Throughout his life, my father, Otto Bruck, was an active sportsman, with his greatest passion being tennis. He played actively as a youth in Ratibor, and, after moving to Berlin, to begin his dental studies, he joined the “E. V. B. Schwarz-Weiss” tennis club in Berlin-Schoeneberg (a future Blog post will deal with an interesting piece of tennis memorabilia my father saved from his time as a member of this club). After receiving his dental diploma in 1930, my father moved to Danzig where he apprenticed as a dentist in Danzig and a few other places in the Free State of Danzig. Finally, in April 1932, my father moved to Tiegenhof to establish his own dental practice. Throughout this period, until his departure from Tiegenhof in mid-1937, my father played tennis competitively. My father’s remaining personal effects include newspaper clippings and trophies attesting to his accomplishments on the tennis court.
By November 1932, my father had applied for and met the physical qualifications for acceptance to the “V.F.B. Tiegenhof, Baltischer Sportverband (Baltic Sports Federation).” (Figure 1) It appears the members socialized, recreated, and met regularly at a place called the “Club Ruschau” in Petershagen (today: Zelichowo, Poland), just outside Tiegenhof (today: Nowy Dwor Gdanski, Poland); my father took numerous photos there. (Figures 2, 3) Judging from the pictures, it was located along the Tiege River (today: Tuga).
Since I can personally attest to the fact that many buildings from the German period still exist today in Nowy Dwor Gdanski, one day I asked Marek Opitz, Director of the “Muzeum Zulawskie” and President of the “Klub Nowodworski,” whether he knew about the Club Ruschau and the buildings that once formed the Club. Whereas Marek knew what purpose and which buildings remained from the German period, until he examined my father’s photos of the Club Ruschau, he had not known of its existence. It was logical to conclude, given the widespread destruction that was wrought on Tiegenhof and Petershagen towards the end of WWII, that all remaining traces of the Club Ruschau had been erased. Therefore, I expected nothing more to come from this avenue of investigation.
Several weeks passed, when much to my surprise, Marek contacted me to tell me he had re-located one of the buildings that had comprised the Club Ruschau, now privately-owned; he included aerial and ground-level pictures of the property and structure as it appears today, and sure-enough, its location was along the Tiege River. Marek indicated his intention to take my wife and me to visit the location during our upcoming visit. And, indeed, in May 2012, Marek arranged with the current property-owner to give us a tour of the structure and land that had once made up the Club Ruschau. Given all the time my father spent here, augmented by the fact that my father’s days in Tiegenhof were unquestionably the happiest in his life, it thrilled me beyond measure to walk, if only for a short time, in the same place he’d trodden and enter the same door and touch the same doorknob he’d handled 75 years earlier. (Figure 4) This was literally like traveling by time-machine.
Members of the Club Ruschau included some of my father’s closest network of friends, specifically, the President, Dr. Schumanski, and Vice-President, Dr. H. Holst, as well as companions recognizable in various photos as Herbert Kloss and Kastret Romanowski. (Figure 5) Again, using the membership list in the “Tiegenhofer Nachrichten,” I attempted to contact people with similar surnames, but, unlike the success I garnered with descendants of Idschi and Suse Epp, I have to date been unable to learn the fate of any of these people. Peter and Lolo Lau confirmed that Dr. Holst moved to Danzig from Tiegenhof, and was a teacher in Lolo’s gymnasium, high school. Given the political realities of the 1930’s and what little my father told me about his social circle of friends from Tiegenhof, it is safe to assume that those friends that were not themselves Jewish gradually or abruptly distanced themselves from my father in the interest of self-preservation.
