Meyer Goldschmidt’s youngest child Falk Goldschmidt died on June 4, 1901. He was 65 years old when he died and was survived by his wife Clara Babetta Carlebach and their five children, Meier, Helene, Fanny, Hedwig, and Julius, and their grandchildren.

The family lost its matriarch when Clara Babetta Carlebach Goldschmidt died on February 27, 1920. She was 75.

In the last post we saw that Meier Falk Goldschmidt, Falk’s oldest child, went to the US in about 1890 and died there in 1922. He did not have any children. Falk and Babetta’s two youngest children—Hedwig and Julius Falk—I have already covered in earlier posts because they married cousins who’ve already been discussed. So that leaves the two older daughters, Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer and Fanny Goldschmidt Loewenthal. I will tell their stories separately in this post.

Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer and Her Children

Eight years after losing her father Falk, Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer lost her husband Bernard. He died on September 14, 1909, in Frankfurt; he was 51.¹ Helene was a widow at 38.

Helene’s daughter Fanny Flora Igersheimer married Ludwig Selmar Goetz on December 11, 1912, in Frankfurt. Ludwig was born in Berlin on August 13, 1876, to Julius Goetz and Rosalie Badt.

Fanny and Ludwig had two sons. Erwin Julius Goetz was born in Frankfurt on February 21, 1914.² His brother Arthur Bernard Edmund Goetz was born October 8, 1915, in Frankfurt.³

Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer’s son Franz Jonas Igersheimer married Elizabeth Isabel Malvina Lorch in Frankfurt on April 7, 1927. She was the daughter of Ludwig Lorch and Gisela Koehler and was born on December 14, 1904, in Frankfurt.

Franz and Elizabeth also had two sons, according to Baron and Cibella, both of whom were born in Frankfurt before Hitler’s rise to power.⁴

By 1939, Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer was living in London with her son Franz and his wife Elizabeth. Franz and Elizabeth had changed their surname to Ingham, but Helene had not. Franz was working as a company director of an electric company. Neither of their sons were listed with them on the 1939 Register; perhaps they were in boarding school.

On his enemy alien registration, Franz listed his occupation as company director of Telephone Trading Company. It appears that he was found exempt from being sent to an internment camp.

Meanwhile, Helene’s daughter Fanny Flora Igersheimer Goetz and her husband Ludwig Goetz had immigrated to Argentina by 1936. They appear on a 1936 ship manifest leaving England for Argentina, but report that they were already citizens of Argentina where Ludwig, now using the name Luiz, was a farmer in Buenos Aires. I assume they had been visiting Fanny Flora’s mother and brother and family in London and were returning home.

Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer and Franz Jonas Ingham and his family soon followed Fanny Flora and Luiz to Argentina. They are all listed on a ship manifest dated June 22, 1940, leaving England for Argentina, and they indicated that Argentina was their permanent destination.

Helene Goldschmidt Igersheimer died only two years after moving to Argentina; she was 71 when she died in Buenos Aires on September 30, 1942.⁵

From various travel documents it appears that both of Helene’s children and her grandchildren remained in Argentina after the war and for the rest of their lives. I have no other specific sources for them at this point.

Fanny Goldschmidt Loewenthal and Her Son

Fanny Goldschmidt Loewenthal’s son Julius married Else Margarete Cahn, the daughter of Arthur Moritz Cahn and Alice Hellman, in Frankfurt on December 10, 1920. Else was born on January 31, 1900, in Frankfurt. According to Baron and Cibella, Julius and Else had two sons.[^6]

[^6]: Baron and Cibella, Goldschmidt Family Report

Then five years later, Fanny Goldschmidt Loewenthal’s husband Siegfried died on August 30, 1925, in Cannes, France. He was 61.⁶ Thus, like her sister Helene, Fanny was a relatively young woman when she became a widow at 51.

I could not find Fanny Goldschmidt Loewenthal on any record between her children’s birth records in the 1890s and a 1946 Brazil immigration card. She was a widow whose husband had died in 1925 and with only one surviving child, her son Julius. Where could she have been between 1920 and 1945? How did she survive the war? I don’t know.

In tracking Julius’ whereabouts, I only had marginally better luck. He appears to have immigrated to Brazil in 1940-1941. He listed his address at his prior residence as being in Brussels. His wife Else arrived with him, also listing Brussels as her last address, and Else listed their son Herbert on her immigration card.

Maybe Fanny was with Julius and Else in Brussels, but I have no record that supports that notion. All I have is a Brazil immigration card for Fanny indicating she arrived in Brazil in 1946 after the war was over. Her card indicates that her prior address had been in Frankfurt. Could she have safely survived the Holocaust hiding in Frankfurt?

I wish I had a way to find her story. But I have no further records for Fanny or Julius or Else, except one travel document for Else showing that she was living in Rio de Janeiro in 1961. David Baron and Roger Cibella report that both Fanny and Julius died in Rio de Janeiro, Julius in 1955 and Fanny in 1957.⁷

Thus, Falk and Babetta Goldschmidt’s widowed daughters Helene and Fanny both escaped from the Nazis to South America with their children and grandchildren, but to two different countries, Helene to Argentina and Fanny to Brazil.