Note: In this post, I discuss some previously unknown details about my father, Gary Otto Brook (Dr. Otto Bruck), and his life before and during WWII uncovered in a file I was given by a staffer at the German Embassy in connection with my German citizenship application. The staffer ordered this file from an office in Saarburg, Germany, where my father’s 1950s dossier wound up after his compensation petition was processed.
Related Posts:
POST 26: “APATRIDE” (STATELESS)
POST 71: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY FATHER, DR. OTTO BRUCK–22ND OF AUGUST 1930
POST 166: STATELESSNESS & MY GERMAN CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION
In Post 166, I related to readers my ongoing endeavor to obtain German citizenship. The process is moving apace thanks to the assistance of an extraordinarily helpful staffer at the German Embassy in Los Angeles. I recently delivered the preliminary application and only require one additional certificate to complete my submission. For reasons I will explain below obtaining citizenship could take 18 months or more. The recovery of an unexpected document is a direct result of my ongoing efforts and is the subject of this post.
Based on my vague childhood recollections of my father’s attempt to obtain some measure of recompense for the loss of his dental practice in the Free City of Danzig during the era of the National Socialists, I would have expected an application to exist supporting his petition. I was just not sure where I might find it. However, I’m now in possession of my father’s 13-page compensation file he originally submitted in the 1950s to the then-Federal Republic of Germany. (Figure 1) The file was ordered by the staffer at the German Embassy from Saarburg, Germany, from an office I did not know existed. While alone insufficient to fulfill application requirements, it bolsters my petition. I will discuss some of the contents below.
Though not particularly revelatory in a broad sense, the petition pinpoints some of the chronological events in my father’s life providing a more nuanced understanding of their timing. The events are told firsthand in a matter of fact-style chronicling when they took place. However, they mask an undercurrent of extreme loss that leaves me almost 90 years later deeply saddened. It’s not what’s written but what’s implied about how my father’s life and by extension the lives of so many other Holocaust victims were extinguished or upended that reverberates to this day. Possibly because of the fragmented nature of our ongoing political discourse this seems even more relevant.
A related issue I’ve been grappling with is the question of success versus justice. Suffice it here to say that for most Holocaust victims or their descendants no amount of financial compensation, what could be construed as a “successful” outcome, can ever make up for the loss they suffered. Ergo, they can never obtain real justice. This is an existential question that merits further consideration outside of my blog. However, it’s a question I’ve been pondering in the context of my longstanding claim against the French Ministry of Culture to obtain compensation and repatriation for paintings confiscated by the Nazis from one of my father’s first cousins in December 1940. Notwithstanding the fact that I’m the closest surviving relative to my father’s cousin, because France has a civil law legal system, I’ve been denied the opportunity to obtain justice on behalf of my family. As my petition nears resolution, this will be the subject of an upcoming post.
Back to the subject of this post. As I proceed, I’ll describe a few of the documents attached to my father’s petition which shed further light on what I know. I need to emphasize that much of the new information about my father comes from a dry recitation of events, not from any detailed discussion about what my father thought or felt about these events. Still, reading between the lines conceals disappointment and resignation to his fate. In fact, growing up, my father often used the word “kismet,” which comes from the Arabic word “qisma” which literally means “to divide” or “allot.” As a practical matter “kismet” is used to describe something that happens by chance like it was meant to be.
One document in my father’s petition is titled “Lebenslauf” (Figure 2), translated as curriculum vitae. Most often, a curriculum vitae summarizes a job applicant’s qualifications from the standpoint of work experience, education, and skills. In terms of what my father includes, it harkens back to its original Latin meaning, “the course of one’s life.” My father, born in 1907 (Figure 3), indicates his schooling involved three years in elementary school followed by nine years in a Humanistic Grammar School. He passed his so-called “Abitur,” basically his high school-leaving examination, in 1926. Then, from 1926 to 1930, he studied dentistry at the universities of Berlin, Breslau [today: Wrocław, Poland], and Munich. He qualified to be a dentist on the 8th of May 1930. During 1930 and 1931, my father apprenticed, assisted, and temporarily filled in for dentists in Königsbrück, Berlin, Allenstein [today: Olsztyn, Poland], and Danzig [today: Gdańsk, Poland].
Let me digress for a moment. As implied above, the broad outline of my father’s life was previously known to me. Still, there are a few surprises. I was aware my father studied dentistry at the University of Berlin since I have his diploma from there, but it was a complete revelation that he studied at the universities of Breslau and Munich. His link to Breslau is less surprising given that the Bruck family had longstanding ties with this city, including the fact that my father’s older brother, Dr. Fedor Bruck, received his dental degree here. However, the fact that my father studied dentistry in Breslau makes me wonder whether he apprenticed with his renowned relative, Dr Walther Wolfgang Bruck (1872-1937) (Figure 4), dentist to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser, his family, and other royalty. This would strongly suggest my father trained with a family member who was exceptionally skilled in his craft.
Munich and Breslau are about eight hours apart today by car. There is no indication how long my father studied in Munich, although this merits further investigation.
As far as the four places where my father apprenticed in 1930 and 1931, none are surprising. I have in my possession letters of recommendation from the respective dentists in Königsbrück (Figure 5) and Allenstein (Figure 6) commending my father on his exemplary work in their absence. Furthermore, since my father attended dental school in Berlin, then later worked in the Free City of Danzig, I would have expected he would have apprenticed in these places. In the case of Danzig, I even have a picture showing him there in his dental scrubs. (Figure 7)
Let me continue. I know from a note in my father’s surviving papers that he had his own dental practice in a town in the Free City of Danzig named Tiegenhof [today: Nowy Dwór Gdański, Poland] from April 1932 through April 1937; this town is approximately 40km (25 miles) east of Danzig. While it is technically accurate to say my father maintained an independent dental practice until April 1937, as a practical matter because of the Nazi imposed boycott of Jewish businesses, he’d ceased having patients by 1936.
My father’s compensation file includes another informative document, an “Eidesstattliche Erklaerung” (Figures 8a-b), translated as affidavit. Here my father writes that he sold his dental equipment and instruments at less than ten percent of their market value. To compound the affront, patients whom my father had treated before the boycott went into full effect stiffed him to the tune of what today amounts to many thousands of dollars.
One particularly intriguing document included with my father’s compensation application is titled “Fuhrungszeugnis,” a “Certificate of Good Conduct.” (Figure 9) It is dated the 28th of April 1937 from Tiegenhof, and signed by “Die Polizeivertbeltung,” Tiegenhof’s “Police Bureaucracy.” It gives the precise dates my father’s dental practice was in business, from the 14th of April 1932 until the 28th of April 1937. Why my father would have wanted such a document is completely understandable, though why authorities would have felt compelled to document his service when they no longer wanted it in Germany, or the Free City of Danzig is mystifying.
Following the sale of his dental equipment in Tiegenhof, my father moved to the city of Danzig in April 1937, where, in his own words, “he took over the representation of dental colleagues until March 1938.” I presume the anonymity of this larger city, where my father had multiple professional colleagues, allowed him to continue working for a while. This is like what my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck did after he was forced to shutter his own dental practice in Liegnitz [today: Legnica, Poland] in Lower Silesia after Hitler came to power in January 1933. He moved to Berlin, working under the auspices of non-Jewish dentists until that too became impossible.
I’d always been uncertain where my father spent the period between April 1937 and March 1938. I mistakenly thought he might have joined his brother in Berlin, possibly working there. Based on photographs in his albums, however, I knew that by early March 1938 he’d permanently left Germany since photos show him transiting through Vienna, Austria following his departure. (Figure 10) He was headed to Fiesole, Italy, outside Florence, to join his sister and brother-in-law, who were then operating a bed-and-breakfast there.
What caused my father to leave Germany before Kristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 is not entirely clear, though I have no doubt he clearly saw the handwriting on the wall. The absence of a wife and any children made his departure a relatively easy decision.
A stray sentence in the affidavit accompanying his compensation petition suggests my father may have had a plan. The two first cousins with whom my father was closest were Jeanne “Hansi” Löwenstein (Figure 11) and her brother Heinz Löwenstein. (Figure 12) Both were born in Danzig, and I strongly suspect that while doing his dental apprenticeship in Danzig in 1930-1931, he lived with his aunt, Hedwig Loewenstein, nee Bruck (Figure 13), and these two cousins. Following the death of her husband Rudolf Loewenstein in a plane crash on the 22nd of August 1930, subject of Post 71, Hedwig and the family moved to Nice, France, along France’s Côte d’Azur. The precise date of their move is unknown.
Following his departure from Germany, I don’t think my father ever permanently intended to stay in Fiesole, Italy. I think his intended destination at the time was Nice, France. My father writes in his affidavit that he was unable to obtain a work permit in France so finally enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in November 1938.
Suffice it here to say that as I learn more about France’s complicity with the Nazis during WWII, I never fail to get angry anew at France’s treatment of my father and his family before, during, and after the war. For me this still seems very relevant, particularly as France has fought for ten years since 2014 to retain paintings rendered by Fedor Loewenstein (older brother of Hansi and Heinz) confiscated by the Nazis in December 1940 in Bordeaux and stored in Paris since, the provenance of which was only uncovered in 2010. I digress.
Though of no particular interest to readers, the exact dates of my father’s engagements in the French Foreign Legion (FFL) and England’s Pioneer Corps are mentioned. My father was in the FFL (Figure 14) in Algeria from the 9th of November 1938 until the 9th of November 1943. He was in the English Army (Figure 15) from the 19th of November 1943 until the 5th of May 1946, thus for two years 224 days. I have a picture of my father in his English Army uniform with his comrades-in-arm, taken in September 1945 in Rome, Italy. (Figure 16) Appearing to be almost a farewell gathering, I mistakenly concluded that my father had been demobilized from the English Army in Rome. Contrary to my assumption, in his affidavit my father writes he was demobilized in Nice, France.
For readers interested in knowing what I’ve learned about my father’s time in Nice, I discussed this in Post 26. After his discharge from the English army, my father procured a permit to work as a dental technician but was unable to work as a dentist. Because he had no connections, he could barely make ends meet.
Other information of personal interest is the precise date my father left France, the 2nd of June 1948, and the exact date he landed in America, the 7th of June 1948. Having previously found my father’s naturalization card (Figure 17) on ancestry.com, I knew he became an American citizen through Court Order #7509013, dated the 19th of July 1955. Though both the “Bruck” and “Brook” names appear on the card, I’d never been sure if he changed his name upon landing in America in 1948 or upon becoming an American citizen. Well, as it turns out, my father changed his name to Gary Otto Brook in 1955.
The final document in my father’s compensation file I’ll discuss is titled “Staatsangehorigkeitsausweis.” (Figure 18) Issued in Berlin on the 22nd of November 1927, this is my father’s German nationality card. I have the original among my father’s surviving papers, and as implied above it bolsters my claim for German citizenship.
As to the restitution my father received for the loss of his dental practice and livelihood, it amounted to a pittance, approximately $2,500. in 1966. Unlike my uncle Fedor who miraculously survived the entire war hidden in Berlin, my father never received a regular pension from the German government.
Let me return to something I alluded to above, namely the reason for the lengthy delay in processing German citizenship applications. The explanation is rich. Because of the tragic events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, Israelis of German descent are applying in droves for German citizenship.
In closing, let me be clear that I don’t expect the above to be of much interest to readers. However, it highlights that occasionally one happens upon a primary source document related to one’s ancestors that fill in some gaps in one’s understanding of their lives. In my case, the recovery of my father’s compensation petition was a fortuitous outcome of my German citizenship application.