Note: In this post I relate the story about a German gentleman born in Santiago, Chile in 1944 and now living in Bonn, Germany, Mr. Roberto Hirsch, who is the great grandnephew of Sigmund Hirsch, the co-owner of the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik outside Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]. Roberto contacted me through my Blog and filled in gaps in my understanding of the fate of some of his ancestors, adding nuance, color, and some fascinating context to a horrific period in history. I will not pretend to readers I can do justice to Roberto’s family story, nor tell a comprehensive story. Rather, I will highlight aspects that augment the story of some people I have previously written about or examine lesser-known facts of my extended family’s survival during WWII.
Related Posts:
Post 27: Jewish Deportations from Gurs, France in 1942
Post 36: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Background)
Post 36, Postscript: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part I-Maps)
Post 59: The Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (Sugar Factory) Outside Ratibor (Part III—Heirs)
In multiple earlier posts, I have spoken at length about the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik (sugar factory) (Figures 1a-b), located outside Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the town where my father was born in 1907. Prior to the forced sale of the plant during the Nazi era, the business was co-owned by Adolph Schück (1840-1916) (Figure 2) and his brother-in-law Sigmund Hirsch (1848-1920). (Figure 3) Adolph and Sigmund were married to sisters, and they and their wives died in Ratibor and were interred there in the former Jewish Cemetery.
Given the general inaccessibility of records from Jewish ancestors who wound up in South America, it is always gratifying when surviving descendants with connections there send me messages. Such was the case when I was contacted by Roberto Hirsch, born in Santiago, Chile in 1944 but living in Bonn, Germany for the past 50 years. For context, he explained that his great-grandfather, Jakob Hirsch (1842-1905) (Figure 4), was one of Sigmund’s older brothers, and that he was married to Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch (1849-1935). (Figure 5)
Roberto told me ample stories and gave me enough enticing clues about some of his ancestors that it sent me down one of the deepest rabbit holes I have ever climbed into seeking primary source documents, my gold standard for accuracy. As readers will learn in the second part of this two-part Blog post, I accessed historic records on Roberto’s ancestors that were practically indecipherable. Fortunately, my German friend, Peter Hanke, the “Wizard of Wolfsburg,” confirmed they were pertinent and translated them. Including Roberto’s generation, I have incredibly now found seven generations of his family, going all the way back to 1739!! For Jewish families, this covers a long span.
Sigmund Hirsch was married to Selma Braun (1856-1916), one of 14 children the Ratibor brewery owner Markus Braun (1817-1870) had with two wives. Sigmund and Selma had three children, Helene “Lene” Goldenring née Hirsch (1880-1968), Robert Hirsch (1881-1943), and Henrietta “Frieda” Mamlok née Hirsch (1883-1955). (Figure 6) Prior to being contacted by Roberto Hirsch, I had already learned the fate of all three children. From Lene Goldenring’s (Figure 7) post-WWII German compensation file, I knew she had died in 1968 in Newark, New Jersey, that her brother Robert perished in Valparaiso, Chile in 1943, and that her sister Frieda had passed away in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1955. (Figure 8)
Among the relatives Roberto first told me about was his namesake, Robert Hirsch, Sigmund’s middle child. Robert had studied electrical engineering in Berlin but had unspecified problems there, so his parents arranged to send him to Spain to work for AEG, “Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft.” The company was founded in 1883 in Berlin by Emil Rathenau, and according to Roberto, the Rathenau had ties to the Hirsch family from Ratibor. Possibly a business relationship existed between the families connected to the Woinowitz Zuckerfabrik and maybe this facilitated Robert Hirsch obtaining a position as general manager for AEG in Bilbao, Spain? So far, I have been unable to find the thread.
Robert Hirsch was not the only member of the Hirsch family to find refuge in Spain before or during WWII. In Post 27, I talked at length about Robert’s niece, Eva Zernik née Goldenring (1906-1969) (Figure 9), who made her way to Madrid after walking away or escaping from the French detention center in Gurs, France. As I pointed out in Post 27, security at Gurs was lax, and because Eva spoke impeccable French, she likely managed to cross the nearby Spanish border illegally using money she had squirreled away to bribe human smugglers. She remained in Madrid until 1947 when she emigrated to America.
Roberto Hirsch’s parents, Fritz Hirsch (1908-2006) and Margarete Hirsch née Janzen (1914-1992), also made their way to Spain. Prior to the ascendancy of the Nazis, it had been envisioned that Fritz would take over the family fashion business in Bonn, established by his father Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) (Figures 10-11) at the turn of the 20th Century; named “Wittgensteiner,” this store was famous throughout Germany for its fine apparel from England, France, and elsewhere. (Figures 12a-d) After it quickly became apparent the store would be expropriated by the Nazis, Fritz escaped to France to join his older brother Kurt Hirsch (1905-1993) (Figures 13-14) who had tried to establish a new life in Paris after his PhD. was revoked by the Nazis in 1933. Like my own father, Kurt joined the French Foreign Legion, but unlike my father who was shipped to Algeria, Kurt remained hidden in the south of France until 1945, eluding the German occupiers for five years and experiencing innumerable adventures.
Because Fritz’s residence permit in France only allowed for a three-month stay, he tried to get to Spain. There he knew some people with whom he had studied in Bonn that had good connections to Spanish Government officials. Through this channel, Fritz obtained an unlimited residence permit for Spain. Several months later Roberto’s mother, only 21 at the time, left Germany by train and joined her future husband there. Roberto’s mother, incidentally, was Protestant, and, on account of her relationship with Fritz Hirsch, was considered by the National Socialists as a “Judenliebchen,” a Jew’s lover, strictly forbidden under Nazi law.
Roberto tells a few fascinating stories about his parents’ time in Spain.
Roberto’s parents lived mostly in small towns in the northern part of the country. In the mid-1930’s, Spain was a cultural and social backwater with limited outside contacts. Arriving speaking not a word of Spanish and having no money Fritz still managed to land himself a job as a traveling salesman selling office supplies. Armed with only a small dictionary, he traveled around his sales district, speaking his broken Spanish to comical delight and endless derision. Nonetheless, the Spaniards, a joyful people by nature, were so amused by the situation, they bought more supplies than they needed. Thus, Fritz was able to provide for himself and his wife.
Roberto’s parents were in touch with Robert Hirsch during their four-year stay in Spain between 1935 and 1939. By virtue of Robert’s position as general manager for AEG, he had more freedom of movement, which allowed all to meet periodically. Based on Roberto’s aunt’s surviving address book, Fritz Hirsch lived for a time in Bilbao. (Figure 15) Given that Robert, Fritz, and Margarete’s stays in Spain overlapped with almost the entirety of the Spanish Civil War, which began on the 17th of July 1936 and ended on the 1st of April 1939, I was particularly curious how the conflict might have affected their lives.
Roberto relates one amusing story about an unnerving encounter his mother had towards the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. At the time, at least in northern Spain, the conflict was a low-key affair. Young men from opposing sides would gather in an open field and start shooting at one another with their ancient and off target rifles; neither side could afford more accurate arms, so damage and injury was limited. One day Roberto’s mother was returning from shopping and came upon this scene. Suddenly, a voice shouted, “stop shooting, the lady wants to pass.” And the boys did precisely this, allowing her to walk through with trembling knees, whereafter the same voice shouted, “now we can continue!”
According to Roberto’s parents, the conflict became more gruesome when the Germans, Italians, and Soviets began to send troops and more sophisticated arms. At the time, Fritz and Margarete lived in a small town not far from Guernica. Students of history know this town was the scene of an infamous April 26, 1937 bombing, the first aerial bombing by the German Luftwaffe carried out at the behest of Francisco Franco’s Nationalist faction; the number of casualties ranged from about 150 to more than 1600, depending on which faction was reporting. This incident was the inspiration for Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica.”
At some point, Roberto’s father had to renew his German passport and was forced to visit the German consulate in Bilbao, which was evidently staffed by Nazis. While Fritz’s passport was eventually renewed, it did not happen before anti-Semitic epithets were hurled at him and he was told that Berlin would be informed of his whereabouts. I have on occasion uncovered vital documents for some Jewish ancestors with their location outside of Germany noted. Roberto’s story is independent confirmation that this in fact took place, ostensibly because the Nazis expected one day to invade these yet unoccupied countries and round up Jews living there. No doubt, Fritz and other Jews living in Spain were worried about this eventuality.
As the Spanish Civil War intensified and Franco’s forces captured larger cities, Roberto’s parents moved further west towards Portugal. Approaching the end of their stay in Spain in 1939, Roberto’s parents lived in La Coruna, the capital of Galicia in the northwest of Spain by the sea, in a zone already captured by Franco. (Figure 16) Each morning, they could hear shooting on the nearby beach as Franco’s forces executed Republican prisoners.
It was at this moment that Roberto’s parents decided to flee Spain. One day they told their neighbors they were traveling to Portugal for the weekend and took with them only two suitcases. Using $3,000 they had saved over the years, they left for Lisbon. Upon their arrival, they started visiting the various consulates trying like thousands of other Jewish refugees there to obtain an exit visa. Everywhere, they were turned down until they visited the Chilean Embassy. Upon their arrival, the Ambassador was out, so a young staffer received them and started flirting with Roberto’s attractive mother; she reciprocated, and this miraculously resulted in Roberto’s parents being granted a visa for Chili. Within a week, by April 1939, they had boarded a ship bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina, a transit point. (Figures 17a-f)
Upon Fritz and Margaret Hirsch’s arrival in Santiago, Chile in June 1939, they were met by Robert Hirsch. (Figure 18) Roberto knows nothing about Robert’s departure from Spain and eventual emigration to Chile. Robert was apparently living with a Spanish woman named Carmen to whom he left a large sum of money upon his departure. Robert’s sister, Helene Goldenring née Hirsch, would eventually also go to Chile via an unknown route from Germany. While I already knew that Robert had died in Valparaiso, Chile on the 7th of October 1943, Roberto explained that his namesake had committed suicide because of a severe persecution complex. This resolved yet another unanswered question I had.
Helene Goldenring lived not with her brother Robert in Valparaiso but with Roberto’s parents (Figures 19-20) in Santiago until she left for America on the 3rd of July 1947 (Figure 21), never having learned to speak any Spanish. Oddly, after her departure, Roberto’s parents never again heard from her.
As to some of Roberto’s relatives who did not escape from Europe, I will briefly relate the heartbreaking story of Roberto’s grandparents, Hermann Hirsch (1876-1943) and Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (1874-1944). (Figures 22-23) Erroneously concluding the Nazis would have no interest in them because of their age, like many other elderly Jews, they consciously decided to stay in Germany. However, by 1939, Hermann and Ida were forced to move to a special house for Jews in Bonn where they paid high prices for water, electricity, and gas. Most of their money had been confiscated, and only a small sum remained from which paltry monthly withdrawals could be made. Around this time their son Fritz began corresponding with his parents from Santiago, Chile, retaining carbon copies of his letters. By 1941, Roberto’s grandparents were again forced to move, this time to a convent in Bonn where the nuns had been evicted. The posts came to a stop in June 1942, when his grandparents were deported to Theresienstadt.
Roberto graciously shared with me the last correspondence the family ever received from his grandmother. (Figure 24 a-c) It is an exceptional document, a typed postcard written on the 20th of December 1943 from Theresienstadt to Roberto’s family in Geneva. Dictated by Ida Hirsch who was already nearly blind, she wrote that her husband had died of cardiac arrest; the family would later learn from survivors his real cause of death had been suicide, which it was forbidden to write. Preposterously, Ida’s postcard was first sent by the Nazis to Berlin to the “Oberkommando der Wehrmacht” to be censored before being forwarded to Geneva, as though an elderly blind woman could divulge military secrets. It is astonishing the Nazis would allow Jewish internees of the concentration camps any communication with the outside world.
I am profoundly grateful to Roberto for sharing some of his family’s stories, pictures, and documents. I like to think this has been a mutually beneficial exchange since I have uncovered additional ancestors of which he was unaware including their fates. Roberto’s grandfather had three siblings, only two of which he knew about; the three he knew about were all murdered in the Holocaust, and the fate of the fourth has yet to be worked out.
In the second installment of Post 98, I will describe and illustrate some of the historic documents I recovered from various sources related to Roberto Hirsch’s family that have allowed me to track a few of his relatives to the 18th Century.
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VITAL STATISTICS OF SIEGMUND HIRSCH AND HIS RELATIVES
| NAME | EVENT | DATE | PLACE | SOURCE |
| Sigmund Hirsch (self) | Birth | 18 November 1848 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 441 of 748) |
| Death | 14 October 1920 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]; Family History Library Ratibor Microfilm Roll 1184448 | |
| Selma Hirsch née Braun (wife) | Birth | 11 July 1856 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]; Family History Library Ratibor Microfilm Roll 1184449 |
| Death | 11 July 1916 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Headstone from former Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | |
| Helene Goldenring née Hirsch (daughter) | Birth | 25 March 1880 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Helene Goldenring’s Hesse, Germany Post-War Compensation File |
| Death | 12 January 1968 | Newark, New Jersey | Helene Goldenring’s Hesse, Germany Post-War Compensation File | |
| Robert Hirsch (son) | Birth | 31 October 1881 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | Ratibor birth certificate: Mittweida, Germany 1904 Residence Register |
| Death (suicide) | 7 October 1943 | Valparaiso, Chile | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) | |
| Henrietta “Frieda” Mamlok née Hirsch (daughter) | Birth | 8 February 1883 | Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland] | |
| Death | 29 July 1955 | Montevideo, Uruguay | Roberto Hirsch Family Papers | |
| Emanuel Hirsch (father) | Birth | About 1805 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate |
| Marriage | 27 May 1834 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 251 of 748) | |
| Death | 25 March 1880 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate | |
| Henriette “Jette” Hirsch née Ettlinger (mother) | Birth | 1808 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate; Germany Find a Grave Index |
| Marriage | 27 May 1834 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 251 of 748) | |
| Death | 2 August 1882 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate | |
| Bernhard Hirsch (aka Leonhard Hirsch) (brother) | Birth | 26 August 1836 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 272 of 748); Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate |
| Marriage (to Sofie Reutlinger) | 17 August 1871 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate | |
| Death | 7 December 1888 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany death certificate | |
| Jakob Hirsch (brother) | Birth | 8 November 1842 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Karlsruhe Microfilm Roll 1256447 (p. 357 of 748) |
| Marriage | 30 July 1874 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate | |
| Death | 1905 | Neuwied, Germany (buried in Bonn, Germany Jewish Cemetery) | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) | |
| Auguste Hirsch née Hirsch (sister-in-law) | Birth | 14 January 1849 | Ilvesheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Family History Library Ilvesheim Microfilm Roll 1271220 (p. 260 of 403); Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate |
| Marriage | 30 July 1874 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany marriage certificate | |
| Death | 1935 | Bonn, Germany | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) | |
| Hermann Hirsch (nephew) | Birth | 19 August 1876 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate |
| Deportation (to Theresienstadt) | 27 July 1942 | Trier-Köln, Germany | Jewish Victims of Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945 | |
| Death (suicide) | 16 February 1943 | Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication); Ida Hirsch’s 1943 postcard sent from Theresienstadt | |
| Ida Hirsch née Sollinger (wife of nephew) | Birth | 1874 | Einbeck, Germany | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) |
| Death | 1944 | Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia | Yad Vashem Shoah Victims | |
| Sophie Hirsch (niece) | Birth | 3 April 1875 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Yad Vashem Page of Testimony |
| Death | UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN | Yad Vashem Shoah Victims | |
| Bernhard Hirsch (nephew) | Birth | 7 December 1877 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate |
| Death | UNKNOWN | UNKNOWN | ||
| Karl Hirsch (nephew) | Birth | 15 February 1879 | Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany | Karlsruhe, Germany birth certificate |
| Deportation (to Auschwitz-Birkenau) | 10 September 1944 | Auschwitz-Birkenau | Yad Vashem Shoah Victims | |
| Fritz Hirsch (great-nephew) | Birth | 20 January 1908 | Bonn, North Rhine-Wesphalia, Germany | Hirsch Janzen family tree; Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) |
| Death | 11 January 2006 | Santiago, Chile | Hirsch Janzen family tree; Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) | |
| Margaret Hirsch née Janzen (wife of great-nephew) | Birth | 12 January 1914 | Elbing, Germany [today: Elbląg, Poland] | Hirsch Janzen family tree |
| Death | 29 February 1992 | Santiago, Chile | Hirsch Janzen family tree | |
| Roberto Hirsch (great-great-nephew) | Birth | 3 September 1944 | Santiago, Chile | Roberto Hirsch (personal communication) |