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POST 167: MY COUSIN TOM BROOK’S FAMILY EPHEMERA

Note: In this post, I discuss the contents of a collection of photographs shared with me by one of my fourth cousins, Tom Brook. They shed light on some of our mutual ancestors and give a unique glimpse into his father’s WWII deployments, primarily in Egypt, Libya, and India.

Periodically a relative or acquaintance will share with me their collection of family photos or memorabilia. Acknowledging that some readers will consider this akin to a friend inflicting their vacation photos on you, to me this is like a treasure hunt particularly when the pictures are unlabeled and I’m able to identify the subjects through logical deduction or by comparison to labeled images. Frequently, knowing the owner’s ancestral lineage helps; if they’re related to me, I’m often able to identify their ancestors because of my familiarity with our family tree.

On other occasions, the photo collections provide historic glimpses of well-known events or places or, alternatively, off-the-beat locations. It is worth remembering that World War II was a global conflict that took soldiers to often remote spots around the world. In the case of my own father’s surviving photos of his time in the French Foreign Legion while stationed in North Africa, mostly in Algeria, I’ve been told they’re unique. I would say the same regarding the collection I’m about to discuss.

My wife Ann and I recently traveled to New York to meet my fourth cousin Tom Brook and his husband Sam Wahl. (Figure 1) Beyond the fact we’d never previously met, and I was curious to make their acquaintance, Tom had mentioned his father Casper Bruck’s album of photos which he’d expressed an interest in showing me. This is an assemblage I was particularly intrigued to peruse given his family’s connection to Breslau, Germany [today: Wrocław, Poland] where multiple of my own ancestors also hail from. Some of our most accomplished mutual ancestors come from Breslau, several of whom are buried in the still-existing Old Jewish Cemetery [Polish: Stary Cmentarz Żydowski we Wrocławiu]. (Figure 2) Relevantly, both of our families changed their surname to “Brook” upon their arrival in Anglo-Saxon countries.

Figure 1. From left to right, my wife Ann, Tom Brook, me, and Sam Wahl at the Café Luxembourg in New York City in September 2024

Figure 2. The restored headstones of Jonas and Julius Bruck and their respective wives in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland

I previously introduced Tom Brook to readers in Post 143 when I discussed his role as one of the first reporters on the scene after John Lennon was shot in December 1980 outside The Dakota Building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an event he is invariably asked about on milestone anniversaries of this tragic event. Like then, Tom still works for the BBC as the host of a weekly show called “Talking Movies,” where he reviews new releases and interviews actors.

Like other cousins I’ve discovered around the world, Tom found me through my blog when he asked if we are related. As I happened to have him in my ancestral tree, though with no details, I explained we are fourth cousins. Serendipitously, I was more recently contacted by Tom’s second cousin from Wolverhampton, England, Helen Winter, née Renshaw (Figure 3), whom I’ve previously mentioned to readers as the source of lots of family ephemera. While Helen and Tom have never linked up, Helen’s older sister Anna Renshaw clearly recalls meeting him as a child in England where both grew up. As further evidence of my ancestral connection to Tom, my fourth cousin twins (Figure 4) from Sydney, Australia, also born in England, whom I mirthfully refer to as “my movie star cousins,” are Tom’s third cousins.

Figure 3. Tom Brook’s second cousin Helen Winter, née Renshaw in Attingham Park near Wolverhampton, England

Figure 4. My “movie star” fourth cousins, Fran and Michelle Newman

In any case, during our recent encounter in New York Tom showed me his father’s photo album along with an unusually decorated cigar box that belonged to one of his ancestors, likely his great-grandfather (Figure 5); a little more on this box below. Tom allowed me to borrow the album so I could duplicate the photographs for later study. This has been invaluable because with Helen Winter’s help, together we’ve managed to identify the subjects in a few images that Tom specifically wondered about. Also, photos detailing Casper Bruck’s deployment during the war capture rare images of a few places that are today household names.

Figure 5. One side of a decorated box in Tom Brook’s possession that may once have belonged to his great-grandfather, Felix Friedrich Bruck

In this post, I’ll discuss a few family photos but will mostly highlight places where Casper was deployed during the war; I think this will be of broader interest to my audience. These images provide an opportunity to discuss what was going on in the war and its immediate aftermath at the time Casper took his photographs.

Given that the album belonged to Tom’s father, not unexpectedly, most images show Casper and his immediate family at various stages of their lives. In terms of family photos, I’ll address mostly those whose subjects were unknown to Tom.

One of the oldest photos in Tom’s collection is an undated Daguerreotype-like image of a youngish man with three children (Figure 6); as readers can make out, the figures are darkly illuminated. Helen Winter and I were able to determine this is Tom’s great-grandfather, Felix Friedrich Bruck (1843-1911) and his three children, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), Margot Giles, née Bruck (1879-1949), and Werner Friedrich August Bruck (1880-1945). Eberhard Bruck and Werner Bruck are, respectively, Helen Winter and Tom Brook’s grandfathers as young children. Margot, the only daughter, is distinguishable because she is holding a doll. A later photo dated 1930 shows Eberhard Bruck and his daughter, also named Margot (1917-1985), and Werner Bruck (Figure 7); Margot is Helen Winter’s mother.

Figure 6. Tom Brook’s great-grandfather, Felix Friedrich Bruck (1843-1911) with his three children, from left to right, Werner Friedrich Bruck (1880-1945), Margot Bruck (1879-1949), and Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960). The photo postdates the death of Felix’s wife, Anna Elise Bruck, née Prausnitz (1853-1880)

Figure 7. A 1930 photo of Eberhard Friedrich Bruck, his daughter Margot Bruck, and Eberhard’s brother, Werner Friedrich Bruck

The youngest of Felix Bruck’s children, Werner Bruck was born on the 23rd of August 1880, and his mother, Anna Elise Bruck, née Prausnitz (1853-1880) died a week later, perhaps a result of childbearing complications. Obviously, the Daguerreotype-like picture, when Werner appears to be only a year or two old, does not include his mother. The picture clearly captures the weight of her death on the family, where all look immeasurably sad. Elsewhere among Tom’s photos is a stand-alone picture of his great-grandmother. (Figure 8)

Figure 8. Tom Brook’s great-grandmother, and Felix Friedrich Bruck’s wife, Anna Elise Prausnitz, who died a week after her last offspring died

Felix Bruck never remarried. Elsewhere in Tom’s album are a few untitled pictures of him later in life where he is portlier and more difficult to recognize compared to when he was younger. (Figures 9-10) After studying the setting and comparing the photos to similar ones among Helen’s ephemera, there is no doubt the photos depict Felix. Margot Bruck was the first of his children to bear him a grandchild, Otto Giles (1904-1980), and a photo survives of Otto as a child seated on his grandfather’s lap in his study. (Figure 11)

Figure 9. A portlier version of Tom Brook’s grandfather Felix Friedrich Bruck in 1910

Figure 10. Another picture of Felix Bruck later in life

Figure 11. Felix Bruck in his library with his first grandchild Otto Giles seated on his lap

The surviving photos taken in Felix’s study are particularly intriguing to me. Hanging on the wall above his desk are portraits of unidentified individuals I’m almost certain depict older Bruck ancestors, possibly Felix’s grandparents. (Figure 12) Unfortunately, I have no portraits to compare them against. Helen’s collection of photos includes a comparable one of Felix seated in his study with his daughter Margot standing aside him with those same portraits visible. (Figure 13)

Figure 12. A photo from Tom Brook’s collection of Felix Bruck in his study with portraits of early Bruck ancestors believed to be hanging on the wall above him

Figure 13. A similar photo from Helen Winter’s collection of Felix Bruck in his study with his daughter Margot Bruck standing alongside him

Beyond the pictures of Tom’s great-grandparents, Tom’s album includes pictures of his grandparents (Figure 14), parents (Figure 15-16), aunt and uncle (Figure 17), and cousins. Apart from casual family acquaintances, Helen and I have been able to identify most of the subjects. A particularly endearing photo was taken in 1928 of Casper with his younger brother Peter. (Figure 18)

Figure 14. Tom Brook’s grandparents, Werner Friedrich Bruck and Charlotte Antonie Bruck, née Cörper in 1919

Figure 15. Tom Brook’s father, Casper Bruck

Figure 16. Tom Bruck’s mother, Dinah Brook, née Fine

Figure 17. Tom Brook’s uncle, Peter Bruck

Figure 18. Tom Brook’s father, Casper Bruck with his younger brother Peter in 1928

Let me shift now to Casper Bruck’s intriguing wartime images.

The individual pages in Casper photo album typically note the year(s) and place(s) the pictures were taken. Casper Bruck’s album includes a page of photos taken in El Alamein, Egypt, and in Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya in 1942-43. El Alamein is a town located on the Mediterranean Sea 66 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt, while Benghazi and Tripoli are in Libya further west but also along the Mediterranean. A little historic context is useful to understand Casper’s pictures.

The Second Battle of El Alamein was fought near the western frontier of Egypt between the 23rd of October and the 4th of November 1942. El Alamein was the climax and turning point of the North African campaign during WWII and the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign. The Axis army of Germany and Italy suffered a decisive defeat at the hands of the British Eighth Army that prevented them from penetrating into Egypt. This kept the Suez Canal in Allied hands and prevented the full-scale invasion and seizure of the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields.

In a 13-day battle the Axis Panzerarmee Afrika was crushed and forced to retreat from Egypt and Libya to the borders of Tunisia. The Axis fought a defensive campaign in Tunisia into 1943. Although they engaged in a tenacious rearguard action, the Axis forces were in an impossible position. In May 1943, they were forced to surrender, with the loss of around 240,000 prisoners.

Casper’s album separately includes a sequence of photos taken in Cairo; I can’t say for sure when they were taken because the last numeral on the date is hidden but I think they predate his pictures from El Alamein, meaning they were likely taken earlier in 1942 before the Second Battle of El Alamein. The images from Cairo are interesting more for what they don’t show, namely, the pyramids outside the city; curiously, several famous mosques are instead illustrated. (Figure 19)

Figure 19. Casper Bruck’s photo of the Al-Nour Mosque in Abbassia, Cairo, Egypt

Turning to Casper’s photos of El Alamein, one image stands out. In the foreground is a corrugated metal sign reading “El Alamein Salvage,” and in the near background is written “Springbok Road.” (Figure 20) I found an identical copy of this image that sold on eBay for £6.99. I imagine this was a popular photo spot, and that multiple examples of this picture survive in the decaying albums of former English soldiers involved in the Western Desert Campaign. Several of Casper’s photos appear to show German and Italian abandoned war materiels waiting to be broken up for scrap metal, ergo the salvage effort. (Figure 21)

Figure 20. Casper Bruck’s photo of the corrugated metal sign pointing towards El Alamein’s salvage yard

Figure 21. Expended artillery shells waiting to be recycled at El Alamein

Another intriguing photo in Casper’s album is simply labeled “ITIES.” (Figure 22) Having no idea what this signifies, I eventually discovered this is derogatory English slang for Italians. The photo clearly shows Italian prisoners of war. What I learned while researching this image is that unlike the Germans whose retreat from El Alamein was more orderly, thereby limiting the number of their surviving soldiers captured, their Italian allies lacked motor transport to evacuate their withdrawing units thus resulting in more Italians being swept up by the British. Regardless, by November 4 the motorized elements of the Axis were in full retreat, and because of the sluggish British follow-up they were allowed to escape virtually unscathed to Tunisia.

Figure 22. One of Casper Bruck’s photos he captioned “ITIES,” derogatory English slang for Italians, showing Italian prisoners of wars captured during the “Second Battle of El Alamein”

The page on which Casper’s pictures of Benghazi and Tripoli are found is labelled “MEF 1942-43,” which stands for “Middle East Forces 1942-43.” (Figure 23) It’s not clear that Casper was in one of vanguard British infantry divisions that participated in the Tunisian campaign that ultimately defeated the Axis forces there in 1943. Photos of Casper place him in Ismailia, Cairo, and Alexcandria, Egypt between 1942 and 1945. However, this overlaps with the period between 1942 and 1946 when he was assuredly in India and Pakistan. Possibly, Casper’s regiment was duty-based in Egypt but deployed elsewhere as needed? As we speak, I’m attempting to obtain Casper’s military dossier from the United Kingdom’s Military of Defence to better understand the sequence of his deployments.

Figure 23. Page of photos from ElAlamein, Benghazi, and Tripoli captioned in the upper right-hand corner as “MEF 1942-43”

My friend Brian Cooper, an amateur English military historian who has assisted me immeasurably in learning where my father’s first cousin, Heinz Loewenstein, was incarcerated during the war, recognized that in several of Casper’s photos where he is sporting a beret, he is wearing a badge of the Glider Pilot Regiment. (Figure 24) A 1946 group picture of Casper’s regiment labeled “Sergeant’s Mess. Glider Pilot Depot” shows the regimental badge. (Figure 25) Casper’s album includes photos of him piloting his glider (Figure 26) and flying over the Indus and elsewhere. It’s obvious Casper was a glider pilot, at least in India and Pakistan. (Figure 27)

Figure 24. Casper Bruck wearing a beret with the insignia of the Glider Pilot Regiment

Figure 25. 1946 photograph of the “Sergeant’s Mess. Glider Pilot Depot” showing the regimental badge with Casper Bruck circled

Figure 26. Casper Bruck at the helm of his Waco CG-4A glider

Having never previously come across any of my distant ancestors who were glider pilots during WWII, nor photos of their activities, I did a little research. It’s quite engrossing. The most widely used glider during the war was the Waco CG-4A. Given that Casper adopted a mutt during his time in India which he named “Waco” (Figure 28) it is reasonable to assume he piloted one of these crafts.

Figure 28. The mutt Casper Bruck adopted in India he named “Waco,” likely after the Waco CG-4A glider he piloted

Gliders from India supported military operations in Burma during WWII. Special operation units battled the Japanese army in Burma attempting to reopen the Burma Road linking India and China. Waco CG-4A gliders were used to land troops, ammunition, medical supplies, and even mules to carry supplies. Significantly, in a special operations battle using gliders to fight the Japanese army in Burma, more than 9,000 fighters were dropped 165 miles behind Japanese lines.

Fascinatingly, some gliders carried up to three mules; the pilots or handlers always had a pistol at the ready to shoot any mules that went berserk. While this may sound cruel, it is important to understand that a glider is built of steel tubing and doped fabric (i.e., a textile material that is impregnated with a chemical compound, known as “dope,” the primary purpose of which is to cause shrinkage of the fabric, thus making it taut and improving the flow of air over it during flight) so that it would take little for a mule to kick out the side of a glider endangering the crew and craft.

Gliders were advantageous because they could deploy large numbers of troops quickly and accurately. Also, they could land in small, inaccessible areas where a larger aircraft couldn’t land. They were also used to transport heavier equipment that was too large for parachutes or other transport aircraft. The India-Burma campaign involved difficult terrain that made it difficult to land gliders, so they were often treated as semi-expendable.

Allied forces retrieved gliders using twin-engine transports, such as a C-47 transport planes (Figure 29), through a technique referred to as “glider snatching.” The tactic involved having the transport plane fly low to the ground and quickly hooking onto a special attachment point on the glider, essentially “snatching” it into the air without needing to land. This allowed for the retrieval of troops or supplies from a combat zone where landing might be impossible; this was referred to as a “glider snatch pick-up.” This maneuver was considered risky due to the need for precise timing and low flying altitude. The Allies also used twin-engine transports to snatch up gliders filled with wounded soldiers and fly them to hospitals.

Figure 29. A twin-engine C-47 transport pulling a tethered glider

Returning briefly to the cigar box Tom Brook showed me. (see Figure 5) I shared pictures I’d taken of it with Helen, who in turn passed it along to one of our mutual German cousins. It appears that one of the captions is the beginning of Heinrich Heine’s lyrical love poem, “Die Lorelei.” According to modern scholars, Heine is now seen as a romantic poet, for his passion, his independence of mind, and his hatred of political repression. However, he was critical of German Romanticism, which he saw as idealizing the feudal past, being a deterrent to political progress, and encouraging xenophobia. For this reason, his books were later banned by the Nazis. The inclusion of Heine’s poem on Felix Bruck’s cigar box may have signified his attachment to liberal principles.

More could certainly be gleaned from Casper’s photos, but my intent has merely been to highlight a few unique images that provide a sense of the theaters in which Casper Bruck fought. For readers holding comparable collections of family photos, military or otherwise, scrutinizing them with a hand lens will no doubt yield some intriguing finds. Personally, I repeatedly find myself returning to my father’s pictures, continually discovering something I’d previously missed.

REFERENCES

Battles of El-Alamein. Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/event/battles-of-El-Alamein

India in World War II (2024, October 17). In Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_in_World_War_II

National WWII Glider Pilots Association. 1944, India/Burma was the glider snatching capital of the world.
https://ww2gp.org/burma/buma_compulation.pdf

National WWII Glider Pilots Association. GliderPickup.
https://www.ww2gp.org/gliderpickup/

Second Battle of El Alamein (2024, December 6). In Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_El_Alamein

Tunisia 1942-1943. British Infantry Divisions. British Military History.
Docs – Tunisia 1942 – 1943 – British Infantry Divisions – British Military History

POST 148: METAPHORICALLY, THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Note: In this post, I discuss how I recently came into possession of images of ancestors from a branch of my family that originates mostly from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and learned about a memoir written by the grandfather of the English lawyer who shared these pictures.

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

POST 11, POSTSCRIPT 2: RATIBOR & BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN” HOTEL

POST 132: FATE OF THE BRUCK’S “PRINZ VON PREUßEN“ FAMILY HOTEL IN RATIBOR (RACIBÓRZ): GEOPOLITICAL FACTORS

POST 143: TOM BROOK, BBC JOURNALIST ON SCENE THE DAY JOHN LENNON DIED

A scant three months ago, on the 29^th of September 2023 to be precise, I received an email from a lawyer living in Wolverhampton in the West Midlands of England, Helen Winter, née Renshaw. (Figure 1) I say “scant” because in the short period since we’ve been in touch, we’ve already exchanged several hundred emails.

Figure 1. Helen Winter, née Renshaw in Attingham Park in Wolverhampton in 2023

In Helen’s initial missive, she explained that she is a descendant of the Bruck family and that her maternal grandfather was Professor Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960). (Figure 2) He taught law at the University of Bonn until enactment of “The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” (German: Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, shortened to Berufsbeamtengesetz) by the Nazis on the 7^th of April 1933. The primary objective of this law was to establish a “national” and “professional” civil service by dismissing certain groups of tenured civil servants, including individuals of Jewish descent and non-Aryan origins. Additionally, the law forbade Jews, non-Aryans, and political opponents from holding positions as teachers, professors, judges, or within the government. It also extended to other professions such as lawyers, doctors, tax consultants, musicians, and notaries.

Figure 2. Helen’s grandfather, Professor Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960), with his dachshund “Seppel” in 1913 in Mittenwald, Bavaria

Following Eberhard’s dismissal as university professor and confiscation of his home, he fled to the United States and wound-up teaching at Harvard University. As Helen further explained, her grandfather wrote a memoir for his daughter, Helen’s mother (Figure 3), relating the history of his branch of the Bruck family. As a Christmas gift to her nephews and nieces, Helen has slowly been translating the account. Her grandfather’s chronicle makes mention of the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel, the family business in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] owned by three generations of my family. (Figure 4) While researching the history and fate of the hotel, Helen stumbled on multiple blog posts where I made mention of the establishment.

Figure 3. Margot Renshaw, née Bruck (1917-1985), Helen’s mother and Eberhard’s daughter

Figure 4. The Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] in 1942, owned by my family for three generations from ca. 1850 until 1926

Helen has promised to share her grandfather’s translated story but has given me a preview of the brief entry her grandfather Eberhard Bruck wrote about his great-grandfather, Jacob Nathan Bruck, my great-great-great-grandfather from Ratibor. Since Jacob arguably died in 1832 or 1836 and Eberhard was born in 1877, he would not have known him personally. Eberhard’s written accounts of Jacob are likely stories he heard about him growing up and may have been clouded by the lens through which childhood memories are often remembered. In an upcoming post, I intend to discuss the meager details I’ve been able to uncover about my earliest known ancestor from Ratibor but suffice it for now to say the particulars caused me to more thoroughly investigate when the Bruck’s Hotel might have been built. These findings will be the basis for yet another post because they give insights on avenues others may want to follow in examining their own family histories.

On various occasions I’ve told readers that my ancestral tree has fewer than 1,500 names, which pales in comparison to multiple trees I’ve come across with more than 100,000 names. I use my tree mostly to orient myself to the people I write about on my blog. That said, I have people in my tree, living and deceased, whose names I’ve come across without knowing anything about them. This was the case with my fourth cousin Thomas “Tom” Friedrich Brook until he contacted me asking if we were related; I wrote about Tom in Post 143. (Figure 5) This was also true of Helen who previously existed only as a wraith. Coincidentally, Tom and Helen Winter are second cousins who’ve never met (i.e., Helen and Tom’s grandfathers were brothers), and like Tom, Helen is my fourth cousin.

Figure 5. My fourth cousin, Tom Brook (b. 1953) who coincidentally is Helen Winter’s second cousin

In conjunction with translating her grandfather’s memoirs, Helen recently obtained family documents and pictures her older sister was curating. (Figure 6) Scrutinizing these items in combination has caused Helen to become obsessed with ancestral research. I can relate!

Figure 6. Helen with her older sister Anna (right) as children (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

It is not my intention to further dwell on this branch of my family. However, as I just mentioned, I have numerous individuals in my tree I know nothing about and have no idea what they looked like. As names only, they are lifeless. Helen has been like the gift that keeps on giving because she has sent me pictures of many of my ancestors, including some of the earliest known ones from Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland]. Acquiring these visuals for my ancestral tree is like filling in my Bingo card!

Among the most beguiling images Helen sent are ones of Jacob Bruck’s son and daughter-in-law, Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (1813-1883) (Figures 7a & b-10) and Rosalie Bruck, née Marle (1817-1890) (Figures 11-12) and his famous grandson, Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902). (Figure 13) Julius is known for having designed in 1867 a water-cooled diaphanoscopic instrument for transillumination of the bladder via the rectum.

Figure 7a. Miniature painting from the 1830s of Dr. Jonas Julius Bruck (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 7b. English-language caption on the back of the miniature painting of Jonas Bruck indicating that Jonas’s wife didn’t care for the painting because she thought her womanizing husband had it done for another woman (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 8. A second painting of Dr. Jonas Bruck (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 9. Yet a third painting of Dr. Jonas Bruck (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 10. A photograph of Dr. Jonas Bruck later in life (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 11. A photograph of Dr. Jonas Bruck’s wife, Rosalie Bruck, née Marle (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 12. A second photograph of Rosalie Bruck, née Marle (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 13. A photo of the famous and fashionable Dr. Julius Bruck (1840-1902) in August 1880 (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Jonas and Julius Bruck and their respective wives are interred in a mausoleum-like structure at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland (Figure 14), and are among my only Bruck ancestors whose burial location is known. Because I am friends with the Branch Manager of the Old Jewish Cemetery, Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska (Figure 15), I shared the pictures Helen sent with her and she was thrilled to receive them since some of the people are interred in “her” cemetery.

Figure 14. The mausoleum-like structure at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław, Poland where Drs. Jonas and Julius Bruck and their respective wives are interred (photo courtesy of Dr. Renata Wilkoszewska-Krakowska)

Figure 15. Dr. Renata Wilkoszewksa-Krakowska receiving her Ph.D. diploma at the recently renovated Baroque Leopoldina Hall at the University of Wrocław, built between 1728-1732

To close this post, I will share two other images (Figures 16-17) Helen has sent over the last several weeks, like the twelve daily gifts of Christmas! Suffice it to say, my Bingo card is becoming quite full!

Figure 16. Tom Brook’s father, Casper Bruck (1920-1983) in his military uniform (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

Figure 17. Tom Brook’s father and uncle, Casper Bruck and Peter Bruck (1922-1977) as children (photo courtesy of Helen Winter)

POST 143: TOM BROOK, BBC JOURNALIST ON SCENE THE DAY JOHN LENNON DIED

Note: In this post, I discuss a fourth cousin, familiarly known to his BBC News followers as Tom Brook, who was one of the first British journalists to report live outside John Lennon’s home on New York’s Upper West Side following his murder on December 8, 1980. Serendipitously, I was recently contacted by Tom’s second cousin, a lady from Wolverhampton, England, who is currently translating her grandfather’s memoir which happens to contain references to my earliest known Bruck relatives from Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland]. In upcoming posts I will begin to discuss documents I’ve recently uncovered related to some of these early family ancestors.

An application on Geni World Family Tree allows you to enter the name of two people and have it tell you how these people are linked, often a convoluted and rather uninteresting connection. Since we’re all ultimately related, I’ve never personally availed myself of this Geni function though others whom I converse with through my blog have on occasion sent me graphics illustrating our “kinship.” I’m aware of but again have never used a different application available elsewhere that allows someone to determine how they are related to famous people. Since I’m decidedly not a “stargazer,” this is of no interest to me.

At various times, I’ve mentioned that I have a family tree on ancestry.com’s platform with between 1200 and 1300 names. While this may seem like a large number, I’ve seen trees with more than 100,000 names. As I’ve periodically told readers, I use my tree mostly to orient myself to the people about whom I write. However, regular readers know that over time I’ve started writing about much more than my own family in the interest of retaining and expanding my readership.

At the risk of offending distant relatives, I tend to lose interest in next of kin beyond fourth cousins. That said, whenever someone contacts me asking whether we might be related or telling me they think we are related, as an intellectual exercise, I will take pencil and paper to try and work out our ancestral relationship. Occasionally, this leads to hearing from people with a captivating pedigree or making engaging connections. This post is about just such a person, plus a more recent contact from a different individual who I discovered is the second cousin of the person who originally reached out to me. Long-term followers of my blog know that uncovering connections between seemingly unrelated people and events is something I find particularly engrossing about doing ancestral research.

Around Thanksgiving of 2022, I received an email from a genial journalist named Thomas Friedrich Brook (b. 1953) (Figure 1), more familiarly known as Tom, who’s lived in New York for 40 years. After stumbling on my blog, Tom wondered whether we might be related. Given our identical surnames, this makes sense. He briefly explained his lineage, telling me his father was born Caspar Friedrich Bruck (1920-1983) in Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and that his grandfather was Werner Friedrich Bruck (1880-1945) (Figure 2), a university professor in Münster, Germany until 1933 when Hitler came to power. Werner’s brother, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960) (Figure 3) was a prominent lawyer, whom Tom told me he’d met a few times growing up.

Figure 2. Tom Brook’s grandfather, Werner Friedrich Bruck (1880-1945)

Figure 3. Tom Brook’s great-uncle, Eberhard Friedrich Bruck (1877-1960)

Tom’s family settled in London in 1948, and like my family when they came to America, changed their surname to “Brook.” Following his grandfather’s divorce, Werner ended up teaching at the New School in New York until his death in 1945.

Since all of Tom’s family are in my tree, including Tom whose name I had stumbled across during my research, I was quickly able to establish that he and I are fourth cousins.

Tom Brook’s mention that he is a journalist caused me to Google his name, and I learned he is a New York-based journalist working primarily for BBC News and is seen primarily on BBC World News and BBC News Channel. He is the main presenter of its flagship cinema program “Talking Movies,” and has presented every episode since it was first broadcast in February 1999.

In a subsequent email Tom mentioned that he has a large photo album with pictures of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, plus a drawing of a visit from Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany’s last Kaiser. The existence of this drawing reaffirms my family’s connection to Kaiser Wilhelm. It’s my great hope that despite Tom’s dreadfully busy schedule, we might eventually connect so I can view his family heirlooms.

Fast forward to late September of this year when I was contacted by an English lady named Helen Winter née Renshaw (b. 1948) (Figure 4) from Wolverhampton, West Midlands, in the central part of England. Like most of my contacts these days, Helen stumbled on my blog while researching the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland], the hotel my family owned there for three generations. She told me her grandfather Eberhard Friedrich Bruck had mentioned the family hotel in a memoir he wrote for his daughter, Margot Renshaw née Bruck (1917-1985), that’s to say, Helen’s mother. This is when I realized that Eberhard happens to have been Werner Friedrich Bruck’s older brother, making Helen Winter and Tom Brook second cousins.

Figure 4. Helen Winter née Renshaw (b. 1948), Tom Brook’s second cousin and Eberhard Friedrich Bruck’s granddaughter, in Attingham Park in Shropshire, England

Becuase Tom and I have lost touch since our initial contact in 2022, I asked Helen whether she knew of her second cousin and, if so, how to contact him. She explained that while she was aware of him, they’d never met though her older sister had met Tom when she was younger. Intriguingly, she mentioned something I overlooked when initially reading Tom’s Wikipedia entry, namely, that he had been the first British journalist to report live from outside John Lennon’s home in the famed Dakota Apartment building (The Dakota – Wikipedia) on New York’s Upper West Side, following the murder of the former Beatle.

I must briefly digress. Long-term watchers of the CBS News Hour may recall Steve Hartman’s regular award-winning program “Everybody Has a Story.” For those unfamiliar with this series, Hartman would throw a dart at a map and then randomly choose an interview subject from the local phone book. Steve would uncover something alluring or unusual that had happened to that person, and fashion a human-interest story based on their conversation. Running for seven years beginning in 1998, Hartman produced more than 120 pieces in this series. While Tom Brook will better be remembered for his career as a BBC journalist and his long-running entertainment show, I couldn’t help but think that if Steve Hartman had randomly selected his name from a local phone book, Tom’s reportage of John Lennon’s murder outside his apartment building in New York City would have stood out as an unusual occurrence in his life.

On the 40^th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder, which took place on the 8^th of December 1980, Tom penned an article in which he basically conceded the point I’m making. Quoting: “Lennon continues to define my career. I have been a broadcast journalist for more than 40 years. In that time, I have filed more than 3,000 stores for BBC outlets and have interviewed most of the big names in the movie industry.

But all people want to know when they meet me is what it was like to cover John Lennon’s death.”

As we speak, Helen Winter is in the process of translating her grandfather Eberhard’s memoir. While he was a lawyer in Bonn, Germany, and like his brother Werner lost his position in 1933 when Hitler ascended to power, his memoir also discusses his early Bruck ancestors from Ratibor. Helen has teased me with some of the facsinating things Eberhard wrote about them that may reveal more about my family’s earliest connection to this town. Stay tuned.

REFERENCE

Brook, Tom (8 December 2020). “John Lennon: I Was There the Day He Died.” BBC News. London. Archived from the original on 8 December 2020.