Klara Maas: A Survivor and American Idol Fan

Posted on November 10, 2017 by Amy

As I said, many of the stories in this line of the family do not have happy endings. And it doesn’t get better with the next child of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion, their fifth child and fourth daughter, Johanna. But there is hopefulness in this story as well.

As reflected on Reverend Bach’s report on the family of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion, Johanna/Hanna was born on December 28, 1838, in Jesberg.

She married Simon Maas, who was five years younger than Johanna and born in June 1843 in Mardorf. According to Barbara Greve’s research, Johanna and Simon married on December 3, 1873. If so, Johanna was 35 and Simon 30.

Their first child was born on April 26, 1875, in Mardorf, a daughter named Gidel, also known as Auguste.

Birth record for Auguste Gidel Maas
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 5870

Their second child was a son, Jacob Levi, born on September 28, 1876.

Jakob Levi Maas birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 5871

Johanna died on March 18, 1892; she was 53 years old.

Johanna Katzenstein Maas death record
Standesamt Mardorf (Amöneburg) Sterbenebenregister 1892 (HStAMR Best. 915 Nr. 5971)AutorHessisches Staatsarchiv MarburgErscheinungsortMardorf (Amöneburg)

Her husband Simon Maas died on April 22, 1910, at age 66.

Their son Jakob married Rosa Goldenberg on July 26, 1907 in Kestrich, Germany. Rosa was the daughter of Dobel Goldenberg and Lina Baer. Rosa Goldenberg was also the sister of Nathan Goldenberg, whose wife Regina Katz was the granddaughter of Rahel Katzenstein, who was the sister of Jakob Maas’ grandfather Jakob Katzenstein. Thus, Rosa married a descendant of Jakob Katzenstein and her brother Nathan married a descendant of Rahel Katzenstein. Jakob and Rosa had one child, a daughter Klara born in 1921.

Marriage record of Jakob Levi Maas and Rosa Goldenberg
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 921; Laufende Nummer: 515

Neither of the two children of Johanna Katzenstein and Simon Maas survived the Holocaust.

On March 15, 1939, their daughter Auguste was sent to the Jakoby Institute in Sayn-Bendorf, at one-time a well-regarded psychiatric hospital for Jews that was warped into a facility used by the Nazis to mistreat Jewish patients.

According to this website,

During the first years of National Socialism the Jacoby Institute was left in relative peace; probably as an acknowledgement of the fact that it was an important employer for Sayn and the region. ….A circular decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior on 12th December 1940 decreed that “mentally ill Jews” were only to be accommodated in Sayn because “a cohabitation of Germans and Jews is not acceptable in any length of time” (illustr. 7). The option of concentrating all the patients in one location served as preparation of their deportation. In the course of five transports (between March and November 1942) 573 people were taken to the death camps in the East. 142 Jews died from 1940 till 1942 and were buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Sayn; most of them had already been seriously ill when they arrived in Sayn and not fit to travel. From 1940 to 1942 the graves in the Jewish Cemetery could not be marked with stones…

Auguste Gidel Maas is buried in one of those unmarked graves in Sayn-Bendorf. She died on October 29, 1941, according to the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). She was 66. .

Her brother Jakob Levi Maas was arrested on May 6, 1941, and imprisoned at a forced labor camp in Breitenau. Two months later on July 18, 1941, he was sent to the Sachensausen concentration camp, where he died on May 16, 1942, according to Yad Vashem. His wife Rosa was also killed by the Nazis. She was sent to Theriesenstadt on September 7, 1942, and then to Auschwitz on January 23, 1943, where it is presumed she was murdered.

The only descendant of Johanna Katzenstein and Simon Maas who was not killed by the Nazis was Klara Maas, their granddaughter and the daughter of Jakob Maas and Rosa Goldenberg. Klara arrived in the United States on May 4, 1940. According to the ship manifest, she was going to New York City to her uncle Julius Goldenberg, brother of her mother Rosa and her uncle Nathan Goldenberg.

Klara Maas ship manifest 1940
Year: 1940; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6466; Line: 1; Page Number: 34

On April 9, 1941, Klara filed a Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen; she was working as a houseworker at the time and living in Forest Hills, New York. She was not yet twenty years old.

Klara Maas declaration of intention
New York, Southern District, U.S District Court Naturalization Records, 1824-1946,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99HD-TVB7?cc=2060123&wc=M5PF-PTG%3A351624701 : 22 May 2014), Petitions for naturalization a

On August 2, 1945, Klara petitioned for naturalization; at that time she was working as a nursemaid and living back in Manhattan on Fort Washington Avenue. Her petition was supported by statements from two people, including Liselotte Goldenberg, the wife of Klara’s uncle Julius Goldenberg, who was also living on Fort Washington Avenue although at a different house number.

Petition for Naturalization “New York, Southern District, U.S District Court Naturalization Records, 1824-1946,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99HD-TVBP?cc=2060123&wc=M5PF-PTG%3A351624701 : 22 May 2014)

Klara was sworn in as a US citizen on February 18, 1946.

After that, I lost track of her. In 1946 she would have been 25 years old. If she married after that, I could not find her in the NYC marriage index or elsewhere.

But then I went back to look at the documents I had to see if there were any clues I’d missed. And there was one: when she’d petitioned for naturalization, she’d petitioned to change her name from Klara to Claire. I really didn’t think that this would make a difference in my search results since I knew that in my searches for Klara on both Ancestry and FamilySearch the search engines picked up women named Clara and Claire as well. But I figured, what the heck, let’s search for Claire Maas.

And this time Ancestry turned up something new, something important. It was an entry in the New York City Marriage License Index, 1907-1995, database that indicated that a Claire Maas had married a John Lind on March 21, 1949. Could it be my cousin Klara? I wasn’t sure. I had the names, date, and license number, so I contacted Allan Jordan, who generously offers to retrieve NYC documents for just his travel costs and the cost of the document. He said he hoped to get to the Clerk’s Office in the next week.

Claire Maas in NYC marriage license index
New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number: 10 Year Range : 1949 Ancestry.com. New York City, Marriage License Indexes, 1907-1995

While waiting for the marriage license file, I spent hours and hours searching for John Lind, Claire Lind, Claire Maas, and any other combinations I could dream up on newspapers.com, GenealogyBank.com, Ancestry, FamilySearch, and Google. And the only real clue I came up with was a 2015 story about a group of senior citizens living in a Jewish nursing home in New Jersey who called themselves the Senior Jax Pack because they had become avid fans of a contestant on American Idol known as Jax.

One of the women in the Senior Jax Pack was named Claire Lind. She was 93 years old, and the article stated that she had escaped from “pre-war Germany as a child.” Klara Maas would have been almost 94 in 2015, and she had been a teenager when she left Germany in 1940. Could this be my Klara Maas?

I wasn’t sure, and the article gave no more details except to mention that Claire Lind had recently passed away. I found an obituary for Claire Lind, who died on July 29, 2015, but it did not provide her birth name, her birth date, or the names of her spouse or survivors. I called the cemetery where she was buried and learned that she must have been the Claire Lind who married John Lind because he is also buried there. I found a few other articles about the Senior Jax Pack that mentioned Claire Lind, but they also did not reveal any additional information about Claire’s identity.

And so I waited for Allan to send me the marriage license documents. While I waited, I watched the videos of Claire Lind from the first article I’d found and fell in love with her, hoping she would prove to be my cousin. Listen to her sing in the first one, and listen to her advice to Jax in the second.

And then Allan sent me the marriage certificate:

Marriage license for Claire Maas and John Lind

There it was—Claire Maas Lind was the daughter of Jakob Maas and Rosa Goldenberg. She was born in Giessen, Germany on October 22, 1921. The woman who had married John Lind was my cousin; my cousin Klara/Claire Maas Lind was the woman who at age 93 was a member of the Senior Jax Pack.

A little research into John Lind revealed that he also had been a recent German refugee when he married Claire Maas in 1949. He was born Hans Levi in Luenen, Germany on February 27, 1913, and was the son of Emil Levi and Helen Herzberg (the family had changed its surname from Levi to Lind after arriving in the US). He died in 1977.

And so Klara Maas, whose parents had been murdered in the Holocaust, making her the sole surviving descendant of Johanna Katzenstein and Simon Maas, had lived a full life in the US. She became Claire Lind—singing into the last days of her life despite the heartbreak she must have experienced as a young woman.

I am so glad I found her story.

Two of The Less Fortunate Children of Jakob Katzenstein: Schalum and Rebecca

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Amy

I will now return to the children of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion. I had already discussed their first two children and their descendants: Gelle and Mina.

Mina Katzenstein’s children and descendants were remarkably fortunate in many ways. They survived the Holocaust by escaping from Germany during the 1930s. Some went to the United States, some to South America, and some to South Africa. I don’t mean to say they were lucky. They were all torn from their homes and all that they knew and undoubtedly subjected to harassment and discrimination before they left and some painful adjustments after they left. But they did survive. As we’ve seen, that was not true for many of the descendants of Mina’s sibling Gelle.

Now we can explore the fate of the other seven children of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion. Unfortunately, many of them do not have happy endings.

The third child of my great-great-grandfather’s brother Jakob Katzenstein and his wife Sarchen Lion was their first son, Schalum Abraham Katzenstein, named for his grandfather, Jakob’s father and my three-times great-grandfather, Scholem Katzenstein. Jakob and Sarchen’s son Schalum was born in February, 1834, in Jesberg, according to the report of Reverend Bach provided to me by Barbara Greve.

Reverend Bach family sheet for Jakob Katzenstein

Schalum only lived to be 25. He died on July 7, 1859, in Jesberg. He is buried at Haarhausen cemetery, where I visited in May and took this photograph of his gravestone:

Jacob Katzenstein’s son, Schalum Katzenstein

The inscription was very faded, but it had been transcribed years ago on the LAGIS site from Hebrew to German, and Barbara Greve translated the German translation of inscription on the headstone for me into English. It describes Schalum as “a lovable youth of a beautiful stature who avoided evil and was attached to the good. He was quick and nimble in his work in the short time of his work. And there came death, and gathered him there in the blossom of his youth.” How bittersweet.

Jakob and Sarchen’s fourth child was Rebecca Katzenstein. According to her death certificate and the report of Reverend Bach, Rebecca was born on July 6, 1836. I was not able to locate a marriage record for Rebecca, but sometime before August, 1866, Rebecca married Wolf Lamm of Ober-Gleen, Germany. According to his death record, Wolf was the son of Joseph Lamm and Hanna Goldschmidt and was born in Ober-Glenn in about 1833.

Rebecca and Wolf had two children, Karoline, born August 4, 1866, in Ober-Gleen, and Joseph (obviously named for his paternal grandfather), born July 9, 1870, in Ober-Gleen.

Wolf died before either of his children married. He died on March 13, 1897, in Ober-Gleen. He was 64 years old.

Wolf Lamm death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 921; Laufende Nummer: 717

Their daughter Karoline married Seligmann Hoexter on March 3, 1908, in Ober-Gleen; he was born February 7, 1858, in Gemuenden, Germany, and had been previously married and widowed. Karoline was 41 when she married Seligmann, and he was fifty. They did not have any children.

Karoline Lamm andSeligmann Hoexter marriage record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 921; Laufende Nummer: 715

Joseph Lamm, Karoline’s brother, married Bertha Baum on November 24, 1901. Bertha was born June 10, 1877, in Gielhausen, daughter of Abraham Baum and Gretchen Kaiser.

Marriage record of Joseph Lamm and Bertha Baum
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 905; Laufende Nummer: 317

Joseph and Bertha had two sons, Willi, born November 15, 1902, in Ober-Gleen, and Nathan, born December 21, 1903, also in Ober-Gleen.

Rebecca Katzenstein Lamm lived to see her children marry and her two grandsons born. She died on February 20, 1915, in Ober-Gleen at age 74.

Rebekka Katzenstein Lamm death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 921; Laufende Nummer: 717

Just three years later, Rebecca’s daughter Karoline died on January 11, 1918, making her husband Seligmann a widower for the second time. Karoline was only 51 years old.

Karoline Lamm Hoexter death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 922; Signatur: 4233

Seligmann Hoexter died twenty years later on October 12, 1938. He was eighty years old and died at the Jewish community hospital in Frankfurt.

Unfortunately, all but one of the remaining family members were killed in the Holocaust. Joseph Lamm and his wife Bertha Baum Lamm were deported first to Theriesenstadt on September 1, 1942. Joseph was then taken to Treblinka, where he was murdered on September 29, 1942. Bertha died at Theriesenstadt on December 17, 1942.

Their older son, Willi, was killed at the concentration camp in Majdanek, Poland, on July 16, 1942. He was thirty-nine years old. Thanks to Linda Silverman Shefler, who is also related to the Lamm family of Ober-Gleen, I was able to learn that Willi had married Berta Dub, and she also was killed at Majdanek. Neither Linda nor I have been able to find any children born to Willi and Berta, although I did find Berta’s sister’s family and hope to learn more from them. (The links are all to their entries in the Yad Vashem database.)

The only descendant of Rebecca Katzenstein and Wolf Lamm to survive the Holocaust was their younger grandson, Nathan, Willi’s brother. Nathan had left Germany before Hitler even came to power. He had arrived in New York on November 27, 1927, reporting that he was a tailor and that he was going to a friend in Buffalo named Henry Geissler, who had been in the US since 1923 and was also from Ober-Gleen.

Nathan Lamm 1927 passenger manifest Year: 1927; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4175; Line: 1; Page Number: 35 Description Ship or Roll Number : Roll 4175 Source Information Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

At first I had no luck finding Nathan on the 1930 census, but then I found his naturalization papers, which indicated that he was using the name Max Nathan Lamm:

Nathan Max Lamm naturalization papers
The National Archives at Atlanta; Morrow, Georgia, USA; 2217062; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States; Record Group Number: 21
Description
Description : Greenville Petitions 1911-1965 (Box 6)
Source Information
Ancestry.com. South Carolina, Naturalization Records, 1868-1991

Using the name Max Lamm to search for him, I found him in Buffalo in 1930, working as a laborer in a bakery and living as a boarder with two other men who were also working in the bakery:

Max Lamm 1930 census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Roll: 1428; Page: 22A; Enumeration District: 0182; FHL microfilm: 2341163

In 1940, Max Lamm was still in Buffalo, living in a large guest house and working as a laborer in building construction.

Max Lamm 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Roll: T627_2824; Page: 82A; Enumeration District: 64-73

He enlisted in the US Army on December 1, 1942, and while in the army, he petitioned for citizenship, as the document above reveals. He was apparently stationed in South Carolina when he filed his petition.

After serving in the military for the United States during World War II, Max Nathan Lamm returned to Buffalo, New York; he is listed in Buffalo directories for 1957 and 1960, working as an employee of the Red Star Express, a trucking company.

Max Nathan Lamm died in 1968 and is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo. He was 64 years old. It does not appear that he ever married or had children, and he had lost his brother and both his parents during the Holocaust. He was the only surviving descendant of Rebecca Katzenstein and Wolf Lamm, and he died without survivors.

Courtesy of Jay Boone
Find A Grave Memorial# 82841920

Thus, neither Schalum or Rebecca Katzenstein has any living descendants.

The fifth child of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion was their daughter Johanna. Her story is covered in my next post.

Sisters and Cousins

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Amy

This is a brief addendum to my last post (which I have also updated). I wanted to share two new images I received from Martin Abrahams after he read the post about his aunt Mali Katz Baumann and her family.

First, Martin sent me his mother Senta’s passport from Germany. The photograph of Senta reveals the strong family resemblance between Senta and her sister Mali in the 1930s:

Mali Katz Baumann Courtesy of her grandchildren

Senta Katz Abraham Courtesy of Martin Abrahams

The second photograph was taken before the families left Germany in the 1930s. In the front row are Eva Baumann, Fred Abrahams, Martin Abrahams, and Margot Baumann, first cousins. After leaving Germany, the Baumanns lived in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the Abrahams in New York City.

Front row: Eva Baumann, Fred Abrahams, Martin Abrahams, Margot Baumann. Courtesy of Martin Abrahams

Such happy, innocent children whose lives were about to be changed forever.

My Cousins in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Amy

Before I return to the remaining children of Jakob Katzenstein, I am tying up a few loose ends about some of the Katzenstein families I have already discussed. This post involves the family of Mali Katz.

Mali was the great-granddaughter of Rahel Katzenstein and Jacob Katz, the granddaughter of Moses Katz and Malchen Wetterhahn, and the daughter of Markus Katz and Minna “Nanny” Wallach. She was the sister of Maurice Katz and Senta Katz, both of whom had immigrated to the United States, Maurice in 1925 to Oklahoma, Senta in 1937 to New York. Senta was married to Julius Abraham(s), and they were the parents of Fred and Martin Abrahams, the two brothers with whom I have been corresponding.

Amalie (Mali), Senta, and Moritz (Maurice) Katz, 1908
Courtesy of the Abrahams family

But I knew very little about the third sibling, Mali. I knew that Mali had married Siegfried Baumann on April 17, 1930, in Jesberg. Siegfried was born in Lauterbach, Germany, in 1893. I knew from Martin, Mali’s nephew, that Mali and her family had been unable to get permission to immigrate to the United States and that they had ended up in Brazil, but Martin knew nothing more than that. And I could not find anything else.

There was, however, one tree on Ancestry that provided some more information, but without sources. It had Siegfried Baumann married to a woman named Maly with one daughter named Margot Baumann. Those were the only names revealed, and the only information attached to Siegfried, Maly (no birth name given) and Margot were their birth places as Germany and places of death as Porto Alegre, Brazil. There were no birth dates for Siegfried or Maly, but there were dates of death for Siegfried, Maly, and Margot. I wrote to the tree owner, but did not hear back.

By Googling “Margot Baumann Porto Alegre,” however, I found the Facebook page for SIBRA— Sociedade Israelita Brasileira de Cultura e Beneficência, or the Brazilian Society for Jewish Culture and Charity. On that page was a long post that detailed the eighty year the history of the organization, written by Grete Blumenthal Bejzman and posted by the rabbi for the SIBRA synagogue on their Facebook page on August 29, 2016. Siegfried Baumann and his two daughters Margot and Eva were all mentioned in this post.

According to Bejzman’s post, SIBRA was founded eighty years before, i.e., on August 29, 1936, to assist the German Jewish refugees who were arriving in Brazil. The society obtained a building with a hall for a synagogue and rooms for social and cultural meetings. SIBRA became a place of comfort for the new immigrants, a place where they could learn Portuguese and Brazilian culture, a place to pray and a place to receive assistance with finding work and homes, and a community of people who helped in times of illness or other emergencies. In this post, Siegfried Baumann is mentioned as a synagogue leader, and his daughters Margot and Eva are mentioned in the context of a trip to Ipanema organized by SIBRA.

From this Facebook post I learned that the Baumann family was very involved in SIBRA and the Porto Alegre Jewish community. I left a message on the SIBRA page and sent a message through their website, asking how I might contact members of the family, but I did not hear back. Perhaps the fact that I don’t know Portuguese made it hard for them to understand my inquiry, or perhaps they were being protective of the privacy of the family. But at least I had the names of the two daughters and their married names (Margot was identified as Margot Baumann Leventhal and Eva as Eva Baumann Dorfman) and could search for them on my own.

I decided to post a question to the LatAmSIG on JewishGen, asking for advice on how to contact the Baumann family. I received two very helpful responses, one pointing to a Geni page for Eva’s family and one from someone who was a good friend of Margot’s son and who gave me his email address and the names of his siblings. Based on this additional information, I also found several of Mali’s grandchildren on Facebook, and one of them, Margot’s daughter Iara, responded with great enthusiasm.

Iara has now shared with me not only information about her family, but also her grandparents’ passports and several family photographs. With her permission, I can now complete the story of Mali Katz Baumann and her family.

Mali and Siegfried lived in Lauterbach, Germany, where Margot was born on April 30, 1931, and Eva was born on September 24, 1933, according to Iara. Siegfried was in the leather business with his brother Max.

The Baumann family left Germany in 1936 and settled in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Porto Alegre is the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sol, the state in Brazil where most of the German Jewish refugees came in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany, according to Iara. Siegfried Baumann’s brother Max was already there when Siegfried, Mali, and their daughters arrived.

Here are the passports of Siegfried Baumann, Mali Katz Baumann, and their two young daughters showing their departure from Germany and their immigration to Brazil. It’s wonderful that Iara shared these with me because not only do they provide descriptions of Siegfried and Mali, there are also photographs of Mali, Margot, and Eva.

First, Siegfried’s passport, which also included the little girls:

Here is Mali’s passport:

UPDATE: Martin Abrahams, son of Senta Katz Abraham, sent me the images of his mother’s passport after seeing this post. Here is her photograph. The resemblance between Senta and her sister Mali is striking:

Martin also shared this photograph of the four cousins (plus two older cousins in the back row). In the front are Eva Baumann, Fred Abraham(s), Martin Abraham(s), and Margot Baumann before they all escaped from Germany.

Eva Baumann, Fred Abraham, Martin Abraham, Margot Baumann JPG

Front row: Eva Baumann, Fred Abrahams, Martin Abrahams, Margot Baumann. Courtesy of Martin Abrahams

Iara told me that her grandparents Mali and Siegfried always held on to their Jewish identity and traditions after settling in Brazil. They were among the leaders of the SIBRA synagogue and celebrated Shabbat and all the Jewish holidays. Iara described her grandmother as strong and energetic and her grandfather as “too gentle.” They lived in the same building with their daughter Margot for their entire time in Porto Alegre. Iara told me that Mali’s brother Maurice/Moritz and his wife came to visit them in Brazil and that Mali often spoke with her sister Senta by telephone.

Their daughter Margot Baumann married Julio Leventhal, a business owner in Brazil, on March 27, 1960. Here is a photograph of Margot and Julio’s wedding:

Margot Baumann’s wedding to Julio Leventhal. Courtesy of Iara Leventhal.

Margo worked in a business importing and exporting leather until her children were born. Margot and Julio had three children, including my cousin Iara, her brother Luis David, and sister Liana.

Eva Baumann was a physiotherapist who worked in hospitals in Porto Alegre. She married Raul Dorfman, who taught at the University of Rio Grande do Sul, on February 28, 1962. They had two children, Mauro and Adriana.

Siegfried died on July 14, 1981, and Mali died on December 21, 1987. Eva died on May 8, 2001. Margot died on August 21, 2006, and her husband Julio died on December 20, 2015. They are all buried in the Jewish cemetery in Porto Alegre.

Mali Katz and Siegfried Bauman and their daughters Margot and Eva are survived by the five children of Margot and Eva and many grandchildren. Iara pointed out to me that the first names of her siblings, her first cousins, and herself spell out the name MALI (sometimes spelled Malli) (Mauro, Adriana, Luis/Liana, Iara). They all are determined to carry on the proud legacy that they have inherited from their grandmother Mali, their grandfather Siegfried, and their parents.

Iara also shared with me a number of photographs of Eva and Margot and their children and grandchildren, and with her permission I am posting two of them here.

Margot Baumann Leventhal and Eva Baumann Dorfman Courtesy of Iara Leventhal

Wedding of Iara Leventhal and Jaime Aronis with Julio Leventhal on the left and Margot Baumann Leventhal on the right Courtesy of Iara Leventhal

I feel very fortunate to have found Iara and to have learned so much more about her family—another family that escaped from Nazi Germany and was forced to start life over in a whole new country with a whole new language and culture. Another family that is evidence that Hitler did not prevail.

From A to Z: Adventures in Chile

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Amy

Once again I found myself taking quite a rollercoaster ride in my genealogy research-this one involving one of the children of Pauline Ruelf and Hirsch Abraham.

As I wrote in this post, I had very little information about their oldest daughter, Rosa. All I knew about her was her birth date and place (November 20, 1892 in Niederurff); the only other document I had was a passenger card from a 1961 flight from Santiago, Chile, to Miami, Florida. The birth date and place matched what I knew about Rosa, and the card listed her as Rosa A. Zechermann, so the middle initial could have referred to Abraham. But that wasn’t enough to know for sure whether this Rosa was in fact Rosa Abraham, even though the circumstantial evidence made it seem very likely.

Rosa Abraham passenger card
The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving at Miami, Florida.; NAI Number: 2788541; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787 – 2004; Record Group Number: 85

And who was Mr. Zechermann? And why were they in Chile? Rosa’s nephew Martin remembered that one of his father’s sisters had ended up in Chile, but that was all he remembered. He didn’t remember a husband named Zechermann or anything else. But his memory and the passenger card led me to believe that I had to search for Zechermanns in Santiago, Chile.

Unfortunately, there are no documents on Ancestry.com for Chile after 1920, and although FamilySearch does have some cemetery records up through 2015 for Chile, there were no Zechermanns listed in that database. I wasn’t able to find any other websites or databases that might help.

I turned to Facebook and specifically to the Jekkes group on Facebook. Jekke (pronounced Yekkie) is a term used to refer to German Jews or more broadly, German-speaking Jews. I thought that this group might know about Jews of German background who had settled in South America, so I asked for help at 8 am one morning. First, a woman named Hanna responded within a half hour of my post and mentioned that she had known a woman named Ilse Dahlberg who had immigrated from Frankfurt to Chile. She didn’t know if Ilse was still alive, but thought she might be worth contacting.

When I googled Ilse Dahlberg, a Geni result came up for an Ilse Dahlberg whose birth name was Zechermann! I didn’t know whether Hanna had mentioned her for that reason or whether it was just a coincidence, but obviously Zechermann is not a common name so I thought it possible if not likely that Ilse Dahlberg was somehow related to Rosa A. Zechermann.

Geni listed Ilse with a brother named Erich Zechermann and a father named Isidor Zechermann, but Ilse’s mother’s name was Amalia Zechermann, born Dahlberg, and not Rosa Abraham. (Ilse married one of her mother’s relatives, Nathan Dahlberg, thus ended up with a married name that was the same as her mother’s birth name. Just to confuse genealogists, I am sure.)

I found an immigration card for Erich that confirmed that his mother was also Amalia Dahlberg:

Erich Zechermann, Brazil immigration card
Ancestry.com. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
Original data: “Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965”. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2013.

And I found the record of Isidor Zechermann’s marriage to Mali Dahlberg in Worms in 1905:

Marriage of Isidor Zechermann to first wife

Marriage of Isidor Zechermann to Amalie Dahlberg Ancestry.com. Worms, Germany, Marriages, 1876-1923 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Personenstandsregister Eheregister, 1876-1923. Stadtarchiv Worms.

So how did Rosa fit into this picture? Had she married Isidor’s brother or some other Zechermann who also ended up in Chile?

Then I found a record of Mali Dahlberg Zechermann’s death in Frankfurt on August 23, 1924:

Amalia Dahlberg death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 903; Signatur: 903_10891

Thus, Isidor was a widower as of August 1924 and might have married Rosa Abraham sometime thereafter. But I could find no record of a second marriage for Isidor or any marriage for Rosa.

The first document I located that possibly linked Isidor Zechermann to Rosa Abraham was this passenger manifest listing Isidor and Rosa Zechermann traveling together in April 1952 on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to New York:

Isidor and Rosa Zechermann, 1952 passenger manifest
Year: 1952; Arrival: Idlewild Airport, Idlewild, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 8139; Line: 1; Page Number: 164
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

It listed their destination address as 41-15 50^th Avenue, Long Island, New York. That address did not mean anything to me, and Google identified it as an apartment building in Queens, New York.

The manifest listed Isidor’s occupation as a “rentista,” which translated to a person of independent means or a stockholder or financial expert. Rosa also had an occupation listed—“bussinesm,” which didn’t translate to anything, but I assume meant she was in business. But there was no birth name given for Rosa to link her to Rosa Abraham.

I also searched for descendants of Isidor Zechermann, hoping that one of them might be able to help. Eric Zechermann had eventually immigrated to the United States, and I was able to find the names of his children and grandchildren. One of them was on Facebook, a woman named Deborah, and I left a private message explaining who I was and asking her to get in touch.

And then I sat back and waited.

No, not really. I kept desperately trying to figure out where to turn next.

Around 3 in the afternoon of that same day, I received a Facebook notification that a man named Simon had commented on my post in the Jekkes group. Simon lives in Santiago, and his first comment was to tell me that “most of the German Jews know and knew each other in Chile.”

And he then blew me away by telling me that not only had he known Ilse Zechermann Dahlberg, but that he remembered and knew Rosa as well and remembered her sitting in synagogue with Ilse. But Simon did not know Rosa’s birth name or what had happened to either Isidor or Rosa. He did not believe that Isidor and Rosa had children of their own and called his mother to check. She agreed that Rosa and Isidor did not have children, but she also did not know what had happened to Isidor and Rosa, nor did she know Rosa’s birth name. Simon gave me several suggestions for websites and people to contact in Santiago, and I followed up with his suggestions.

Later that same afternoon I also heard back from Deborah, Isidor’s great-granddaughter. She was excited about my work and interested in what I had learned, but unfortunately she didn’t know anything about Rosa.

So that’s where I was on Rosa. I knew that there was a Rosa A. Zechermann whose birthdate and place matched those of Rosa Abraham and a Rosa Zechermann who had traveled to New York with Isidor in 1952. I was 90% certain that this had to be my cousin, the daughter of Pauline Ruehl and Hirsch Abraham. But there was that nagging 10% of doubt.

I contacted Fred and Martin Abrahams, Rosa’s nephews, to report on what I’d found and to see if I could stir up any other stories or memories. Fred had no memory of an aunt named Rosa; he wrote that he only remembered three of his father’s sisters—Meta and Recha and Adele.

Adele, I said? I hadn’t found a sibling named Adele in researching the Abraham family. I had written a long blog post about the Abraham siblings, and neither Fred nor Martin had previously mentioned an aunt named Adele despite having had several communications back and forth among us.

Fred wrote that Adele’s married name was Trier and that she had lived in Queens. So back to Ancestry I went to look for this missing sibling, Adele Abraham Trier. And it wasn’t hard to find her. She had arrived in the US on on October 10, 1936, with her husband Alfred Trier. I knew this was the right person because her birth place was Niederurff, and they were going to Meta Abraham and Recha Abraham, the sisters of Adele Abraham.

Alfred and Adele Trier 1936 passenger manifest
Year: 1936; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 5890; Line: 1; Page Number: 120
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-195

Other US documents revealed that Adele was born on December 21, 1903; now I knew why I hadn’t found her before. The Hesse records on Ancestry stop in 1901, and there are no birth records on the LAGIS website for Niederurff for 1903 either. If Fred hadn’t mentioned Adele, I’d never have known there was another sibling.

In 1940, Adele and Alfred Trier were living in the apartment next to Adele’s sisters Meta and Recha. I’d seen this census before, of course, but had not had any reason to see the connection between the two households.

Alfred, Adele and Paul Trier on 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2643; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 31-809

The next records I found for Adele and Alfred related to their deaths—entries in the Social Security Death Index and on FindAGrave. Both lived long lives. Adele died in March 1993 at age 89, Alfred in 1996 at age 108! Alfred died in New Jersey, but Adele had died in Queens. They are buried at Mt. Zion cemetery in Queens.

And then I recalled that Rosa and Isidor had listed a Queens address on the 1952 manifest. I decided to see if I could find Alfred or Adele in any directories or databases for Queens. And I found this:

City: Long Is City; State: New York; Year(s): 1993 1994
Source Information
Ancestry.com. U.S. Phone and Address Directories, 1993-2002 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005.
Original data: 1993-2002 White Pages. Little Rock, AR, USA: Acxiom Corporation.

Adele Abraham and Alfred Trier had lived at 41-15 50^th Avenue in Long Island, New York—-the very address that Rosa and Isidor Zechermann had listed as their destination in 1952. I was now 99% sure that Rosa Zechermann was the sister of Adele Abraham Trier as well as Meta, Recha, and Julius Abraham and that she was the aunt of Fred and Martin Abrahams. And thus she was my third cousin, once removed.

The final piece of the puzzle came from a tip from a researcher in Germany named Kari, whom Fred Abrahams had recommended. She found two files in the Arcinsys website for Hesse, one for Isidor Zechermann and one for Rosa Zechermann geb Abraham. Although the files themselves are not accessible online, the descriptions of the files made it clear that this was my cousin Rosa and that she was married to Isidor Zechermann:

The birth date and place matched, her birth name was Abraham, and she was married to a Zechermann. And I learned that Rosa was a “modistin,” a milliner.

I contacted someone at the archives to see what was in the file. The archives responded that there were four files in the Hesse archives relating to Isidor and Rosa Zechermann, including two lengthy files relating to their claims for compensation and one nine page file that included their naturalization application.

I have requested the naturalization papers (the other two files would be very costly to obtain), but from just the label on the file, I now have confirmation that Isidor Zechermann (born February 25, 1878) was married to my cousin Rosa Abraham (born November 20, 1892).

My search for Rosa Abraham Zechermann was over. It had truly been a search from A (Abraham) to Z (Zechermann).

The Search for Jakob David: A New Story Discovered

Posted on October 27, 2017 by Amy

Before I move on to the remaining children of Jakob Katzenstein and Sarchen Lion, I want to tie up some loose ends from the stories of other descendants.

There was a loose end in the story of Rebekka Ruelf, and in trying to tie up that loose end, I learned a great deal more about Rebekka’s son Hugo David. He was a brave and adventurous man.

As I wrote in my earlier post, Jakob David married my distant cousin Rebekka Ruelf, daughter of Gelle Katzenstein, my great-grandmother’s first cousin. Jakob and Rebekka had one child who survived to adulthood, Hugo. The David family lived in Moringen, Germany, where they owned a textile business. Hugo married Berta Loeber of Alten-Buseck, Germany, and they had a daughter named Margot.

Hugo David home in Moringen
http://weperhase.bplaced.net/?Moringer_Geschichte___Gebaeude_u._Einrichtungen___Spurensuche%3A_Juden_in_Moringen

From my research, I knew that Rebekka had died in Moringen in 1929 and that at some point in the 1930s the family had left Moringen for Abbazia, Italy, and then for the United States, where they had settled in Rhode Island in 1940.

What I did not know was the fate of Jakob David. There was no death record for him in Moringen, but also no immigration record for him. Had he died elsewhere in Germany? Where was he buried? I hate loose ends, and although Jakob was only my relative through his marriage to Rebekka Ruelf, I wanted to know what had happened to him.

Although I still don’t have all the answers, I have many. Through the magic of Facebook, I was able to connect with Jakob’s great-grandson Andy. Andy told me that his grandfather Hugo had been quite outspoken in his criticism of Hitler and the Nazis even before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 and as a result was forced to leave Germany. First, he went to Saint-Raphael, France, which is on the southeast coast of France not far from Cannes. His brother-in-law Martin Loeber was already living there, and together they ran a hotel. Within a year, Hugo’s family joined him, including his father-in-law Jakob, wife Berta, and daughter Margot. In 1935 the French government refused to renew the visas of foreign-born Jews, and so the David family left France for Italy.

Saint Raphael, France
By Tobi 87 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

I knew from Hugo’s naturalization papers that the family had resided in Abbazia, Italy, before immigrating to the US in 1940, but when I googled Abbazia in Italy, there were a number of places in Italy with that name, and I had no idea how to find out which was the correct Abbazia. I googled a number of phrases, but the one that finally worked was “Abbazia Jewish refugees 1930s.” I found this website, written by a man named Federico Falk, who was born in 1919 in Rijeka, a port city in Croatia. [1]

At first I was confused (not an unusual state). Why was a man from Croatia writing about a town in Italy? And then I received one of those wonderful benefits of doing genealogy research—-I learned something new about European history. The province in what is now Croatia that includes the two port cities of Rijeka and Opatija were once under Italian control and were then known as Fiume and Abbazia. That is, the Abbazia where my David relatives lived was at that time in Italy, but today is part of Croatia and known as Opatija.

According to the official website for Rijeka, that city was originally settled in prehistoric times and then further developed in the Roman Empire era because of its favorable location: “Given its location on gentle slopes and a narrow coastal zone, abundant with fresh water springs, secluded by a bay having the properties of a natural port, this settlement possessed all the predispositions required for development into a major seaport and trading town.” Then in medieval times, the Croatian people moved into the region.

As the city became more and more strategically and economically important, it also became a focus for conquest by various European nations. At various times the region was under the control of the French, the Hungarians, the Austrians, the Croatians, and then in 1924 in the aftermath of World War I, the Italians. Thus, when Federico Falk was growing up, Rijeka was known as Fiume and was an Italian city. After the war it became part of Yugoslavia and today is in Croatia.

Rijeka or Fiume in 1937
By SpeedyGonsales (self-made from postcard from 1937.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Less than ten miles east from Rijeka/Fiume, also on the coast, is the now-Croatian town of Opatija, known as Abbazia during the time the region was part of Italy. Opatija is a Croatian term meaning “abbey,” and Abbazia is the Italian equivalent. The town was named for the church and monastery built there in medieval times in honor of St. Jacob. Like Rijeka, Opatija was very well situated as a port city; an Opatija travel website describes it as “Located at the edge of the Mediterranean, on the slopes of Mount Učka gently descending towards the coast of Kvarner Bay.”

By the late 19^th century, Opatija had become a very popular tourist destination and it remains one today:

Director of the Austrian Southern Railway Company Friedrich Schüler and its shareholders wanted to improve passenger traffic to the south. After choosing Opatija as the region’s most promising destination, they started building the first hotel in this new bathing and climatic health resort, advertising it widely as the “Austrian Nice”.

Several important facilities were built alongside the first hotel: a pavilion with indoor pool for warm sea baths, a bathing place with separate areas for ladies and gentlemen, and the 12-kilometre-long coastal promenade from Volosko to Opatija and further to Lovran.

The hotel was opened on the 27th March 1884. Its original name was Hotel Quarnero, and it offered its visitors 60 rooms.

Kings and emperors came to Opatija as well as Isadora Duncan, Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini, James Joyce, and Anton Chekhov, among others.

Opatija/Abbazia
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Opatija.JPG

According to Federico Falk, “The Jews of Abbazia began to settle there at a time when the area was being undergoing a transformation, from a small coastal town into – after 1892 – an elegant holiday and health resort. They used to meet at the Breiner Pension where food was prepared according to kasherut rules. In 1922 they asked to be officially recognised by the autonomous Jewish community and inaugurated their headquarters in a building they owned (Villa Zora).”

Falk continued, “With the rise of Nazism in the ‘30s there was a considerable inflow of Jews who, having fled Germany and its neighbouring countries, were emigrating overseas. Many of them stopped temporarily in Fiume and surrounding areas and were registered as residents, but most of them continued on their journeys towards other destinations.”

And it was to this very important resort city of Opatija/Abbazia that Hugo David and his wife, child, and father came after leaving France. According to the website created by Federico Falk, Hugo David and family arrived on June 6, 1935, and Hugo became the owner of the Pensione Adria. This is the entry Falk has about the David family on his website:

https://www.bh.org.il/jewish-spotlight/fiume/?page_id=282

With help from Google Translate, I read this as saying: “Hugo David, son of Jakob David and Rebecca Ruelf, born in Moringen on September 25, 1897, householder and trader (owner of the Pensione Adria). German citizen. In Abbazia from June 6, 1935. Married to Berta Loeber, daughter of Sigmund Loeber and Selma Katz, born in Alten Buseck on August 13, 1903, hotelier. German citizen, in Abbazia since June 6, 1935. Hugo and Berta David have one daughter named Margot, born in Moringen, March 4, 1928, a student. In Abbazia from June 6, 1935.”

Why, one might wonder, would a Jewish family go to Mussolini’s Italy? After all, we know now that Italy became Germany’s ally in World War II.

Italy had not historically been associated with much anti-Semitism, according to an article written by Mary Feltsiner, “Refuge and Persecution in Italy, 1933-1945,” (1997, Simon Wiesenthal Center). Even after Mussolini obtained power, he did not immediately do anything to persecute the Jews in Italy.

According to Feltsiner:

After gaining power, Mussolini’s government pursued a policy of integration toward the tiny group of approximately 40,000 Jews, expecting strict political loyalty from them. Consequently, Italian Jews faced little discrimination until the mid-1930s. In 1930 the Comprehensive Law on the Jewish communities was passed; the statute assured their rights. The Union of Jewish Communities of Italy (Unione delle Comunita Israelitiche Italiane) with an office in Rome, served as the central umbrella organization. Legally there was no obstacle to providing help for other Jews who had emigrated to Italy because of persecution elsewhere.

Thus, when Hugo David and his family arrived in 1935, Italy was still a relatively safe haven for Jews. Andy’s mother Margot said that they were treated well in Abbazia; she attended school and was friendly with both Jewish and non-Jewish students.

But that changed in the fall of 1938 when Mussolini’s government enacted a series of laws that discriminated against Jews; as described by Feltsiner, “persons of Jewish origin, irrespective of their own religious affiliation, were banned from public service; forbidden to attend state schools, universities, and educational facilities; could not enter civil marriages with Aryans; and were prohibited from engaging in a significant part of their economic activity.” See also Paul Vitello, “Scholars Reconsidering Italy’s Treatment of Jews in the Nazi Era,” The New York Times (November 10, 2000) found here.

Feltsiner noted, however, that the policies were not always strictly enforced, were not generally popular among the Italian people, and were not as severe as those adopted by the Nazis. Margot recalled that even after she was no longer able to attend the public schools, she was still able to attend a Catholic school where the nuns knew she was Jewish and allowed her to be excused from the religious part of the school curriculum.

But although there might not have been as much terror and violence as Jews were experiencing elsewhere, the Italians did start rounding up and arresting Jewish residents; Hugo David was one of those arrested. His wife Berta went to Rome and asked for help from a magistrate who had often stayed at the family’s hotel in Abbazia, and Hugo was released. But the family had to leave within 24 hours of his release, so they left Abbazia and went to Greece and then Portugal. From Portugal, they sailed to the United States, arriving on August 11, 1940, just one month after Italy entered World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany.

Hugo David and family on ship manifest
Year: 1940; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6488; Line: 1; Page Number: 153
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

Despite learning this additional information about the lives of the David family between 1933 and 1940, I was unable to find any record of when or where Hugo’s father Jakob David died. In his description of the David family on his website, Federico Falk does not mention Jakob at all. According to Andy, his great-grandfather Jakob David died before the family left Abbazia and was buried in a small hillside cemetery in Matulji, a small town about three miles from Opatija/Abbazia.

Roberta F. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

And then Andy sent me this precious photograph of his great-grandparents Jakob David and Rebekka Ruelf with his grandfather Hugo David. Hugo was born on September 25, 1897, so I would say this photograph was taken sometime in 1898.

Jakob David, Hugo David, and Rebekka Ruelf David c. 1898
Courtesy of their descendants

In addition, Andy scanned the back of the photograph:

Courtesy of the family

Andy’s mother Margot, the daughter of Hugo David, had written the information on the back of the photo. And it included the year that her grandfather Jakob had died: 1936.

Thus, although I did not find any official records of Jakob David’s death, I did learn where and when he died. More importanly, I learned the story of a very brave and outspoken man, my cousin Hugo David. If Hugo had not been courageous enough to speak out against the Nazis, he would not have had to leave Germany as early as he did. His outspokenness probably saved his family’s lives by forcing them to leave before the Nazis’ full terror began against the Jews in Germany.

[1] Federico Falk died only last year (2016).

Rebekka and Regina: Sisters with Intertwined Lives

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Amy

The last two children of Mina Katzenstein and Wolf Katzenstein were Rebekka and Regina, and because their fates are intertwined in several ways, I will discuss both in this post.

Rebekka was born on August 28, 1865, in Frankenau. Regina was born two years later on September 24, 1867.

Rebekka Katzenstein birth record Arcinsys
HHStAW Fonds 365 No 174

Regina Katzenstein birth record arcinsys
HHStAW Fonds 365 No 174, p. 8

Rebekka married her cousin Salomon Schalom Kneibel Katz (apparently known as Kneibel) on April 30, 1889, as discussed previously.

Marriage of Rebekka Katzenstein and Salomon Kneibel Katz
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3844

Two and a half years later, on November 25, 1891, Regina Katzenstein married Selig(mann) Alexander in Frankenau. He was born on September 20, 1861, in Momberg, the son of Joseph Alexander and Fradchen Frank.

Marriage of Regina Katzenstein to Selig Alexander
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Standesamt Frankenau Heiratsnebenregister 1891 (Hstamr Best. 922 Nr. 3226); Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 922

Rebekka and Salomon Kneibel Katz had four children, three sons and one daughter. Their first child was Berthold; he was born on May 15, 1890, in Jesberg.

Berthold Katz birth record
HStAMR Best. 920 Nr. 3821 Standesamt Jesberg Geburtsnebenregister 1890, S. 36

Then came Rebekka and Salomon’s only daughter, Therese. She was born November 11, 1891, in Jesberg.

Therese Katz birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3822

Two sons followed Therese. Julius was born May 30, 1893, in Jesberg.

Julius Katz birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3824

And Jakob Katz was born April 14, 1895, in Jesberg.

Jakob Katz birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3826

Meanwhile, Regina and her husband Selig Alexander were also having children in the 1890s. Regina gave birth to seven children, but only four survived infancy. The first child, a girl, was stillborn on January 9, 1893.

Stillborn daughter of Regina Katzenstein and Selig Alexander
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6560

Less than a year later, Regina gave birth to Bertha on December 28, 1893, in Momberg.

Bertha Alexander birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6476

Regina and Selig’s third child was Rosa. She was born in Momberg on January 18, 1896.

Rosa Alexander birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6479

Almost two years after Rosa’s birth, on December 22, 1897, Regina gave birth to her fourth child, Mina, named for Regina’s mother Mina Katzenstein, who had died on September 5, 1896.

Mina Alexander birth record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6480

After giving birth to Mina, Regina and Selig lost two sons in infancy. Little Joseph Alexander lived only thirteen days, dying on January 24, 1902. His brother Manus lived for two months, dying on March 23, 1903.

Joseph Alexander death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6569

Manus Alexander death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6570

The seventh and last child I have for Regina Katzenstein and Selig Alexander was a son named Samuel, born January 1, 1906, according to a source provided by Barbara Greve, Barbara Haendler-Lachmann’s Schicksale der Juden im alten Landkreis Marburg 1933-1945, Hitzeroth, Marburg 1992, p. 125. Without Barbara Greve’s help, I never would have known about this seventh child as there was no available birth record for him online.

Thus, of the seven children born to Regina and Selig Alexander, only Bertha, Rosa, Mina, and Samuel lived to adulthood.

In many ways the two Katzenstein sisters were following similar paths at the same time, Rebekka in Jesberg, Regina in Momberg, fifteen miles apart. Their lives became even more intertwined on August 21, 1923, when Rebekka’s son Jakob married Regina’s daughter Rosa.

Marriage record of Rosa Alexander and Jakob Katz
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6208

That is, Rosa Alexander married her first cousin, Jakob Katz. They had three daughters who were not only sisters but also second cousins to each other. Rebekka and Regina shared granddaughters who were also their great-nieces. Remember also that Rebekka and her husband Salomon Kneibel were also cousins to each other, so Salomon Kneibel was not only his children’s father but also their cousin and the same for Rebekka.

As for Rebekka and Regina’s other children, they made my life easier by marrying outside of the family.

The first to marry was Rebekka’s daughter Therese. On June 16, 1919, she married Hermann Blum, who was born in Kuelsheim on July 7, 1883, son of Abraham and Sophie Blum. I have not been able to identify any children born to Therese and Hermann.

Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3872

Rebekka’s oldest son Berthold married Ida Blumenstiel on January 20, 1920. Ida was the daughter of Hugo Blumenstiel and Bertha Weinberg of Mansbach, Germany. She was born July 9, 1893.

Marriage record of Berthold Katz and Ida Blumenstiel
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Standesamt Hersfeld, Bad Heiratsnebenregister 1920, Eintrags-Nr. 1 – 78; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 907

Berthold and Ida would have two children born in the 1920s, Senta (1921) and Ludwig (1924).

I have not found any marriage record for Rebekka’s son Julius, and, as discussed above, her son Jakob married his cousin Rosa on August 21, 1923, and they had three daughters.

As for Regina’s children, Bertha Alexander married Julius Simon on June 26, 1922, in Momberg. He was the son of Moses Simon and Fanni Katz and was born in Pohl-Goens on May 29, 1891.

Marriage record of Bertha Alexander and Julius Simon
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6207

I have not been able to locate any record of children born to Bertha and Julius, nor do I have any records for them after their marriage, but I am still looking. Thank you to Aaron Knappstein for finding this photograph of Julius Simon on the Vor dem Holocaust – Fotos zum jüdischen Alltagsleben in Hessen website. According to the website, this was taken in 1916 when Julius was a soldier in the Germany army during World War I.

Julius Simon of Pohl-Goens 1916
http://www.vor-dem-holocaust.de/index_suche.php?ortswahl=Butzbach

I am still hoping to locate some records that will reveal what happened to Julius Simon and Bertha Alexander.

Bertha’s younger sister Rosa Alexander married Jakob Katz, as discussed above. The third sister Mina Alexander married Leo Wachenheimer in Momberg on December 25, 1927. Leo was the son of Meier Wachenheimer and Klara Rothschild; he was born on March 23, 1897, in Biebesheim, Germany. Mina and Leo would have two children.

Marriage record of Mina Alexander and Leo Wacheneimer
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 6212

According to Barbara Greve, Regina and Seligmann’s only surviving son, Samuel, married Lottie Weiler in July 1933; Lottie was born in Marburg on January 10, 1913, according to the JOWBR. I do not have names for her parents. Samuel and Lottie had one son, Hans-Joseph Alexander, according to Barbara Greve.

Rebekka Katzenstein Katz died in Jesberg on March 2, 1927; she was only 61 years old. Her husband Salomon Scholum Kneibel Katz died two years later on May 2, 1929. He was 69.

Death record of Rebekka Katzenstein Katz
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 920; Laufende Nummer: 3918

Here is the photograph I took in the Jesberg cemetery of Rebekka’s grave long before I knew the whole story of their family; sadly, I do not have a photograph of her husband’s gravestone:

The rest of the families of Rebekka and Regina Katzenstein survived into the Nazi era, and it appears that every single one of them left Germany in time—all of Rebekka and Salomon Kneibel’s children and spouses and grandchildren as well as Regina Katzenstein and Selig Alexander and at least three of their four children and spouses and grandchildren. The only couple I’ve been unable to find in any later record or index are Regina’s daughter Bertha and her husband Julius Simon.

Almost all the rest of the families of Rebekka Katzenstein and her sister Regina Katzenstein ended up in Johannesburg, South Africa. Unfortunately, I don’t have any actual records or documents that reveal when the family arrived there or any other information aside from their deaths and burials.

But I was fortunate to connect with John Leach, a relative by marriage of Leo Wachenheimer, husband of Mina Alexander. From John I learned that Leo had been a cattle dealer in Germany and had also worked in his father’s kosher butcher business. Leo was arrested by the Nazis in 1935 for doing business with a non-Jew; when he was released, he escaped from Germany to South Africa, where he opened a kosher butcher shop. Soon many family members followed him, including his wife Mina and their children, his in-laws Regina and Selig Alexander, his sister-in-law Rosa Alexander Katz and her husband Jakob Katz and their three children, and Jakob Katz’s sister Therese Katz and her husband Hermann Blum and Jakob’s brother Julius Katz. They all appear to have spent the rest of their lives in Johannesburg.

The only descendants of Rebekka or Regina who did not go to South Africa were Rebekka’s son Berthold and his wife Ida and their children, Senta and Ludwig. Instead, they went to the United States. Their daughter Senta arrived first on October 8, 1938, and Berthold, Ida, Ludwig, and Ida’s mother Bertha Blumenstiel arrived on November 25, 1938; they were all going to a cousin, Leo Katzmann in the Bronx:

Senta Katz 1938 passenger manifest
Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6238; Line: 1; Page Number: 176
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

Berthold Katz and family passenger manifest
Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6254; Line: 1; Page Number: 68
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

By 1940, they had settled in Philadelphia where Berthold was working as a salesman for a paper bag company and Senta was working as a packer for a children’s dress company. Bertha’s mother-in-law Bertha Blumenstiel was also living with them.

Berthold Katz and family 1940 US census
Year: 1940; Census Place: Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: T627_3733; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 51-1446

That same year Senta married Julius Idstein, who was also a refugee from Germany. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Marriage Index, 1885-1951) Julius was born on August 6, 1906, in Bad Homburg, and came to the United States on October 20, 1938. On his World War II draft registration, he reported that he was a partner in business with Berthold Katz, his father-in-law. On Berthold’s registration, he reported that he owned a paper products business. So between his arrival in 1938 and 1942, Berthold had become a business owner in partnership with his son-in-law Julius.

Julius Idstein World War II draft registration
Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Multiple Registrations

World War II draft registration for Berthold Katz
The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II draft cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Pennsylvania; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System, 1926-1975; Record Group Number: 147; Series Number: M1951

Sadly, Berthold’s wife Ida died at age 48 of liver cancer on December 29, 1941.

Ida Blumenstiel Katz death certificate
Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission; Pennsylvania, USA; Certificate Number Range: 109451-112000

Their son Ludwig was in college at Temple College (now Temple University) in Philadelphia in 1942:

Ludwig Katz World War II draft registration
Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Multiple Registrations

In 1943, Berthold remarried; his second wife was Betty Nussbaum, and she also was a German native, born in Mansbach on February 4, 1893. She had come to the US in 1925 on her own; her parents stayed behind where her mother died in 1939 and her father died in the Theriesenstadt concentration camp in 1942. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Marriage Index, 1885-1951)

Berthold died from stomach cancer on March 5, 1959; he was 68 years old; his second wife Betty died in 1977:

Berthold Katz death certificate
Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission; Pennsylvania, USA; Certificate Number Range: 026551-029250

Meanwhile, Berthold’s siblings and first cousins and aunt and uncle were all living in South Africa. His aunt Regina Katzenstein Alexander died on October 14, 1942, and her husband Selig Alexander died on May 5, 1949; they are buried at West Park Cemetery in Johannesburg. (JewishGen Online World Burial Registry (JOWBR)). Charmaine Rosenberg of the Johannesburg Chevra Kadisha kindly sent me the following photograph of Regina’s headstone:

Headstone of Regina Katzenstein Alexander

Berthold’s daughter Senta and her husband Julius Idstein had five children. Julius died in 1981, and Senta lived until 2003. She was 82 when she died.

Berthold’s son Ludwig became a nuclear physicist and was a senior scientist for Visidyne, Inc. in Burlington, Massachusetts, when he was killed in a car accident on March 18, 1981. He was 57 years old and was survived by his wife and two children. “Ludwig Katz, Swampscott,” Boston Herald (March 25, 1981), p. 40.

As for the family in South Africa, I have no information other than their dates of death and burial place. All those named below are, like Regina Katzenstein and Selig Alexander, buried at the West Park Cemetery in Johannesburg, and all this information comes from the JOWBR on Jewishgen.org and from Charmaine Rosenberg of the Chevra Kadisha in Johannesburg. I am very grateful to Charmaine for providing me with these photographs of the headstones.

Julius Katz died on November 11, 1958, when he was 65. As far as I know, he never married or had children.

Headstone of Julius Katz

Therese Katz died on September 28, 1964, eight years after her husband Hermann Blum, who died on December 23, 1956. She was 73, he was also 73 when he died. As far as I have been able to determine, they did not have children.

Headstone of Therese Katz Blum and Hermann Blum

Jakob Katz died on August 24, 1974; he was 79. His wife and first cousin Rosa Alexander Katz outlived him by 23 years. She was almost 101 when she died on June 14, 1997.

Headstone of Jakob Katz

Rosa’s sister Mina Alexander Wachenheimer also outlived her husband by many years. Leo Wachenheimer died on January 23, 1969, when he was 72. Mina survived him by over twenty years, dying on December 23, 1989, when she was 92.

Headstone of Mina (Minna) Alexander Wachenheimer

Headstone of Leo Wachenheimer

Samuel Alexander died on June 21, 1989; he was 83. He had outlived his wife Lotte by seventeen years; she died on January 11, 1972, when she was 59.

Overall, the children of both Rebekka and Regina Katzenstein, daughters of Mina Katzenstein and Wolf Katzenstein, were fortunate to escape from Nazi Germany when they did. Perhaps Leo Wachenheimer’s arrest in 1935 was the key that opened the door to the survival of all of them.

A Story Left Unfinished

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Amy

Mina Katzenstein and Wolf Katzenstein had only one son, their middle child, Manus, who was born in Frankenau on April 23, 1863.

Birth record of Manus Katzenstein
Standesamt Höringhausen Heiratsnebenregister 1891 (HStAMR Best. 922 Nr. 5542)AutorHessisches Staatsarchiv MarburgErscheinungsortHöringhausen, p. 19

I have nothing more than the bare facts for Manus: birth, marriage, and death. He married Fanny Bickhardt on November 18, 1891, in Hoeringhausen, Germany. Fanny was born on June 6, 1868, in Hoeringhausen. She was the daughter of Abraham Bickhardt and Esther Lion.

Marriage record of Manus Katzenstein and Fanny Bickhardt
HStAMR Best. 922 Nr. 5542 Standesamt Höringhausen Heiratsnebenregister 1891, S. 19

I was not able to locate any children born to Manus and Fanny. I searched the birth registers for Frankenau, Hoeringhausen, and Momberg, but found nothing. The only other residence I found for Manus and Fanny was Frankfurt, but that was in 1941, long after they would have had children. If they’d moved to Frankfurt early in their marriage and had children there, I was not able to find any such children.

In fact, I could not find any information about either Manus or Fanny between their marriage in 1891 and their deaths. Manus Katzenstein died on October 15, 1941, of Altersverfall—old age. He was without occupation at the time of his death and was living with his wife Fanny in Frankfurt. It appears that he died at the Jewish community hospital in Frankfurt. Notice that both Manus and Fanny had been assigned the middle names used by the Nazis to identify someone as Jewish—-Israel for Manus and Sara for Fanny.

Manus Katzenstein death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 903; Signatur: 903_11127

I wish I knew how and why and when Manus and Fanny had ended up in Frankfurt. Had they moved there of their own free will before the Nazis came to power or even afterwards? Or had they been deported there? Did Manus really die from old age (he was 78 years old), or had he been mistreated and died from abuse, neglect, torture, or worse? I don’t know.

What I do know from the Yad Vashem database is that on September 1, 1942, Fanny Bickhardt Katzenstein was deported from Frankfurt to Theriesenstadt, where she died on April 15, 1943, just seven months after arriving there. She was 74 years old.

The story of Manus and Fanny is for me a hard one to leave alone. I keep hoping to learn more. Why hadn’t they left Germany like the children of Manus’s sisters Rosa Katzenstein Katz and Karoline Katzenstein Blumenfeld and their other nieces and nephews? What kept Manus and Fanny in Germany if they had no children? Were they just unable to leave? How I wish I could learn more.

But sadly these are the only traces of them that I have—a birth record, a marriage record, a death record, and an entry in Yad Vashem. It doesn’t feel like nearly enough to honor their lives and their memories.

UPDATE! Once again my friend Aaron Knappstein has come to my rescue. Aaron found this page for me, and it has a great deal of information about Manus Katzenstein. I am now trying to sort through it and will update again once I understand it.

Update on Rosa Katzenstein Katz and Her Family!

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Amy

Just a quick update on the family about whom I posted today. My dear friend and brilliant researcher Aaron Knappstein located Stolpersteine in Selters for Rosa Katzenstein Katz, her daughter Sara Katz Loew, and Sara’s husband Otto Loew. And the good news is that these are not Stolpersteine for people killed, but for people who escaped—to Argentina in 1936.

Here are their Stolpersteine:

Thank you SO much, Aaron! Now I will see if I can find anything about their lives in Argentina.

Further update: A search of the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry turned up burial records for Rosa and for her daughter Sara. Sadly, neither lived very long after escaping to Argentina. I did not find Otto there so perhaps he left Argentina after Rosa and Sara died.

FURTHER UPDATE! Well, from Aaron Knappstein’s discovery of the Stolpersteine, I now have found not only where Rosa and her daughter Sara died and are buried; I’ve also found Rosa’s daughters Sophie and Recha and their husbands. They all ended up in Buenos Aires and are buried in the same cemetery.

Maybe Isaac Vogel Sophie's husband burial record

Aaron, you knocked down a big brick wall with one blow!

My Double/Triple? Cousins: The Children of Pauline Ruelf and Hirsch Abraham

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Amy

The youngest child of Gelle Katzenstein and Moses Ruelf to live to adulthood was Pauline Ruelf. Part of Pauline’s story has already been told, as she was the mother of Julius Abraham, who married Senta Katz, the great-granddaughter of Rahel Katzenstein. That is, as I described here, Pauline’s son Julius and his wife Senta Katz were half-third cousins. Julius and Senta were the parents of Fred Abrahams, whose memoirs of his family’s life and departure from Germany were also posted here.

But I am getting a bit ahead of myself, so let me back up and start with Pauline’s birth. She was born on September 25, 1869, in Rauischholzhausen:

Pauline Ruelf birth record,
Geburtsregister der Juden von (Rauisch)Holzhausen (Ebsdorfergrund) 1824-1874 (HHStAW Abt. 365 Nr. 452)AutorHessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden, p.15

On December 26, 1891, when she was 22 years old, she married Hirsch Abraham. Hirsch was born on December 4, 1858, in Niederurff, and was the son of Jakob Abraham and Roschen Frank.

Pauline Ruelf marriage to Hirsh Abraham
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 915; Laufende Nummer: 7960

Hirsch was a widower when he married Pauline; his first wife was Pauline’s older sister Johanna Ruelf, who had died on August 12, 1890, eleven days after giving birth to a daughter, whose name was originally Rosa but was changed to Johanna (or Hannah) after her mother died.

Birth record of Rosa later Johanna Abraham
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6175

So Pauline took on the responsibility for raising her niece Johanna. She and Hirsch also had six children together: Ricchen Rosa (1892), Julius (1894), Meta (1894), Sarah (1896), Siegfried (1897), and Recha (1900). Although Julius and Meta were both born in 1894, they were not twins; Julius was born January 2, 1894, and his sister Meta was born almost twelve months later on December 26, 1894, meaning Julius was only three months old when Meta was conceived.

Birth record of Julius Abraham Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6179

Birth record of Meta Abraham
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Geburtsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6179

Pauline and Hirsch lost two of their children at young ages. Their daughter Sarah died on June 25, 1910; she was only fourteen.

Death Record for Sarah Abraham
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6261

Their son Siegfried was killed fighting for Germany in World War I. He was only nineteen when he was shot in the line of duty on April 13, 1917. According to his death record, he was a musketeer in the Germany infantry and was shot twice, once in the left forearm and once in the chest, and died from his injuries; he was buried in a common grave.

Siegfried Abraham death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6268

The fact that twenty years later Siegfried’s family would be forced to leave Germany to survive makes his death even more tragic. My cousin Fred Abrahams was named for his uncle Siegfried.

Siegfried’s brother Julius also served in World War I. Here is a photograph of three of Siegfried’s siblings at some gathering in Germany in 1915; first, the overall photograph and then a snip focusing on the three Abraham siblings, Meta, Julius, and Recha. You can see that Julius is in uniform:

Courtesy of Fred and Martin Abrahams

On September 25, 1921, Johanna Abraham, Pauline’s niece whom she raised after her sister Johanna died, married Jakob Hirschberg of Zwesten, Germany. Jakob was born on April 15, 1893. He and Johanna had one child, a son Martin.

Marriage of Johanna Abraham and Jakob Hirschberg
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Collection: Personenstandsregister Heiratsregister; Signatur: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6226

Although I have very little information at all about Hirsch and Pauline’s oldest daughter Ricchen Rosa Abraham, one passenger manifest lists her with the married name Zechermann; I don’t know her husband’s first name or when or where she married, nor do I know whether they ever had children.

Ricchen Rosa Abraham passenger card
The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving at Miami, Florida.; NAI Number: 2788541; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787 – 2004; Record Group Number: 85

The other surviving daughters of Pauline Ruelf and Hirsh Abraham both immigrated to the United States in the 1920s. Recha, the youngest child, was only 25 when she first left Germany on October 6, 1925, to travel to the US. According to the passenger manifest, she had been last living in Frankfurt and working as a housekeeper and was now traveling to her uncle, Max Abraham, who resided in Davenport, Iowa. Recha stated that she expected to stay for nine months.

Recha Abraham 1925 ship manifest
Year: 1925; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 3741; Line: 1; Page Number: 135
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

Max Abraham was Hirsch Abraham’s older brother; he had come to the US from Germany in the 1870s when he was just a teenager. In 1880, he was living in Louisville, Kentucky, and working as a dry goods merchant. He remained in Kentucky for a number of years and after marrying in 1988, he moved to Campbellsburg, Indiana, where he became president of the local bank. After 25 years in Indiana, Max and his family moved to Davenport, Iowa in 1916, where he and his sons started what became a very successful clothing business, Abrahams Brothers. “Max Abrahams, Treasurer of Ready to Wear Store in Davenport, Dies at 82,” Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa), 24 Apr 1938, p. 1

I don’t know how long Recha ended up staying with her uncle Max in Iowa on this trip, but on October 15, 1926, she again sailed from Hamburg to New York listing her destination as her uncle Max Abraham’s home in Davenport, Iowa. She listed her last address as Frankfurt. She provided no occupation nor did she indicate this time the length of her stay.

Recha Abraham 1926 ship manifest
Year: 1926; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 3947; Line: 1; Page Number: 182
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

On September 23, 1927, her older sister Meta also arrived in the US and also indicated that she was going to her uncle Max Abraham of Davenport, Iowa. Meta stated that she planned to stay in the US permanently. She stated that her occupation was a clerk.

Meta Abraham 1927 passenger manifest
Year: 1927; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4135; Line: 1; Page Number: 94
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

In the fall of 1930, both Meta and Recha must have visited their family in Germany because a passenger manifest for a ship sailing from Hamburg and arriving in New York City on October 8, 1930, lists both sisters as residents of New York City where they were both living at 42 West 89^th Street. Recha was working as a cashier and Meta as a dressmaker. Neither had yet become a US citizen. Both reported that they had been in the US since 1927, although Recha obviously had arrived earlier than that.

Meta and Recha Abraham 1930 passenger manifest
Year: 1930; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4854; Line: 1; Page Number: 90
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

Meta and Recha did not show up on the 1930 census when I searched for them on Ancestry and FamilySearch, which puzzled me. I turned to stevemorse.org, using his enumeration district finder tool and the address from the 1930 passenger manifest—42 West 89^th Street. There they were, clear as could be.

Meta and Recha Abraham 1930 US census
Year: 1930; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: 1556; Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 0450; FHL microfilm: 2341291

So why hadn’t they shown up when I searched? For one thing, both had reported themselves as much younger than they were; Meta, who apparently gave the information to the enumerator, said that she was 24 and her sister 22 when in fact Meta was 34 and Recha was 30. That obviously threw off my search even though I thought I’d given fairly wide ranges in my search parameters for their ages. Also, Recha was listed as Rebecca. But this household is clearly that of the Abraham sisters. Meta was working as a cashier for a butcher and Recha was a seamstress at Macy’s. Both are listed with the surname Abrahams, a change that had also been made by their uncle Max in Iowa.

Meanwhile, back in Niederurff, Germany, Pauline and Hirsh’s only surviving son, Julius Abraham, had by 1932 married his half-third cousin Senta Katz of Jesberg, and they had two sons in the 1930s, Martin and Siegfried/Fred. (Julius and Senta were married either on January 10, 1931, or January 10, 1932; their sons were not sure of the year, and I’ve not been able to find an official record.)

It was not too much longer before Julius and Senta recognized the need to escape from Nazi Germany. As Fred described in his memoir excerpted here and as I wrote about in that same post, Julius and Senta and their two sons left Germany and arrived in New York City on June 24, 1937 . They were going to Julius’ sisters, Meta and Recha, who were then living at 252 West 85^th Street. Julius reported his occupation to be a tailor.

Family of Julius and Senta Katz Abraham, passenger manifest, Year: 1937; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6003; Line: 1; Page Number: 18
Description
Ship or Roll Number : Roll 6003
Source Information
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

The next family member to arrive from Germany was Johanna Abraham Hirschberg, the half-sister of Meta, Julius, and Recha, daughter of Johanna Ruelf and Hirsch Abraham. Johanna came with her husband Jakob and son Martin on May 4, 1938; they also were going to Meta and Recha’s home at 252 West 85^th Street in New York City. Jakob was a merchant. They had been living in Zwesten, Germany, before immigrating to the US.

Johanna Abraham Hirschberg and family on 1938 passenger manifest
Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6152; Line: 1; Page Number: 168
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957

Sadly, Pauline Ruelf Abraham died on March 22, 1938, in Niederurff, and thus did not get to join her children in the United States. She was 68 years old when she died.

Pauline Ruelf death record
Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 920; Laufende Nummer: 6280

Pauline Ruelf Abraham gravestone

Her husband Hirsch Abraham left Germany a year later, arriving in New York on March 25, 1939. He also was joining his daughters at 252 West 85^th Street. He was eighty years old when he left Niederurff, Germany and sailed alone to New York City, leaving behind the only home he’d ever known. He lived only a year in the US, dying on March 9, 1940 at age 81. (New York, New York, Death Index, 1862-1948, on Ancestry.com)

Thus, by March 1939, all but one of the children of Pauline Ruelf and Johanna Ruelf and Hirsch Abraham were living safely in New York City. On the 1940 census, Meta and Recha were still living at 252 West 85^th Street; Meta was a bookkeeper for a women’s clothing manufacturing company, and Recha had no occupation listed. Meta died in New York City on May 18, 1977, and her sister Recha died almost a year to the day later on May 24, 1978. Meta was 83 when she died, and Recha was 78. It appears the two sisters had lived together their entire adult lives once coming to the US in the 1920s.

Meta and Recha Abraham on 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2643; Page: 1B; Enumeration District: 31-809

Their half-sister/first cousin Johanna and her husband Jakob (listed as Jack) and son were also still living in New York in 1940; Johanna and Jack were both working as cooks, Jack for the city and Johanna in a private home. By 1955, the family had moved to Davenport, Iowa, where Jack and his son Martin were both working in Max Abrahams’ store. Johanna died August 15, 1955, and Jack died in 1960. They are buried in Davenport.

Johanna Abraham Hirschberg and family on 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2636; Page: 13A; Enumeration District: 31-547

Julius Abraham and his wife Senta Katz and their sons were also living in New York City in 1940. As I wrote earlier, the family was living at 325 West 93rd Street, and Julius was working in the family business, Abrahams Brothers, the clothing business started by Max Abrahams and his sons in Davenport, Iowa. The business had grown to about a dozen stores throughout the Midwest. In 1940, Julius was working in the fur department of the New York office, where the administration and buying for the many stores was handled. He continued to work for the business for the rest of his life. Julius died on December 22, 1959; his wife Senta lived to 93, dying on October 15, 2000, in Stamford, Connecticut.

Senta Katz Abrahams and family, 1940 census
Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2642; Page: 16A; Enumeration District: 31-777

The only child of Pauline Ruelf Abraham who is unaccounted for is Ricchen Rosa Abraham, Pauline’s first child. I have no records for her aside from her birth record and the 1961 passenger list card depicted above. I am also only inferring that this is in fact Ricchen in the passenger list card based on the birth date and place of birth and the fact that her nephews Martin and Fred knew that she had ended up in Chile. The family story is that she was unable to gain entry to the US and so went to Chile instead.

I have no records for her in Chile so do not know when she got there, whom she married, whether she had children, or when she died. I have tried finding information about her from sources in Chile, but so far have had no luck. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

But what I do know is that all of the children and grandchildren of both Pauline Ruelf and her sister Johanna Ruelf survived the Holocaust. That in and of itself gives me a happy ending to this last chapter in the story of Gelle Katzensten and Moses Ruelf.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Category Archives: Holocaust

Klara Maas: A Survivor and American Idol Fan

Two of The Less Fortunate Children of Jakob Katzenstein: Schalum and Rebecca

Sisters and Cousins

My Cousins in Porto Alegre, Brazil

From A to Z: Adventures in Chile

The Search for Jakob David: A New Story Discovered

Rebekka and Regina: Sisters with Intertwined Lives

A Story Left Unfinished

Update on Rosa Katzenstein Katz and Her Family!

My Double/Triple? Cousins: The Children of Pauline Ruelf and Hirsch Abraham

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