Category Archives: Genealogy

The Families of Kiele Stern Loewenthal and Abraham Stern: An Update

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My last post provided new information about the descendants of Kiele Stern Loewenthal’s daughter Selma Loewenthal Schwabacher. Today I will look at updates for the family of Kiele Stern Loewenthal’s daughter Helene Loewenthal Schultze and specifically updates for her only child, Elisabeth Auguste Aloysia Schultze, daughter of Helene’s second husband Oskar Schultze. I had several gaps in the story of Elisabeth.

First, I did not have Elisabeth’s birth record, and Aaron Knappstein located it for me:

Elisabeth was born on December 3, 1914, in Coblenz, Germany. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned from this record was that Helene, her mother, was identifying as “ohne,” or without, religion. As I wrote about here, Elisabeth’s mother Helene was born Jewish, but her father Oskar Schultze was Protestant. But both Helene and Elisabeth were included on the 1939 Minority census in Germany.

The notes at the bottom of the record indicate that Elisabeth was married in February 24,1955, in Hamburg and that she died on November 23, 1991 in Bad Krozingen.

That helped Aaron locate Elisabeth’s marriage record and death record. Here is the marriage record.

This document shows that Elisabeth married Ulrich Carl Albert Wilke on February 24, 1955, in Hamburg, Germany. Ulrich was born on August 16, 1906, in Hamburg; his parents were Emil Ludwig Gustav Wilke and Catherine Wilhelmine Frieda Auguste Schreiber. The marriage record states that Ulrich was a bank clerk and that Elisabeth was a merchant. She was 41 when they married, and he was 49. The marriage record indicates that neither had children, and as far as I know, Elisabeth and Ulrich also did not have children. Both Elisabeth and Ulrich reported that they were Lutheran.

In the upper left-hand margin of the marriage record is a note indicating that Elisabeth left the church in 1969. Aaron explained to me that this could have been done to avoid the religion tax or it could have indicated that she was not religious and did not want to pay a tax to support the church.

The second note in the left-hand margin reports that Ulrich died on December 5, 1984.

The third document that Aaron located about Elisabeth Schultze Wilke is a transcription of her death record.

From this document I know that she died in Bad Krozingen on November 23, 1991 and that she identified as “evanglische” (Protestant), so perhaps she had returned to the church between her marriage and her death. Elisabeth was 77 when she died.

Thanks to Aaron Knappstein, I now have a much more complete story of Elisabeth’s life; what’s still missing is the story of where she was and how she managed during the 1940s, and that may remain a mystery as she had no children to carry on her story.

I also have updates that relate to the descendants of Kiele Stern’s brother Abraham Stern and his children. These updates came from Abraham’s great-grandson Rafi Stern, who has previously shared photographs and information about his relatives. This time he sent two documents in German.

The first is a letter written by his uncle Erich Stern to Erich’s brother and Rafi’s father Guenther Stern. Erich and Guenther were the sons of Siegfried Salmon Stern, son of Abraham Stern and Johanna Goldschmidt. I discussed this letter in the earlier post, but now have a scan of the original letter in German. It is the letter Eric wrote describing in the first paragraph what had happened to the family on Kristallnacht. As you can see, it is dated November 13, 1938, just a few days after that nightmarish event throughout Germany.

The remaining two paragraphs are rather vague but appear to concern the family’s property and business and how to protect it from the Nazis.

Thank you for your various letters.
Unfortunately we have very bad news from Frankfurt. Uncle Siegfried, who wanted to go to Palestine with your family on Sunday, was arrested on Friday, as well as Aunt Sittah, Maguerite and Helmuth. Aba had fled and no one knew where. Really horrible conditions. Bickhardts still seem to be undisturbed.

Under these circumstances, I personally think it is more correct if you do not entrust Mr. Goldschmidt with the handling of the matter, since he cannot do the thing in the future. An Aryan lawyer, as I hear, is also not allowed to accept new Jewish customers, but if you turned to Peters, that [problem]would also disappear.  [I assume this means that because the family had previously used Peters, the prohibition against new clients would not apply.] Please write to him immediately. The matter can surely also be processed via the foreign exchange office in Cologne, since we are responsible here. Please let me know about it immediately. I will not enclose the list of assets with you, because maybe it will not be required in Cologne. I am also very reluctant to submit a list of 35 & 38, because I do not know about Eburonenstrasse and have given only very vague information about the general property registration.

As far as the matter of the foreign  papers, Father gave the matter to one of his lawyers (I don’t know his name), who is said to have first-class relationships. I haven’t heard anything yet. Father took it on the condition that if the lawyer got all or part of the papers in my name, we would share them.

Did you hear about the transfer of the proceeds from the sale of Kaiserstrasse to our accounts?
Greeting and kiss. Yours, Erich

Rafi also sent me a memoir written by his great-aunt, Siegfried’s sister Alice Lea Stern Oppenheimer.  It’s 58 pages long and in German, and since my German group is not meeting this summer, I am going to try to read it myself to keep up with my German. I will report back once I’ve accomplished that task.

Thank you again to Aaron Knappstein and to Rafi Stern for helping to tell the stories of these descendants of Sarah Goldschmidt and Salomon Stern.

 

A Photo Essay of the Family of Selma Loewenthal Schwabacher

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Another cousin who found my blog during these pandemic days is my fifth cousin, once removed, Carrie Schwabacher. She is the granddaughter of Gerhard Schwabacher, the great-granddaughter of Selma Loewenthal Schwabacher, great-great-granddaughter of Kiele Stern Loewenthal, three times great granddaughter of Sarah Goldschmidt Stern, and four-times great-granddaughter of Meyer Goldschmidt.

Carrie kindly shared with me these wonderful photographs as well as some heartwarming stories about her family. They start with her great-great-grandmother, Kiele (Caroline) Stern Loewenthal, the daughter of Sarah Goldschmidt and Salomon Stern, wife of Abraham Loewenthal. I wrote about Kiele here and here.

Kiele Stern Loewenthal.
Courtesy of her family

Here is a lovely photograph of Kiele and Abraham Loewenthal’s daughter, Selma, as a young woman; I see a strong resemblance to her mother.

Selma Loewenthal
Courtesy of her family

Selma married Nathan Schwabacher:

Nathan Schwabacher Courtesy of the Schwabacher family

And they had three children. Their daughter Alice was the oldest:

Alice Schwabacher Courtesy of the Schwabacher family

Alice was followed by Julius Alfred Schwabacher:

Julius Alfred Schwabacher Courtesy of the Schwabacher family

Gerhard Schwabacher, Carrie’s grandfather, was Selma and Nathan’s youngest child:

Gerhard Schwabacher
Courtesy of the family

The two sons look remarkably similar to each other and to their father Nathan.

Alice Schwabacher married David Weinstein (later Wenten) and had one child, Wolfgang, depicted here as a young boy with his dog:

Wolfgang Weinstein and dog

Julius Schwabacher married Margaret Wuertenberg and had one child, Eva Lore, the adorable little girl shown here:

Eva Lore Schwabacher
Courtesy of the family

This photograph of Selma Loewenthal Schwabacher and her brother Julius Loewenthal is undated, but must have been taken before 1936 when Julius left for the United States. Selma died in 1937 in Berlin.

Selma Loewenthal Schwabacher and brother Julius Loewenthal
Courtesy of the family

Here is a closer one of Selma, probably taken around the same time:

The remaining photographs that Carrie shared with me appear to have been taken after the family immigrated to the United States. Their full story has been told here, so I won’t tell it again, but will share these photographs of the Schwabacher family in their new country and some of Carrie’s memories of her extended family.

She has wonderful memories of her grandparents, as she shared with me: “I have such great memories of my grand parents even though they died when I was 7. Christmas was a very special time – like a scene from the Nutcracker. As children, we celebrated Hanukkah, Christmas and Epiphany ( my mom’s side of the family is Russian Orthodox). We got presents for months, or it seemed like it.” She also wrote that her Opa, Gerhard Schwabacher, always gave each of his grandchildren a quarter every time he saw them.

Other holidays were spent with her great-uncle Julius Schwabacher, who became Fred Wenten in the US, and his wife Else in Proctor, Vermont: Fred and Elsa owned an Inn in Proctor Vt. The entire family spent a few holidays there as well. The toasts would go on for so long that someone would finally say “let the children eat their fruit cocktails before they fall asleep”. And then, dinner would start.”

Here’s a photograph of Fred Wenten in the US:

Fred Wenten (born Julius Alfred Schwabacher)
Courtesy of the family

Fred’s daughter Eva Lore was also a favorite of Carrie. Eva Lore married Henry Corton in 1951. Carrie wrote this about them:

“Henry was a fabulous dancer and would sometimes break into buck and wing ( tap dancing) in the kitchen even when he was old. We visited then often when they lived in Jamaica, Queens. We always went out for walks. We met Bella Abzug at the Cloisters in NY. He was very fond of Pavorotti and considered him a “distant cousin“. It got him back stage at the Met many times. Eva and Henri took us to Ringling Bro’s. And Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Ice Capades when we were little. We visited Eva Lore in LaGuna Hills, helped her pack and move to Baltimore, and took her to her first McDonalds meal. The “Apple Strudel “ was her favorite. Apple Pie. Even at 79, she was booking her own travel on her computer. They never had children, but spoiled us.”

Here are some of the photographs of Eva Lore and Henry that Carrie shared with me:

Eva Lore Schwabacher and Henry Corton Courtesy of the family

Eva Lore Schwabacher Corton Courtesy of the family

Eva Lore Schwabacher Corton Courtesy of the family

Eva Lore and Henry Corton Courtesy of the family

Carrie also has warm memories of her great-aunt Alice Schwabacher Weinstein (Wenten in the US):

“We went to visit Tanta Alice for the holidays every year in Washington Heights, NY. I always wanted to take a nap, because I loved the big square Feather pillows on the bed. She always had such great treats for us, German delicacies. She was extremely socially active. Wolf would remark that he had to make an appointment just to visit his mother. We had her 90 th birthday party at window on the worlds – top of the World Trade Center. It was incredible to meet so many people originally named Schwabacher.”

This photograph shows Alice with her son Wolfgang and his wife Ruth.

Alice Schwabacher Wenten Kingsley, Wolfgang Wenten, Ruth Pollinger Wenten
Courtesy of the family

Finally, this is a photograph of the three Schwabacher siblings and their spouses taken in the US:

Arthur Kingsley, Alice Schwabacher Kingsley, Julius (Fred Wenten) Schwabacher, Else Wenten, Alice Ferron Schwabacher, Gerhard Schwabacher
Courtesy of the family

I am extremely grateful to my cousin Carrie for sharing her memories and these photographs. She really has brought to life this strong and loving family who escaped from Germany and started a wonderful new life in the United States.

Hannah and Henry Goldsmith, My Double Cousins: An Update

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I have been working on the family of Jacob Meier Goldschmidt, the oldest son of Meyer Goldschmidt, my four-times great-uncle, for months. We have already discussed four of Jacob’s five children: Helene, Regina, Julius, and Mayer/Marcel, and there is one more child to discuss. Then I can move on to Jacob’s sister Malchen and his two younger brothers, Selig and Falk. As you can see, there are still a lot of Goldschmidts to discuss. Given that I started writing about the Goldschmidts almost two and a half years ago, it looks like I will still be writing about them at least until the end of 2020 if not into 2021. That’s more time than I’ve spent on any of my other family lines. Wow.

But before I go on to Jacob Meier Goldschmidt’s youngest child, I need to do some catching up. It seems that the COVID19 pandemic has led many people stuck at home to research their family history. And I’ve heard from quite a few new Goldschmidt/Goldsmith cousins who Googled an ancestor’s name and found my blog. I’ve gotten new photographs, new stories, and new names to add to the family tree. So for the next few weeks, I am going to post this new information and update the posts where I first wrote about the relevant family.

Today’s post is about the families of two of Simon Goldschmidt’s children, the two born in the US, Hannah Goldsmith Benedict and Henry Goldsmith, who were my double cousins as their mother was my three-times great-aunt  Fradchen Schoenthal, my great-great-grandfather Levi Schoenthal’s sister.

First, I want to share some photographs and documents and a story about the family of Hannah Goldsmith Benedict, my first cousin, three times removed.  She was born in Baltimore in 1848 and had three sons who survived to adulthood, Jake, Herschel, and Centennial Harry Benedict.

In April, 2020, I heard from Hannah’s great-great-grandson Bruce Velzy, who is also the great-grandson of Jake Benedict; he had found my blog posts about his ancestors and wanted to share some photographs, including this one of Hannah Goldsmith Benedict that I posted earlier and had restored by the Free Photo Restoration group on Facebook.

Hannah Goldsmith Benedict, restored photo. Courtesy of her family

This is Hannah’s husband, Joseph Benedict:

Joseph Benedict, courtesy of Bruce Velzy

Bruce also shared a photograph of Hannah’s three sons. We weren’t completely sure who was who, but since Harry was the youngest, six years younger than Jake, five years younger than Hershel, I think he is the boy in the center.

Sons of Hannah Goldsmith and Joseph Benedict, c. 1890. Courtesy of the family

Bruce also had some very interesting documents, including this application for a Civil War pension filed by Joseph Benedict:

I learned several things from this document—that Joseph and Hannah were married by Rabbi Naumberg on April 17, 1867, in Pittsburgh. Even more important is the fact that Joseph and Hannah had two children who died as infants whom I’d not discovered. Their first child Emily, born October 19, 1868, died just three months later in December, and their fifth child Sydney was born on March 29, 1889, and died two months later in May, 1889. I am so glad I can add them to the family tree and preserve their memory for I am sure they were loved and mourned by their family.

I looked for birth and death certificates for Emily and Sydney, but did not find any. I did, however, find their gravestones on FindAGrave and also a death notice for Sydney on his FindAGrave memorial.

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 06 June 2020), memorial page for Emilie Benedict (Oct 1868–Dec 1868), Find a Grave Memorial no. 109102550, citing Troy Hill Jewish Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA ; Maintained by Corey & Douglas Marshall-Steele (contributor 47477063) .

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 06 June 2020), memorial page for Sidney G. Benedict (29 Mar 1889–17 May 1889), Find a Grave Memorial no. 90777547, citing Troy Hill Jewish Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA ; Maintained by DGG (contributor 47020054) .

 

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 06 June 2020), memorial page for Sidney G. Benedict (29 Mar 1889–17 May 1889), Find a Grave Memorial no. 90777547, citing Troy Hill Jewish Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA ; Maintained by DGG (contributor 47020054) .

Death: Benedict—on May 17 at 10 in the evening, Sidney G., youngest son of Joseph and Hannah Benedict. Funeral to be held at the parents’ home, [address], on Sunday, May 19, at 2 in the afternoon. Please no flowers.

(Note that the spelling of their first names on the gravestones and in the death notice is different from that used on the pension application written years later.)

In order for Hannah to receive the Civil War pension benefits as a widow after Joseph died, she had to prove her marriage. The pension application asked for a marriage record, and Joseph had written there was none as no records were kept at the time.

So in 1918 after Joseph died, Hannah applied for widow’s benefits and submitted this affidavit to prove her marriage:

Notice that Julius J. Streng, the witness, was 63 in 1918, meaning that at the time of the wedding in 1867 he would have been only twelve years old. So who was he and why was he at Hannah and Joseph’s wedding?

Well, I found his death certificate, and his mother’s birth name was Jenetta Benedict. I haven’t yet found evidence to prove it, but my hunch is that Jenetta was Joseph Benedict’s sister and that young Julius was his nephew.

UPDATE: My hunch was confirmed when I found Jeanette/Jenetta’s obituary in 1913 and it described Joseph Benedict as her brother.

Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1967; Certificate Number Range: 066001-069000
Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1967

Bruce also had a copy of Hannah’s death certificate:

Hannah Goldsmith Benedict death certificate

Of course, I love this because it is evidence of my double connection to Hannah as a Goldschmidt and as a Schoenthal.

Bruce shared with me that Joseph and Hannah’s two older sons, his great-grandfather Jake and great-great-uncle Herschel, dropped out of school in ninth grade in order to earn money so that their youngest brother Harry, who was an excellent student, would be able to attend college. Harry, as I wrote about here, ended up graduating from Cornell University as did his two sons Manson and William, and all three became highly successful and brilliant engineers.

In addition, Bruce’s sister Suzanne Midford left this comment on my blog post about her grandmother Helen Benedict Booher, Jake Benedict’s daughter:

My “Grandmommy Booher” was what’s now known as a social worker, one of the professions that grew out of the Jane Addams Hull House movement and the professionalization of women workers who helped to socialize new American immigrants in the 1920s and 30s. One aspect of this was the desire by members of the earlier (and more prosperous) German Jewish immigrant waves to give a leg up to, and help “Americanize” the (mostly poorer) Jewish immigrants from the later eastern European waves. To that end, the new immigrants were taught hygiene, cooking, language, ‘manners’ (American ones anyhow), and comportment. One of my dearest possessions is my grandmother’s bound copy of The Settlement Cookbook, which was a German-Jewish cookbook meant to teach a new immigrant Jewish housewife all the ways she should “be American”, from translating her old world dishes to new world methods and ingredients, to introducing her to “modern” culinary ideas, how to use unfamiliar kitchen implements, how to keep a clean house (by American standards), and a million little details about “life in America”. As a historian, I find it an invaluable window through which to understand my grandmother’s generation and the immigrant assimilations that characterized that period in our national history.

I am so happy that my cousins Suzanne and Bruce, my fourth cousins, once removed, found my blog and so generously shared with me these photographs, documents, and family stories that add new and important dimensions to their personalities and their lives.

One final addition, this one about Hannah Goldsmith Benedict’s sister-in-law, Sarah Jaffa Goldsmith, wife of Henry Goldsmith, Hannah’s brother. This photograph of Sarah was sent to me by my cousin Christian, Sarah and Henry’s great-great-grandson.

The story behind this photograph is that Christian received it in the mail from someone who found it in an antique shop in Portland, Oregon. Given that Sarah lived in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, her entire married life and that, as far as I know, none of her children or grandchildren or other descendants ended up near Oregon, it’s a mystery as to how this photograph traveled all the way to the Pacific Northwest and landed in an antique shop in Portland.

These little windfalls, these gifts, have brightened my days during the dark and scary time we’re living in.

 

Hermann Gutmann Becomes Dennis Goodman: An Oral History, Part II

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By the spring of 1940, Hermann Gutmann was seventeen years old and had been in England and separated from his parents since the fall of 1936.  He had completed his secondary education and had been working at a leather factory in Lancashire in the north of England since February 1940 and moved to London that May.1

On July 2, 1940, at 6 am he heard a knock on his door. The police told him to pack his bags and come with them to the police station. He protested, but to no avail, and along with many other German Jewish “enemy aliens,” he was taken to a camp, Huyton Camp, and housed in a tent with other young refugees from Nazi Germany. All those who were under eighteen, including Hermann, were told they were being taken out of England. He again protested and was told by the commanding officer that those leaving England would have the best chance of survival because England was likely to lose the war.

As the internees boarded the HMT Dunera on July 10, 1940, all their personal possessions were taken and never returned. The Jewish internees were placed in the hold in the rear of the ship and kept there by barbed wire fencing. They were only allowed up on the deck for thirty minutes a day for exercise where they were barefooted and often stepping on the broken beer bottles left behind by the guards, whom Hermann described as “football hooligans.” The internees slept on the hard floor and had open toilet stalls that he described as “awful.”  Hermann described the morale of the younger internees as fairly good, but said that those who were older had a much harder time and that there were even a few suicides during their voyage. There were also Nazi and Italian internees on the ship, but they were kept in a different location.

HMT Dunera. Not stated in the AWM record / Public domain

The internees had no idea where they were going until they arrived in Australia on September 6, 1940. Once in Australia, they were sent to New South Wales and housed at the Hay Internment Camp. There were about two thousand internees kept there, many of whom had been successful professionals—doctors, lawyers, professors, and so on. They formed their own government and even printed their own money. Hermann distributed newspapers and even started a Boy Scout group that was officially recognized by the London headquarters of the Boy Scouts.

They lived in huts, about forty to a hut, and conditions were good. Hermann noted several times that as a young man (he was seventeen), he was not as uncomfortable as those who were older, and he didn’t mind some of the living conditions. When asked whether he now resented having been interned during this time, he said no—that he understood it was done without much thought based on fear when the war started and that it was an awful waste of time and money, but that he did not feel any resentment towards the British for their actions.

In the fall of 1941, Hermann volunteered to join the British military as a means of getting out of the internment camp. He left Austrialia on October 13, 1941, and arrived back in England on November 28, 1941, just over a week before Pearl Harbor. He and other Jewish refugees were given no choice as to where to serve and were assigned to the Pioneer Corps, a corps assigned “light engineering tasks [that] included building anti-aircraft emplacements on the Home Front, working on the Mulberry harbours for D-Day, and serving during beach assaults in France and Italy. Pioneers also carried stretchers, built airfields, repaired railways, and moved stores and supplies.”

Pioneer Corps clearing rubble, Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer / Public domain

It was during this time that his commanding officer asked him to change his name to something less German-sounding. Hermann chose the name Dennis John Goodman, his first name for a friend who had been killed in the war and Goodman as an Anglicized version of Gutmann. In the interview, he commented that he now regretted that he never returned to his birth name Hermann Gutmann as it had a very long history in his family.

Dennis was not content being in the Pioneer Corps because he wanted to be fighting the Nazis. In 1943, British policy changed, and Jewish German refugees like Dennis were allowed to serve more directly in combat. Dennis joined a tank unit and was on the beach at Normandy three days after D-Day, that is, on June 9, 1944. He ended up fighting in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally in Germany. He was involved in many difficult and dangerous battles, made more dangerous by the fact that the English tanks were outmatched by the German Tiger Tanks they were facing. He experienced some very close encounters with death or capture by the Germans.

The interviewer asked him how he felt when he entered Germany, his country of birth, and fought on German soil. Dennis commented that “by that time I felt more English than German” and that he had no difficulty facing his former countrymen in battle. When the war ended, he was in Berlin for the British Victory Parade on July 21, 1945.

British Victory Parade in Berlin, National Archives and Records Administration / Public domain

By that time he already knew about the concentration camps.  He was given compassionate leave to go to Amsterdam to learn what had happened to his parents and learned of the deportation to and murder at Sobibor. In the interview, Dennis mentioned that at that time he learned that his grandmother had been hidden in the northern part of Holland and had survived.

I checked to see which grandmother, and it had to be his maternal grandmother, Hedwig Goldschmidt, because his paternal grandmother had died in 1932. I have no wartime records for Hedwig after March 15, 1938, when she was a passenger coming to England from Amsterdam.2 I initially thought that meant that she had moved to England at that time, but it appears from Hermann’s information that she had returned to Amsterdam, perhaps after visiting him in England.

Dennis remained in Germany after the war and joined the Review and Interrogation staff in Neuengamme, near Hamburg, where he was involved in interrogating Nazis about war crimes. He was struck by the ordinariness of the people who committed these crimes and their weak excuses for what they did. He also found some of them very arrogant. Several times during the interview, Dennis made the point that it was well known throughout Germany that Jews were being persecuted and that those who afterwards claimed that they hadn’t been aware of what was happening were either lying or repressing what they’d known.

In 1947, Dennis was discharged from the military and returned to England. He married a Polish-born Holocaust survivor after the war and had three children. I don’t know much about his life after the war, but did find several immigration documents from Brazil, starting in 1949, suggesting he might have been involved in international business or perhaps visiting family members who had immigrated to Brazil.

Ancestry.com. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965. Original data: “Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965”. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2013.

Dennis John Goodman, born Hermann Gutmann, died in England in 2007. He had lived an extraordinary life, leaving his parents and homeland as a thirteen year old boy, being interned for over a year in Australia as an “enemy alien,” and then fighting valiantly against the Nazis for several years including post-war interrogation of war criminals. His parents had been murdered at Sobibor. He had every right to be an angry, resentful man.

But listening to his voice in the oral history interview, I detected no resentment towards his adopted country, despite the internment. Certainly he harbored anger with the Nazis for what they did to his parents and all the Jews in Europe and continuing bewilderment over the German citizenry’s acquiescence to it all. But I did not come away from the interview thinking of him as bitter or defeated; instead I heard a then 72 year old man who looked back on his life with pride in his ability to endure and succeed against all odds and in his strength and independence even as a young man. His story will stay with me forever.

  1. These facts come almost entirely from the oral history interview of Dennis Goodman, aka Hermann Gutmann, found on the Imperial War Museum website. Some of the dates in this post were found in an article written by his daughter, Naomi Levy, and published in the AJR [Association of Jewish Refugees] Journal of December 2018, on page 11, and found here. ↩
  2.  Hedwig Goldschmidt, Arrival Age: 61, Birth Date: abt 1877, Port of Departure: New York, New York, United States, Arrival Date: 15 Mar 1938, Port of Arrival: Plymouth, England, Ports of Voyage: New York, Ship Name: Washington, Shipping Line: United States Line, Official Number: 232210, The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 1158, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 ↩

Hermann Gutmann, Child Refugee from the Nazis: An Oral History

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As we saw last time, my cousin Else Goldschmidt Gutmann, daughter of Marcel Goldschmidt and Hedwig Goldschmidt, was murdered by the Nazis in 1943 at the Sobibor concentration camp along with her husband Siegfried Gutmann. They were, however, survived by their son, Hermann Gutmann. His story is captured in a moving and detailed oral history interview that was recorded for the British Imperial War Museums in 1995 and available online here.

The oral history interview is two hours long, and I listened to it in the course of one afternoon. If anyone has the time and the interest to listen, even if just to the first thirty minutes, it will provide insights into the strength and courage of those who escaped Nazi Germany as children. My words cannot possibly capture the emotion and the personality expressed by this man in retelling his life story fifty to sixty years after these tumultuous events. When you listen, the clarity of his memory, his composure, and his strength come shining through. Despite living in England since 1936, he still had the traces of a German accent. I will try and do justice to his story, but again, if you have time, listen to at least some of this interview.

One other editorial explanation. Hermann Gutmann changed his name in 1943 to Dennis John Goodman. I will refer to him as Hermann in discussing the years before that change and then as Dennis for the years after the name change. I hope that’s not too confusing.

All the facts in this post come directly from the oral history interview with Dennis John Goodman at the Imperial War Museum, Catalogue 15101.

Hermann Gutmann’s father Siegfried Gutmann was from a family of bankers in Stuttgart, and after the Stuttgart bank was taken over by a larger bank, Siegfried moved to Frankfurt to work for a bank in that city where he met and married Else Goldschmidt. Their only child Hermann Gutmann was born in Frankfurt on February 28, 1923. Hermann believed that the economic circumstances experienced in Germany in the 1920s made his parents reluctant to have more than one child. He described his childhood as a happy middle-class childhood in Frankfurt where his family was actively involved in the Jewish community as well as the general community.

Frankfurt, Germany, 1918,Carl Andreas Abt / Public domain

Hermann experienced anti-Semitism as early as 1931 when he was eight years old and saw people carrying anti-Semitic political posters while marching in the streets of Frankfurt. But things grew much worse after 1933 when Hitler was elected Chancellor. Hermann described himself as an outspoken and opinionated boy who fought back when he was attacked by students for being Jewish. When he finished primary school, his parents could no longer send him to a general secondary school because Jews were banned. Instead they sent him to an excellent Jewish day school where he was one of several hundred students.

But by 1936, his parents were concerned that Hermann would not be able to receive a quality education, and they decided that the best thing to do for their son was to send him to boarding school in England. His father spoke to young Hermann, expressing his fears, given how Hitler had perverted Germany and how their non-Jewish friends had drifted away out of fear.  When asked by the oral history interviewer how he felt about leaving his parents and his home, Hermann responded that he “just had to face it.” His acceptance of this reality seemed remarkable to me, especially given that he was only thirteen at the time.

So on October 5, 1936, thirteen year old Hermann Gutmann traveled to England with a family friend who happened also to be heading to England.  When they arrived in London, a relative met him at the station and made sure he boarded the right train to Brighton, where his new school, a Jewish boarding school called Whittinghame College, was located. He described his first year there as very lonely. He knew just a little English when he arrived, and there were only one or two other German students at the school. More German refugees had arrived by the time he left in 1939.

Thank you to the alumni association of Whittinghame College for permission to use these two photographs.

Hermann is probably in this photograph, but I don’t know which young man he is.

Whitinghame College students, 1939

His parents left Germany for Amsterdam in 1937. The interviewer asked him why his parents hadn’t come to England instead of Amsterdam, and he explained that his father had been offered a job in Amsterdam and that his parents believed they would be safe there. He said that no one anticipated in 1937 that Hitler would later invade the Netherlands and deport Jews to concentration camps. Hermann was able to visit his parents in Amsterdam during this time, and he said that although it was a big adjustment for them and especially for his father, whose new job was not in the banking field, they were reasonably happy living there.

Although Hermann said that he did not enjoy the “monastic existence” of the all-boys boarding school, he stated that he received an excellent education and that he even qualified to matriculate at Cambridge University for the fall of 1939, but “events intervened,” that is, the start of World War II. Once the war started, Hermann also was no longer able to visit his parents.

He finished his time at Whittinghame and obtained a job in a leather manufacturing factory in Lancashire, England, where he worked from February, 1940 until May, 1940. He had been in England for more than three years at that point. He had coped with adjusting to a new country, learning a new language, completing his secondary education at a Jewish boarding school, and enduring the long separation from his parents. In the interview, he commented that he had experienced no hostility in England based on his German background and that people had been very friendly.

But his life was about to change in the spring of 1940.

Pacific Street

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I am delighted and honored by Charles Moore’s insightful and in-depth review of my novel, Pacific Street. Thank you, Charles!

Moore Genealogy's avatarMoore Genealogy

A Novel by Amy Cohen

Where does the time go? I know I purchased this book a few months after it came out. The copyright date says 2016, and here we are in 2020, and I have finally read the book. Pacific Street is an excellent read and well worth your time. The author Amy Cohen writes about the early life of her grandparents Gussie Brotman and Isadore Goldschlager, leading up to their marriage. While written as a novel, many of the events are true, and many of the people encountered in the book are real. To say the book is a result of a great deal of research would be an understatement. While written as a novel, the author let her grandparents take on that human quality that better served the telling of their story.  

Amy opened her book with an actual event in Isadore’s home town of…

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Marcel Goldschmidt’s Children: The Two Who Did Not Survive

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Although Marcel Goldschmidt’s widow (and cousin) Hedwig and two of their children escaped safely from Germany and survived the Holocaust, their other two children, Nelly and Else, met tragic fates.

Nelly and Else were the two middle children, and they married brothers. Nelly was married to Moritz Gutmann and Else to Siegfried Gutmann. Each had one child; Nelly’s son was Karl Hermann Gutmann, and Else’s son was Hermann Gutmann; both were named for their paternal grandfather, Hermann Gutmann. Up until the Nazi era, both families were living in Frankfurt. I have no information about Siegfried Gutmann’s occupation, but his brother Moritz was an art dealer like so many of his Goldschmidt in-laws.1

Nelly Goldschmidt Gutmann’s story is particularly heartbreaking because she could have survived had the family made a different decision. On January 13, 1936, Moritz Gutmann arrived in the United States and filed a declaration of intention to become a US citizen two months later. On his declaration he listed his wife Nelly and reported that she was residing in Frankfurt and that their son Karl was living in Holland. Moritz also indicated that his prior residence before entering the US had been Toronto, Canada, and that he had entered the US in Buffalo, New York, but was now residing in New York City.

The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21
Source Information
Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Moritz and Nelly’s son Karl arrived the following year on December 16, 1937 when he was fourteen. On the ship manifest he indicated that he was going to his father in New York and leaving behind his uncle, “S. Gutmann,” i.e. Siegfried Gutmann, in Amsterdam. Thus, by that time Else Goldschmidt and her husband Siegfried Gutmann had also left Germany.2

But where was Else’s Goldschmidt’s sister Nelly Goldschmidt Gutmann, the wife of Moritz Gutmann, mother of Karl Gutmann? She was still in Germany, now in Coblenz, according to the petition for naturalization that Moritz filed on November 21, 1941. She and Moritz had divorced in August, 1940 in Florida.3

Moritz Gutmann petition for naturalization, National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, DC; NAI Title: Index to Petitions for Naturalizations Filed in Federal, State, and Local Courts in New York City, 1792-1906; NAI Number: 5700802; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21
(Roll 1347) Petition No· 390451 – Petition No· 390950, Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Nelly thus never came to live in the US and was still in Germany as late as November 21, 1941, two years after the beginning of World War II. According to the Page of Testimony filed at Yad Vashem by her cousin Regina Blanche Rosenberger, Nelly was living in a mental institution during the war and was killed sometime during the war. She was gassed on a train.

We don’t know all the circumstances surrounding Nelly’s life—why she was institutionalized and when, why her extended family wasn’t able to take her with them when they left Germany, or even where and when she was murdered. But we know that her life ended tragically and violently at the hands of the Nazis.

Fortunately, Nelly was survived by her son Karl, who did escape in time. As noted above, Karl had arrived in 1937 when he was fourteen years old. According to his declaration of intention filed on October 28, 1941, when he was seventeen, Karl was at that time a student at Pennington School, a boy’s college preparatory school in Pennington, New Jersey. (The declaration says Pennsylvania, but that’s incorrect.)

Karl Gutmann declaration of intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21,  (Roll 638) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 507401-508300), Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Karl enlisted in the US Army on February 11, 1943, and petitioned for naturalization while stationed in Spartanburg, South Carolina.4 In August 1945 he was hospitalized in an unidentified hospital for a non-battle-related injury to his eye caused while cleaning a firearm.5 I could not (yet) find other records of his military service, but I did find him on a Navy transport ship returning from France on April 12, 1946, a year after the war in Europe had ended.6

Interestingly, Karl married Joan C. Fenton just six days after returning from Europe. They were married on April 18, 1946, in New York, and had three children.7  Karl and Joan later divorced, and he married Gisela Bartels in 1974.8 They moved to Florida, where Karl died on February 8, 1995, at the age of 71.9

Thus, although Nelly did not survive the Holocaust, she has descendants who are alive today and living in the United States. I hope that I can connect with them and learn more about their grandmother.

As mentioned above, Nelly’s sister Else Goldschmidt Gutmann did leave Germany before World War II started. She and her husband Siegfried Gutmann were in Amsterdam when their nephew Karl arrived in the US in 1937.  Unfortunately Else and Siegfried were not safe from the Nazis in the Netherlands. At some point after Hitler conquered the Netherlands, they were sent to the camp at Westerbork in the Netherlands and then from there on July 20, 1943, they were deported to the Sobibor concentration camp where they were murdered. These Pages of Testimony and a letter found in their files at Yad Vashem attests to the cruelty of their deaths:

Siegfried was 57 when he was killed, and Else only forty.

But as was the case with Else’s sister Nelly, Else and Siegfried were survived by their son, Hermann Gutmann. His story merits separate posts that will come next.

  1. Moritz Gutmann, Declaration of Intent, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  2. Karl Gutmann, passsenger manifest, Year: 1937; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 143, Ship or Roll Number: Statendam, Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  3. Moritz Gutmann, Gender: Male, Spouse’s name: Nelly Gutmann, Divorce Date: 1940, Divorce Place: Dade, Florida, USA, Certificate Number: 6976, Ancestry.com. Florida, Divorce Index, 1927-2001 ↩
  4.  Karl Hermann Gutmann, Gender: Male, Declaration Age: 20, Record Type: Petition
    Birth Date: 4 May 1923, Birth Place: Frankfort On Maim, Germany, Arrival Date: 16 Dec 1937, Arrival Place: New York, NY,Declaration Date: 8 May 1943, Declaration Place: Greenville, South Carolina, USA, Court District: U.S. District Court for the Greenville Division of the Western District of South Carolina. (06/26/1926 – 03/18/1966)
    Petition Number: 2589, The National Archives at Atlanta; Morrow, Georgia, USA; Record Group Title: 21; Record Group Number: Records of District Courts of the United States, Ancestry.com. South Carolina, Naturalization Records, 1868-1991; Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946. ↩
  5. National Archives and Records Administration; Hospital Admission Card Files, ca. 1970 – ca. 1970; NAI: 570973; Record Group Number: Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), 1775-1994; Record Group Title: 112,
    Ancestry.com. U.S. WWII Hospital Admission Card Files, 1942-1954 ↩
  6. Karl Gutmann, ship manifest, Year: 1946; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 285, Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  7.  Karl H Gutmann, Marriage License Date: 18 Apr 1946, Marriage License Place: Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse: Joan C Fenton, License Number: 12447, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number: 18, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  8. Karl H Gutmann, Marriage License Date: 1974, Marriage License Place: Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse: Gisela E Bartels, License Number: 23231, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  9. Karl Gutmann, Birth Date: 4 May 1923, Death Date: 6 Feb 1995, SSN: 067180184
    Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 ↩

Marcel Goldschmidt’s Children: The Two Who Survived

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Marcel (born Mayer) Goldschmidt, the fourth child of Jacob Meier Goldschmidt and Jettchen Cahn, died in 1928 and was survived by his wife and first cousin, Hedwig Goldschmidt, and their four children, Jacob, Nelly, Else, and Grete. Hedwig and two of those children, Jacob and Grete, would survive the Holocaust. Nelly and Else were not as fortunate. This post will tell the story of Hedwig and the two children who escaped.

Grete and her husband Berthold Heimerdinger and their daughter Gabrielle were the first to leave Germany. They arrived in New York on June 22, 1934, and were going to Berthold’s brother Leonard Heimerdinger in New York City.

Berthold Heimerdinger and family, ship manifest, Year: 1934; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 101, Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Two months later Berthold declared his intention to become a US citizen.  He was working as a securities dealer at that time, and the family was residing at 1212 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Berthold Heimerdinger, Declaration of Intent, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, (Roll 478) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 355901-357000), Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Grete’s mother Hedwig came to visit them in New York in April, 1935, for a four month stay, listing her son Jacob as the person to contact back in Frankfurt,1 but Hedwig returned to Germany after her visit. She returned for another visit two years later on October 29, 1937, but this time listed her residence as Zurich, Switzerland, where her contact person was a friend named Julius Wolf.2

Sometime thereafter Hedwig must have left Switzerland because when she arrived in England on March 18, 1938, she listed her last address as Amsterdam.3 I don’t know where she was during World War II. More on that in a later post. By 1952, she was living in the United States.

Ancestry.com. New York, Index to Petitions for Naturalization filed in New York City, 1792-1989 [

In 1940, Grete, Berthold, and Gabrielle Heimerdinger were living in Queens, New York, and Berthold was working as a jewelry dealer.4 According to Berthold’s draft registration for World War II, he was self-employed.

Berthold Heimerdinger, World War II draft registration, The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942

Grete’s brother Jacob arrived in New York on August 30, 1941, from Lisbon, Portugal, with his last residence being Nice, France. On his declaration of intention to become a US citizen, Jacob listed his occupation as an art dealer, like so many of his extended family members from Frankfurt.

Jacob Goldschmidt, Declaration of Intent, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21 Description Description: (Roll 644) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 512901-513900) Source Information Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

According to his World War II draft registration completed the following year, Jacob was living at 26 East 63rd Street in New York and listed Herman Goldschmidt as the person who would always know where he was. Herman was his cousin, the son of Julius Falk Goldschmidt and Helene Goldschmidt II, and was living at the same address, 26 East 63rd Street.

Thus, Jacob was living with his cousins, not his sister Grete. Jacob did not list an occupation on his draft registration, but listed his place of business as the same address as his (and his cousins’) residence, 26 East 63rd Street. (Note also that on the naturalization index card for his mother Hedwig above, she also listed 26 East 63rd Street as her address in 1952.)

Jacob Goldschmidt, World War II draft registration, The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942

Jacob had reported on his declaration of intent that he was not married and had no children. However, David Baron and Roger Cibella’s research reported that Jacob married in France on June 20, 1940, and thereafter had two children born in France, one in December 1941 and one in 1952. Although I have no documentation of the marriage or the births of the children, I did find airline documents showing that the wife and two children visited Jacob in New York City during the 1950s.[^5] By 1964, Jacob had relocated to France, presumably to be closer to his family.5

Gabrielle Heimerdinger, Grete and Berthold’s daughter, married Erwin Vogel on September 8, 1943, in New York City.6 Erwin was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 23, 1921, to Kurt and Edith Vogel, and had immigrated to the US with his family in 1937, coming from Antwerp, Belgium. They settled in Chicago, where they were living in 1940.7

On his 1942 draft registration for World War II, Erwin was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, and working for the Stevens Institute of Technology, from which he received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1944. Gabrielle and Erwin had four children.8

Erwin Vogel, World War II draft registration, The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; WWII Draft Registration Cards for New Jersey, 10/16/1940-03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147; Box: 686
Ancestry.com. U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

Thus, Hedwig and her son Jacob and her daughter Grete and Grete’s family all survived the Holocaust. Grete’s husband Berthold Heimerdinger died in June 1961 at the age of 71.9 Hedwig died on December 9, 1964; she was 87.10 Jacob Goldschmidt died in October 1976 in France. He was eighty years old.11

Grete was the last surviving child of Marcel and Hedwig Goldschmidt. She lived a long life, dying on January 2, 2003, in New York at the age of 98.12 She had outlived her daughter Gabrielle Heimerdinger Vogel, who died January 19, 1990, in Rockville, Maryland, where she and her family had relocated in 1972.13 Gabrielle was 65 and was survived by her husband Erwin and their four children.

Grete and Jacob were fortunate to have left Germany when they did. The other two siblings, Else and Nelly, faced tragic deaths at the hands of the Nazis, as we will see in my next post.

 

 

 

  1. Hedwig Goldschmidt, ship manifest, Year: 1935; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 80, Ship or Roll Number: Albert Ballin, Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  2. Hedwig Goldschmidt, ship manifest, Year: 1937; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 8, Ship or Roll Number: Manhattan, Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  3. Hedwig Goldschmidt, ship manifest 1938, The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 1158, Month: Mar, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 ↩
  4. Berthold Heimerdinger and family, 1940 US census, Census Place: New York, Queens, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02732; Page: 5B; Enumeration District: 41-614, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩
  5. This information came from his mother’s death announcement in the December 11, 1964, New York Times, p, 39, found at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/12/11/97361257.html?pageNumber=39 ↩
  6.  Gabrielle J Heimerdinger, Gender: Female, Marriage License Date: 8 Sep 1943, Marriage License Place: Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse: Erwin Vogel, License Number: 21889, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number: 9, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  7. Kurt Vogel and family, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois; Roll: m-t0627-00934; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 103-447, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census. ↩
  8. “Unconventional Aeronautics Engineer Erwin Vogel, 88, Dies,” The Washington Post, October 28, 2009, found at https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102703825.html ↩
  9.  Berthold Heimerdinger, Social Security Number: 085-28-3608, Birth Date: 10 Sep
    Issue Year: 1952-1953, Issue State: New York, Death Date: Jun 1961, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  10. December 11, 1964, New York Times, p, 39, found at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/12/11/97361257.html?pageNumber=39 ↩
  11.  Jacob Goldschmidt, Social Security Number: 085-28-0743, Birth Date: 1 Jul 1896
    Issue Year: 1952-1953, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 912, (U.S. Consulate) Paris, France, Death Date: Oct 1976, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  12. Greta Goldschmidt Heimerdinger, Birth Date: 25 Sep 1904, Birth Place: Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date: 2 Jan 2003, Father: Marcel Goldschmidt
    Mother: Hedwig Goldschmidt, SSN: 064167857, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  13. Gabrielle Joan Heimerdinger, [Gabrielle Vogel], Birth Date: 16 Dec 1924, Birth Place: Wiesbaden, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date: 19 Jan 1990, Father: Berthold Heimerdinger, Mother: Grete Goldschmidt, SSN: 102185390
    Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩

Two Sisters Who Were Second Cousins Married Brothers: More Twists in the Goldschmidt Family Tree

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This post and the ones that follow will focus on Jacob and Jettchen’s fourth child, Mayer Goldschmidt,  who, like his brother Julius, married a first cousin. On August 30, 1895, he married Hedwig Goldschmidt, who was born on January 1, 1877, to Falk Goldschmidt and Babette Carlebach, in Frankfurt.

Marriage record of Mayer Goldschmidt and Hedwig Goldschmidt, Certificate Number: 1392
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903,  Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Hedwig’s father Falk Goldschmidt was Jacob Meier Goldschmidt’s younger brother, so Mayer and Hedwig were first cousins on their paternal sides. Hedwig was seventeen years younger than Mayer and only eighteen when she married him; he was 35.

The annotation on the left margin of the marriage record was translated by Matthias Steinke of the German Genealogy Group on Facebook:

Frankfurt am Main, at the 24th November
To the signing registrar came today, the personally known salesman Marcel Goldschmidt, residing in Frankfurt am Main, Fichtestrasse 18, and showed a permission of the royal district-president in Wiesbaden, dated 7th November 1902, P. I A. 9406 wherein he was permitted, to change his firstname from Mayer into Marcel.
Readed, confirmed and signed
Marcel Goldschmidt

Thus, Mayer changed his name from Mayer to Marcel in 1902 when he was 42 years old.

Marcel and Hedwig had four children, Jacob, Nelly, Else, and Grete.

Jacob Goldschmidit (named for his grandfather and to be referred to as Jacob Goldschmidt II) was born on July 1, 1896, in Frankfurt.

Jacob Goldschmidt II birth record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903; Signatur: 903_9170, Year Range: 1896, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901

Their second child was named Nelly Goldschmidt. She was born on July 16, 1898, in Frankfurt:

Nelly Goldschmidt, birth record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903; Signatur: 903_9206, Year Range: 1898, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901

Else Goldschmidt was born on October 2, 1902, in Frankfurt.1 Then Marcel and Hedwig had a third daughter and fourth child, Grete Goldschmidt, born on September 25, 1904, in Frankfurt.2

Because Marcel and Hedwig were first cousins, their four children were not just siblings, but also second cousins to each other. All three daughters married in the 1920s. Amazingly, none married a cousin. But two of them married men who were brothers.

Nelly Goldschmidt married Moritz Gutmann on August 2, 1920, in Frankfurt.  Moritz was born on June 1, 1892, in Stuttgart, Germany. Some sources say his parents were Hermann Gutmann and Jettchen Ries, but I have not found a record to verify that since the marriage record does not include the names of his parents.

Marriage record of Nelly Goldschmidt and Moritz Gutmann, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Year Range: 1920, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Nelly and Moritz had one child, a son Karl Hermann Gutmann, born on May 4, 1923, in Frankfurt.3

Nelly’s younger sister Else Goldschmidt married Nelly’s presumed brother-in-law Siegfried Gutmann on May 15, 1922, in Frankfurt. He was born April 28, 1886, in Stuttgart, to Hermann Guttmann and Jettchen Ries. Siegfried was sixteen years older than Else and had served in World War I for Germany.4

Marriage record of Else Goldschmidt and Siegfried Gutmann, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Year Range: 1922, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Else and Siegfried had one child, Hermann Guttmann, born February 28, 1923, in Frankfurt.5 He later changed his name to Dennis John Goodman.

The third sister Grete Goldschmidt married Berthold Heimerdinger on January 18, 1924, in Frankfurt.6 Berthold was the son of Moritz Heimerdinger and Leontine Seligmann; he was born on September 20, 1890, in Wiesbaden, Germany. Berthold was slightly wounded while serving in World War I for Germany.7

After marrying, Grete and Berthold settled in Wiesbaden, where their daughter Gabrielle Heimerdinger was born on December 16, 1924.8

Marcel (Mayer) Goldschmidt lived long enough to see his three daughters married and several of his grandchildren born, but then died on November 2, 1928, in Koenigstein im Taunus, Germany. He  was 68.

Marcel Goldschmidt, death record, Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 908; Laufende Nummer: 1933, Year Range: 1928, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

I was curious about the location of his death since Marcel was a resident of Frankfurt. According to Wikipedia, Koenigstein im Taunus, located about 15 miles northwest of Frankfurt, was “famous as “Jewish spa” mainly due to the high proportions of Jewish guests …. who stayed in the internationally famous sanitarium Dr. Kohnstamm … and Hotel Cahn, which offered kosher food. For these reasons, Königstein was an attractive city to visit for a day trip for many Jews in Frankfurt. Königstein became even more easily accessible from Frankfurt am Main in 1906, when the railway between Königstein and Frankfurt was built.”

Koenigsburg im Taunus, Brion Vibber / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Life was thus very good for Marcel, Hedwig, and their children and grandchildren up through the 1920s. Much would change in the 1930s.

  1. Else Goldschmidt, Gender: weiblich (Female), Age: 19, Birth Date: 2 Okt 1902 (2 Oct 1902), Marriage Date: 15 Mai 1922 (15 May 1922), Marriage Place: Frankfurt am Main, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany), Civil Registration Office: Frankfurt am Main, Spouse: Siegfried Gutmann, Certificate Number: 561, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930 ↩
  2. Grete Goldschmid, Birth Date: 25 Sep 1904, Birth Place: Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany, Father: Marcel Goldschmidt, Mother: Hedwig Goldschmidt
    SSN: 064167857, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  3. Karl Herrmann Gutmann, Birth Date: 4 May 1923, Birth Place: Frankfurt, Federal Republic of Germany, Father: Moritz Gubmann, Mother: Nelly Goldschmidt, SSN: 067180184, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  4. Siegfried Gutmann, Residence Year: 1914, Residence Country: Deutschland (Germany), List Date: 21 Nov 1918, List Number: 2218, Volume: 1918_XVI, Ancestry.com. Germany, World War I Casualty Lists, 1914-1919 ↩
  5. Dennis John Goodman, Gender: Male, Marital status: Single, Birth Date: 28 fev 1923 (28 Feb 1923), Birth Place: Frankfort, Arrival Date: 1949, Arrival Place: Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Father: Sigfried Goodman, Mother: Elsa Goodman
    Traveling With Children: No, FHL Film Number: 004564017, Ancestry.com. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965 ↩
  6. Grete Goldschmidt Heimerdinger naturalization papers, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 478) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 355901-357000), Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  7. Berthold Heimerdinger, Residence Year: 1914, Residence Country: Deutschland (Germany), List Date: 22 Sep 1917, List Number: 1637, Volume: 1917_XVI, Ancestry.com. Germany, World War I Casualty Lists, 1914-1919 ↩
  8. Gabrielle Joan Heimerdinger, Birth Date: 16 Dec 1924, Birth Place: Wiesbaden, Federal Republic of Germany, Father: Berthold Heimerdinger, Mother: Grete Goldschmidt, SSN: 102185390, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. According to Cibella/Baron, Grete and Berthold had two other children, but they did not have any dates for these other two, and I found no records for any other children born to Grete and Berthold. ↩

Leni and Julius Falk Goldschmidt and Their Sons: Escaping from Germany

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Julius Goldschmidt, my second cousin, three times removed, died on January 5, 1932, in Bad Homburg, Germany; he was seventy-three.  Bad Homburg was “an internationally fashionable spa”  not far from Frankfurt (about eleven miles), and it appears from the death record that Julius was living there at the time of his death.

Bad Homburg, M. Jacobs, Frankfurt a. Main / Public domain

He had been preceded in death by two of his children, Mimi and Amalie, and was survived by his wife Elise Seligmann, their daughter Helene “Leni” Goldschmidt, and Leni’s husband (and cousin) Julius Falk Goldschmidt, and their two sons, Felix and Hermann; their son Jacob Goldschmidt; and their daughter Regina Goldschmidt Rosenberger, her husband Siegfried Rosenberger, and their two children.

Julius Goldschmidt death record, Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 908; Laufende Nummer: 1585, Year Range: 1932, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

Jacob (Julius) Goldschmidt only survived his father by two years. According to David Baron and Roger Cibella, he died at the age of 44 in Paris, France, on November 28, 1934. That left Leni Goldschmidt Goldschmidt and Regina Goldschmidt Rosenberger as Julius and Elise’s only surviving children.

I don’t know a great deal about what happened to Regina, her husband Siegfried Rosenberger, and their two children during the Holocaust. It appears that at least until 1937 they were still living in Frankfurt1 and that after the war, according to Roger Cibella and David Baron, their two children were both married in the Netherlands and had children born there. Eventually they all immigrated to Canada where Regina died in February 1992;2 according to Cibella/Baron, Siegfried had died in France in 1949. Regina filed Pages of Testimony with Yad Vashem for family members who were killed in the Holocaust, as we have seen and as we will see in future posts.

The remainder of this post will focus on Leni (Helene II) and Julius Falk Goldschmidt and their sons.

I will start in a strange place to tell their story: Leni’s husband,Julius Falk Goldschmidt, who was also her father Julius’ first cousin. Focusing on the in-law is not usually what I would do, and it would have made more sense to wait and tell his story when I get to Jacob Meier Goldschmidt’s younger brother Falk, who was Julius Falk Goldschmidt’s father. But because we are telling Leni’s story now and her story is entwined with that of her husband, I can’t delay the story of Julius Falk Goldschmidt.

Some of my readers may recall how I found an obituary for Julius Falk Goldschmidt in one of Milton Goldsmith’s family albums, attached to a page that included a replica of an ancient ketubah, and I had wondered why it was there and how Milton knew this distant cousin well enough to refer to him as “beloved” and include his obituary in an album otherwise devoted to Milton’s closest relatives, his immediate family. I also was puzzled by the ketubah reproduction included on that page.

I decided to see if I could locate the source of this tribute to Julius Falk Goldschmidt. I noticed that it was written by someone named John Pope-Hennessy, who I learned was a British art historian and at one time the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.3 By Googling his name and Julius F. Goldschmidt, I was able to locate the source of Pope-Hennessy’s tribute to Julius. It was published on December 1, 1964, in The Times of London on page 12.

Pope-Hennessy included this background information about Julius in that tribute:

Born in Frankfurt in 1882, Goldschmidt as a young man became a member of the celebrated firm of J.M.S. Goldschmidt, which had been founded in 1859 by his father [Falk Goldschmidt] and two uncles [Selig and Jacob Goldschmidt] and which numbered among its clients the Tsar, the German Emperor and members of the Rothschild family. His interests from the first were canalized in sculpture, and especially bronze statuettes, and after 1905, when a branch of the first was established in the United States, he played an active part in the formation of the Pierpont Morgan, Altman, Widener and Bache collection.

Thus, Julius Falk Goldschmidt had been traveling back and forth to the US long before Hitler’s rise to power. In fact, I found a 1909 passenger manifest showing him traveling to the US with Leni and her brother Jacob, as mentioned in the prior post.

Year: 1909; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 1381; Line: 1; Page Number: 120 Description Ship or Roll Number: Roll 1381 Source Information Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Moreover, Julius Falk filed a declaration of intention to become a US citizen on January 16, 1924, after “immigrating” on November 21, 1923.

Julius F Goldschmidt declaration of intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 249) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 124581-125078), Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

That explains how Julius Falk and Milton Goldsmith may have become closely acquainted as Milton was living in New York City at that time. As for the ketubah reproduction, the Goldschmidt firm also specialized in Judaica, so perhaps this was a reproduction of a ketubah that the firm had collected.

Julius Falk Goldschmidt did not, however, follow through on his declaration of intention, but returned to Frankfurt, where he remained a resident until 1935. According to Pope-Hennessy (see above), Julius Falk moved that year to London and continued his work for the Goldschmidt firm. Records indicate that Julius Falk Goldschmidt, his wife Helene, and their older son Felix were all residing in England in 1939, as was Helene’s mother Elise Seligmann Goldschmidt.4

Julius, Leni, and Felix Goldschmidt, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/420B, Enumeration District: APDK, Ancestry.com. 1939 England and Wales Register

Julius F. and Helene’s younger son Hermann left for the United States on September 2, 1939, the day after World War II began. He was 26 at the time.5 His declaration of intention to become a US citizen, which was filed on December 21, 1939, indicated that his last place of foreign residence was Paris and that he had immigrated from Montreal into the US at Rouses Point, New York, which is the first town over the US border from Canada about 45 miles south of Montreal. At the time he filed his declaration, Hermann was living in New York City.

Hermann Goldschmidt declaration of intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 572) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 448201-449000), Ancestry.com. New York, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

I couldn’t find Hermann on the 1940 US census, but I did find his draft registration dated October 24, 1940; he had dropped the second N from his first name and registered as Herman Goldschmidt. (Later he became Herman Goldsmith.) At that time he was living in New York City and working for Julius Kayser & Company, a large manufacturer of women’s gloves, hosiery, and silk underwear, today known as Kayser-Roth.

Herman Goldschmidt, Ancestry.com. U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

Meanwhile, Herman’s brother Felix and parents Helene and Julius Falk Goldschmidt and grandmother Elise Seligmann Goldschmidt were living in England. Both Julius Falk and his son Felix were interned as enemy aliens on June 21, 1940, although both had previously been found exempt from internship on November 28, 1939. It appears they were released just two months later on August 28, 1940. Helene and her mother were spared from internment. Julius listed his occupation as art dealer, and Felix reported that he was a “company director and art dealer” for his father’s firm. All four family members were living at the same address in London.

Julius F Goldschmidt, Enemy Alien registration, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: HO 396/174
Piece Number Description: 174: German Internees Released in UK 1939-1942: Ga-Gom
Ancestry.com. UK, WWII Alien Internees, 1939-1945

Felix Goldschmidt, enemy alien registration, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: HO 396/109
Piece Number Description: 109: Canada Internees 1939-1942: G-H, Ancestry.com. UK, WWII Alien Internees, 1939-1945

Elise Seligmann Goldschmidt died in 1943 in London; she was 79 years old and was survived by her daughter Helene, son-in-law Julius Falk Goldschmidt, and two grandsons, Felix and Herman.6

After the war Felix joined his brother Herman in the US, where he married and had a child.7 Herman never married. Their parents Helene and Julius Falk Goldschmidt remained in England for the rest of their lives. Julius Falk Goldschmidt died on November 18, 1964, in London.8 Pope-Hennessy opined that with the death of Julius Goldschmidt, “the London art world loses one of its most warmly regarded personalities.” It went on to describe his interests, his appearance, and his personality. It’s quite a poetic and beautiful obituary.

Julius Falk Goldschmidt was survived by his wife Helene, who died in London six years later in 1970,9 and their two sons, Felix and Herman, and one grandchild. Felix died on March 10, 1989, in Greenwich, Connecticut; he was 78.10 His brother Herman lived until October 7, 2016; he was two months shy of his 104th birthday when he died.11

Here was another family that survived the Holocaust, but lost their homeland with the sons living on one continent, their parents on another. Herman Goldsmith’s incredible longevity is quite a testament to the strength of this family.

 

 

  1. Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für den Bezirk der Reichspostdirektion Frankfurt am Main, 1937, Ancestry.com. German Phone Directories, 1915-1981 ↩
  2. Regina Rosenberger, Burial Date: 27 Feb 1992, Burial Plot: 53-F-23, Burial Place: North York, Ontario, Canada, Cemetery: Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park, JewishGen, comp. JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) ↩
  3. John Russell, “Sir John Pope-Hennessy, 80, Art Expert, Dies,” The New York Times, November 1, 1994, p.36. ↩
  4.  The National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: HO 396/226, Ancestry.com. UK, WWII Alien Internees, 1939-1945 ↩
  5. Ship Name: Empress Of Britain, Shipping Line: Canadian Pacific
    Official Number: 162582, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 ↩
  6. Registration Quarter: Jan-Feb-Mar, Registration district: Paddington
    Inferred County: London, Volume: 1a, Page: 23, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 1a; Page: 23, Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007 ↩
  7.  Arrival Date: 8 Feb 1949, Port of Arrival: Buffalo, New York, USA
    Arrival Contact: Brother Herman Goldsmith, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Manifests of Alien Arrivals at Buffalo, Lewiston, Niagara Falls, and Rochester, New York, 1902-1954; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787 – 2004; Record Group Number: 85; Series Number: M1480; Roll Number: 045, Ancestry.com. U.S., Border Crossings from Canada to U.S., 1895-1960 ↩
  8.  Registration Quarter: Oct-Nov-Dec, Registration district: Paddington
    Inferred County: London, Volume: 5d, Page: 198, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 5d; Page: 198, Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007 ↩
  9.  Registration Quarter: Oct-Nov-Dec, Registration district: Paddington
    Inferred County: Greater London, Volume: 5d, Page: 1218, General Register Office; United Kingdom; Volume: 5d; Page: 1218, Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007 ↩
  10. Feliz A Goldschmidt, Birth Date: 10 Sep 1910, Death Date: 10 Mar 1989
    SSN: 061264467, Death Certificate Number: 05428, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  11. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=herman-goldsmith&pid=182198098 ↩