The Nazis altered the fates of all seven of the grandchildren of Moses Blumenfeld IIA. Whereas the two children of his daughter Antonie Blumenfeld Katz safely escaped to Palestine and his grandson Albert Kaufmann, son of Hedwig Blumenfeld Kaufmann, escaped to Brazil, his granddaughter Anna Kaufmann Leyser and her husband and sons were murdered at Sobibor in 1943.

As for the family of Ernst Blumenfeld, the youngest child of Moses Blumenfeld IIA, although he died at 42 in 1935, leaving behind his young widow Bella and their three young children, Bella and their children all ended up escaping Nazi Germany by coming to the US on December 5, 1939, and settling in New York City, where in 1940 they were living with Bella’s parents Levi and Rosa (Katz) Tannenbaum.¹

Two years later Bella remarried. Her second husband was Gustav Katz,² born in Jesberg, Germany, on October 24, 1893, to Josef Katz and Roschen Stern.³ When I saw Katz and Jesberg, I speculated that somehow Gustav was related to my Katz and Katzenstein relatives from Jesberg, and sure enough, Gustav was my fourth cousin, twice removed! My five-times great-grandfather Schalum Katz was Gustav’s three times great-grandfather.

Gustav arrived in the US just a few weeks after Bella and her children on December 22, 1939, listing his occupation as textile merchant.⁴ But on his Declaration of Intention filed on July 8, 1940, he reported that he was a laundry worker,⁵ a sign of how challenging it must have been for some middle-class German Jews who escaped Nazi Germany to adapt to life in the US. Gustav died in February 1964; he was seventy.⁶ Bella outlived her second husband by 23 years. She died March 11, 1987 at the age of 87.⁷

Bella was survived by two of her three children with Ernst Blumenfeld, her son Paul having predeceased her by less than ten months on June 13, 1986, at the age of 54.⁸ I wonder whether Paul’s death hastened Bella’s demise so soon afterwards. Paul was married to Edith Stark, a Baltimore native, who was born there on March 27, 1933, and died there on April 12, 2014.⁹ Paul and Edith are survived by their four children and their grandchildren.

Ernst and Bella’s daughter Lore Blumenfeld married Manfried “Fred” Oppenheim in 1947.¹⁰ Fred was also a German refugee; he was born on June 12, 1920 in Kassel, Germany to Hermann Oppenheim and Esther Lehrberger.¹¹ Fred came to the US on March 12, 1938, and in 1940 was living with his parents in New York and working as a waiter.¹² His World War II draft registration shows that he was working for the Jones Beach Catering Corporation.

Fred enlisted in the US Army on September 21, 1943, and served until June 8, 1946.¹³  Lore Blumenfeld Oppenheim died on November 14, 1991; she was 64.¹⁴ Her husband Fred Oppenheim died the following year on March 31, 1992.¹⁵ They were survived by their children.

Finally, Ernst and Bella’s other son Franz became Frank in the US. When he registered for the draft, he was living in New York with his mother and stepfather and working at Volume Dress Company. Frank married Rita Rae Nelkin, a native of Houston, on December 16, 1956.¹⁶ They had three children. Frank died when he was 73 on March 22, 2002¹⁷. According to his obituary, “He was proud to be an American, having served in the First Infantry Division in his birthplace, Marburg. He moved to Houston in 1955 where he met his wife. In 1957 he founded Formcraft, Inc., the largest independently owned business forms company in Houston. He was known to have a kind and generous heart, a winning personality and a great sense of humor as well as being an avid fisherman, shrewd businessman and a lover of classical music.”¹⁸

Fortunately Moses Blumenfeld IIA has many living descendants today in Israel and in the United States because the children of his children Antonie Blumenfeld Katz and Ernst Blumenfeld all left Germany in time, but tragically his daughter Hedwig Blumenfeld Kaufman has no living descendants since her son Albert had no children and her daughter Anna and her husband and their two children were wiped out by the Nazis. How cruel is fate that allowed some to escape and others to face a brutal death.

UPDATE: I received an email today (1/5/22) from the daughter of Paul Blumenfeld. I learned from her that Albert Kaufmann did have a daughter named Inge and that Inge had two sons. So Albert Kaufmann, and thus his mother Hedwig Blumenfeld Kaufmann, do have living descendants!