Note: In this post, I discuss my quest to find and visit a very distinctive house my father and uncle stayed in between Christmas 1934 & New Year’s Eve 1935, located in pre-WWII Germany, now in southwest Poland.
Related Posts:
POST 15: BERLIN & MY GREAT-AUNTS FRANZISKA & ELSBETH BRUCK
POST 17: SURVIVING IN BERLIN IN THE TIME OF HITLER: MY UNCLE FEDOR’S STORY
Among my father’s surviving photos are a sequence of pictures (Figures 1a-e) he took between Christmas 1934 and New Year’s Eve 1935 when he and his brother stayed at the so- called Haus Gotzmann in Kiesewald, Germany (today: Michałowice, Poland) in Riesengebirge (today: Karkonosze, Poland; Krkonoše, Czech Republic). In English these are often referred to as the Giant Mountains, and they are in what is today southwest Poland, straddling the border with the Czech Republic.
My father was typically very good at labeling his photos but in this instance, he merely provided the name of the house and its location in Riesengebirge. None of the principals were named, although I obviously recognized my father, Dr. Otto Bruck (1907-1994) (Figure 2), and uncle, Dr. Fedor Bruck (1895-1982). (Figure 3)
Like my father, my uncle was a dentist, and prior to Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 he had his own dental practice in Liegnitz, Germany (today: Legnica, Poland), a distance as the crow flies of about 100km (62 miles) from Michałowice. (Figure 4) In 1933, the Nazi regime passed the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service,” which was the first major piece of legislation to exclude Jews from public life. While not a total ban, this law served as a foundation for hundreds of later decrees designed to systematically marginalize and persecute Jews. Shortly after passing this law, my uncle was forced to shutter his dental practice in Liegnitz.
Rightfully assuming he could continue working under the auspices of an Aryan dentist in Berlin, he relocated there hoping to lose himself in the anonymity of the larger city. This subterfuge worked until 1941, when he was told to report to “an old age transport,” which effectively meant deportation to a concentration camp. As I’ve previously written in Post 17, he went underground at this point and miraculously survived hiding in Berlin for the remainder of the war with the help of friends and family, at great personal risk to them. Only about 5,000 Jews in all of Germany survived in this manner.
Let me digress for a moment and talk briefly about Riesengebirge. Years ago, when my uncle’s illegitimate son Wolfgang Lutze (1928-2014) (Figure 5), my first cousin, was still alive, we were discussing our great-aunt, Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970). Following the Second World War, Elsbeth, who was the subject of Post 15, became a high-ranking apparatchik in the Communist East German government. (Figure 6) Like many of my Bruck family, she was born in Ratibor, Germany (today: Racibórz, Poland), and apparently worked when young in the family hotel-restaurant there, the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. My father who also later briefly worked there as a sommelier told me many of the staff were Polish workers. According to family lore, Elsbeth had an affair with one of the Polish cooks and became pregnant. I’ve seen the small headstone of her son buried in the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in East Berlin so there is no question Elsbeth had a child who died in infancy in 1908. (Figure 7)
In any case, in talking about our great-aunt, my first cousin Wolfgang used a German proverb which I understood to mean something to the effect that Elsbeth was sent away to Riesengebirge by her family after they discovered she was pregnant for a “change of scenery” or “to clear her head.” Artificial Intelligence notwithstanding I’ve been unable to source the saying. Still, I learned other things about Riesengebirge that provide some colorful background.
During the 18th century the Giant Mountains (Riesengebirge, Krkonoše, Karkonosze) became a favorite destination for tourists from the German states and the Austrian Empire. At the time the mountains were favorably compared with the Alps. I could find no widespread proverbs related to Riesengebirge (Giant Mountains). Rather, the sayings are based on the mountains’ ancient folklore, particularly the legend of the mountain spirit, Rübezahl. The aphorisms are less like traditional proverbs and more like warnings or common wisdom related to the whimsical and powerful mountain spirit (e.g., calling his name is forbidden; beware his unpredictable mood; a “test” for travelers; the origin of weather).
While there is no common German adage about going to Riesengebirge for a change of scenery or to clear one’s head, as was apparently suggested for Elsbeth, the German concept of Fernweh describes a strong yearning for distant places and a desire to travel, and Wanderlust (“wanderlust” is a German loanword) describes a general love of wandering and exploring. These words capture the feeling of wanting to go somewhere new to get away from the familiar. This said there is no evidence to suggest Elsbeth ever spent time or even visited Riesengebirge.
Let me resume my narrative. Knowing my wife and I would be visiting Racibórz and southwestern Poland, we decided to incorporate a visit to the Giant Mountains. I was curious whether the very distinctive house my father and uncle visited in Kiesewald (Michałowice) still exists. I’ve amassed a considerable amount of information looking into this question.
Fatefully, almost immediately after starting my research into Haus Gotzmann, I stumbled on a genealogist named Marta Maćkowiak (Figure 8) living in nearby Jelenia Góra, known in the German era as Hirschberg or Hirschberg im Riesengebirge. Translated as “deer mountain,” Jelenia Góra is only about 18km (11 miles) from Michałowice. (Figure 9) Marta is a professional genealogist who specializes in researching Polish and Polish Jewish genealogy. Knowing I had nothing to lose, I contacted her and explained my interest in finding the house where my father and uncle had stayed in 1934/35. She kindly responded and told me to forward my father’s pictures so that she could investigate.
While waiting for Marta to reply, I asked my teacher/historian friend Jan Krakczok (Figure 10) from Rybnik, Poland, who I also met for the first time during my recent visit to Poland, whether he could track down any additional information on the Haus Gotzmann. In a 1937 Hirschberg Address Book (i.e., “Adressbuch – Einwohnerbuch fur den Landkreis Hirschberg, 1937”) (Figure 11), Jan discovered that by 1937 a lady named Ida Mattner owned or leased the house though the home was still referred to as the “Haus Gotzmann.” By way of clarification, the 1937 Landkreis Hirschberg address book includes listings for nearby Kiesewald-Petersdorf (see explanation below about the physical relationship between these two places). Curiously, the 1937 address book does not provide an address, so the German street name was at this point still unknown to me.
Based on the current owner or lessee in 1937, I erroneously concluded the owner, known to me at this point only as “Gotzmann,” was Jewish. I assumed he had had his home confiscated or been forced to sell by the Nazis. More on this below.
Several days later Marta wrote telling me she had located the house. She explained that the house is in fact described as Haus Gotzmann and Haus Mattner, so the information Jan had found matched what Marta uncovered. Marta also sent me a link with historic postcards. (Figures 12-14)
Marta happily reported the house still exists, and that its current address is 16 ulica Sudecka in Piechowice. (Figures 15-16) Marta helpfully explained that before the war Piechowice was called Petersdorf, and that Michałowice or Kiesewald, as it was formerly known, was and is still part of Piechowice. (Figure 17) Marta also reported she was able to match some of my father’s photos with a viewpoint near Michałowice called Złoty Widok, located not far from Haus Gotzmann.
Prompted by the information Marta uncovered, I continued my investigations. I tripped over another database I’d curiously never come across, “Kartenmeister.” This is described as an online gazetteer and genealogy tool for locating towns and places that were historically in eastern Prussia and other German-speaking areas especially, but not exclusively, east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. It helps users find the current name of a place and provides historical details such as alternate names, geographical location, church parish affiliations, and population records from specific names. The database includes over 100,000 entries for towns, villages, and other points of interest like mills, battlefields, and cemeteries.
Helpfully, the Kartenmeister database includes a listing for Petersdorf (Figure 18), which as Marta explained includes Michałowice where the Haus Gotzmann was located. Conveniently, the listing included the names AND emails of six people also researching Petersdorf. (Figure 19) Unabashedly, I started working my way through the list. I struck gold when I reached a German gentleman named Holger Liebig.
Initially, I was interested in uncovering the German street for modern-day ulica Sudecka. I thought the German street name in conjunction with owner names from contemporary address books might provide clarification on the sequence of owners; this never panned out because I never found the contemporary address books from the 1930s. Regardless, in a so-called “Häuserbuch,” Holger found some very useful information. A Häuserbuch is described as a German-language term for a “house book.” In a genealogical context, it is a historical record that documents the history of properties and the families who have lived in them. A Häuserbuch can be a valuable resource for tracing a family’s lineage.
By way of clarification, a Häuserbuch is to be distinguished from a “Grundbuch,” a land register, something I’ve alluded to in some earlier posts. A Grundbuch is an official public land register with legal authority over property rights, while a Häuserbuch is a historical or informal private record of a household or family. The Grundbuch (land register) is a formal, public register maintained by a special division of the local court (Grundbuchamt) in Germany. I would later learn from Marta Maćkowiak that the Grundbuch for the Haus Gotzmann was destroyed during the war.
In any case, Holger found the Haus Gotzmann listed in the Häuserbuch under Kiesewald (Kw 73; Agnetendorfer Straße; Haus No. 136). (Figure 20) Significantly, the German street name and number are given. The Häuserbuch provides other information. It indicates that the Haus Gotzmann was built in 1933 by a man named Leo Gotzmann, a dentist from Weißwasser, a town in Upper Lusatia in eastern Saxony, Germany. Weißwasser is located about 130km (80 miles) from Piechowice. (Figure 21) Additionally, Holger learned that Dr. Gotzmann sold the house to Ida Mattner in 1940 (she first rented the house, then later bought it). Though ultimately a dead-end, the Häuserbuch further tells us that Ida Mattner was born in 1896 in Wronke (today: Wronki, Poland), about 50km (31 miles), northwest of Posen (today: Poznań, Poland).
Holger Liebig sent me a link to an old prospectus of Kiesewald showing the “Landhouse” Gotzmann as lot “Nr. 31b.” (Figure 22a) To be clear, this number is not to be confused with the regular house number but rather corresponds to the number on the prospectus identifying the lot. Note that five of the homes on the list of houses shown in the prospectus were connected to members of Holger Liebig’s family. (Figure 22b)
Having ascertained that Dr. Leo Gotzmann was, like my father and uncle, a dentist, I surmised that perhaps a professional relationship had evolved into a friendship. Having determined that Dr. Gotzmann was from Weißwasser, Saxony, I checked for address books from there from the 1930s, to no avail. I similarly checked address books from Hirschberg-Petersdorf for Dr. Gotzmann from this period, again in vain.
However, I struck gold again when I checked in ancestry.com. I found several German military cards for a Dr. Leo Johannes Gotzmann showing he was killed in action on the 6th of December 1941 in Russia. (Figure 23) What convinced me this is the same man my father and uncle was friends with is that he was born in Ratibor on the 24th of December 1892. Additionally, another card in the German military records indicated Leo was from Weißwasser, matching information found in the Kiesewald Häuserbuch. (Figure 24) He was less than three years older than my uncle, born in August 1895, and less than 15 years older than my father born in April 1907. Clearly, my family’s familiarity with Dr. Gotzmann ran through my father’s birthplace.
While I was convinced that Leo Gotzmann was Jewish, unlikely given that he died fighting for the Wehrmacht in Russia, I learned from Jan and another friend from Racibórz that even today there are non-Jewish Gotzmanns, possibly of German descent, living nearby. As we speak, I’m working on trying to obtain Leo Gotzmann’s 1892 birth certificate to confirm that he was in fact not Jewish.
I initially had difficulty reading and tracking down the place where Dr. Gotzmann was killed in action, but eventually deciphered he died at Yukhnov, Russia (German: Juchnow) (Figure 25), likely as the Germans were retreating from Russia following their rout at Stalingrad.
One of the German military cards provided Dr. Gotzmann’s wife’s forename, “Lilly” (Figure 26), but so far, I’ve been unable to track down her surname. She was shown living at Berliner Straße 2 in Weißwasser.
After learning all I was able to by resort to historic directories and documents, I tried something I’ve attempted in the past with mixed results. I wrote a “cold” letter addressed to the unknown current owner of the Haus Gotzmann. Knowing the modern-day address of the home, I merely addressed my letter to “Owner,” included my father’s sequence of photos, explained I was going to be in the area in a few weeks and expressed a hope that I could stop by and take a few pictures of the house; I also provided my contact information. More than two weeks passed before I received a gracious email from the current owner, Ms. Wiola Trybalska, telling me how touched she was by my letter and seeing my father’s old photos of her house. Not only were my wife and I invited to visit, but Wiola cordially asked us to come for lunch.
Our much-anticipated meeting took place on the 30th of August 2025. Along with Wiola, two of her three daughters, Ania and Alexandra, and a family friend Marek were present. (Figure 27) Since all our email exchanges had taken place in English, I mistakenly assumed Wiola was fluent in English. It was Ania, however, who is most fluent in English and translated.
The history of ownership of Haus Gotzmann following Ida Mattner’s proprietorship is unclear. I presume that Ms. Mattner was forced to flee once the Russians occupied Poland, as most Germans did. Possibly a Communist apparatchik occupied the house until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, at which point perhaps the home reverted to private ownership. What is clear is that Wiola’s husband inherited the house from his father, a noted Polish painter, Paweł Trybalski (1937-2023). His studio and some of the props and souvenirs brought back by Pawel’s friends on their travels used by him in some of his paintings are intact.
Wiola showed me a few old photos of people taken at the Haus Gotzmann, and in one of them I recognized a few of the same people my father photographed, presumably Leo Gotzmann and his wife Lilly. (Figure 28) The unknown person could be Ida Mattner, though this is conjecture since I’m uncertain what her relationship was to the Gotzmanns and how she came to lease and eventually own Leo and Lilly Gotzmann’s house.
One thing I had the opportunity to do during my visit with Wiola and her family at the Haus Gotzmann was to recreate photos my father took in 1934/35. Remarkably, those parts of the house inside and outside that my father pictured have hardly changed. The very distinctive alternating brown and white horizontal stripes painted on the outside still exist. I sat on the same steps where my father stood (Figures 29a-b), and in the same place he and his brother once stood. (Figures 30a-b) I also sat on the interior steps where partying guests participated in a masked ball on New Year’s Eve 1935. (Figures 31a-b) Given that Michałowice is 9300km (5,780 miles) from where I now live, I find this haunting. On only one previous occasion have I stood in the same spot I knew my father to have stood thousands of kilometers away and many years ago.
A few final thoughts. (Figure 32) While Wiola and I could not directly communicate with one another save for the intervention of her daughter, we made an immediate connection. I think it’s fair to say we both had this odd sense of having previously “met” and it being “fated” that we should meet again in this life. Wiola and other thoughtful and intelligent people I’ve encountered in my years of doing forensic genealogy convince me that my work transcends my own family history. Given the existential danger that the divisions in our current body politic pose to democracies around the world, a quote attributed to Cicero comes to mind, “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” My recent trip to Europe, particularly the time spent in Poland, made it clear how real and worrisome the ghosts and horrors of the past are for people living in the shadow of the war in the Ukraine and the dangers posed by an aggressive neighbor.
Readers will rightly perceive that my search to relocate a house my father and uncle visited 90 years has yielded some productive and unexpected discoveries. For readers who may find themselves in similar circumstances, I encourage persistence. I do not pretend this is exclusive to my forensic searches because I’ve occasionally come across others who’ve achieved far more impressive results using old films, photos, diaries and ancestral accounts, and documents related to places their Jewish ancestors lived.