Before I continue the stories of the children of Gerson Rothschild and Fanny Kugelmann, I have three updates to earlier posts that I’d like to share. All three are possible because other researchers and family members found this blog and contacted me. These are true gifts from the genealogy village. I am so grateful.

Some of you may recall that back in May 2024, I wrote about my relative Hirsch “Harry” Rothschild and his three children, all of whom escaped from Nazi Germany to the United States before World War II started. But unfortunately Harry’s wife Mathilde did not escape with her family and was ultimately murdered by the Nazis.

In my blog post about this family I wondered why Mathilde had not come with Harry and her children when they left Germany. Was she ill, I speculated? I had no answers.

Now I have more information about the family of Harry Rothschild. A man named Fredo Behrens recently contacted me after seeing my blog post. He lives in Oldenburg, Germany, and as he told me in his email, he worked for the “Nordwestdeutsches Museum für Industriekultur” in Delmenhorst for several years 25 years ago, where his area of responsibility was museum education, exhibitions and a regional “Topography of the Nazi Era.” He also is on the board of the “Friends and Supporters of the Jewish Community of Delmenhorst,” and heads the Delmenhorst City History Working Group. More specifically, he has done research into the history of the Jewish people of Delmenhorst, including the Rothschild family.¹

Fredo told me about a monograph by Dr. Enno Meyer from 1985 entitled “Die Geschichte der Delmenhorster Juden 1695-1945”, or the History of the Jews of Delmenhorst 1695-1945. Dr. Meyer was the head of “Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit” (Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation) for at least 30 years, according to Fredo. Fredo sent me both a copy of Dr. Meyer’s monograph (in German) and also a copy of an article that Fredo himself wrote about the Jews of Delmenhorst that excerpts parts of Meyer’s monograph and adds to it.² I was able to use DeepL to translate Fredo’s work and learn more about the Rothschild family’s life in Delmenhorst.

According to the works of Meyer and Behrens, Dr. Harry Rothschild came to Delmenhorst from Hesse in 1914 and was the first Jewish doctor to practice in that town. By 1925, he was one of the top two taxpayers in the town. Harry was not active in the organized Jewish community, however, until after the Nazis came to power.³ According to Fredo’s research, the growing antisemitism in the early 1930s prompted Harry to become more involved. By 1933 he was chairman of the local Zionist organization and on the Jewish community board.

When the Nuremberg Laws were adopted and Jews were no longer allowed to employ Aryans, Harry and his Aryan cleaning woman petitioned the mayor for permission to continue their employment relationship, but their petition was rejected.⁴

Fredo kindly shared with me this photograph showing the street where the Rothschild family lived in Delmenhorst in 1930. The arrow points to where Harry Rothschild practiced medicine and lived before he left Germany in 1939.

Rothschild house and office in Delmenhorst, 1930, courtesy of Fredo Behrens: Jüdisches Leben in der Langen Straße nach 1933. In: Die Lange Straße in Delmenhorst : Biographie einer alten Straße ; Begleitveröffentlichung zur Ausstellung in den Museen der Stadt Delmenhorst auf der Nordwolle vom 24.6. – 2.9.2001. Hg. vom Stadtmuseum Delmenhorst. Isensee, Oldenburg 2001, p. 60

Then on October 10, 1937, Harry and a number of other Jewish residents of Delmenhorst were arrested by the Gestapo without warning or warrants. According to the observations of a fellow prisoner who became Harry’s cellmate, Harry was particularly humiliated by this experience and was called a “dirty stinking Jew” by one of the Gestapo agents. Harry and his cellmate were in solitary confinement, and Harry remained in prison until the spring of 1938. Harry’s condition had deteriorated greatly during his imprisonment.⁵

On November 10, 1938 in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Harry was again arrested and was one of fourteen Jewish men who were arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.⁶

By that time all three of Harry and Mathilde’s children had left Germany for the United States. Harry left in the spring of 1939 and went to Cuba, and he was finally able to join his children in the US in December 1939.

But as we know, Mathilde did not come with him, and she was eventually deported to Minsk and died there. Dr. Meyer shed some light on this in his monograph, also quoted in Fredo Behren’s work. On page 85 of his history of the Delmenhorst Jews, Enno Meyer wrote that Mathilde had stayed behind to try and sell the family house; then when the war started in September 1939, she was trapped in Germany and could not leave.⁷

If only Mathilde had left with Harry and had not tried to sell the family’s home, this family’s story would have had a much happier ending. There may be more to this story that we will never know, but if this account is accurate, it shows how one decision affected an entire family’s fate during the Holocaust.

I want to thank Fredo Behrens again for providing me with the information and the photograph used in this post and for the work he does to preserve the Jewish history of Delmenhorst.

The second update came from two newly found cousins—my fifth cousin Charles Alexander and his daughter Kate. They also found me through my blog. Charles is the grandson of Theresa Rothschild Alexander, and I wrote about that family here. Check out the update there and learn how Charles’ parents, Albert Alexander and Mary Jane Deiches, actually met. My original speculation proved to be incorrect.

Also, I’ve added to that post a photo Charles gave me from his father’s yearbook. I am also adding it here since I could not place it properly in the original post.

Finally, the third update will have to wait until next week.