he was born on the 7th of March 1878 in Ratibor, that he was a Bank Director, and last lived in Frankfurt (Main) prior to leaving Germany

Ernst was the subject of Post 92. In connection with that earlier post, years ago I came upon his name in an ancestry database, entitled “Germany, Index of Jews Whose Nationality was Annulled by Nazi Regime, 1935-1944.” This database is described as follows in ancestry:

“This is a collection of individual index cards of Jews who had their German nationality annulled by the Nazis. The records were created when German citizenship was revoked because of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935. The laws spelled out exactly who was considered Jewish and who was allowed German citizenship and its accompanying rights. The Nuremberg Laws also prevented Jews from marrying those of German descent.

These records were filmed from index cards at the Berlin Document Center in 1959. The records have some suffix names added, Israel for men and Sara for women, which were used to readily identify Jews. The records include information on:

Name
Birth Date
Birthplace
Occupation
Last address”

Confused as to the overlap in dates and the varying authorities depriving Jews of German nationality, I asked a German friend and my contact at the German Embassy about these things. They explained that while the names of Jews whose nationality was annulled between 1935 and 1944 because of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were ALSO published in the Reichsanzeiger, such individuals and their descendants claim restoration of German nationality under a different authority, specifically Section 15 of the German Nationality Act (Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG). In the case of Ernst Berliner, his name was published on the 23rd of February 1938 issue of the Reichsanzeiger. (Figures 7a-b)

Figure 7a. Page from the February 23, 1938 “Reichsanzeiger” paper listing Ernst Berliner’s name as a Jew whose German nationality was annulled

Figure 7b. Ernst Berliner’s name in the February 23, 1938 “Reichsanzeiger” listed as a Jew whose German nationality was annulled

Pursuant to Section 15 StAG, persons who lost their German citizenship in some way other than because of the 1933 and 1945 decrees or who were never able to acquire German citizenship due to Nazi persecution and their descendants can become German citizens. Suffice it to say, this provision benefits in particular persons who lost their German citizenship after their flight, for instance, by virtue of a foreign citizenship or through marriage with a foreign national. Compared to naturalizations under the GG which have been in effect since 24 May 1949, naturalizations under StAG have only been permitted since 20 August 2021.

I know of several friends and relatives who’ve applied for German nationality, several successfully. An advantage I have stems from having worked and written about my family’s history for over ten years, so I am generally familiar where the original vital certificates are located that have not been digitized. Case in point, as we speak, I’m trying to obtain a certified copy of my father’s birth certificate from the archives in the town where my father was born. I’m also eligible to apply for French nationality through my mother. A German passport would allow me unrestricted stays in countries that are members of the European Union, so if the EU continues to exist there is no obvious advantage to obtaining French nationality. Still, as an intellectual exercise it might be an interesting challenge.

POST 125: MY FATHER’S DENTAL APPRENTICESHIP IN FREIE STADT DANZIG (FREE CITY OF DANZIG)

Note: This post is the result of a recent contact with a Dr. Dominik Gross who is developing an encyclopedia of dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who worked during the Nazi era as either perpetrators or enablers or victims of the regime’s policies. Evidence provided by Dr. Gross has allowed me to identify the Jewish dentist in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] with whom my father apprenticed after obtaining his dental license from the University of Berlin in 1930.

Post 6: OTTO BRUCK & TIEGENHOF: 1932 POCKET CALENDAR

POST 31: WITNESS TO HISTORY, “PROOF” OF HITLER’S DEATH IN MY UNCLE FEDOR’S OWN WORDSPOST 31: WITNESS TO HISTORY, “PROOF” OF HITLER’S DEATH IN MY UNCLE FEDOR’S OWN WORDS

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

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

I was recently contacted by a Dr. Dominik Gross who is a German bioethicist and historian of medicine. (Figure 1) He is Professor and Director of the Institute of History, Theory and Ethics in Medicine at the RWTH (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule) Aachen, the North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Germany. His research focuses on medicine under National Socialism and the professionalization of the medical and dental profession. From 2017 to 2019 he headed the national project to review the role of dentists under National Socialism.

Figure 1. Dr. Dominik Gross in 2017 (source: Wikipedia)

Dr. Gross has been working on a “lexikon,” in essence an encyclopedia or dictionary, on dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who worked or emerged during the time of the Third Reich as well as before 1933 or after 1945. It is titled “Lexicon of Dentists and Oral Surgeons in the ‘Third Reich’ and in Post-War Germany: Perpetrators, Followers, Members of the Opposition, Persecuted, Uninvolved Volume 1: University Teachers and Researchers.” As his publishing house describes the work it “. . . brings together ‘perpetrators, followers, members of the opposition, persecuted’ and politically ‘uninvolved,’ whereby the relationship of the individual to National Socialism is . . . a central part. Further focal points are the professional achievements as well as the personal network structures in which the individual specialist representatives were involved.”

As we speak, Dr. Gross is working on Volume 2 of his lexikon, specifically on biographies for dentists, dental technicians, and oral surgeons who had private practices or worked under the auspices of academically trained dentists.

It is worth pointing out a distinction in terminology that once existed in Germany with respect to dentists. Two German words, “zahnarzt” and “dentist” both translate into English as “dentist.” However, a German “dentist” was a job title for dentists without academic training that existed in Germany until 1952 alongside academically trained dentists. “Dentisten” (plural) were essentially dental technicians who, after successfully completing relevant training, were allowed to treat patients. In Germany, the term “dentist” is now used as a derogatory title.

As a related aside, I remarked the following in Post 31 about Hitler’s dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke: “Dr. Blaschke would today be called a ‘zahntechniker,’ a non-academically trained dental technician primarily responsible for producing bridges and dentures, or ‘zahnbehandler,’ dental practitioner. A ‘zahnarzt’ in today’s parlance is an academically trained dentist.” Hitler elevated Blaschkle to the status of a zahnarzt though he was not academically trained as one.

I digress. Among the biographies that will be included in Dr. Gross’s Volume 2 lexikon are ones for my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 2), and my uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck. (Figure 3) Since some of the information about both was drawn from posts on my family history blog, Dr. Gross asked me to review his drafts. While I anticipated learning new things about my uncle’s professional life since he never told me his life’s story, I had more modest expectations regarding my father’s dental career in Germany. Still, I learned that my father had apprenticed for a Dr. Paul Herzberg in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] after taking his dental examination at the University of Berlin in May 1930 and being licensed as a zahnarzt. What I was most surprised to learn was that as part of being certified prior to 1935 as a Dr. med. dent., a Doctor of Dental Medicine, he wrote a dissertation; to date, Dr. Gross has not been able to track it down nor discover the subject of my father’s dissertation.

Figure 2. My father Dr. Otto Bruck in his dental uniform in Danzig in 1931

Figure 3. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck working on a dental patient in his practice in Liegnitz, Germany [today: Legnica, Poland]

Dr. Gross sent me a copy of the source of the information on my father’s apprenticeship to Dr. Herzberg, specifically, the “Deutsches Zahnärzte-Buch. 17. Ausgabe Des Adresskalendars der Zahnärzte Im Deutsches Reich Freistaat Danzig und Im Memelland 1932/33,” translated as “German dentist book. 17th edition of the address calendar of dentists in the German Reich Free State of Danzig and in Memelland 1932/33.” According to this address book, Dr. Herzberg’s office was located at Langer Markt 25 (Long Market 25) In Danzig, known today as Długi Targ. (Figure 4a-b)

Figure 4a. Cover of the “German dentist book. 17th edition of the address calendar of dentists in the German Reich Free State of Danzig and in Memelland 1932/33”

Figure 4b. Pages 438 and 439 of the German dentist book from 1932/33. Page 438 lists my father’s name showing he was an assistant to Dr. Paul Herzberg. On the opposing page 439 the name “Hoppe” appears under the town “Neuteich” who was my father’s good friend Gerhard Hoppe

My father’s photo albums include several taken in Danzig including one with his close friends Ilse and Gerhard Hoppe. (Figure 5) Regular readers will recall Posts 67, Parts I & II where I discussed the particularly brutal deaths of these companions. Like my father, Gerhard Hoppe was a dentist; he worked in the town south of Tiegenhof called Neuteich [today: Nowy Staw, Poland]. In the 1932/33 address book sent to me by Dr. Gross, readers will note the Hoppe surname under Neuteich. (see Figure 4b)

Figure 5. My father with Gerhard & Ilse Hoppe walking along Grosse Wollwebergasse [today: Tkacka] in Danzig during the Winter of 1931-1932

The only previous reference I had found that my father was a dentist in the Free City of Danzig was in a 1934 Danzig Address Book. Quoting what I wrote in Post 1: “Danzig Address Books can be accessed on-line at the following site: http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Kategorie:Adressbuch_f%C3%BCr_Danzig. ‘Teil III’ (Part III) in the back of the directory is like our Yellow Pages, listing people by occupation. In the 1934 Danzig Address Book, there is a separate listing of dentists which includes Tiegenhof and the other towns in the Free City of Danzig. Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland] includes two listings, a woman by the name of Dr. Zeisemer, for which no address is provided, and a DR. HEINZ BRUCK, located at Markstrasse 8, the address corresponding exactly to my father’s dental office . . . Clearly, this is a reference to my father, although why his first name is incorrectly shown is unclear. (Figure 6) Unfortunately, no separate listing of dentists in the Danzig Address Books exists for before or after 1934 that specifically includes Tiegenhof and the towns surrounding Danzig, so it is not possible to further track my father.” Clearly, in writing the last line, I was obviously unaware of the address calendar of dentists from 1932/33 that Dr. Gross sent me.

Figure 6. Page from 1934 Danzig Address Book listing dentists including a Dr. Heinz Bruck at Markstrasse 8 in Tiegenhof, a clear but mistaken reference to my father, Dr. Otto Bruck

I suspect the reason no early 1930’s Danzig residence address books include my father’s name is because he was living with his aunt, Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck, and two of her three children, Jeanne and Heinz Löwenstein, two of my father’s first cousins.

Curious whether I might uncover any information about Dr. Paul Herzberg, I turned to ancestry.com. There, I unearthed Paul’s 1925 marriage certificate to a Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck; clearly, Mathilde was divorced or widowed when she remarried. At the time they married they were living at Langer Markt 9/10, a stone’s throw from Dr. Herzberg’s office. (Figures 7a-d)

Figure 7a. Cover page of Dr. Paul Herzberg and Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck’s 1925 marriage certificate

Figure 7b. Page 1 of Dr. Paul Herzberg and Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck’s 1925 marriage certificate

Figure 7c. Page 2 of Dr. Paul Herzberg and Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck’s 1925 marriage certificate

Figure 7d. Transcription and translation of Dr. Paul Herzberg and Mathilde Marie Fleischmann, married Heineck’s 1925 marriage certificate

The marriage certificate, as I suspected, established that both Paul and Mathilde were Jewish. Checking Yad Vashem, I can find neither of their names as Holocaust victims so there is a good possibility they emigrated to an unknown destination. Expectedly, Dr. Gross confirmed there is no record of Dr. Paul Herzberg in post-WWII German phone directories.

Among my father’s surviving papers are two letters of recommendation from dentists he briefly apprenticed with prior to training with Dr. Herzberg. From the 1^st to the 15^th of July 1930 my father worked under a Dr. Franz Schulte from Königsbrück in the German state of Saxony (Figures 8a-b), then from the 17^th of July until the 16^th of August he trained with a Dr. Heinrich Kruger from Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland]. (Figures 9a-b) Neither of these dentists is included in Dr. Gross’s lexikon. Given the timing of the two brief stints my father served as a novitiate in 1930, and the opening of his own practice in Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland] in April 1932, I surmise that he worked as Dr. Herzberg’s assistant in the intervening period.

Figure 8a. Letter of recommendation from Dr. Franz Schulte of Königsbrück (Saxony) dated the 22nd of July 1930 after my father apprenticed with him from the 1st to the 15th of July

Figure 8b. Dr. Franz Schulte’s name listed as a dentist in Königsbrück (Freistaat Sachsen) in the 1929 Dental Address Book

Figure 9a. Letter of recommendation from Dr. Heinrich Kruger of Allenstein, Germany [today: Olsztyn, Poland] dated the 17th of August 1930 after my father apprenticed with him from the 17th of July to the 16th of August

Figure 9b. Dr. Heinrich Kruger’s name listed as a dentist in Allenstein in the 1929 Dental Address Book

In closing because I found a picture of a Dr. Fritz Bertram and other friends of my father sailing in the Bay of Danzig (Figure 10) and knew Fritz through Danzig address books to be a zahnarzt, in Post 6 I mistakenly concluded him to be the dentist with whom my father apprenticed; I now assume he was a professional colleague and friend. With new evidence to the contrary, it seems my father apprenticed rather with Dr. Paul Herzberg when living in Danzig.

Figure 10. Dr. Franz Betram and other friends of my father sailing in the Bay of Danzig in April 1931; I mistook Dr. Bertram as the dentist in Danzig with whom my father apprenticed

REFERENCE

Gross, Dominik. (2022) Lexikon der Zahnärzte & Kieferchirugen im “Dritten Reich” und im Nachkriegsdeutschland: Täter, Mitläufer, Oppositionelle, Verfolgte, Unbeteiligte Band 1: Hochschullehrer und Forscher. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich.

POST 123 (GUEST POST): IN MEMORY OF THE JEWISH FAMILY LIEB-LIB FROM STUTTHOF [SZTUTOWO, POLAND]

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the first time on my Blog, I’m hosting a guest post by a gentleman named Mr. Uwe Sager, a longtime contributor to the German-language Forum.Danzig.de. Members in this Forum post articles about people, places, events, etc. associated with the former Free City of Danzig [German: Freie Stadt Danzig; Polish: Wolne Miasto Gdańsk] and investigate and try to answer queries posted by participants and fellow researchers. The Free City of Danzig was a city-state under the protection of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland] and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrounding areas. Because my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, lived in Danzig and nearby Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free City of Danzig between roughly 1930 and 1937, several years ago I posted multiple queries on the Forum hoping members might help me determine the fate of several of my father’s friends from his time living there, to little avail. However, this is how Uwe and I became acquainted. At the time, Uwe was already researching the fate of the Jewish family “Lieb” or “Lib” from Stutthof [today: Sztutowo, Poland] that is the subject of this guest post, although he’d not yet worked out most of the details presented below. Uwe’s research into the Lieb’s was prompted by one of the Forum’s readers who’d formerly lived in Stutthof, a woman named Irmchen Krause, asking about them. What follows is what Uwe and a fellow Forum member, Rainer Mueller Glodde, have unearthed about the Lieb family’s fate. Since I’ve mentioned the notorious Stutthof Concentration Camp in previous posts, including my father’s encounter with Gerhard Epp who relied on Jewish inmates from there to produce munitions in his converted Stutthof machine factory, it seems appropriate to include a guest post discussing the fate of one Jewish family from Stutthof.

Stutthof-Sztutowo

In memory of the Jewish family Lieb/Lib in Stutthof

By Uwe Sager – Forum.Danzig.de

With Contributions by Rainer Mueller Glodde (Administrator of momente-im-werder.net)

April 2020

When I was informed at the end of 2016 by Irmchen, née Krause, former Stutthof resident, of a Jewish family that had once lived there, I wanted to learn more about their history and whereabouts. The family’s name was Lieb. I hope my findings may remind the town’s current inhabitants that Jews once lived there, even though the family itself may not have attached much importance to it. Yet, the family was part of the community at one time and represents a segment of the town’s dark past.

Irmchen recalls a Jewish family by the name of Lieb that lived in Stutthof in the 1930’s. They ran a clothing store located on the corner of Schulstraße and Poststraße. (Figure 1) The family had a young daughter named Antonia, affectionately called “Tania.” Only a few Stutthöfer dared to shop at Lieb’s. As Irmchen notes, “Whoever bought from the Lieb’s had fingers pointed at them.” Additionally, customers were threatened by telling them their names would be published on the “Stürmerkasten” (EDITOR’S NOTE: Stürmerkasten is a kind of wall newspaper, that was erected in every village during the Hitler era in Germany) (Figure 2), situated directly opposite the Lieb store.

Figure 1. The corner of Schulstraße and Poststraße in Stutthof where the Lieb family store was once located

Figure 2. Example of a “Stürmerkasten” or a wall newspaper where, among other things, the Nazis posted the names of people who continued to frequent Jewish businesses despite the ban against such interactions (Credit: Bundesarchiv_Bild_133-075, Worms,_Antisemitische_Presse,__Stürmerkasten_)

The boycott measures against Jewish businesses and businesspeople are well known. Despite these measures, ironically, some Stutthöfer secretly shopped with the Lieb’s in the evening. According to Irmchen, the talk at the time was that Mr. Lieb was taken away with his wife and child in what is referred to as a “Nacht und Nebel aktion” (EDITOR’S NOTE: German for the “night and fog action” of abductions and disappearances decreed by Nazi Germany). Irmchen is not aware of any community support on behalf of the Lieb’s. According to another witness, some members of the community were still in contact with Mrs. Lieb who was supposedly then living in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland]. Mrs. Lieb is said to have warned comers against contacting her, saying it was too dangerous. Not unexpectedly,it was reported that she wore a Jewish star.

Following the Lieb family’s abduction or departure, their business was taken over by the Antony family who ran a grocery and dairy store next door. The textile portion of the Lieb business was assumed by Heinrich Thiessen, who ran his own textile store on Poststraße.

My own research, as well as that of colleagues from Forum Gdansk, led to several documents from which the life of the Lieb/Lib family can partially be reconstructed.

Zalman Lib (Salomon Lieb) was born on the 21^st of December 1891. The difficult-to-read place of birth, combined with the possibility that the place name was incorrectly spelled by the registrar, is by appearances Dziewienszki (Polish), Dieveniškės (Lithuanian) (Figure 3), Divenishok (Lithuanian), or Jevenishok (Yiddish) (see Wikipedia and Jewish Gen KehilaLinks (English), including pictures of the town). Family surname listings for Divenishok show no Lieb or Lib; the closest is the surname “Leyb.”

Figure 3. Location of Dieveniškės, Lithuania, presumed birthplace of Salomon Lieb

Around 1928 Salomon Lieb opened his clothing store at the corner of Schulstraße and Poststraße. However, the “Adreßbuch Danzig-Land von 1927/28” does not have him listed in either Stutthof nor elsewhere in the Free City of Danzig. Presumably he was living in the region but without his own household.

The existence of the Lieb clothing store is documented in two places:

Günter Rehaag, “Ostseebad Stutthof” Band 2, Einwohnerverzeichnis Stutthof (Volume 2, Register of Residents Stutthof).

Number 1445:

Name: Antony, Walter, born 1908

Place of Residence: Stutthof, Schulstraße 2

Occupation: Merchant, Milk Butter Groceries, Schulstraße/corner Poststraße

Other: Besitz Fr. Löwner, tenants Rathke and Antony (early merchant Liep)

Info: Hermann Rohde

Deutsches Reichs-Adressbuch für Industrie, Gewerbe und Handel, 1934, Stutthof, Manufakturwaren (German Reich Address Book for Industry, Trade and Commerce, 1934, Stutthof, Manufactured Goods)

Dau, G. – Gerber, Fritz – Glodde, Alfr. – Lieb, Sal., – Thiessen, Heinrich (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Listing in the “Deutsches Reichs-Adressbuch für Industrie, Gewerbe und Handel, 1934, Stutthof, Manufakturwaren” documenting Solomon Lieb’s manufactured goods store. Readers will also note below the listing of manufactured goods retailers, the machine factor of “Epp & Co. GmbH”

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers will notice that immediately below the list of manufactured goods merchants on Figure 4, there is a single “Maschinenfabrik,” Machine Factory, with the merchant “Epp & Co. GmbH” listed. This would refer to Gerhard Epp who was a middle brother of two of my father’s friends from Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]).

In 1929 Salomon Lieb got married in Danzig. (Figures 5a-c).

Figure 5a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Sarra Woloweleski’s marriage to Salmon Lib on the 16th of July 1929 in Danzig, Free City of Danzig

Figure 5b. Page 1 of Sarra Wolowelski and Salmon Lib’s 16th of July 1929 marriage certificate

Figure 5c. Page 2 of Sarra Wolowelski and Salmon Lib’s 16th of July 1929 marriage certificate

The marriage certificate records the following information:

Registry Office Danzig I, Certificate Number 528 dated 16^th of July 1929

The merchant Salmon Lib, Jewish religion, born on the 21^st of December 1891 in Dziewienszki, district Oszmiany, Lithuania, living in Stutthof, Danziger lowland.

The parents are the merchant David Lib and his already deceased wife Tony, née Katz, both residing in Dziewienszki.

Married to Sarra Wolowelski, accountant, Jewish religion, born on the 31^st of August 1898/ 10^th of September 1898 (Julian/Gregorian calendar) at Pinsk-Karolin, Belarus (Figure 6), living in Danzig.

The parents are the merchant Josef Wolowelski and his wife Lea, née Menzel, both living in Pinsk-Karolin, Belarus.

Figure 6. Location of Pinsk, Belarus, birthplace of Sarra Wolowelski

In 1932, presumably in Stutthof, Salomon and Sarra’s daughter Tania was born.

The exclusion, harassment, and persecution of the Jew Salomon Lieb in Stutthof, supporting what Irmchen previously noted, is confirmed in the following account:

“Kurt Gutowski, son of a local blacksmith and later poet, has given anecdotal evidence in his short memoirs of the growth of fascism and racist ideologies in his home village (Gutowski, Kurt: Aus meiner Stutthöfer Kinderzeit, p. 66). Gutowski attributes the everyday fascism to his school principal Reinhold Zube, who asked students to damage deliveries to the Jewish department store Lieb to make them unusable. Zube pulled out of the ordered district council elections in November 1934 as a firebrand in the Kreistag. . .” (Zimmermann, Rüdiger: Friedrich Rohde (1895-1970), Danziger Volkstagsabgeordneter, Fischer und Sozialist, Bonn 2020, S. 44)

In 1936, the Lieb family left Stutthof. Whether they were, as Irmchen postulated, picked up in a “Nacht und Nebel” action, or they left Stutthof quietly and secretly on their own remains unclear. The latter is supported by the above-mentioned meeting with Mrs. Lieb, who was apparently living in freedom in Danzig. (EDITOR’S NOTE: After all my father’s dental clients had abandoned him, he left nearby Tiegenhof in around fall 1937 in favor of Berlin where the anonymity of a larger city temporarily provided Jews like him more freedom of movement and economic opportunities. For the same reason, the Liebs may have felt that Danzig as a larger city might similarly and temporarily provide haven.)

The likelihood that the Liebs were living in Danzig is also supported by another written account: “. . . at the home of the Danzig merchant Salomon Lieb, officials of the Tax Investigation Office discovered 30,000 Danzig guilders in gold which they confiscated along with his savings account balance of 3,000 guilders, even though Lieb no longer ran a commercial business. Nonetheless, the Financial Authority claimed he had tax debts and seized the gold coins as an alleged tax liability and tax penalty.” (Sopade 1938, p. 770f.) (Banken, Ralf: “Hitlers Steuerstaat: Die Steuerpolitik im Dritten Reich”, 2018, S. 555, Fußnote 256)

These monetary assets suggest that Salomon Lieb had successfully sold his business and stock of goods in Stutthof to the merchants Walter Antony and Heinrich Thiessen.

Where the Lieb family then lived between 1936 and 1942 remains unclear, possibly Danzig? The Liebs are not listed in Danzig Address Books of 1937/38 and 1939, although this is not definitive proof that they did not stay in the city. Alternatively, they may have returned to Dziewienszki, Salomon’s place of birth. There is documentary evidence from a 1942 Ghetto List that Salomon Lieb and his daughter Tania, without the wife/mother Sarra, were in the Woronów Ghetto.

From a Ghetto-List – https://www.avivshoa.co.il/pdf/Ghetto-List-1.8.2014.pdf (Figure 7)

Figure 7. Link to source of 1942 Woronowo ghetto list

COLUMN 1: Nr. 5288

COLUMN 2: Woronowo (Voranava [Bel], (Voronovo [Rus], Woronów [Pol], Voronova [Yid], Voranova, Voronov, Voronove, Werenów, Woronowo)

COLUMN 3: until 1941: Poland, Gebiet Nowogrodek; until 1944/1945: Reichskommissariat Ostland (White Ruthenia); today: Belarus, Gebiet Grodno (Hrodna) region

COLUMN 4: Opening 1^st June 1941

COLUMN 5: Liquidation 30^th September 1943

COLUMN 6: Deportations Lida

COLUMN 7: Remarks: on the 11^th of May 1942, 1,291 persons were shot

COLUMN 8: Handbook of Detention Centers Belarus (1941-1944), 2001; Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, 2001 [EDITOR’s NOTE: The specific ghetto list with Salomon and Tania’s name on it appears in one of these publications.]

COLUMN 9: Date of Addition: 1^st of August 2014

The map shows that the distance from the Woronów Ghetto [today: Voronovo, Belarus] to Dziewienszki [today: Dieveniškės, Lithuania] is only about 15.4 miles or 25km. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. Map showing distance from Dieveniškės, Lithuania, where Salomon Lieb was born, to the Woronowo (Voronovo) ghetto in Belarus where he and his daughter Tania were murdered

Following a request to the “Arolsen Archives International Center on Nazi Persecution,” they sent a file about the Liebs. This file does not indicate when and from where the Lieb family was taken to the Woronów Ghetto. Salomon Lieb is arrested in the ghetto on the 19^th of May 1942 and shot during an “action.” (Figures 9a-d) In the case of the 10-year-old daughter Tania the date of her arrest is given as the beginning of June 1942; she too is shot during an “action.” (Figures 10a-c)

Figure 9a. Page 1 of Salomon Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives

Figure 9b. Page 2 of Salomon Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives; circled question indicates he lived on Weidengasse in Danzig

Figure 9c. Page 3 of Salomon Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives

Figure 9d. Page 4 of Salomon Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives

Figure 10a. Page 1 of Tania Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives

Figure 10b. Page 2 of Tania Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives; circled question indicates she lived on Weidengasse in Danzig

Figure 10c. Page 3 of Tania Lieb’s file from the Arolsen Archives

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In Figure 9b of the questionnaire in Salomon Lieb’s Arolsen Archives file, under question 9, and on Figure 10b. of Tania Lieb’s file is written in German the following: “9. Letzte Anschrift vor der Inhaftierung: Stutthof bei Danzig bis etwa 1936, dann Danzig in der nähe der Weidengasse,” translated as “9. Last address before imprisonment: Stutthof near Danzig until about 1936, then Danzig near Weidengasse.” (Figure 11) This confirms that Salomon and Tania Lieb lived in Danzig after leaving Stutthof, although there is no indication for how long.]

Figure 11. Pre-WWII map of Danzig with arrows pointing to location of Weidengasse where the Liebs lived, and to Mäusegasse where the Jewish ghetto in Danzig was located

[UWE SAGER’S HISTORICAL NOTE: At today’s ulica Owsiana in Gdansk, Poland (formerly Mäusegasse pointed out on Figure 11) there was a granary (Figure 12) with the charming name “Red Mouse” at number 7. In 1939 it served as a Nazi gathering point for Jews imprisoned in Danzig and was thus a kind of Danzig ghetto. The Germans were able to gather in it about 600 people who, for one reason or another, had not left Danzig when the Jewish community emigrated before the outbreak of war. The ghetto existed until 1943, when the remaining Jews were taken to the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps. The fact that Salomon and Tania Lieb were murdered in the Woronów Ghetto rather than in Auschwitz or Theresienstadt suggests that they returned to Dziewienszki, Salomon’s place of birth, before being deported and murdered.]

Figure 12. Photo of the “Rote Maus,” the “Red House,” a granary that served as a Nazi detention center for Jews in Danzig until 1943 when the remaining Jews were deported and murdered in either Auschwitz or Theresienstadt

Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the wife/mother Sarra, not even on the list of survivors of the Woronów Ghetto. It cannot be ruled out that Sarra died between 1936 and 1942.

In the unpublished English-language manuscript written by Moshe Berkowitz entitled “Woronow, Voronova (Voranava, Belarus) 54°09′ / 25°20′,” Chapter XIII describes how the Jewish inhabitants of Diveneshok and neighboring villages were taken to Voronovo. Before their deportation, a delegation from the villages tried to negotiate with the Germans: “The delegation was as follows: LIEB; Hirsh SCHMID; YUTAN; and KOTLIAR from Diveneshok. . .” (Figure 13) Unfortunately, the first name of LIEB is missing so it is not clear whether it refers to Salomon Lieb.

Figure 13. Chapter XIII of Moshe Berkowitz’s unpublished manuscript with the names of the Jewish residents from Divenoshok and surrounding towns who “negotiated” with the Nazis before being deported to the Voronovo ghetto, including a man with the surname of “LIEB”

Chapter XV of the manuscript describes the massacre in Woronow, which took place on the 11^th of May 1942, shortly preceding Salomon Lieb’s own death.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the subscribers from the Danzig Forum, as well as the Arolsen Archive for providing the file on the Lieb family. My goal was not to write a book but as mentioned at the outset, to give the Lieb family a place in our consciousness. Therefore, I ask for your understanding that I have kept my post short.

The following is the file from the Arolsen Archives.

Copy of 6.3.3.3/82889670 through 82889675

In conformity with IST Digital Archives

With kind permission of the publication by above mentioned archive.

REFERENCES

Banken, Ralf. Hitlers Steuerstaat: Die Steuerpolitik im Dritten Reich (Hitler’s Tax State: Tax Policy in the Third Reich). De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018.

Berkowitz, Moshe. Woronow, Voronova (Voranava, Belarus) 54°09′ / 25°20′. https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/voronovo1/voronovo1.html

Gutowski, Kurt. Aus meiner Stutthöfer Kinderzeit (From my Stutthöfer childhood). J. Pinnow, 1999.

Rehaag, Günter. Ostseebad Stutthof: Band 2, Einwohnerverzeichnis Stutthof (Volume 2, Register of Residents Stutthof).

Zimmerman, Rüdiger. Friedrich Rohde (1895-1970). Danziger Volkstagsabgeordneter, Fischer und Sozialist (Friedrich Rohde (1895-1970) Danziger Volkstag, fisherman and socialist). Bonn, 2020.

POST 120: FAMILY PHOTOS, DISCOVERING & DECODING THEM

Note: In this post, I discuss “stashes” of family photos I’ve uncovered, and the efforts I’ve undertaken with the help of near and distant relatives to identify people in some of those images even absent captions. In a few instances the photos are significant because they illustrate individuals renowned or notorious in history. In other cases, a good deal of sleuthing was required, including comparing the pictures of people in captioned versus uncaptioned images. On other occasions, I recognized portrayals of family members I knew growing up. And, in rare instances, I was able to determine a photographed person based on an educated guess.

POST 17: SURVIVING IN BERLIN IN THE TIME OF HITLER: MY UNCLE FEDOR’S STORY

POST 31: WITNESS TO HISTORY, “PROOF” OF HITLER’S DEATH IN MY UNCLE FEDOR’S OWN WORDS

POST 33: FINDING GREAT-UNCLE WILLY’S GRANDCHILDREN

POST 34: MARGARETH BERLINER, WRAITH OR BEING?

POST 41: DR. OTTO BERGER & OTHER “SILENT HEROES” WHO HELPED MY UNCLE DR. FEDOR BRUCK SURVIVE THE NAZI REGIME

POST 45: HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE: RECALLING MY PAULY ANCESTORS

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

POST 65: GERMANY’S LAST EMPEROR, WILHELM II, PICTURED WITH UNKNOWN FAMILY MEMBER

POST 99: THE ASTONISHING DISCOVERY OF SOME OF DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK’S PERSONAL EFFECTS

POST 100: DR. WALTER WOLFGANG BRUCK, DENTIST TO GERMANY’S LAST IMPERIAL FAMILY

The antisemitic and racist laws enacted by the Nazis short-circuited my father’s career as a dentist. Pursuant to his formal training at the University of Berlin, followed by an apprenticeship in Danzig (today: Gdansk, Poland), my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (Figure 1), opened his own dental practice in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig (today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland) in April 1932; by April 1937, my father was forced to flee Tiegenhof, and by March 1938 he had left Germany altogether, clearly seeing the handwriting on the wall. As an unmarried man with few family ties, this was an option open to him. My father would never again legally practice dentistry.

Figure 1. My father Dr. Otto Bruck as a dental apprentice in Danzig in 1931

My father considered the five years he spent in Tiegenhof to be the halcyon days of his life. Judging from the numerous photos of his days spent there, including those illustrating his active social life, his professional acquaintances, and recreational pursuits, I would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise.

I originally intended in this post to briefly discuss with readers the history of Polish Mennonites because Tiegenhof, the town where my father had his dental practice, was largely Mennonite when my father lived there. The Mennonites arrived in the Żuławy Wiślane region (i.e. “the Vistula fens,” plural from “żuława”), the alluvial delta area of the Vistula in the northern part of Poland, in the 17^th century. They came to escape religious persecution in the Netherlands and Flanders. I have instead decided to devote the subsequent Blog post to discussing the history of Polish Mennonites, and briefly explore how the Mennonites, who are committed to pacifism, inexplicably, became strong adherents of Hitler. I intend in the following post to use photos from my father’s collection to focus on one Mennonite family, the Epp family, with whom my father was acquainted and friends with. They have a dark history related to their connection to the Nazi regime.

Getting back on track. Curious whether the office building where my father had both his dental practice and residence still existed (Figure 2), in 2013 my wife Ann Finan and I visited Nowy Dwór Gdański. We quickly oriented ourselves to the layout of the town, and promptly determined that his office and residential building no longer stands. I would later learn that the structure had been destroyed by Russian bombers when Nazi partisans shot at them from this location.

Figure 2. The office building in Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig in October 1934 where my father had his dental practice and residence, which no longer exists. Note the swastikas festooning the building

During our initial visit to Nowy Dwór Gdański, we were directed to the local museum, the Muzeum Żuławskie. The museum docent the day we visited spoke English, so I was able to communicate to her that my Jewish father had once been a dentist in the town and had taken many pictures when living there of Tiegenhof and the Żuławy Wiślane region. I offered to make the photos available, which I in fact did upon my return to the States.

In 2014, my wife Ann and I were invited to Nowy Dwór Gdański for an in-depth tour and a translated talk. Naturally, during my presentation, I used many of my father’s photos. There was a question-and-answer period following my talk, and one Polish gentleman of Jewish descent commented on how fortunate I am to have so many photographs of my father, family, and friends. I agreed. In the case of this gentleman, he remarked he has only seven family pictures, which I think is often true for descendants of Holocaust survivors. In my instance, my father’s seven albums of surviving photos, covering from the 1910’s until 1948 when my father came to America, are the reason I started researching and writing about my family.

Given the importance pictures have played in the stories I research and write about, and the development of this Blog, I thought I would highlight a few of the more interesting and historically significant pictures in my father’s collection, as well as discuss other “stashes” of photos I’ve uncovered. Obviously, it’s impossible and would be of scant interest to readers to discuss all the photos.

My father was a witness to the rise of National Socialism from the window of his dental office in Tiegenhof. On May 1, 1933, my father photographed a regiment of “SA Sturmabteilung,” literally “Storm Detachment,” known also as “Brownshirts” or “Storm Troopers,” marching down the nearby Schlosserstrasse, carrying Nazi flags, framed by the “Kreishaus” (courthouse) on one side. (Figure 3)

Figure 3. Father’s photograph of Nazis marching down Schlosserstrasse in Tiegenhof on May 1, 1933, taken from his dental office

Again, a year later to the day, on May 1, 1934, my father documented a parade of veterans and Brownshirts following the same path down Schlosserstrasse led by members of the Stahlhelm (“Steel Helmet”), a veterans’ organization that arose after the German defeat of WWI. (Figures 4a-b) In 1934, the Stahlhelme were incorporated into the SA Sturmabteilung, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

Figure 4a. A year later May 1, 1934, Nazi Storm Troopers and WWI veterans again marching down Schlosserstrasse in Tiegenhof

Figure 4b. WWI veterans, “Stahlhelme,” at the head of the Nazi parade on May 1, 1934, in Tiegenhof

Then again, the following year, on April 5, 1935, there was another Nazi parade. On this occasion Field Marshall Hermann Göring visited and participated in the march through Tiegenhof. The day prior, on April 4, 1935, Hermann Göring had visited the Free City of Danzig to influence the upcoming April 7^th parliamentary elections in favor of Nazi candidates. The visit to Tiegenhof the next day was merely an extension of this campaign to influence the Free City’s parliamentary elections. In the photos that my father took on April 5^th there can be seen a banner which in German reads “Danzig ist Deutsch wenn es nationalsozialistisch ist,” translated as “Danzig is German when it is National Socialist.” (Figures 5a-b) It appears that along with everyday citizens of Tiegenhof and surrounding communities, members of the Hitler Youth, known in German as Hitlerjugend, also lined the street in large number.

Figure 5a. Nazi Field Marshall Hermann Göring standing in his open-air limousine on March 5, 1935, as he parades through Tiegenhof

Figure 5b. A Nazi banner reading “Danzig ist Deutsch wenn es nationalsozialistisch ist” (translated as “Danzig is German when it is National Socialist”) hung across the street that Field Marshall Hermann Göring traveled down on March 5, 1935, as he paraded through Tiegenhof

Students of history know about Hermann Göring but for those who are unfamiliar with him, let me say a few words. He would evolve to become the second-highest ranking Nazi after the Führer. Unlike many of Hitler’s sycophants and lieutenants, Göring was a veteran of WWI, having been an ace fighter pilot, a recipient of the prestigious Blue Max award, and a commander of the Jagdgeschwader a fighter group that had previously been led by the renowned Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen. Göring was drawn to Hitler for his oratorical skills and became an early member of the Nazi Party. He participated with Hitler in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, during which he was wounded in the groin. During his recovery he was regularly given morphine to which he became addicted for the remainder of his life.

Göring oversaw the creation of the Gestapo, an organization he later let Heinrich Himmler run. He was best known as the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, although after the Nazi victory over France, he was made Reichsmarschall, head of all the German armed forces. He amassed great wealth for himself by stealing paintings, sculptures, jewelry, cash, and valuable artifacts not only from Jews and people whom Nazis had murdered but also by looting museums of defeated nations.

Towards the end of the war, following an awkward attempt to have Hitler appoint him head of the Third Reich and thereby drawing Hitler’s ire, he turned himself in to the Americans rather than risk being captured by the Russians. He eventually was indicted and stood trial at Nuremberg. The once obese Göring, who’d once weighed more than three hundred pounds, was a shadow of his former self at his trial. Expectedly, he was convicted on all counts, and sentenced to death by hanging. His request to be executed by firing squad was denied, but he was able to avoid the hangman’s noose by committing suicide using a potassium cyanide pill that had inexplicably been smuggled to him by an American soldier.

My uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck, has been the subject of multiple previous posts (i.e., Post 17, Post 31, Post 41). My uncle, like my father was a dentist. He was educated at the University of Breslau (today: Wrocław, Poland) and had his dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany (today: Legnica, Poland) until around 1933 when he was forced to give it up due to the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” passed by the Nazi regime on the 7^th April 1933, two months after Adolf Hitler had attained power. My uncle’s life is of interest because he miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin by friends and non-Jewish family members. His story has also been of interest because he counted among his friends a woman named Käthe Heusermann-Reiss, who had been his dental assistant in Liegnitz.

Following the loss of his business my uncle relocated to Berlin hoping the anonymity of the larger city would afford him the possibility to continue working under the auspices of another dentist, which it did for a time. Käthe Heusermann also moved to Berlin and opportunistically landed herself a job as a dental assistant to Hitler’s American-trained dentist, Dr. Hugo Blaschke. In this capacity, she was always present when Dr. Blaschke treated Hitler. Following the end of the war, she was interrogated by the Russians and asked to identify dental remains which had been recovered in a burn pit outside the Reichstag. The bridgework performed by Dr. Blaschke on Hitler was outmoded so Käthe was easily able to recognize Blaschke’s work and Hitler’s teeth, a fact Stalin kept hidden from the world. Following Russia’s capture of Berlin at the end of the war, my uncle who’d temporarily been hiding in Käthe’s apartment learned from her that Hitler had committed suicide. This dangerous information resulted in Käthe being imprisoned in the USSR for many years, and my uncle barely escaping the same fate. Surviving among my father’s photographs is a noteworthy picture taken in Liegnitz of my uncle and Käthe Heusermann. Though uncaptioned, I have been able to compare it to known pictures of Käthe to confirm it is her. (Figure 6)

Figure 6. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in his dental office in Liegnitz, Germany with his dental assistant Käthe Heusermann-Reiss who would later go on to become the dental assistant for Dr. Hugo Blaschke, Hitler’s dentist. Following the war, she would identify Hitler’s dental remains, a fact the Russians hid for many years

As I have told readers in multiple earlier posts my father was an active sportsman, and an excellent amateur tennis player. Among my father’s belongings I retain multiple of the prizes he was awarded for his achievements, including many newspaper clippings documenting his results. In August 1936, my father attended an International Tennis Tournament in Zoppot, Germany (today: Sopot, Poland), located a mere 32 miles from Tiegenhof. During his attendance there, he photographed the great German tennis player, Heinrich Ernst Otto “Henner” Henkel (Figure 7), whose biggest success was his singles title at the 1937 French Championships. Interestingly, Henkel learned to play tennis at the “Rot-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin. My father was a member of the “Schwarz-Weiss” Tennis Club in Berlin, so perhaps my father and Henner played one another and were acquainted. Henner Henkel was killed in action during WWII on the Eastern Front at Voronezh during the Battle of Stalingrad while serving in the Wehrmacht, the German Army.

Figure 7. The famous German tennis player, Henner Henkel, in August 1936 at the International Tennis Tournament in Zoppot, Germany

As I mentioned above, my father left Germany for good in March 1938. He was headed to stay with his sister Susanne and brother-in-law, then living in Fiesole, a small Tuscan town outside Florence, Italy. During his sojourn in Italy, before eventually joining the French Foreign Legion later in 1938, my father visited some of the tourist attractions in Italy, including the Colosseum in Rome. One of the images that my father took there has always stood out to me because of the paucity of people around what is today a very crowded and visited venue. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. The Colosseum in Rome in August 1938

My father’s collection of photos number in the hundreds but I’ve chosen to highlight only certain ones because they illustrate a few personages or places that may be known to readers. My father’s collection is merely one among several caches of images I was able to track down through family and acquaintances. I want to call attention to a few pictures of family members that grabbed my attention from these other hoards.

In Post 33, I explained to readers how I tracked down the grandchildren of my grandfather’s brother, Wilhelm “Willy” Bruck (1872-1952). Based on family correspondence, I knew my great-uncle Willy wound up in Barcelona after escaping Germany in the 1930’s and theorized his children and grandchildren may have continued to live there. Official vital documents I procured during a visit there convinced me otherwise, that at least his son returned to Germany after WWII. I was eventually able to track down both of my great-uncle’s grandchildren, that’s to say my second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck, to outside of Munich, Germany. (Figure 9) I have met both, and they’ve shared their family pictures, which again number in the hundreds.

Figure 9. My second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck from near Munich, Germany in May 2022, source of many family photos

The cache included many images of family members, but there are two pictures I was particularly thrilled to obtain copies of. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982), previously discussed, fought in WWI on the Eastern Front. (Figure 10) Among the family memorabilia I retain is a postcard he sent to his aunt Franziska Bruck on the 3^rd of September 1916 coincidentally from the Ukraine announcing his promotion to Sergeant. (Figures 11a-b) The ongoing conflict between the Ukraine and Russia makes me realize how long the Ukraine has been a staging area for wars.

Figure 10. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck in his WWI uniform

Figure 11a. The front side of a postcard my uncle Fedor mailed to his aunt Franziska Bruck during WWI from the Eastern Front in Ukraine on the 3rd of September 1916

Figure 11b. The backside of the postcard my uncle mailed from the Ukraine on the 3rd of September 1916

Regular readers may recall that my father was born in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), in Upper Silesia. The family hotel there, owned through three generations between roughly 1850 and the early 1920’s, was known as the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Among my second cousins’ photos is a rare image of the entrance to this hotel, which no longer stands. (Figure 12)

Figure 12. The entrance to the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel circa. 1914. The hotel is no longer standing

I introduced readers to two of my grandfather’s renowned sisters, my great-aunts Franziska and Elsbeth Bruck, way back in Post 15. Their surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau, the westernmost of the twelve boroughs of Berlin; these files have been another source of family photographs. Franziska Bruck was an eminent florist, and it is reputed that one of her clients was the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II (1859-1941). One undated photograph taken in my great-aunt’s flower shop shows Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886-1954), the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, who was married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, Wilhelm, the German Crown Prince. (Figure 13)

Figure 13. Duchess Cecilie Auguste Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886-1954), the last Crown Princess of Germany and Prussia, married to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, visiting my great-aunt Franziska Bruck’s flower school in Berlin

My second cousins Margarita and Antonio Bruck introduced me to one of my third cousins, Andreas “Andi” Pauly, also living part-time in Munich, Germany. (Figure 14) The Pauly branch of my extended family, which originally hailed from Posen, Germany (today: Poznan, Poland) has been the subject of multiple blog posts, including Post 45 on Pauly family Holocaust victims and reflections in Post 56 by the paterfamilias, Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916), Andi Pauly’s great-grandfather. Josef Pauly and his wife Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer (1844-1927) had eight daughters and one son born between 1870 and 1885; thanks to photos provided by Andi Pauly, not only was I able to obtain images of all nine children but also some of Pauly cousins I knew of by name.

Figure 14. My third cousin Andreas “Andi” Pauly, source of many family photos

Again, it is not my intention to boggle readers’ minds by showing all these photos but I want to focus on one particular picture I originally obtained from Andi Pauly that was the subject of Post 65. The photo was taken in Doorn, Netherlands on the 28^th of May 1926, and shows a then-unknown Bruck family member standing amidst a group that includes the last German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, his second wife, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), and the Royal Family’s entourage. (Figure 15) At the time I wrote Post 65, I was unable to determine who the Bruck family member was, nor whom the initials “W.B.” stood for.

Figure 15. Postcard of the last German Emperor Wilhelm II, his second wife Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (1887-1947), and her youngest daughter by her first marriage, Princess Henriette of Schönaich-Carolath (1918-1972), taken in 1926 in Doorn, the Netherlands. A then-unknown member of the Bruck family is surrounded by the Royal Family’s entourage

Fast forward. In early 2021, I was astonished to receive an email from a Dr. Tilo Wahl, a doctor from Köpenick in Berlin, who stumbled upon my Blog and contacted me. He shared copies of the extensive collection of personal papers and photographs he had copied from the grandson of one of my esteemed ancestors, Dr. Walter Bruck (1872-1937), from Breslau, Germany (today: Wrocław, Poland) Again, this relative and my findings related to Dr. Walter Bruck have been chronicled in multiple earlier posts. The very same image discussed in the previous paragraph I had obtained from Andi Pauly was included among Dr. Bruck’s images. It was then I realized the unidentified Bruck family member standing with Kaiser Wilhelm II, his family, and his entourage was none other than Dr. Bruck’s second wife, Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch (1884-1963). (Figure 16) I discussed these findings in Post 100.

Figure 16. Same photograph as Figure 15 that Dr. Walter Bruck took of his wife Johanna and the Kaiser’s entourage in September 1925 with identifications (photo courtesy of Dr. Tilo Wahl)

Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection of papers and photos yielded images of multiple family members about whom I was aware, including one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s three siblings. However, one that stands out amongst all these photos was the one of Dr. Walter Bruck’s grandfather Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883). (Figure 17) Dr. Jonas Bruck is buried along with his son, Dr. Julius Bruck, in the restored tombs at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland. (Figure 18) Dr. Jonas Bruck was a brother of my great-great-grandfather Samuel Bruck (1808-1863), the original owner of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland) I previously discussed.

Figure 17. Dr. Walter Bruck’s grandfather, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883)

Figure 18. The restored gravestones of Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck, his son Dr. Julius Bruck, and their respective wives interred in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland

In various places, I found fleeting references that Dr. Walter Bruck and Johanna Elisabeth Margarethe Gräbsch had both previously been married. I eventually found historic documents, my gold standard, confirming this. Using educating guesses based on incomplete captions and estimating the timeframe a few pictures in Dr. Walter Bruck’s collection were taken, that’s to say during WWI and before, I was even able to find pictures of both of their previous spouses among his photos.

Dr. Walter Bruck’s album also contain multiple pictures of his daughter, Renate Bruck (1926-2013). She was married three times, with images of two of her husbands included. Thanks to Post 99 Renate’s twin daughters, whom I knew about but had no expectation of ever finding since they’d left England years ago, instead found me. From this, I learned that Walter Bruck’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in Sydney, Australia.

I suspect the story I’m about to relate may resonate with some readers, the topic of missing or incomplete captions on pictures of one’s ancestors. Let me provide some context. During the time that my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck was a dentist in Liegnitz, Germany he carried on an illicit affair with a married non-Jewish woman, Irmgard Lutze (Figure 19), with whom he had two children, my first cousins Wolfgang (Figure 20) and Wera Lutze. During the Nazi era time when it was prohibited and dangerous for an Aryan to have an affair with a Jew, the cuckolded husband nonetheless raised the children as his own. Therefore, they had the Lutze rather than the Bruck surname.

I knew both first cousins well, though both are now deceased. In any case, included among my cousin’s photographs was one that left me perplexed. It showed three generations, the eldest of whom was identified as “Tante Grete Brauer (mother’s sister).” (Figures 21a-b) The “Brauer” surname reverberated only because when perusing my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s papers at the Stadtmuseum I discovered multiple letters written by Brauers. At the time I had no idea this represented another branch of my extended family.

Figure 19. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck standing next to Irmgard Lutze, the married Aryan woman with whom he fathered two children

Figure 20. My uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s now-deceased son and my first cousin, Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014), in Hurghada, Egypt in October 2005

Figure 21a. Photo found among my first cousin’s pictures of my grandmother’s sister, Margarethe Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942) who was murdered in the Holocaust

Figure 21b. Caption on backside of Figure 21a.

As I discussed in Post 34, I would eventually work out that “Tante Grete Brauer” was my grandmother Else Bruck née Berliner’s sister, Margarethe Brauer née Berliner (1872-1942) who was murdered in the Holocaust. Prior to finding this isolated picture of my great-aunt, I was completely unaware of her existence. I’ve repeatedly told readers that my father had scant interest in family and rarely spoke of them to me growing up, so I was not surprised by this discovery.

I will give readers one last example of caches of family photos I’ve been able to recover by mentioning my third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser (Figure 22), who very sadly passed away in 2021 due to complications from Covid. Over the years, Larry and I often shared family documents and photos. Several years ago, he borrowed and scanned a large collection of photos from one of his cousins named Michael Maleckar which he shared with me. As with any such trove, I found a few gems, including one of my own parents at a party they attended in Manhattan the early 1950’s. My father literally “robbed the cradle” when he married my mother as she was 22 years younger than him. This age difference is particularly pronounced in the one picture I show here. (Figure 23)

Figure 22. My third cousin once-removed, Larry Leyser, another source of many family photos

Figure 23. From left to right, my father (Dr. Otto Bruck), my mother (Paulette Bruck), my uncle (Dr. Fedor Bruck), and one of father’s cousins (Franz Kayser) at a party in Manhattan in the early 1950’s

I will merely say, in closing, that I am aware of other caches of family photos that unfortunately I have been unable to lay my hands on. I completely understand that some of my cousins are busy leading their lives and don’t share my passion for family history, so they are excused. One other thought. The longer I work on my family’s history, the more I realize how much I regret not talking with my relatives when they were alive about some of our ancestors as my stories would be broader and would then be grounded in truths rather veiled in so much conjecture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sussman, Jeffrey. Holocaust Fighters: Boxers, Resisters, and Avengers. Roman & Littlefield, 2021.

POST 112, POSTSCRIPT: WOLFRAM E. VON PANNWITZ’S BEQUEST TO HIAS

Note: In this postscript to Post 112, I address the question of why Wolfram E. von Pannwitz’s friend, John Kroeker, may have arrived in America as a Stateless citizen, based on a reference sent to me by one of my German friends.

As a reminder to readers, the inspiration for Post 112 came from Mr. John Thiesen, a gentleman from Newton, Kansas. Among his family papers, he discovered that his grandfather John Kroeker arrived in America in July 1947 aboard the “Marine Marlin,” the same ship my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck and his friend Wolfram E. von Pannwitz took to come here; it is clear from these ancestral documents that Wolfram and Mr. Kroeker befriended one another on their voyage to America.

Mr. Thiesen contacted me through my Blog hoping I might shed some light on why his grandfather suddenly moved from Kansas to Providence, Rhode Island in 1953. Providence is the city where Mr. von Pannwitz lived for several years following his arrival in this country, a place he likely called home until around 1952. Based on passenger manifests I located for Mr. von Pannwitz on ancestry.com, by late 1952 or early 1953, he’d permanently relocated to New York City. I have been unable to determine whether John Kroeker’s move to Providence was related to his friendship with Wolfram.

Another question I’d previously been unable to answer was why John Kroeker arrived in America as a “Stateless” citizen. Since he was a Mennonite, it was clearly not related to the revocation of his German citizenry by the Nazis because of his Jewish ancestry. Possibly, it is connected to one of the multiple reasons for “statelessness” enumerated in the link above (e.g., lack of birth certificate; birth to stateless parents).

By chance, my German friend Peter Hanke stumbled on an article in German Wikipedia about John Kroeker’s father and John Thiesen’s great-grandfather, Jakob Kroeker, which may provide a clue as to why John Kroeker was Stateless.

According to German Wikipedia, Jakob Kroeker was born on the 12^th of November 1872 in Gnadental in the Odessa Oblast of the former Soviet Union [today: Dolynivka, Ukraine]. An “oblast” is an administrative division or region in Russia and the former Soviet Union, and in some of its former constituent republics; readers are reminded that Ukraine was formerly part of the Soviet Union. Given the ongoing war between Russia and the Ukraine, this post coincidentally provides an opportunity to discuss a little history and geography. (Figure 1)

Figure 1. The oblasts or administrative regions of Ukraine

Jakob Kroeker was born in a Mennonite colony in Gnadental in the Odessa Oblast, but by 1881 he and his parents had moved to the Crimean Peninsula to the Mennonite village of Spat [today: Havardiiske or Gvardeskoye, Simferopol Raion, Republic of Crimea, Ukraine] near Simferopol. (Figure 2) The Crimean Peninsula, on which the Republic of Crimea is located, became a part of post-Soviet Ukraine in 1991, upon the latter’s independence, by virtue of Ukraine’s inheritance of the territory from the Ukrainian SSR, of which Crimea was a part since 1954. In 2014, Russia annexed the peninsula and established two federal subjects there, the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol, but the territories are still internationally recognized as being part of Ukraine.

Figure 2. Map showing the distance between Dolynivka, Ukraine, where Jakob Kroeker was born in 1872, and Simferopol, Ukraine on the Crimean Peninsula, near where he and his parents moved in 1881

The land for the Mennonite village where Spat was established and where Jakob Kroeker’s parents moved to was purchased in 1881 from Mennonites living in the Molotschna Mennonite Settlement [today: Molochansk, Ukraine] (Figure 3); Spat was located near the train station of Sarabus [Sarabuz] (Figure 4), which is about 11 miles or 18 km from Simferopol. Molochansk is approximately 185 miles or 297 km NNE of Simferopol.

Figure 3. Map showing the distance between Simferopol, Ukraine and Molochansk, Ukraine; the Mennonites in the latter community sold Jakob’s ancestors the land on the Crimean Peninsula where Spat was built, the town where Jakob Kroeker grew up as a young man

Figure 4. The train station in Sarabuz (Sarabus) near Spat at the end of the 19th century

Let me briefly digress and provide an instructive history of how and why Mennonites came to be in this part of the former Soviet Union.

The Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, located in the province of Taurida, Russia [today: Zaporizhia Oblast in Ukraine], on the Molochnaya River, was the second and largest Mennonite settlement of Russia. Chortitza [today: Khortytsia Island], founded in 1789, was the oldest and next in size, located about 71 miles or 114 km NW of Molochansk. (Figure 5) Chortitza was established by Mennonites from Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland] (Figure 6) and Prussia who had accepted the invitation of Catherine the Great. The basis for this invitation was the fact that the Russian government needed good farmers in the Ukraine on land they had just acquired through a war with Turkey.

Figure 5. Map showing the distance between the Mennonite communities of Chortitza (Khortytsia) founded in 1789 and Molochansk founded in 1804

Figure 6. Map showing the distance between Chortitza (Khortytsia), and Gdansk, Poland, where the Mennonite community who built Chortitza in 1789 originated

Mennonite families, which tended to be large, were traditionally farmers but had been forced to seek other occupations as land along the Vistula River near Danzig and in Prussia had become scarce. Further complicating matters were Prussian edicts issued between 1786 and 1801 during and following the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia making it difficult for Mennonites to acquire land, because of their refusal to serve in the military due to their pacifist religious beliefs. Thus, the invitation by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great to relocate from Prussia was attractive because Mennonites could purchase all the land they wanted on the vast steppes of the Tsar’s Russian empire.

From a personal point of view, the fact that the Mennonites who founded Chortitza in 1789 came from Danzig is fascinating. Readers who have followed my Blog since its inception in 2017 may recall that my father Dr. Otto Bruck apprenticed as a dentist in Danzig, and later had his own dental practice between 1932 and 1937 in a Mennonite village to the east called Tiegenhof in the Free City of Danzig [today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland].

The region where Tiegenhof is located is called Żuławy Wiślane (i.e. “the Vistula fens”), which refers to the alluvial delta area of the Vistula, in the northern part of Poland. Much of the farmland was reclaimed artificially by means of dykes, pumps, channels, and an extensive drainage system. The arduous process of retaking the land from the sea started in the 14^th century and was in large part undertaken by the hardworking Puritan community of Mennonites, who originally came from the Netherlands and Flanders to escape religious persecution.

In any case, the land on the Crimean Peninsula where the town of Spat was established and where Jakob Kroeker grew up was sold to his ancestors by Mennonites who lived in Chortitza but originally came from Danzig and Prussia.

Returning to Jakob Kroeker. Even as a teenager he found comfort in the Christian faith, which eventually drew him to a theological training. He got married to Anna Langemann in 1894, and moved to Hamburg, Germany where he began studying at the Baptist seminary which he completed in four years. John Kroeker’s birth in Hamburg is thus explained.

Jakob’s wife could not obtain the necessary health certificate to work abroad, so he became a traveling preacher for the German Mennonites throughout Russia. In around 1906, he moved to Molotschna, where the cultural center of the Mennonites of Russia was located, although by 1910 he emigrated with his wife and children to Germany, to Wernigerode am Harz. Until the outbreak of WWI, he made numerous trips to St. Petersburg and southern Russia, although with the onset of the war he was no longer allowed to leave Wernigerode without permission because of his Russian nationality. The fact that he was never interned by the Germans during the war was probably because he was an ordained minister of the Mennonites.

Following the end of the war, until a peace agreement was signed in 1921, Jakob Kroeker held Bible courses for Russian POWs; this is deemed by scholars to have provided the impetus for the great religious movement in Russia after the First World War. This prompted him to cofound the mission union Light in the East in 1920 with the aim of spreading Christian literature among the Russian population. In connection with this, he continued to travel extensively throughout the 1920’s and the early 1930’s until the Nazis came to power, which severely restricted his mission’s work opportunities.

Jakob Kroeker and his wife wound up having eleven children, including Wolfram E. von Pannwitz’s friend, John Kroeker. Jakob died in 1948 in Mühlhausen (Stuttgart) in the German State of Baden-Württemberg.

We know that Jakob Kroeker was born in what was formerly part of the Soviet Union, lived as a child and young man on the Crimean Peninsula, and that he eventually emigrated to Wernigerode am Harz in Germany in around 1910. During WWI he was generally prevented from traveling to Russia on account of his Russian nationality. While he traveled extensively following WWI, he seems to have lived continuously in Wernigerode until around 1945-46 when he moved near Stuttgart. There is no indication that he ever relinquished his Russian nationality in favor of German citizenship, so while he was never interned during the Nazi era, the Nazis may have considered him to be Stateless. Following WWII, most Germans, including Mennonites, still living in the Soviet Union left or were deported; since Jakob had once religiously tended to these expelled German Mennonites, he would have had no reason to return to Russia once his flock was gone. As a Russian citizen, this may explain why Jakob was classified as Stateless, and why his son John Kroeker arrived in America as such.

POST 106: EVIDENCE OF CONVERSION FROM JUDAISM IN MY FAMILY

Note: In this post, I discuss the proof I have found for conversions from Judaism for German family members, some of which unavoidably consists of indirect evidence. This topic naturally involves touching on the political, economic, and social context under which such conversions took place.

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

There is a long history of Jewish conversion to Christianity, both voluntary and forced conversion. Forced conversions of Jews go back to Late Antiquity, the boundaries of which are a continuing matter of debate, but the period between roughly the 3^rd and 8^th centuries A.D. Royal persecutions of Jews from the 11^th century onward typically took the form of expulsions with exceptions. Jews were forced to convert to Christianity before and during the First Crusade (1096-1099) including in parts of what are today France, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

The mass conversion event which took place on the Iberian Peninsula in A.D. 1391 when tens of thousands of Spain’s Jews converted to Christianity because of pogroms is the one readers will be most familiar with. Practicing Jews who refused to convert were expelled by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in the Alhambra Decree of 1492, following the Christian Reconquest of Spain. The net effect of the Alhambra Decree and persecutions carried out in earlier periods is that over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. In adjoining Portugal, by contrast, where an edict for Jewish expulsions was also ordered four years later in A.D. 1496, most Jews were not allowed to leave but were forced to convert.

Though conversions continued over time across many other parts of Eastern, Central, and Western Europe, forced conversions were apparently less common in the 20^th century and were later more often the result of Jews choosing to convert to integrate into secular society. In Germany, which is the focus of this Blog post as it relates to my family, conversions occurred in three main periods. The first began during the Mendelssohnian era, named after Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), the German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah, the “Jewish Enlightenment” of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is attributed. A second wave occurred during the first half of the 19^th century. And the third and longest period of conversions was a result of antisemitism and began roughly in 1880.

Conversion among German Jews was not an uncommon phenomenon in the 19^th century owing to the myriad restrictions and myths that confronted them, and stymied their hopes, ambitions, dreams, and careers. In a sense, conversion to Christianity was the easy way out. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the noted German poet, writer, and literary critic, who himself converted, was reputed to have said conversion was his “ticket of admission into European culture.” Across most of the German states that united to create “modern” Germany in 1871, dominated by the state of Prussia, Jews were often rewarded for renouncing Judaism by being given influential positions and financial incentives. Whereas, during the 17^th century, most converts were poor, by the middle of the 18^th century, the converts were richer. The departure of the wealthier converts deprived the Jewish community of part of its operating budget. In any event, it is estimated that by the 20^th century, close to one million Christians in Germany were of Jewish origin. According to Deborah Hertz’s book, “How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin,” the majority of converts were infants whose parents wanted to spare them “conflicts” as adults. She notes that 60 percent of converts between 1800 and 1874 were under five years of age.

Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums), which excluded Jews and other political opponents of the Nazis from all civil service positions, was one of the first anti-Semitic and racist laws to be passed by the Third Reich, enacted on the 7^th of April 1933. The law initially exempted those who had worked in the civil service since August 1, 1914, those who were veterans of World War I, or those with a father or son killed in action in World War I. The Civil Service immediately impacted the education system because university professors, for example, were classified as civil servants.

With the seizure of power by the Nazis, the new government enacted laws that required all citizens to document their genealogy in full. The regime sought to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s foremost Jewish city. These records, the Judenkartei, the Jewish Register or File, begin in 1645. Work on creating this file had started before the Nazis even came to power under a private initiative which sought to uncover proof of the Jewish ancestry of university and college professors and judges. By 1932, this file had already collected 400,000 genealogical records of Jews in Germany. The constantly expanding file was taken over and expanded in 1933 by the Reichsstelle für Sippenforschung (RfS), renamed Reichssippenamt on the 12^th of November 1940, the Reich Office for Clan Research.

Readers who have accessed ancestral records for their German Jewish relatives may have noticed notations in the upper left- or right-hand corners or along the margins of vital documents. Beginning August 17, 1938, Jews had to add “Israel” (males) (Figure 1) or “Sara” (females) (Figure 2) as their middle name. Similarly, on passports, which allowed German Jews to leave Germany, when they still could, but not return, a large “J” was imprinted. (Figure 3) These and other measures instituted by the Nazis were intended to officially separate Jews from the German populace. While German Jews still converted after the Nazis seized power, as I will illustrate in the case of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, readers can easily surmise this was futile.

Figure 1. Birth certificate for my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck showing he was born on the 17th of August 1895 in Leobschutz, Germany [today: Głubczyce, Poland], with a notation added by the Nazis on the 31st of January 1939 in the upper righthand corner adding the middle name “Israel” to identify him as Jewish

Figure 2. Birth certificate for my second cousin once removed Susanne Dorothea Neisser showing she was born in Stettin, Germany [today: Szczecin, Poland] on the 30th of July 1899, with a notation dated the 10th of January 1939 adding “Sara” to her name to identify her as Jewish

Figure 3. 1939 passport for one of my distant relatives Fritz Hirsch with a big red “J” and “Israel” added to his name, both indicating he was Jewish (photo courtesy of Roberto Hirsch)

As I contemplated the question of conversion from Judaism among my immediate and extended ancestors, I began to wonder what evidence I could find in the ancestral records proving my relatives’ “alienation” from their Jewish roots. In my limited experience, finding such documents is not easy. In the case of some of my ancestors but not all of them, conversion was a “pragmatic” decision, as I’ve alluded to. Again, citing the poet Heinrich Heine, he declared that he was “merely baptized, not converted.” Quoting from a letter he once wrote:

“From my way of thinking you can well imagine that baptism is an indifferent affair. I do not regard it as important even symbolically, and I shall devote myself all the more to the emancipation of the unhappy members of our race. Still I hold it as a disgrace and a stain upon my honor that in order to obtain an office in Prussia—in beloved Prussia—I should allow myself to be baptized.”

Figure 4. My great-great-uncle Dr. Josef Pauly (1843-1916)

In re-reading the memoirs of Dr. Josef Pauly (Figure 4), husband of my great-great-aunt, who had likely been baptized Catholic as a child and whose recollections I discussed in Post 56, I wonder whether he may not have been implying the same sentiment when he wrote:

“I believe in God as the creative force of the universe, to an immanent [NOTE: (of God) permanently pervading or sustaining the universe] consciousness, to a moral world order, to the invisible God of the world as the Jewish religion has revealed it first, whose goodness is identical with the eternal laws.”

As I began to search through my files and recollect what evidence for conversion I had found for my ancestors, I initially concluded that most of the “proof” was indirect, such as in the case of my father which I discussed in Post 38. However, upon further consideration, I realize I have found considerably more direct validation than I initially thought. Beyond the obvious instances where the graves or burial records of my forefathers interred in existing and destroyed Jewish cemeteries survive, proving they did not convert, I found corroboration for several ancestors confirming they were baptized.

The earliest instance is the case of my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918). (Figure 5) On ancestry, I uncovered a record showing she was baptized in Dresden, Germany, 21 years after her birth, on the 13^th of April 1855. (Figure 6) This was undoubtedly in anticipation of her marriage to Leopold Julius Wolf von Koschembahr (Figure 7) later that year on the 26^th of September 1855 in Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, London, England, an Anglican church. (Figure 8)

Figure 5. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer (1834-1918) in 1904, the earliest of my ancestors for whom I could find evidence of conversion from Judaism

Figure 6. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s baptismal record showing she was born on the 9th of September 1834 in Leschnitz, Germany [today: Leśnica, Poland] and was baptized on the 13th of April 1855 in Dresden, Germany

Figure 7. My great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer’s husband Leopold von Koschembahr (1829-1874) in Halberstadt, Germany in approximately 1860

Figure 8. Cover page from ancestry.com proving my great-great-aunt Amalie Mockrauer married her husband Leopold von Koschembahr on the 26th of September 1855 in Saint Clements Danes, Westminister, London, England, several months after she was baptized in Dresden

Initially, I thought Leopold von Koschembahr was also of Jewish origin because his grandson, Gerhard Bruck von Koschembahr (i.e., Gerhard’s father, Wilhelm Bruck, took his baroness wife’s surname) (Figure 9), departed Germany for the United States via Switzerland in 1938 with his 12 children. However, I learned from a New York Times article dated the 2^nd of October 1938 that Gerhard departed Germany NOT on account of his grandfather’s Jewish roots but because his great-grandmother, on his mother’s side, was non-Aryan. (Figure 10) This gives credence to the concern descendants of Jews whose ancestors had long ago converted or had never converted felt when the Nazis started tracing their ancestral origins. In the case of Leopold von Koschembahr, I found his baptismal record showing he was baptized on the 5^th of December 1829 (Figures 11a-b), proving he was not Jewish at birth. As readers can discern from this example, confirming or refuting the Jewish origins of one’s ancestors can be like solving a complex puzzle.

Figure 9. Amalie and Leopold von Koschembahr’s grandson, Gerhard Bruck-von Koschembahr (1885-1961), who I initially thought was a converted Jew

Figure 10. New York Times article dated the 2nd of October 1938 confirming that Gerhard von Koschembahr left Germany because his great-grandmother on his mother’s side, Therese Graetzer (1809-1883), was non-Aryan

Figure 11a. Cover page from ancestry.com of Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

Figure 11b. Leopold von Koschembahr’s baptismal record, showing he was baptized on the 5th of December 1829 in Magdeburg, Germany

Moving on to other family members, let me briefly discuss the evidence for conversion for my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, my uncle by blood Dr. Fedor Bruck, my father Dr. Otto Bruck, and Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the great-grandfather of a fourth cousin.

The Centrum Judaicum Foundation is housed in the New Synagogue Berlin which was consecrated on the Jewish New Year in 1866, at which time it became the largest Jewish house of worship with its 3,200 seats. While the synagogue was spared major damage on “Kristallnacht,” it was severely damaged by Allied bombing during WWII. In 1958, the main room of the synagogue was demolished, so that today only the parts of the building closest to the street remain structurally intact.

Documents addressing the history of Jews in and around Berlin are archived there, including surviving records on conversions that took place in the city. In the case of my uncle by marriage Dr. Franz Müller, married to my aunt Susanne Müller née Bruck murdered in Auschwitz, the Centrum Judaicum has an index card on file indicating he converted on the 25^th of November 1901. This did not prevent him being dismissed from his position as Humboldt University professor when the Nazis came to power in 1933 in accordance with their Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.

In the instance of my fourth cousin’s great-grandfather, Dr. Adalbert Bruck, the Centrum Judaicum could find nothing in their archives about him, so referred my cousin to the Evangelische Zentralarchiv in Berlin, the Protestant Central Archive in Berlin. In principle records of all Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are kept here, though many did not survive WWII. According to a letter sent to my cousin, Dr. Adalabert Bruck’s record survives indicating he converted on the 27^th of November 1890; however, his wife Anna Bruck née Flatow’s information survives only indirectly in the form of a 1930 document showing she supposedly converted on the 17^th of February 1900. (Figures 12a-b)

Figure 12a. Letter to my fourth cousin from the Protestant Central Archive confirming the conversion information they have in their archives on his ancestor, Dr. Adalbert Bruck and his wife, Anna Bruck née Flatow

Figure 12b. Translation of letter from the Protestant Central Archive

The conversion of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck, who has been the subject of several Blog posts because of his incredible tale of survival in Berlin during the entirety of WWII thanks to family and “silent heroes,” adds another element to my uncle’s compelling story. The register documenting his conversion survives and indicates he was baptized in Berlin on the 11^th of June 1939 at the Messias Kapelle, a Lutheran Church. (Figures 13a-b, 14) Two godparents are named in the register, a “Herr Engelbert Helwig” and a “Herr Roderich von Roy.” Ancestry shows Englebert Helwig to have been a Holocaust survivor, and Roderich von Roy to have been born on the 3^rd of August 1895, exactly two weeks before my uncle. Did my uncle know these people beforehand, or were they just random parishioners who attended the Messias Kappelle selected to be his godparents? We may never know.

Figure 13a. Left page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s record showing he was baptized on the 11th of June 1939 in the Messias Kapelle

Figure 13b. Right page of my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s baptismal record

Figure 14. Entrance to the Messias Kapelle today

Lutheran is a denomination among the Protestant, in fact it is the oldest of the denominations to break away from Catholicism and is traced to the founder of the movement, Martin Luther of Germany. (Figure 15)

Figure 15. Visual depiction of the denominations of Christianity

Hoping to find a picture of the Messias Kapelle, I did a Google query and stumbled upon a fascinating article written by Christiane Jurik, Editor-in-Chief of Ariel Ministries, discussing the origins of the Messias Kapelle and its role in German Jewish baptisms. I quote:

“Historically, most baptized Jews in Germany joined the Lutheran Church. There, even those who were true believers in Yeshua were mostly met with indifference; sometimes with suspicion; or worst, with anti-Semitism. In order to avoid this treatment, some Jewish believers started looking for places of worship where they could stay among themselves. In 1901, the Berlin Society purchased a property in one of the most urban boroughs of the city, called Prenzlauer Berg. The ministry not only moved its headquarters to the building but soon started construction work of what became known as the Messias Kapelle (‘Messiah Chapel’). Three days before Christmas of 1902, the chapel opened its doors to the Jewish believers of Berlin.

While the goal of the Berlin Society had been to offer a haven for Jewish believers, its work was closely affiliated with the Lutheran Church. In fact, the chapel officially belonged to the union of Protestant churches that also included the Confessing Church, whose most famous member was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, in 1930, the Lutheran Church revoked its support of the work of the Berlin Society and withdrew its pastors from the chapel. From then on, the Messias Kapelle was run by laymen.

In 1935, the Lutheran Synod forbade the baptizing of Jewish people. One of the pastors in Berlin expressed the general sentiment: ‘I am convinced that the family who told me it would be a horrible thought for them that the hand that baptized a Jew would touch their child is not alone.’

Yet not everyone obeyed the new directives of the Synod. The Messias Kapelle at this point separated itself completely from any state-run institution and in turn became the most important place of Messianic baptism in Berlin. According to the baptismal records of the time, over 700 German Jews got baptized there in the years between 1933 and 1940.

On November 11, 1938, during the Kristallnacht, the Messias Kapelle and the seat of the Berlin Society were trashed by the Nazis. Still, it would take until January of 1941 for the ministry and the chapel to be officially closed permanently. Ten months later, the first deportation of Jewish people began in Berlin. Records prove that of the 700 Jewish believers who had been baptized in the Messias Kapelle after 1933, 86 were hauled off to the ghettos of Lodz, Riga, Minsk, and Warsaw. Only two of them survived the Holocaust. It is unknown what happened to the rest of the congregation.”

A few observations. Among the survivors baptized in the Messias Kapelle was my uncle who lived until 1982. Beyond the obvious interest in self-preservation for the 700 or so Jews who got baptized in the Messias Kapelle during the Nazi era, the fact they could be baptized here as late as 1939, worship among other Jewish converts, and be told about the Jewish Messiah may have had appeal. While it’s unclear whether the chapel has been deconsecrated, the author of the above quote tells us that a marketing and public relations firm now owns it and that the worship hall, altar, and a marble relief resembling a Temple survive. It’s sad this is not a recognized historic monument.

Growing up my father never spoke about religion and religion was never part of my upbringing. In fact, I was baptized as a Catholic by my grandparents at six years of age in Lyon, France, at the request of my parents almost as an afterthought, hoping it might protect me in the event of another Holocaust. However, as most readers will surmise, as a half-Jew, I would have been considered a mischlinge of the first degree according to the Nuremberg Laws. Not good enough to survive being murdered.

Aware my father had attended dental school in Berlin, I checked with the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin to ascertain whether they might have a record of my father’s conversion, but they do not. Knowing my father’s penchant for procrastinating, I have always suspected my father never placed a high priority on getting baptized and converting until it became an absolute necessity. And, in my opinion, that only became necessary after he moved to the town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] in the Free State of Danzig where he opened his dental practice in 1932. As I discussed in Post 38, the evidence for my father’s conversion comes in the form of a receipt for payment of quarterly church taxes to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof. (Figure 16)

Figure 16. Document found among my father’s papers initially thought to be a dental invoice later determined to be a receipt for payment in 1936 of Church Tax to the Evangelische Kirche in Tiegenhof

Figure 17. My second cousin twice removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937), in his WWI military dress uniform

My second cousin twice-removed, Dr. Walter Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 17), subject of several recent Blog posts is thought to have converted in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Dr. Barbara Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska, professor of dentistry at the University of Wrocław, who has written about Dr. Bruck, cites a file from the University’s archives saying he converted in 1916 (i.e., University file: sygn. S99, s. 62, nr sprawy AU – 481/46/2001). As we speak, I am working with one of Dr. Bruziewicz-Mikłaszewska’s colleagues to obtain verification of the date of Dr. Bruck’s baptism. Unlike his father and grandfather, who are buried in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Walter’s place of internment in Wrocław is unknown but was undoubtedly in a Christian cemetery that likely no longer exists.

As I mentioned above, in principle all surviving records of Jewish conversions to Christianity in Berlin are archived at the Evangelische Zentralarchiv. For conversions that took place outside of Berlin, however, there is no central repository of this information that I am aware of. Thus, the only possibility of tracking down comparable information for one’s Jewish ancestors is to know the town and parish church where the baptism occurred, and then hope the registers have survived.

REFERENCES

Bruziewicz Mikłaszewska, Barbara. Outline of the history of university dentistry in Breslau/Wrocław. [Polish: Zarys dziejów uniwersyteckiej stomatologii we Wrocławiu]. 2010, University of Wrocław, PhD.

Hertz, Deborah. How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin. Yale University Press, 2009.

Jurik, Christiane. “In the Eye of the Storm: Messianic Believers in Nazi Germany.” Ariel Magazine, Winter 2019, www.ariel.org/magazine/a/in-the-eye-of-the-storm-messianic-believers-in-nazi-germany

Kirshner, Sheldon. “Historian Studies Phenomenon of Conversion in Germany.” Canadian Jewish News, 17 January 2008.

POST 79: DR. OTTO BRUCK’S PATH TO THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION

Note: Beginning with this post, I shift to the timing and chain of events that led to my father’s enlistment in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938, followed in an upcoming post by a discussion of my father’s time in this French military unit.

Post 71: A Day in The Life of My Father, Dr. Otto Bruck—22^nd of August 1930

Figure 1. My father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, daughter of Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein, in Zoppot, Free City of Danzig [today: Sopot, Poland] on the 8th of March 1929

Figure 2. My father’s first cousin, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, daughter of Rudolf and Hedwig Löwenstein, in Danzig [today: Gdansk, Poland]

My father received his dental accreditation from the University of Berlin’s Zahnheilkunde Institut, Dentistry Institute, on the 31^st of May 1930. Soon thereafter, he moved to the Free City of Danzig, Freie Stadt Danzig in German, where he apprenticed with a Dr. Fritz Bertram. I think his relocation to Danzig may have been related to the fact that he was very close to his aunt and uncle, Rudolf Löwenstein and Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck, and two of their three children, Jeanne (Figures 1-2) and Heinz Löwenstein, who all lived there. In Post 71, I described the tragic circumstances of Rudolf Löwenstein’s death in a plane crash in then-Czechoslovakia on the 22^nd of August 1930, when my father resided with him and his family.

By April 1932, my father had gained enough technical expertise to strike out independently, and open his own dental practice in the nearby town of Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland]. While this was undoubtedly a signature achievement in my father’s life, slightly more than eight months later, on the 30^th of January 1933, Hitler was appointed Germany’s Chancellor by the President Paul von Hindenburg, and then became Führer in 1934. An October 1934 picture of the office building in Tiegenhof where my father lived and had his practice was festooned with Nazi flags (Figure 3), clearly demonstrating the predictable impact of political developments in Germany on the Free City of Danzig and the looming danger. By April 1937, my father was devoid of clients, so he shuttered his practice. Judging from the dates on his photos, he appears to have stayed in Tiegenhof until fall of that year.

Figure 3. Office building at Markstrasse 8 in Tiegenhof in 1934 where my father had his dental practice and living quarters, festooned with Nazi flags

I think my father then briefly went to Berlin to “lose” himself in the relative anonymity of a larger city. His adored sister Susanne and her husband, Dr. Franz Müller, had already fled Berlin in favor of Italy by March 1936. However, his older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, who would ride out the entire war in Berlin hidden by friends and family, was still practicing dentistry in Berlin in 1937 under the auspices of a non-Jewish dentist when this was still feasible. Perhaps, my father stayed briefly with his brother, but, regardless, by March 1938, his dated pictures place him in Vienna, Austria between the 5^th and 9^th of March. (Figure 4) His ultimate destination though was Fiesole, Italy, where his sister and brother-in-law were then living. His entered Italy on the 10^th of March 1938 but arrived in Fiesole only on the 26^th of March (Figure 5), spending the intervening period skiing in the Dolomites.

Figure 4. Series of photos my father took between the 5th and 9th of March 1938 in Vienna, Austria, after he’d fled Germany that month

Figure 5. Page from the registration log archived at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my father’s arrival in Italy on the 10th of March 1938 and in Fiesole on the 26th of March for a planned two-month stay

During Italy’s Fascist era, all out-of-town visitors were required to appear with their hosts at the Municipio, City Hall, provide their names, show their identity papers, indicate their anticipated length of stay, and complete what was called a “Soggiorno degli Stranieri in Italia,” or “Stay of Foreigners in Italy.” The surviving records for Fiesole are today kept at a branch of the Municipio called the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive.” (Figure 6) These registration logs and forms, while highly intrusive, are enormously informative for doing genealogical research, uncovering names of visitors, and establishing timelines for these guests. (Figure 7)

Figure 6. My friend, Ms. Lucia Nadetti (left), Director of Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” with another friend, Ms. Giuditta Melli, in June 2015 at the Municipal Archive

Figure 7. My wife, Ann Finan, researching historic records at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale” in June 2014

While 1938 was hardly a serene time, by June or July, my father nonetheless decided to tour parts of Italy and adjoining Switzerland, including Florence, Rome (Figure 8), Pompeii (Figure 9), Naples, Sorrento, the Island of Ischia, and Ascona; his travels lasted until September. By the 15^th of September 1938, he was back in Fiesole according to a surviving immigration register on file at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale.” This record indicates an anticipated two-week visit, though it’s not clear how long my dad actually stayed. (Figure 10)

Figure 8. My father’s August 1938 photo of the Colosseum in Rome

Figure 9. My father’s August 1938 photo of the “Dancing Faunus Statue of Pompeii”

Figure 10. Page from the registration log archived at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my father’s return to Fiesole on the 15th of September 1938 for a planned two week stay

Let me briefly digress and provide some historical context for what was happening in Italy at the time. On the 9^th of May 1938, Adolph Hitler had visited Florence escorted by Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, and toured some historic sites. Soon after, on July 14, 1938, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.” Basically, this Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race of which Jews were no part. Between September 2, 1938 and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy.

It quickly became apparent to my father, his sister, her husband, and my grandmother, Else Bruck née Berliner, also living in Fiesole, that remaining in Italy was no longer possible. Again, according to records on file at Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” my aunt and uncle are deleted from the population records of the city, in Italian “Data dalle quale decorre la cancellazione dal Registro di popolazione,” beginning on the 16^th of September 1938. (Figures 11-12) Thus, my father’s arrival and registration in Fiesole the day before was likely timed to help his relatives pack up and leave, though he may have stayed longer.

Figure 11. Emigration record from Fiesole’s “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” showing my aunt and uncle, Susanne and Franz Müller, were deleted from the population records of Fiesole on the 16th of September 1938

Figure 12. My aunt and uncle, Susanne and Franz Müller, standing by the entrance to the Villa Primavera in Fiesole, where they lived, perhaps around the time they permanently moved to France in September 1938

The next stop along my family’s odyssey was Fayence, France, roughly 42 miles west of Nice, France; Fayence is one of the “perched villages” overlooking the plain between the southern Alps and the Esterel massif. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller’s daughter by his first marriage, Margit Mombert née Müller, lived there with her husband, brother-in-law, and mother-in-law on a fruit farm the family owned. I discussed this in Post 22 so refer readers to that publication. I place my aunt, uncle and grandmother’s arrival in Fayence towards the end of September 1938. While the collaborationist government of Vichy France would not be established in the southern part of metropolitan France until July of 1940, my ancestors’ recent displacements and the reach of the Nazis would have made them extremely nervous. Clearly, in the case of my father, riding out the impending storm in France or elsewhere in Europe was not a viable option at the age of only 31.

Coincidentally, by 1938, but likely years before, his widowed aunt Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck and her two children, discussed above, with whom my father had lived in Danzig between 1930 and 1932, had relocated to Nice, France. (Figure 13) Hedwig’s daughter, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein (1902-1986), was close to my father throughout his life. Realizing the danger he was in, she advised him to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, which is precisely what my father, Dr. Otto Bruck, did.

Figure 13. In March 1946, my father’s widowed aunt Hedwig Löwenstein née Bruck with her three grown children, Hansi, Heinz and Fedor (seated), after she’d immigrated to Nice, France

In one of my father’s surviving post-WWII letters, dated the 7^th of January 1946, he requested a Carte d’identité, an identify card, from the Department of Alpes-Maritimes in southeast France, where Nice is located. In this letter, my father provides some dates that help establish where he was at various times before and during the war. According to this correspondence, by October 21, 1938, my father had arrived in Paris, France, where he applied for admittance to the French Foreign Legion, to which he was conscripted on the 9^th of November 1938 for a five-year hitch. So far, I’ve been unable to determine my father’s whereabouts between September 16, 1938, when he was in Fiesole, Italy, and October 21, 1938, when he arrived in Paris.

The French Foreign Legion is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831. The Legion is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. My father was given a French nom de guerre, an alias, “Marcel Berger.” (Figures 14a-b) From the French Foreign Legion, I was able to obtain my father’s “Livret Matricule,” military file, which states that Marcel Berger was born on the 6^th of January 1907 in Strasbourg in the French Department of Bas-Rhin, and that his profession was “Chirurgien dentist,” dental surgeon. (Figure 15) While my father’s profession is correctly indicated, he was in fact born on the 16^th of April 1907 in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. My father’s fluency in French would have afforded him a measure of protection had he been taken prisoner.

Figure 14a. Front side of my father’s dog tag from the French Foreign Legion with his “nom de guerre,” “Marcel Berger”

Figure 14b. Back side of my father’s dog tag from the French Foreign Legion indicating he was supposedly born in Strasbourg, France on the 6th of January 1907

Figure 15. The cover page of my father’s “Livret Matricule,” military file, from the French Foreign Legion showing, among other things, his “nom de guerre,” “Marcel Berger,” and his enlistment date, the 9th of November 1938

Readers may think the title of this post somewhat odd, as though to imply that my father’s enlistment in the French Foreign Legion was somehow preordained. While my father was very much inclined to believe in kismet, fate, I am a strong believer that you control your own destiny. That said, realistically, without an exit visa to a “sanctuary” country a Jewish person’s options would have been extremely limited in the lead-up to WWII, so my father was fortunate the French Foreign Legion was open to him and that he was unmarried and had no children to look after.

In the following post, I will provide substantially more background on the history of the French Foreign Legion during WWII to account for the Legion’s “conflicted” role at the time and explain how my father was able to travel to France in 1941 “across enemy lines” to visit his beloved sister Susanne one final time.