Lotte’s Story, Part II: Life in Nazi Germany

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Amy

This is the second part of a three-part post about the life of my cousin Lotte, who was born in Germany, left in 1938, and came to the United States in 1939. You can read Part One here.

Although Lotte was only eleven years old on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, she has vivid memories of that day and the events leading up to it.

Lotte wrote:

For years, the Nazis had been a minority party. Many people thought they could not possibly rise to power. But in 1933, Germany was in the grip of the world-wide depression precipitated by the crash of the American stock market and an enormous scandal involving Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish Match King, whose pyramid scam had caused the collapse of the European markets. Unemployment was widespread and severe. In addition, Germany’s pride, so badly hurt by the harsh and unrealistic provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, was crying for revenge. Thus the stage had been set for the dramatic rise of the Nazis whose promise of hope, and whose message of antisemitism, fell on accepting ears. In November of 1932 they succeeded in winning an election and joined up with the “German National Party”, a very rightist holdout of frustrated generals and army protagonists, frustrated because the German army was severely limited by the peace treaty. …But then, on that ominous day in January, President Paul von Hindenburg, a tottering and senile ex- general, appointed Adolf Hitler to be the chancellor.

Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring performing the salute at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg (ca. 1928) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like many Jewish residents of Germany, Lotte’s father at first was not overly concerned about Hitler and his party. Her mother was more worried.

My father, who was a decorated veteran of World War One, owner of the Iron Cross medal, and a respected physician in the community, kept on stating that nothing could really happen to us. That the whole thing would blow over. My mother, always a realist, an activist and somewhat of a pessimist, painted a different picture. She was a convinced Social Democrat with a leftist leaning, whereas my father supported the more centrist “Zentrum” party. There had been many heated arguments about politics in our house, and both Doris and I were quite up-to-date on what had been going on.

It did not take long for Lotte’s mother to be proven right about her concerns about the Nazis. By February, 1933, the father of one of Lotte’s close friends was sent to Dachau, and when he returned, he and his family left Germany. While the father was still in Dachau, his daughter and Lotte were assaulted on the street by three boys, leaving Lotte with a bloody lip.

Lotte soon became fearful of saying the wrong thing and getting her family into trouble. Lotte wrote:

A few days into February [1933] I found that a large picture of Adolf Hitler was hanging in my classroom. Without thinking I exclaimed more or less to myself: “Does that guy have to stare right into my face?” The boy sitting in front of me, known to be a “Nazi”, turned around and said “what did you say?” I don’t remember what I answered, but I was scared to death about the possibility that some harm could come to my father. Fortunately, the boy did not report the incidence, and nothing happened. But from there on I knew that I had to be extremely careful with what I said or did. There was always a certain pressure, a certain fear looming over my head, not a very healthy state for a child and then a teenager. And that fear increased as time went on.

By April, the Nazis had instituted a boycott of Jewish businesses, and Lotte’s father was directly affected by this:

A yellow sign with a Magen David (Jewish star) bearing the inscription “Jewish Enterprise” was plastered over my father’s medical shingle. An S.A. man (Nazi stormtrooper) was planted at the entrance to the building with instructions to prevent anyone other than residents from entering. But one well-meaning elderly woman told him to be ashamed of himself, that my father, who handled many deliveries, had actually brought him into this world, and the young man shamefacedly trotted away.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoycot_of_Jewish_shops_april_1_1933.jpeg

A stormtrooper stands in front of a store being boycotted (Not Lotte’s family) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABoycot_of_Jewish_shops_april_1_1933.jpeg

In her memoirs, Lotte describes the various ways that life for Jews in Germany became increasingly intolerable between 1933 and 1935, when the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. Jews were not allowed in restaurants, theaters, and concert halls. They could not ice skate or swim in public pools. Blatant expressions of anti-Semitism by storm troopers and others became commonplace. Even one of Lotte’s teachers espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric:

My French teacher, who had been known to have been a Social Democrat and who had quite opportunistically converted to Naziism, actually had the gall to try to console me by stating that none of the shenanigans were really meant to be antisemitic, but that the day would come when it would be discovered that the blood in Jewish veins actually was different from that of “Aryans”, the true Germans.

Although most Jewish children were forced to leave the public schools, Lotte was able to stay at the Gymnasium because her father had served in the army during World War I. However, she knew she was facing discrimination:

At the end of each school year the three best scholars received prizes donated by local merchants. Being Jewish, I never received such a prize. My home room teacher used excuses, or I was given an undeserved “C” in a minor subject. Twice I just received an “honorable mention”. Later on they no longer bothered to cover up, and I knew why.

Another incident occurred when Lotte attended a concert, violating the prohibition:

I attend a concert by the fourteen year old Yehudi Menuhin who, wearing shorts, looks like a little boy but plays beautifully. Of course being Jewish I am not supposed to be in the concert hall where I meet the grandmother of one of my non-Jewish friends. The lady looks the other way, completely ignoring me, although I have spent many hours at her house in friendlier times.

Yehudi Menuhin
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AYehudi-Menuhin-enfant.jpeg

Meanwhile, Lotte became more interested in learning about her Jewish identity. As described last time, her father had left the Jewish community, and Lotte’s upbringing had been completely secular. Her limited exposure to Judaism had occurred when she had visited her maternal grandparents in Neunkirchen. But once Hitler came to power, Lotte’s father Joseph rejoined the Jewish community, and Lotte felt a desire to learn more about what it meant to be Jewish.

First, she tried a class for Jewish religious instruction. Her description may seem familiar to many who attended Hebrew School growing up in the US:

The teacher had one look at me and promptly asked what I was doing there, but condescended to let me stay. There was a lot of noise in the classroom, nobody was paying any attention, and the teacher could only try to keep some order by slapping the faces of some and shouting louder than the others. After attending twice I was completely turned off and never went there again. Nobody ever asked me to come back.

Lotte then enrolled in a Zionist youth group, Die Werkleute, where she found a group of like-minded Jewish youth and learned a lot more about Judaism. Although her parents did not support the Zionist movement, for Lotte it became a political, religious, and social outlet.

As far as I was concerned, the concept of Zionism fell on fertile ears. I remembered the KKL box on my grandparents’ chest, and I needed something positive to look forward to, seeing how my future in Germany was being destroyed systematically. A few of my friends actually went to Israel by enrolling in the Youth Aliyah program which was in full force by then and was instrumental in to rescuing Jewish children. Others were planning to spend some time in preparation for their move to the Kibbutz by gaining work experience in agriculture, gardening and some of the trades. I was not quite ready to do just that, but I certainly expected to emigrate to Israel somehow at some time in the future. Fate had it that things worked out differently for me. But more about that later.

I learned a lot about Judaism at that time. Some of the members were very observant, and everybody respected that, but on the whole religion was downplayed. It was discussed in a more or less theoretical context. Jewish history, especially the history of Zionism, and Jewish peoplehood were the thrust of our education. At the same time the value of our background of German culture was stressed. We took our mission very seriously.

Werkleute group in Frankfort, Germany 1927 (not Lotte’s group)
http://www.infocenters.co.il/gfh/multimedia/GFH/0000065842/0000065842_1_web.jpg

In 1936, Lotte’s father was excluded from the state-run insurance system which had provided him with many of his patients. He finally realized that it might be time to leave Germany before it was too late. First, the family arranged for Lotte’s older sister Doris to emigrate; she left for the United States in 1937. Lotte’s parents then began to make plans for their own emigration. .

Lotte’s grandparents Laura (Seligmann) and Samuel Winter and her great-uncle Jakob Seligmann had already left Germany for Luxembourg a few years earlier. As explained by Lotte, Neunkirchen was located in the Saar region, which had been under French control after World War I, as agreed to in the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935, there was a plebiscite to determine whether or not the region should be returned to Germany, and the residents of the Saar region voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Germany (over 90%). Under the terms of the Treaty, however, anyone dissatisfied with the result could leave the area. Thus, Lotte’s grandparents and great-uncle had gone to Luxembourg, where German was spoken. Lotte beautifully described where her grandparents lived in Luxembourg:

With my mother’s help they managed to move to a lovely small apartment at the foot of a hill in the fairytale-like city of Luxembourg. The view toward the skyline silhouette, way above, was breathtaking. The ruins of an ancient watchtower and of fortifications lay on the way up to the city. Grand-duchess Charlotte ruled the country which had an army of about 100 men. At times you could see two or three of the soldiers marching behind each other, rifles on their shoulders. Had it not been for a shortage of funds, it would have been an idyllic place to live.



Embed from Getty Images

Luxembourg

Lotte’s mother Anna persuaded her husband to move to Luxembourg when they made the decision to emigrate. Lotte wrote:

Once the decision was made, all the following steps fell into place. I had to leave school and take the courses needed to prepare me for a different life. My father closed his office. We obtained the necessary passports featuring the addition of the name “Sara” for my mother and me. “Joseph”, my father’s name, was sufficiently Jewish to avoid any changes. The passports were not hard to get since one of the officials at the office was known to oblige when a DM 10.00 note was slipped into each application. Ours was the last family in Mannheim to be allowed to pack most of its belongings.

Lotte remembers what this meant for her education.

Unfortunately my schooling was rudely interrupted when my parents began to make preparations for emigration. Much to my chagrin I had to quit school in the middle of the equivalent of my junior year. Instead, I took courses in English and French shorthand, typing and commercial correspondence at a private school. I also learned the rudiments of using a sewing machine, courtesy of a school run by nuns. I must add that for a couple of years I had also studied English with a very proper Oxford-trained teacher at the private Berlitz School.

On a more positive note, Lotte’s parents saw to it that she would have a good violin before they left Germany.

In preparation for eventual emigration my father and I travel to Stuttgart to buy a new violin for me. Or rather, it is a beautiful old Italian instrument, bearing a label stating that it was made by Matteo Albani in 1698. It has a gorgeous flamed wood back, gracefully molded. The sound is magnificent. My teacher assists in the purchase which also includes a light brown case lined with light blue plush. A piece of matching blue silk serves as a wrapper for the instrument. It will soon become a part of me. I am ecstatic.

An Albani violin http://www.bromptons.co/reference/articles/details/sears-danelectro-history.html

I would imagine that that feeling of ecstasy was tempered by some sadness about leaving behind her childhood home, the city of Mannheim where she’d grown up, and her birth country. But Lotte’s memoirs do not convey sadness, just relief.

On the day scheduled for the packing, an inspector appeared whose job it was to supervise what we were doing. He was quite a jovial man. At lunchtime he attached a yellow ribbon across the doorway and announced that he was now going to be gone for about one hour. My mother took the hint and promptly hid a box with jewelry and cash in one of the suitcases destined for Luxembourg. After exactly one hour the good man returned. Luckily he did not ask any questions and did not inspect anything.

For a few more days we stayed at the home of some friends. On May 9, 1938 my parents and I boarded a train heading for Luxembourg. Again luck was with us. Our compartment was shared with a gentleman who turned out to be the Luxembourg consul posted in Stuttgart. The German border control officers of whom we had been afraid and who might have made a lot of trouble for us, they tipped their hats in deference and did not search the compartment very thoroughly. The Luxembourg officials were considered harmless.

Not long after settling in Luxembourg, Lotte’s mother traveled to New York to attend her daughter Doris’ wedding. When she returned better informed about what was going on in Europe, she persuaded her husband that they should leave Luxembourg and immigrate to the United States. How fortunate it was that Doris had moved to the United States a year earlier and that her mother had come to the US to attend her wedding. If the Wiener family had not left Luxembourg, it is very likely that Lotte would not be here today to share this remarkable story.

Next, the family’s departure from Europe, journey to America, and Lotte’s life in the new country.

My Ever-growing Seligmann Family Tree

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Amy

Of all my family lines, I have had the best luck with my Seligmann line. First, early on I found my cousin Pete, Arthur Seligman’s grandson, who had a wealth of information about the New Mexico Seligmans. Then I was lucky to find people in Germany who provided me with the copies of vital records for Moritz Seligmann and his family as well as a book about the Jews of Gau-Algesheim. From those sources, I learned the names of many of my German ancestors.

Then my cousin Wolfgang found my blog, and he has provided me with invaluable information and documents as well as his continuing help in deciphering and translating what he found in his cousin’s suitcase. From there I was able to find my cousin Suzanne, who has provided me not only with more information and more documents but also with priceless photographs of many of my Seligmann relatives.

And now I have connected with two more cousins: George, an American descendant of Hieronymous Seligmann, a brother of my great-great-grandfather Bernard, and Davita, a descendant of Adolph Seligman, also my great-great-grandfather’s brother, who also settled in Santa Fe.. And from George and Davita I hope to learn even more about the family.

Right before I left and then while I was away, Wolfgang and Suzanne sent a bunch of new documents and new photographs that I want to share. I am not even sure where to begin. I think I will start with the newly discovered Westminster Bank document revealing the names of all the children of Hieronymous Seligmann; it answered some of the questions left open by my posts about the list of heirs to the estate of English James Seligman.

Westminster Bank family tree for Hieronymous Seligmann

This must have been the family tree that Elsa Oppenheimer had found erroneous as described in her letter of July 9, 1984. She had asserted that Hieronymous did not have a daughter named Johanna or Elizabeth (Bettina, on the tree), as the Bank’s tree indicated. But Elsa also said that Moritz did not have a son named Adolph, and she was wrong about that. I now think she was also wrong about Johanna and Bettina. How do I know she was wrong? Because there are pictures of both of these women in the photograph album that belonged to their cousin, Fred Michel.

First, here is a picture of Johanna Seligmann Bielefeld from the Michel album. Despite Elsa’s protestations, Johanna was clearly the daughter of one of the Seligmann sons, and there is no reason to think that she was not a sibling of Jack, Rosina Laura, and Mathilde, as indicated on the Bank tree, and thus a daughter of Hieronymous.

Johanna Bielefeld nee Seligmann

As I posted earlier, Johanna married Alfred Bielefeld, and they had two children, Hans and Lily, both of whom immigrated to the United States. Alfred and Johanna were both deported to Terezin, where Alfred died. With the help of the archivist at Terezin, I was able to locate Alfred’s death certificate.

Albert Bielefeld death certificate from Terezin

Alfred Bielefeld death certificate from Terezin

From what I can interpret here, Alfred died from myocardial deterioration and cellulitis. Johanna did not die at Terezin, but was later transported to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

As for Bettina, this beautiful photograph appears in the Michel photo album.

Bettina Arnfeld nee Seligmann

Wolfgang located a page in German for the stolperstein placed in her memory in Muelheim-Ruhr.

Stolperstein for Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld By RalfHuels (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

According to this page, Bettina was born in Gau-Algesheim on March 17, 1875, the daughter of Hieronymous Seligmann and Anna Levi. She attended school in Bingen and married Adolf Arnfeld in 1900. Adolf was in the fabric and clothing business in Mulheim-Ruhr, and he and Bettina were living there when their son Heinz was born in 1902. Adolf died in 1927, and Bettina was still living in Mulheim when she was deported to Terezin on July 21, 1942. She died six months later at Terezin from pneumonia. Here is yet another chilling death certificate issued by the Nazis.

Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld death certificate from Terezin

Unfortunately, I was not able to locate these death records while at Terezin so was unable to locate the specific gravesite where Albert Bielefeld and Bettina Arnfeld were buried.

Bettina’s biography also discussed her son Heinz. After initially working for his father’s company, Heinz became an attorney and worked as a clerk in the court system until dismissed in 1933 under the anti-Semitic laws adopted by the Nazis. He was imprisoned for a period of time in 1938 at Dachau (mostly likely in the aftermath of Kristallnacht), but was released. He immigrated to England in 1939, where he married Liselotte Schondorff in 1945. Heinz died in England on May 4, 1961. I have not located any descendants.

Based on the photographs and the other information and documentation, I think it is quite evident that both Johanna and Bettina were the daughters of Hieronymous Seligmann, the younger brother of Bernard Seligman, my three-times great-grandfather.

There were two other names I was not certain about when I wrote about the list of heirs to the estate of English James Seligmann: Anna Wolf and Bettina Ochs. I think I now have answers for those as well, with the help of Wolfgang and the photographs from Suzanne.

The list of heirs to English James Seligman’s estate had listed Anna Wolf right below Johanna Bielefeld and Bettina Arnfeld and referred to Johanna as her aunt. It also indicated that Anna had died in December 1935 in Mulheim-Ruhr, the town where Bettina had lived.

On the Hieronymous family tree from the Westminster Bank, depicted above, one of his daughters, Mathilde Wolf, is listed as having a daughter Anna, who died in 1935. This certainly seems to indicate that the Anna Wolf on the list of heirs was the daughter of Mathilde, sister to both Johanna and Bettina. That assumption is further supported by this photograph of what appears to be a stock certificate with the name Mathilde Wolf geb. (born) Seligmann written upon it. I don’t know what happened to Mathilde or her husband or why she herself is not listed as an heir instead of her daughter Anna.

There are several photographs of unidentified couples from the Michel album. Perhaps one of these is Mathilde Seligmann Wolf and her husband; perhaps one is a photograph of Bettina Seligmann Arnfeld and her husband. I don’t know. I will post some of these in a subsequent post and ask for help from all of you.

As for Bettina Ochs, I had been quite perplexed by her name on the list of James Seligman’s heirs. As I wrote, she is listed as Frau Bettina Ochs from Milan, Italy. Ochs thus appeared to be her married name, so I had thought her birth name must have been Seligmann or Oppenheimer, but the list names her brother as Arthur Erlanger, suggesting that Bettina’s birth name was Erlanger. So who was she, and how was she related to the Seligmanns?

I was stumped.

Until I saw this photograph:

Emil Ochs and wife, daughter of Mathilde Erlanger geb Seligmann

It says “Emil Ochs and wife, daughter of Mathilde Erlanger nee Seligmann.” So Bettina Ochs was the daughter of a Mathilde Seligmann, who had married someone named Erlanger. But which Mathilde Seligmann?

Thanks to Wolfgang, I now have an answer. Wolfgang found a page on Geni.com, another genealogy website, for Mathilde Erlanger nee Seligmann, which identified her as the daughter of Moritz and Babetta Seligmann. I looked back at my notes for the children of Moritz and Babetta, and sure enough there was a daughter named Mathilde for whom I had had no information beyond her birth date of January 31, 1845, which came from the records I’d obtained from Gau-Algesheim. Now from the Geni page, the list of heirs, and the photograph, I know her married name and the names of her children, Bettina and Arthur, and I know Bettina’s husband’s name, Emil. Unfortunately, however, I do not know what happened to Mathilde, her husband, Arthur or Bettina and Emil. I don’t know why Bettina was listed as living in Milan or why she had an English lawyer, according to the list of heirs. I don’t know why her brother was only listed as a secondary heir.

The only other record I have for Bettina so far is from the JewishGen database labeled “Switzerland, Jewish Arrivals 1938-1945,” which includes a listing for “Bettina Ochs-Erlanger (Bettina Oberdorfer).” That listing says her nationality was Italian and that she arrived in Switzerland on August 5, 1944. Where did she go from there? Why is she also listed as Oberdorfer? What happened to Emil? I don’t know.

So as always, some questions have been answered, leading to more to be answered. Next post I will look at some of the other photographs from the album of Fred Michel.

Impressions of Vienna and Some Concluding Thoughts on our Trip

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Amy

To be honest, Vienna was not originally on our itinerary. We wanted to go to Prague and Budapest and, of course, Poland, and we felt that given the number of days we could travel that that was already an ambitious itinerary. But we could not find non-stop flights even out of NYC to any of those places, and we hate layovers, so we decided to fly in and out of Vienna. It may not make sense to those of you who are regular jetsetters, but getting me on a plane is a big enough accomplishment; making me change planes might send me…flying?

Anyway, we were going to fly in and out of Vienna so we added a day to our trip. It seemed crazy not to spend at least 24 hours in one of the world’s great cities, even though we knew that 24 hours would not be enough to scratch the surface of what there is to see there. It would take some intense prioritizing and great organization to pack even a few top sights into our day.

We actually ended up with a day and a half, as our train from Budapest to Vienna arrived around 2:15 pm, and we were able to check into our hotel (Radisson Blu) quickly and be on our way. The hotel was extremely well-situated for us to see many of the important sites just a short walking distance away. It’s not the Boscolo, but it is a very clean, contemporary, and small boutique hotel.

Just two blocks down the street was the Hofburg Palace where the Habsurgs lived in Vienna. An outdoor music festival was going on that day, and there were crowds gathered to listen to the music—young choral groups performing primarily American music. A bit incongruous—standing in front of an Austrian royal palace, listening to a group singing, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Our global world at work.

Hofburg Palace

We wandered through the streets, passing many chic stores on Kohlmarket, and reached Graben, where there is a huge square lined with cafes and more fancy shops. We stopped to see St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the all glass Haus Haus across the street. Unlike the Hilton in Buda, this modern structure somehow blended in with the older buildings surrounding it.

We just had to stop and have some Viennese pastry, right? It’s mandatory, I think. If one must drink beer in Prague, one must eat pastry in Vienna. It was very much worth the unnecessary calories. Vienna’s streets were packed with tourists, and there was lots of good people-watching to do from the café.

But we had miles to go in order to see at least some of the city, so off we marched towards the Opera House. Like the Opera House in Budapest, it was a stately and beautiful building. We opted not to do the tour inside this time, preferring to use our time to visit one of the art museums.

It was already late in the afternoon, and we realized that we only had an hour until closing time, so we opted for the smaller Leopold Museum rather than the tremendous Kunsthistorische museum. We were very glad that we did. The museum focuses on the works of Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka as well as that of some of their less well-known contemporaries, and it does a masterful job of teaching about their art, their lives, and the politics and psychology that lie behind their art. The room dedicated to the influence of Sigmund Freud was particularly well-done; a plaque with a quote from Freud hung near each painting, leaving it to the viewer to see the connection between the words and the art.

We stayed until the museum closed and then wandered back to our hotel, not even realizing how close it was. (We had basically walked a full circle from one side of the center of the city to the other and back without realizing it and were essentially behind the Hofburg Palace when we exited the museum quarter.) We were amazed by how much we had seen in the few short hours since we’d arrived in Vienna.

The next day was jam-packed on my itinerary, but I quickly realized that there was no way we would get to the Schonbrunn Palace, even though I had pre-purchased tickets to go there. It’s about 20 minutes outside of the city center, and since we were seeing the Hofburg Palace that morning, we decided that if you’ve seen one palace, you’ve seen them all. (Where is Spiro Agnew when you need him?) Eliminating the Schonbrunn from the agenda loosened up our day considerably.

The Hofburg Palace was worth seeing; it tells the story of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Empress Elizabeth, commonly known as Sisi. In particular, it tells the story of Sisi, who grew up as a young and independent child and married the emperor somewhat reluctantly, knowing that she would lose her freedom by doing so. Eventually she became very unhappy living such a restricted life, and after one of her children died, she became severely depressed. Although she contemplated suicide, in the end she was assassinated in Geneva by an Italian anarchist. Her life story is well-told in the first several rooms in the palace. After that, you then can see many of the lavish rooms where the emperor and empress lived and entertained in the palace.

After the palace tour, we went to see the performance of the Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School. This was another event that, like the baths in Budapest, several people said we could not miss. We had standing room tickets, and the place was packed. Within five minutes of the show starting, I almost left. The first “act” involved some newer horses, and it was clear that at least one of them was not at all happy performing. I couldn’t watch as the horse bucked and resisted his trainer’s attempts to control him. We did stay for the next hour, and although the rest of the show involved more experienced horses, I just couldn’t shake the idea that these animals were being forced to do something they were not intended to do. The horses are gorgeous, and if you love horses, you will either love this event or you will hate it. I still am not sure how I feel about it. (We were not allowed to take photos, so I’ve inserted one from the internet.)



Embed from Getty Images

After lunch, I went to see the jewels at the Imperial Treasury while Harvey went to finalize our boarding passes for our flight the next morning. The jewels were amazing. I will let the pictures reveal what I saw.

This opal was the size of a large pear. My Aunt Elaine would have loved it.

The last thing we wanted to do before leaving Vienna was see some evidence of the Jewish world that once existed there. Vienna had a large and thriving Jewish population before the Holocaust, including many famous artists, writers, musicians, and, of course, Freud. Yet unlike Prague or Krakow or Budapest, there is almost nothing left in what was once the oldest Jewish section of the city to let you know that there once was a vibrant Jewish community there. In that place, called Judenplatz, there are two reminders of the Jewish community: a museum which contains the remains of a medieval synagogue and a Holocaust memorial sculpture. The museum’s exhibit is fascinating. You can actually walk through the remains and see where the bima was, where the ark was, where the men sat to pray.

As for the Holocaust sculpture, it stands in the center of the square, and it is a large cube placed in the center of a larger platform. On the sides of the cube are engraved the names of all the concentration and death camps. I think it is supposed to evoke the sense of being locked inside, given the locked door on the exterior. What was very disturbing about the memorial was the fact that there were many people sitting on the platform, idly eating ice cream and chatting, seemingly oblivious to the purpose of the sculpture.

The memorial to the 65,000 murdered Austrian Jews in the Holocaust at Judenplatz in Vienna. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That perhaps is itself a metaphor for the Austrian attitude towards the Holocaust for many years after the war: denial. As we learned at the main building of Jewish museum, it was not until fifty years after the war that Austrian officials apologized for their country’s role in the Holocaust. They refused to acknowledge their complicity with the Nazis in the persecution and eventual murders of their Jewish citizens. What had been a large and wealthy and intellectual community had been almost entirely wiped out. Today there is some revival of Jewish life in Vienna, mostly made up of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

We ended our trip going to the Musikverein, a great music hall in Vienna, where we heard Haydn, Poulenc, and Sibelius. The sounds were as clear as could be, and the music was just wonderful.

Musikverein Concert Hall

Although we saw so much of great beauty in Vienna—the buildings, the pastries, the jewels, the art, and the music, our visit to Judenplatz and to the Jewish museums put an overall damper on my feelings for Vienna. Perhaps I am not being fair; we were there for such a short time, and perhaps a longer visit would have provided me with more perspective. We had no guides in Vienna, just our handy Rick Steve’s guidebook and TripAdviser. I understand that there are a number of stolpersteins in the Second District where the Jewish community was located right before World War II. We did not get there nor did we see where the current synagogues are located or talk to anyone familiar with the city and its history as we had in the other cities. I am sure there is more than what we saw in such a short time—an important lesson to keep in mind in visiting any place. You can’t see it all in a short visit as a tourist.

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Thus ends my travelogue of our trip to Central Europe. Some concluding thoughts:

The best way to learn about the history, values, and people of another country is to go there and walk where they walk. If you do, be sure to find a way to talk to someone who lives in that place. Guidebooks are great, group tours may be fine—but nothing beats developing a personal relationship with someone who knows that city like you know your home town and your history. Talk to them about their families, their personal history, and you will learn so much more than you ever could from a book or recorded tour.
Take notes, take pictures. Memories vanish very quickly. In writing this, I had to go back to my books, notes, photographs, and, yes, the internet, to be sure I had the right name for the right place and the right numbers and dates.
Travel the way you want to travel. I know many people prefer to travel on organized tours or at least with a group of friends. Call us anti-social, but we have learned that traveling with others means compromising our own priorities. We don’t get to travel as often as we’d like, and when we do, we want to go where we want to go, eat when and where we want to eat, and see and hear what we want to see and hear. It’s really not that hard to research and plan your own trip. Just my opinion, of course. I fully understand that for other people, traveling with others is more comfortable and more fun. Like I said, travel the way you want to travel.
There is both incredible beauty in the world and incredible evil. Human beings have created incredibly awe-inspiring buildings, music, and art. Each place we visited was a testament to man’s ability to create beauty. Sadly, each place was also a testament to man’s ability to do incredible evil. We tried always to let the beauty remind us that for the most part, human beings are good.
If you know where your ancestors lived, go there, even if it’s a small town in the middle of nowhere where no traces are left of your ancestors or their community. I understand that some people have too many feelings of anger about the past to do this, but if you don’t feel that way and can go, go there. You will be forever changed.

Thank you to all who have followed me through this telling of our trip. I will now return to a focus on genealogy, but I felt a real need to write about this trip for so many reasons, not the least of which is to keep a record for me about what I saw and what I felt. It is not an experience I ever want to forget.

Three Days in Budapest

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Amy

Although leaving Poland was hard, arriving in Budapest was delightful. We weren’t even ripped off by the cabbie this time. We arrived at our hotel at 9 am after another overnight train, and when we walked into our hotel, the Boscolo, we were a bit in awe. We’ve never been in a hotel as beautiful as the Boscolo. The atrium in the lobby is glamorous and gorgeous. It may be a bit ornate for our usual taste, but there was no denying the way that large, well-lit, and finely decorated space made us feel. After a breakfast in their famous New York café, we were able to get an early check-in to our room, which also stopped us in our tracks—-a very large and well-appointed room with a little balcony. It felt like we were in some fantasy world.

The Boscolo

Breakfast at the New York Cafe in the Boscolo

Although it would have been tempting just to enjoy our surroundings, we had things to see and do. Although the concierge at the hotel warned us that our destinations would require a long walk, we were not intimidated. And as it turned out, although we walked quite a bit, we did not regret it. We love walking in cities (and beaches and just about anywhere); only by walking do you get a feel for the scale of a city and its buildings and only by walking do you make eye to eye contact with the people around you. So we ventured out for our first day in Budapest.

First, we went to the House of Terror, a museum that primarily tells the story of what life was like in Budapest under Soviet domination. The museum is in the building which the Soviets used as their headquarters and where they also imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured prisoners. The cells and the instruments of torture are still there. It is a powerful museum; the use of symbols is particularly effective. We were very moved by our experience there.

Our next stop was the Budapest Opera House, where we had tickets for a tour and a mini-concert. The opera house was impressive and uplifting, especially after the darkness of the House of Terror. The gold and red colors which ran throughout the building gave it a truly regal feeling. And the mini-concert was fun—one opera singer came out and performed two arias for us. (Don’t ask me what they were—-I am not really an opera fan.)

Hungarian State Opera House

We headed to our final stop for the afternoon, the Parliament, where we also had tickets for a tour. The Parliament is huge—I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large building. It sits right on the Danube River, extending fairly far along its shore, and there is a huge open plaza surrounding the building. We strolled around, looking at the not-at-all blue Danube and across the river to Buda and then entered the building in time for our tour.

Hungarian Parliament

Danube River

The security to enter the building was more intense than what we had gone through at any airport, which was a bit unnerving. But once we were in, the guide led our group through the building, which was originally intended to be finished for the 1896 Millennial Celebration, but was not finished in time. Hungarians believe that the Magyars arrived from Asia to the Carpathian plains where Hungary is located around 895, but because plans for the millennial could not be completed in time for 1895, they postponed it a year and claim now that the country was founded in 896. Like so many countries in Central Europe, Hungary was subjected to many invasions and wars over the year, eventually becoming part of the Austria-Hungary Empire as the result of a compromise with the Habsburgs in 1867. The Parliament building was originally meant to be the Habsburg’s palace, but after World War I and the end of the Austria-Hungary Empire, it became the home of the Hungarian Parliament.

Like the Opera House and the hotel and many of the other buildings we would see in Budapest, it is an ornate and beautiful building, conveying a sense of prosperity and power. The crown jewels sit in a case under a large dome (we were not allowed to photograph them), evidence of the royalty who once ruled the land. We also saw the chambers of the Parliament, equipped with modern digital voting machines at each desk—a strange mix of the old and the new. It was a very interesting tour and gave us a quick overview of Hungarian history.

By that time we were a bit tired and hungry and ready to find a place to eat. We strolled along the river watching the Viking Cruise and other companies’ “river boats,” then turned to walk through the center of the city, where we happened upon a restaurant called Rezkaka. The menu looked creative, and the atmosphere seemed relaxing, so we took a chance. It was our best meal of the trip. The violin and piano playing in the background didn’t hurt either.

As we left the restaurant, the night sky was getting dark (it was about 9 pm), the ferris wheel in the city center was lit up as were many of the buildings. It was magical. We decided to keep on walking (despite what the concierge had said), and we passed the Dohany Synagogue, all lit up. We were using the GPS on my iPhone to guide us back to the hotel, and it led us through the Jewish quarter, which has become a hip place, filled with “ruin bars” patronized by 20-somethings. It was an entertaining walk back, and by the time we reached the hotel, we were quite proud of ourselves for the distance we had walked and quite enamored with Budapest.

St Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest

Dohany Synagogue

Our next day started with a tram ride (we decided to give our feet a little break) to the Central Market in Budapest—an amazing place filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, meat of all kinds, paprika, and flowers. And it’s a real market—not a tourist joint. We could see regular people with shopping bags and carts, buying their groceries.

From there we walked somewhat aimlessly through several streets and squares, passing the university buildings, a street of touristy shops, a street of high fashion designer shops, and the second McDonalds to open behind the Iron Curtain.

We were aiming for the Holocaust Memorial on the river. During the Holocaust, Jews were rounded up and brought to the river, where three people would remove their shoes, be tied together, and one would be shot, forcing all three to fall into the river and die. The memorial captures this atrocity very simply and poignantly with sculptures of many pairs of empty shoes, lining the wall that abuts the river.

Holocaust Memorial, Budapest

For the afternoon we had signed up for a tour of the Budapest Jewish Quarter with Budapest Jewish Heritage Tours. It was supposed to be a group tour, but luckily for us, no one else had signed up at that time, so we ended up with a private tour. We actually had three guides. Ann, our first guide, gave us a general introduction; she then brought us to the Jewish Museum, which is right next to the Dohany synagogue. At the museum we were guided by Esther, who works for the museum. After we finished at the museum, Fatima met us to take us to see the synagogues in the quarter. Each guide was knowledgeable and personable, and we learned a great deal about the history of Budapest’s Jewish community.

There were Jews in Budapest from as early as Roman times, though not a permanent settlement. As in the other countries in Central Europe we visited, Jews came to Hungary as traders and bankers. They faced a great deal of violence and anti-Semitism, and for a long time were required to live on the Buda side of the river while working on the Pest side. Eventually they were allowed to live on the Pest side, but outside the city walls. The area where they settled in the 18^th century became the Jewish Quarter where even today there are numerous active synagogues, kosher restaurants, and other Jewish institutions. The community flourished in the 19^th century, and by the 1930s there were over 200,000 Jews in Budapest.

Perhaps the best indication of the size and prosperity of the Jewish community in Budapest is the Dohany Synagogue, the second largest synagogue in the world and a magnificent structure built in the middle of the 19^th century. It was built for a congregation that wanted to be more modern in its practice of Judaism. They called themselves Neologs (new law). Although men and women were still separated for services, there was an organ (played by Franz Liszt at the inauguration of the building), and the interior was designed to be more church-like than like a traditional synagogue. Like the Spanish Synagogue in Prague, the design reflects a Moorish influence both inside and out.

Dohany Synagogue

Our guides pointed out, however, that Hungary had a long history of anti-Semitism, and in the 1920s a law was passed establishing quotas at the universities. In the 1930s. Hungary adopted laws stripping Jews of their rights even before the Nazis began their occupation of the country. Although Hungarian Jews were among the last to be deported to concentration camps, our guide in Poland, Tomasz, had explained that that was simply because the Hungarians wanted to exploit the Jews for free labor, not because they were trying to protect them. In the end, most of Hungary’s 600,000 Jews were killed, 400,000 of them at Auschwitz on some of the last transports to arrive there.

The Dohany Synagogue survived the war because it was used by the Nazis both for storage and as a place for radio towers since it had the two high spires on its roof. Behind the Dohany Synagogue is a memorial garden dedicated to those who were killed in the Holocaust. I found the sculpture of the Tree of Life that resembles an upside down menorah particularly moving.

We saw two other synagogues after leaving the Dohany. First we visited the Orthodox synagogue, built in 1912, another very beautiful building, and then we saw the Rumbach Street synagogue. From what Vatima told us, this last synagogue was formed by a group that spit off from the Neologs; they felt the Neologs had moved too far away from traditional Judaism, but they also did not agree with the strict practice of the Orthodox synagogue. This building was under renovation and not open to visitors, so we only got to see its exterior, which was quite beautiful.

Rumbach Synagogue

Overall, our experience in the Jewish Quarter in Budapest was much more uplifting than in either Prague or Krakow in large part because we learned that there is still a very substantial and active Jewish community in Budapest, consisting of about 80,000 people. Although that is less than half of the Jewish population of Budapest in 1939, it is nevertheless a promising sign of rebirth and hope for the future.

Our day in Budapest ended with a quick dinner and an organ concert at St. Stephen’s Basilica, the largest church in Budapest—and yet again, a magnificent building.

St Stephen’s Basilica

For our third and last day in Budapest, we had arranged for a driving tour to see those sites that really are too far for walking, even for us. Our guide Magdi took us out to Heroes Square and through the City Park, two more spaces that were developed specifically for the Millennial Celebration in 1896. We saw Hungarian soldiers practicing for a parade while we were there.

Legend says if you touch this guy’s pen, your writing will be successful. FIgured it was worth a try….

Then we crossed the Danube to Buda where the Castle is—where once again we learned that almost everything there was either built or redone for the Millennial Celebration. What impressed us most were the incredible panoramic views we could see from the Fishermen’s Bastion and from the Castle itself. Magdi did point out some older buildings in Buda that dated back to earlier times, but overall most of what we saw dated from 1896 or so. The glaring (literally and figuratively) exception was the Hilton, a modern building of reflective glass that just does not fit into the setting.

Finally we went to Gellert Hill, where we were able to view Budapest from yet another perspective and see the fortress built there.

Our tour ended by dropping us off at the Gellert Spa and Baths. Everyone had told us that we had to try the baths while in Budapest, and so we did. It was an interesting experience—soaking in a hot pool with a bunch of elderly Hungarian women who did not really look so pleased to have us invading their space. But we were glad we tried it, and that hot water was very relaxing. After all the walking we had done in our three days in Budapest, our feet certainly deserved the break!

Looking back on our time in Budapest, I would say it was the city where we had the most light-hearted moments in our trip. Maybe we just needed to focus more on the beauty, less on the tragic, after seeing Terezin, Krakow, and Auschwitz. Maybe it was the Hungarian people or the energy of the city, where the streets were crowded with young people at night. Maybe it was all the beautiful buildings and breath-taking views and sights we saw. For whatever reason, we left Budapest the next morning feeling uplifted.

Our trip was almost over. We had a train ride to Vienna and a day and a half in that city before returning home. And home was starting to sound like a good place to be.

Walking in the Shadows of My Brotman Great-Grandparents

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Amy

My third day in Poland was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip for me. Visiting the town where my great-grandparents lived was the initial motivation for going to Central Europe in the first place. The stops in Prague, Budapest, and Vienna were the icing on the cake, but the cake was Poland and, more specifically, Tarnobrzeg. (I finally learned how to pronounce it, thanks to our guide Tomasz: TarNOBjeg.) I had high and emotional expectations; they were exceeded by the reality.

First, some background. When I first started doing genealogy research, I had no idea where my maternal grandmother’s family had lived in Europe other than they were Galitzianers—from Galicia. My mother had no idea what town in Galicia had been their home, and for a long time the only location given on the records I could find was Austria, which made sense since Galicia was part of the Austria-Hungary Empire when the Brotmans lived there.

Then a few pieces came together—first, I obtained my great-uncle Hyman Brotman’s naturalization application giving his home town as Jeekief, which is a decent phonetic spelling of Dzikow, once a separate village but later incorporated into Tarnobrzeg, a much larger town. Then I found a ship manifest for Yossel Brod, most likely my great-grandfather, from Tarnobchiek, another phonetic spelling, this time of Tarnobrzeg. The ship manifests for my great-uncles Abraham and David Brotman gave their home town at Grebow, a small village less than ten miles from Tarnobrzeg. It seemed clear to me that Tarnobrzeg was the area where my Brotman ancestors had lived in Galicia. And I had to go there.

SelectedU.S.NaturalizationRecords-OriginalDocuments1790-1974ForHermanBrotman

Hyman Brotman’s Naturalization Application (Click twice to zoom in.)

David and Abe Brodmann on the Portia 1889

Joseph Brotman ship manifest

I had originally hoped that there might be some records left in Tarnobrzeg that had not yet been digitized and put on line by JewishGen, Gesher Galicia, or JRI Poland, but our guide Tomasz warned me that he believed that whatever records still existed had in fact been found already and that we would not find any more in the town. I adjusted my expectations accordingly, and I decided to enjoy the trip for the experience of being there rather than as a research opportunity.

Tomasz picked us up at our hotel at 9 am that morning, and we got to meet my recently found cousin Phyllis for the first time. Phyllis and I had connected through DNA testing, which showed us as third cousins and showed her aunt Frieda and my mother as second cousins. By comparing our family trees we had reached the conclusion that the likely connection was through my great-grandmother Bessie Brot Brotman and her grandmother Sabina Brot, whose father we believe was my great-grandmother’s brother. Sabina’s home town in Galicia was Radomysl nad Sanem, another town about ten miles from Tarnobrzeg, which we would also visit that day. The common surname and the proximity of residences seemed to support our hypothesis. We quickly connected in person, chatting excitedly about our research, our travels, and our hopes for that day.

As we drove from Krakow to Tarnobrzeg, Tomasz spoke about the history of Jews in Poland. By the 19^th century Jews made up 10% of the population of Poland, and they lived all over the country—in the cities and in small towns and in villages. The land we drove through was mostly rural even today, and Tomasz said that Jews were often invited by the kings or the aristocracy to live in the towns to support the local economy; Jews had the education and the skills to provide bookkeeping, trade, banking, and other economic necessities to the farmers who lived in these regions. In Tarnobrzeg it was the Tarnowski family that owned the land and invited the Jews to come live there.

Castle of the Tarnowski family in Tarnobrzeg

When I asked him about the level of religious observance of the Jewish residents who lived in places like Tarnobrzeg, Tomasz said that there was a diverse range of religious observance—-from Hasidim to more traditional Orthodox to more liberal Jews and to secular Jews. Other sources point out that Tarnobrzeg was an important Hasidic center with well-regarded Hasidic leaders and rabbis.

Tomasz also spoke about the fact that Tarnobrzeg was one of the leading Jewish population and industrial centers in Galicia outside of Krakow. The main industry aside from agriculture was the production of sulfur, a product that it still important to the local economy of the region. Tarnobrzeg is located where two rivers meet—the Vistula (which also runs through Krakow) and the San, and thus was an important trade location. It also is very close to what was once the border with the Russian Empire, and when Russia obtained that land, families were often separated, some living in Austria-Hungary, some in the Russian Empire. In the 19^th century when my great-grandparents lived there, the population of Tarnobrzeg was more than 75% Jewish. There were about 2800 Jews living there in the 1880s when my great-grandparents decided to leave.

I asked Tomasz why people like my great-grandparents would ever have left a place like Tarnobrzeg, where Jews were doing well and treated well and were more than a majority of the town’s residents. He said that in the late 19^th century, there was both an economic crisis in Poland and a significant increase in the population. (There was also a great deal of anti-Semitism in Poland, as other sources describe.) Jews and non-Jews left for greater economic opportunities. When I pondered how a family would be able to tear themselves away from their home, both emotionally and financially, Tomasz explained that there were emigration agents facilitating these departures. They would circulate brochures touting the advantages of going to America, and the fact that many others were leaving made it easier for a family like mine to make a similar choice. I asked how they would actually leave, and Tomasz said there was a train that came to Tarnobrzeg that would take them to one of the port cities, like Gdansk or Hamburg, where they would catch a ship for America. It would be costly, but the potential benefits made it all seem worth the risk.

Finally we arrived in Tarnobrzeg itself. It was not exactly what I expected, as it is a large town, not a little shtetl, and it is a thriving town—lots of people, lots of stores, lots of cars. Not a quiet little romantic village out of Fiddler on the Roof at all. There was even a Lego store right on the main square.

Lego store on main square in Tarnobrzeg

But once we got out of the car and started to walk around, I felt some almost eerie connection—that this was a place where my great-grandparents had walked, had shopped, had worked. Many of the buildings that surround the square were there back in the 1870s and 1880s when my great-grandparents and their children lived there. Maybe one of those buildings contained a shop where my great-grandfather worked (on that ship manifest his occupation was given as “kaufmann” or merchant). Maybe my family lived in one of them.

Main square in Tarnobrzeg

I stood in that square, imagining it 150 years ago as a place filled with families like my own, Jewish families of all sorts, living in a safe and comfortable way in a safe and comfortable place. I could imagine my great-uncle Chaim who became Hyman and then Herman and my great-aunt Tema who became Tillie, just small children, holding their mother’s hands as they walked through that square. I could block out the Lego store and the ugly modern supermarket and see just the old buildings as they might have looked in the 1880s.

Our guide Tomasz Cebulski leading the way in Tarnobrzeg

Tomasz took us to the building which was once the synagogue. According to the official Tarnobrzeg website, it was heavily damaged by the Nazis and used to store grain. It was renovated in the 1970s into a public library, and there is almost no sign today that it was ever a synagogue building. The windows were changed, and inside where there was once a prayer hall and aron kodesh are now stacks filled with books. When we asked in the library whether they had any photographs or books or records about the synagogue or the former Jewish community, all they could find was one copy of a brochure that had only been created a few years ago.

IMG_2659 where the prayer hall stood, now a library

Space where the prayer hall once was in the Tarnobrzeg synagogue

Exterior of building where the synagogue entrance had been

Tarnobrzeg Synagogue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here are some photographs of the building when it was a synagogue:

murals inside synagogue http://www.kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Tarnobrzeg/html/synagogue.htm

Exterior of synagogue http://www.kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Tarnobrzeg/html/synagogue.htm

The only visible sign that the building was built as a synagogue is a small plaque on the exterior of the building in a location that almost no one could ever see or read if they were not looking for it. We had to walk around the building through the lawn to get this photograph. The only small comfort was that the building was being used for books and education, not for commerce or worse.

IMG_2660 marker on library marking it as location of synagogue

Memorial plaque on the former synagogue building

Tomasz also pointed out that the first Jewish cemetery was located just a block away, but was now a parking lot for the shopping area that now exists there. According to this video prepared in 2008, the Nazis destroyed the synagogue and used the headstones to pave a road. (I suggest downloading the hi-def version and watching it; it will give you a better sense of the town and its history.)

We then drove to the other Jewish cemetery in Tarnobrzeg, which was opened in the 20^th century and where there is still an ohel with a Star of David. Sadly, the cemetery is not maintained at all, and there are just a handful of headstones still standing, most covered with weeds and snails. I took photographs of as many as I could and now hope to get these translated.

After visiting the cemetery, we went to a small museum Tomasz knew about, where we met with an incredibly helpful woman who did not speak any English, but when Tomasz explained why I was there, she was very excited and anxious to help. She provided us with some books with drawings and photographs of Tarnobrzeg before World War II.

The woman at the museum also explained where Dzikow had been located before it merged into Tarnobrzeg, so we drove there and saw some very old homes, built almost like log cabins. I was enchanted and wondered whether one of these buildings had once been my great-grandparents’ home.

As we left Tarnobrzeg, Tomasz told us what had happened to the Jews there during the Holocaust. Many were shot and killed just outside of town and buried there. Many others were taken to the San River and shot, their bodies falling into the water. The rest were eventually transported to a concentration camp or a death camp. If any survived, they have not returned to Tarnobrzeg. There are no known Jews living there today. What would my great-grandparents, both of whom died before the Holocaust, have thought if they returned to their hometown today? It would no longer be the place they knew in almost any way, except for the old buildings that survive.

Nazis rounding up the Jews of Tarnobrzeg 1939

Nazis rounding up the Jews of Tarnobrzeg near the San River 1939

I could have stayed and wandered around Tarnobrzeg for hours, but we had two more stops to make: Radomysl nad Sanem and Grebow. We headed first to Radomysl nad Sanem, where Phyllis’ grandmother had lived. It is on the other side of the San River and is a very small little town with a small town square and municipal building and perhaps fifty homes, if that many. Its Jewish population before World War II was less than 400 people, and the village was mostly Jewish. We drove from one end of the town to the other, and it took only a few minutes. Even more so than in Tarnobrzeg, there is no sign that there were ever Jews there. Phyllis was able to obtain some brochures about the town from the library there, but nothing that discussed the former Jewish community.

Our last stop was a quick one in Grebow, a town even smaller than Radomysl nad Sanem where there was not even a library we could visit. I don’t know whether this was where Abraham and David Brotman were born or simply where they were living at the time they emigrated. Perhaps they had moved here for greater opportunities than they could find in Tarnobrzeg. I don’t know. It’s such a tiny village that all I can do is imagine them living there and then wonder what they must have thought when they landed in a place as large and crowded and dirty as late 19^th century New York City’s Lower East Side.

We then headed back to Krakow. I was exhausted and emotionally drained and filled with thoughts and feelings. We were taking another night train that night, this time to Budapest. As we ate a quick dinner at our hotel, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion in a way that surprised me. My eyes filled with tears—tears for the people who had been killed, tears for my great-grandparents who had left this country for better things, tears of gratitude that they had done that, and tears of sadness that I was leaving a place that part of me truly felt was my homeland.

Auschwitz

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Amy

I have really been struggling to figure out how to write about our second day in Poland, which started with a trip to the ghetto established by the Nazis in Podgorze, across the river from Krakow, and ended with a trip to Auschwitz. We had an incredible guide, Tomasz Cebulski from Polin Travel. He is a scholar in the field of the history of Polish Jewry and the Holocaust as well as an articulate, thoughtful, and sensitive person, and he wanted us to understand on a deeper level the methodology used by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Without Tomasz and his way of preparing us for Auschwitz, I do not think we would have fully appreciated the horror of what we were seeing.

The ghetto in Podgorze. The empty chairs evoke the chairs that were left behind by those who had been sitting while awaiting the transports that took them to the camps

Having said that, there is just no way that I can do the same for anyone reading this post. Most of us have seen photographs; we’ve seen movies and read books about Auschwitz. Many of us have been to Yad Vashem and/or the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We think we understand what happened there. But we don’t. Even being there, I still don’t. The more you learn about it, the less you understand.

What we learned from Tomasz was how ingenious the Nazis were in using psychology and technology and the instinct for greed to enlist not only Germans but citizens of other countries including France, Austria, Hungary, and Poland into their program for annihilating the Jewish population of the world. And Jews weren’t helpless sheep being led to the slaughter; they also were the victims of the Nazi propaganda machine and its use of psychology to create the impression that somehow all would be fine in the end. Corporations like IBM and many others saw the opportunities for making fortunes in developing the technology and equipment needed to facilitate the operation of the Nazi death machine. Jews were also used as slave labor in the companies of many industrialists; Oskar Schindler was the exception, doing something to protect these people who were being forced to work in his factory across the river from Krakow and close to the concentration camp at Plaszow, which we also visited.

Ghetto Wall in Podgorze, built to look like headstones to demoralize the Jewish residents

And the world sat back and let it happen, pretending that things could not be that bad, that focusing on the war effort itself was sufficient, and that there really could not be such things as death camps. That a place like Auschwitz could not exist. Are we any better today? Just as the Jews could not believe that they would be slaughtered like animals but that things would be okay in the end, so do we all. We delude ourselves over and over again into believing that we can’t do anything to stop genocide, just as the world did during World War II. We bend to the profit motive, and we buy into propaganda. We forget, and we move on.

But Auschwitz is still there. Although the other death camps were destroyed by the Nazis when they realized that they were losing the war (see Note below), Auschwitz survived more or less intact. The Nazis did bomb the gas chambers and the crematoria, but there was enough evidence left to show the world what happened there. And the fact that the Nazis made one serious error—placing the gas chambers and crematoria adjacent to barracks for concentration camp prisoners who could witness how they were being used—also ensured that history would not allow the Nazis to cover up their satanic ways completely.

Auschwitz is still there. You can stand on the watchtower, and you can see the foundations of hundreds of barracks almost as far as the eye can see. You can see the crematoria, the remains of the gas chambers, the barracks, the train tracks. You can see the confiscated property of the people who were killed there—glasses, suitcases, clothing, ritual objects. Their hair and their prosthetic devices. The glass case exhibiting baby clothes made me weep. The clothes of children younger than my grandsons—evidence of the complete evil of these animals who watched babies get carried to their deaths with their mothers. More than anything else, that devastated me.

How do you walk away from this and still have faith in humanity? How can you have hope that good and beauty and love will prevail when there is so much capacity for evil? How can you ever trust anyone to be compassionate, fair, understanding?

You just have to. Because it is just too painful to think that people can be so evil. Because in fact most of us are good and loving and compassionate and fair. Because we have no choice but to see the beauty and the love and the hope or we would all just give up and fall into the darkness. We have to walk away, and we have to get up the next day and embrace life. Otherwise, the Nazis and all the other evildoers in the world defeat us. Yes, we need to stand up to evil. Yes, we cannot close our eyes and hide. But we also have to go on seeing the good in each other and loving each other as best we can.

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Important Note: Although the other death camps were substantially destroyed by the Nazis to hide their genocidal activities, there is a movement to preserve the limited remains of the Belzec death camp in eastern Poland. You can read about that project here. It’s in German, but you can use Google Translate to read it in English. There is some urgency as the property is to be sold at a public auction on June 22. Please help preserve this place as another reminder us of our potential for evil and our need to fight against it.

UPDATE: Due to public pressure, the auction has been cancelled, and the money already collected will be used for preservation. The organization is no longer collecting donations.

Krakow

Posted on June 9, 2015 by Amy

We arrived in Krakow after a pretty much sleepless night on the train, and the weather was nasty—very cool and raining hard. Once again, we overpaid a cabdriver (though not by nearly as much) to get to our hotel at 7 am, where our room was, as expected, not ready. (Check-in wasn’t until 3 pm.) But the young man at the reception desk was so friendly and helpful that it immediately changed my outlook. I highly recommend the Metropolitan Boutique Hotel in Krakow—a small and friendly hotel with an incredibly professional, efficient, and friendly staff. Although the location on a small side street at first seemed odd, we soon realized how ideal that location was—about ten minutes from the main square in Krakow and even closer to the Jewish Quarter in Kazimierz.

Our sleeping accommodations from Prague to Krakow

After breakfast at the hotel, we decided to venture out and see the city. We took umbrellas, but fortunately we never had to open them; the skies never turned blue, but the rain was gone. We walked to the market in the main square of Krakow where we had planned to go on two group walking tours that day, one of the Old Town, the other of the Jewish quarter. When we got to the main square, vendors were just starting to open their stands, and the square itself was fairly empty. The square is magnificent in size—reportedly, the largest public square in Europe. There are cafes and shops surrounding the square as well as a number of churches and government buildings. We wandered around a bit, and there was almost a Fanueil Hall feel to the place—a large indoor market lined with souvenir stands. Unfortunately, the weather really was not great, but we did take a few photographs.

After some deliberation, we decided to go on a tour of the Jewish Quarter in the morning and Old Town in the afternoon with SeeKrakow. Our tour guide was a middle-aged Polish man who spoke English well, and the group of about sixteen people was quite diverse in background. We were the only people from an English speaking country. There were people from Spain, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. They all understood English; it was embarrassing. We were the only people in the group who could not speak a second language. Most of the others could speak three. The American educational system is an utter failure in preparing our children for the global world we live in.

Anyway, we marched off with our leader (whose name escapes me, perhaps for good reason), and after a few stops, I realized that he was not a good fit for me. Maybe it was the contrast to Andrea and Helena, our guides in Prague; maybe it was the nature of being on a group rather than private tour. The tour leader was knowledgeable and pleasant, but I felt that he had a personal agenda to promote instead of providing an in-depth and historical view of the Jewish Quarter. Over and over his message seemed to be that Poland had always been tolerant and accepting of its Jewish citizens and that the Polish people were also victims of the Holocaust. What he said is historically accurate in many ways, but it was the way he delivered his message and his seeming defensiveness that troubled me.

After about the first hour, I started to think that (a) I didn’t want to go on the Old Town afternoon tour with this guide, and (b) I didn’t want to continue on the Jewish Quarter tour with this guide. When we realized that his tour would not give us a chance to enter into any of the synagogues we passed (which he did describe, but at times showed us only the back or side of the building), we made a decision to leave the tour and explained to the guide that we wanted to spend more time in the Quarter rather than continue with the group.

Unfortunately, I had made one serious error in planning our itinerary—I had failed to check a Jewish calendar beforehand, and I had not realized that our one day in Krakow would be the holiday of Shavuot. That meant that many of the synagogues, at least those still operating as synagogues, would not be open to the public for tours that day. (It was also the Catholic holiday Pentecost, meaning that many stores and offices were also closed that day.) If I could have changed one thing on our trip itinerary, I would have added at least another day to our stay in Krakow—not only because of the conflict with Shavuot, but also because we just did not have enough time to do the city justice.

But when you are traveling, you do what you can do. So over lunch, we realized that we did not have time to see many of the sites in Krakow outside the Jewish Quarter—the Wawel Castle and the churches and other buildings we’d only glimpsed in Old Town. We also realized that our sleepless night was catching up with us. So we spent the afternoon wandering through the Jewish Quarter, soaking up what we could, and visiting the places we could enter. I hope that someday we can return to Krakow and see the city in more depth.

Unlike the Jewish Quarter in Prague, which as I wrote was substantially torn down in the late 19^th century, most of the structures from the original Jewish Quarter in Krakow are still standing—the winding cobblestones streets and old worn buildings have been there for hundreds of years. As our guide said, Krakow’s Jewish quarter is much more “authentic” than that in Prague because it reflects the way the ghetto looked when it was a ghetto. It also reflects more of the wear and tear of time, neglect, and the war. Here are some photos of the square where the Jewish market once operated; it still operates as a market—a flea market when we were there, although, of course, there are no Jewish vendors or customers today.

We saw six still-existing buildings in the Krakow Jewish Quarter that were once operating synagogues. As with the synagogues in Prague, the only reason they are still standing is that the Nazis found the spaces useful for storage. The oldest of the existing synagogue buildings, appropriately referred to as the Old Synagogue, was built at the beginning of the 15^th century. Its interior was destroyed by the Nazis, and it was then used for storage during their occupation of Poland. Today the building is operated as a museum, displaying Jewish ritual objects and a historical exhibition of Krakow before and during the Nazi occupation.

The second oldest synagogue still standing is the Remu’h Synagogue. It is still an active congregation, so we were not able to enter it during our visit, nor we could enter the Old Jewish cemetery that is located adjacent to the synagogue building. All I could get was the one photograph through the gate. The Remu’h synagogue was built in the mid-16^th century, and its interior also was substantially destroyed by the Nazis and then used for storage.

Remu’h Synagogue

Both the Old and the Remu’h synagogues are located on what was the main square in the Jewish quarter where today there are numerous restaurants, many providing “Jewish” dishes on their menus (but not kosher) and klezmer music at night. It’s a very pretty square, but the faux Jewishness is clearly intended to manipulate Jewish tourists like us, coming to see a world that no longer exists.

The High Synagogue was the third synagogue built in Krakow, sometime after the Remu’h but also in the 16^th century. It was called the High Synagogue because the prayer hall was located upstairs. We were able to climb those stairs and visit the former prayer hall because today it is a museum. The exhibit there was very moving. Several families of former Krakow Jews provided photographs to the museum of their families, depicting what their lives were like in the 1920s and 1930s before the Nazis arrived. I was surprised to see very modern-looking families, engaged in activities like skiing and boating, as opposed to the images I had had in my head of ultra-Orthodox men with payes and long black coats. As in Prague, by the early 20^th century Jews in Krakow were full citizens, no longer required to live in a ghetto. Many were quite successful merchants, and their families lived very comfortable and modern lives.

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether they were Hasidim or assimilated, but I have to admit it made it easier for me to identify with these people, knowing their lives were not unlike mine. Reading the stories of what happened to these families was heartbreaking. Even though someone survived in these families and was thus able to preserve the photographs and the stories, each of these families lost many members during the Holocaust.

The only other synagogue building we could enter was that of the former Kupa Synagogue. It was built in the 17^th century, and like the other synagogues, was severely damaged by the Nazis. We were able to enter the building and see the prayer hall, where people seemed to be setting up for some event. We are not sure exactly how this synagogue is used today since it was open for visitors on the holiday.

Back of Kupa Synagogue showing the ghetto wall

We also stopped to see the outside of the Isaac Synagogue, also built in the 17^th century and now the headquarters for Chabad in Krakow, and the newest of the synagogues, the Tempel Synagogue, a Reform synagogue built in the mid-19^th century. Neither was open to visitors.

Tempel Synagogue

Isaac Synagogue

But next to the Tempel Synagogue is the JCC of Krakow, which was open and where we spoke with a woman at the reception desk. She told us that they have 500 members, although only 120 are “registered” Jews. The JCC provides educational and cultural programming, Shabbat dinners, and holiday celebrations, and aims to revive a Jewish community in Krakow. It was uplifting to be in this new building and see some signs of hope for the very small Jewish community that exists today in Krakow.

We ended our walk through the Jewish Quarter on that somewhat high note. We later returned for dinner at the Klezmer Huis, where we ate “Jewish-style” food and listened to Klezmer music (sung by three young people who I assume are not Jewish, but who were excellent).

But although that was fun (if somewhat corny), it did not really cover up the reality. Before World War II, there were about 65,000 Jews in Krakow, and they made up about 25% of the city’s population. Today, as I said, there are 120 Jews living in Krakow. Walking those streets and seeing the old houses once occupied by Jewish families, entering those once flourishing synagogues that are now just museums, seeing those photographs of the families who were destroyed, I could not help but feel thousands of ghosts following us around. What would Krakow be like today if the descendants of those 65,000 people were alive? My day in Krakow left me angry and very sad.

The second day of our visit to Poland we learned more about what happened to those people. More on that in my next post.

Home Sweet Home

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Amy

We are back from our trip, and I have so much to say that I don’t even know where or how to start. Traveling to a different place can change your whole view of the world, of your place in the world, and of yourself. This trip did that in so many different ways. I have hundreds of photographs to sort and label, a lot of notes to transcribe and ponder, and so many thoughts and memories floating through my head that I need to write them all down before I forget them. So I can’t just start blogging in detail about the trip right away. I will certainly report about the parts of the trip that related directly to my own family—the trip to Poland in particular—once I have it all digested.

For now I have these overall thoughts and a few photographs to share. First, standing in the former Jewish quarters in Prague, Krakow, Budapest, and Vienna, some of which still have several synagogues (a few even still in operation), is a chilling and horrifying experience. For me, these places that once bustled with Jewish grandparents, mothers, fathers, and children, going to work and going to school and going to shul, were a graphic and vivid reminder of what the world lost in the Holocaust. Had it not been for the Nazis, these Jewish communities could and likely would still exist, adding to the culture and economy of these places and of the world just as they did for hundreds of years before their Jewish citizens were murdered.

A street in the former Jewish Quarter of Krakow

Nothing made this more painfully vivid for me than standing in Tarnobrzeg, the town where my Brotman great-grandparents lived, a town that was once 75% Jewish and where not one Jew lives today. The only signs that there were once Jews there were a small plaque on the library, a building that had once been the synagogue, and a Star of David near the gate to the neglected Jewish cemetery, where only a handful of headstones remain.

gravestone on the ground in the Jewish cemetery in Tarnobrzeg

Second, every person, Jewish or not, should visit Terezin and Auschwitz. I cannot say more. The places say it all. You cannot go to these places and not be changed. No matter what you may have read or seen or heard about the Holocaust, you cannot be prepared for what you experience walking in those places of terror and death. I have only two photographs of Terezin and no photographs of Auschwitz. I could not bear to think about taking a photograph while standing where so many were slaughtered.

Terezin

Third, I had little idea what life was like under Soviet domination in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary until we met several people who had lived during that era. We were lucky to have guides in Prague, Poland, and Budapest who had witnessed the changes and were able to describe to us how different life was before and after the Soviets left in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Today all these places are clearly capitalist, for better in many ways, for worse in others. Seeing Starbucks and McDonalds and KFC everywhere amidst the old buildings in these gorgeous cities is jolting, but much better than seeing empty store windows and children forced to march at rallies to support the “state.”

Old Town Square Prague

Despite all the sadness that we felt as we learned about the past in these places, overall we experienced these cities as places of joyfulness, liveliness, and overall comfort. Yes, there were beggars and homeless people, especially in Budapest, and I am sure that outside the areas where tourists congregate there is plenty of poverty and misery. But each of the cities we visited were beautiful places filled with incredible and fascinating architecture, a huge number of cafes and restaurants and bars, museums teeming with people, cobblestone streets crowded with tourists and tour groups, and the sounds of happy, excited people. There was music everywhere—in the streets, in the churches, and in the concert halls.

Dohany Synagogue in Budapest

We had an incredible time. Our tears and sadness were well-balanced with times of pure joy—climbing the tower to see all of Prague, clapping to Klezmer music in Krakow, walking along the river in Budapest, and eating unbelievable pastries in Vienna. We heard music in every city, we stood in awe in Gothic cathedrals, we watched people laughing and drinking and eating in the cafes, and we walked and walked and walked until our feet were numb. We had an incredible time.

Musikverein in Vienna

A Difficult Life: Julius Seligmann

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Amy

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/158503169

Julius Seligmann, son of August and grandfather of Wolfgang, lived a life filled with conflict. As I’ve written previously, he was shunned by his family for converting to Catholicism and marrying Magdalena Kleisinger, a Catholic woman. Since their first child Walter was born in February, 1925, I assume that Julius and Magdalena must have married by 1924. According to family lore, he had to pay his family a substantial sum of money, causing him great financial distress.

Since writing previously about the challenges Julius faced, I’ve learned a bit more, thanks to Wolfgang and some documents he was able to find. One thing that Julius tried to do to address his financial condition was to secure some money from the estate of his uncle, the James Seligman who moved to England and died in 1930. Although we now know that James’ widow had control over the estate for the duration of her life and the principal was not to be distributed for over another fifty years, Julius was obviously in great need of money and hoped to be able to get some of what must have been a substantial amount of money.

In April, 1931, he wrote the following letter to the lawyers handling the estate of his uncle James:

As translated by Wolfgang, in this letter Julius was asking the bank how to contact James’ widow in order to ask her for some money. He wrote that he was having a lot of financial problems after the bank closed down and that he had had to apply for a “Vergleichsverfahren,” which is apparently a method used by debtors that is somewhat like a bankruptcy proceeding. Julius told the lawyers he was looking for a thousand Reichsmarks in order to take care of his most urgent debts.

In June, 1932, Julius received the following letter from his cousin Moritz Oppenheimer. Moritz, who I wrote about here, was both a successful businessman and a horse breeder with a large stud farm.

From this letter, as translated by Wolfgang, it would appear that Julius had asked Moritz to go to England to see if they could resolve their claims against the estate of James Seligman. Moritz had responded that he thought such a trip might be successful and that it was only necessary for one person to go. (It’s not clear who he thought should go.) But Moritz also wrote that he was traveling and not at home and that Julius should contact him and he would be glad to help. He also wrote that he was not available on Sundays as he was at the races—horse races, I’d assume.[1]

In September, 1932, Julius wrote the following letter to the German embassy in London, seeking a lawyer there to help him with his claim against the estate of his uncle.

According to Wolfgang, Julius wrote in this letter that he had been notified that since his uncle had not had any children, he and other relatives were to inherit 150 to 300 pounds as their inheritance. He asserted that the widow had promised to pay this money, but had never done so, and that now neither she nor her attorneys were responding to his requests for payment. He commented that his economic situation was not good and that they needed to do something quickly.

I do not think anything came from any of these attempts to get money from the estate back in 1932 as we know that Julius eventually was forced to close his store in Gau-Algesheim in 1935 and move to Bingen in 1939.

Both the Hellriegel book about Gau-Algesheim and Wolfgang suggested that the chief of police in Bingen had extended protection to Julius and his family despite knowing that Julius had Jewish roots. Wolfgang recently spoke with someone who knew his father Walter during the war; he told Wolfgang that everyone in the community knew that Julius had come from a Jewish family, but that no one cared. This man’s father, like the prior in the Rochus chapel I wrote about last time, spoke out against Hitler and the Nazis. It would appear that there were a good number of people in Bingen who were opposed to the Nazis and did what they could to protect the Jewish citizens. Sadly, however, it was not enough.

Deutsch: Rochus-Kapelle in Bingen am Rhein/Deutschland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

****

[1] Wolfgang also found some discussion of Moritz Oppenheimer on a German internet horse-racing enthusiast’s forum back in 2010. The participants were discussing the history of the stud farm once owned by Oppenheimer and how he had been driven to bankruptcy by the Nazis, forced to sell the stud farm for a price far below its value, and then died either by his own hand or executed by the Nazis. http://www.galopper-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=2473

Too Many Missing Pieces: Part II

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Amy

In my last post, I wrote about the list of English James Seligmann’s heirs that my cousin Wolfgang found in his family’s papers. There were 21 principals named as heirs on that document, and I had discussed all the easily identified ones and some of those that were more difficult to figure out. I had discussed Numbers 1, 2, 6-13, 15, 16, 19-21. That left Numbers 3-5, 14, 17, and 18. Here again is the list of heirs:

So let’s start with Number 3, Johanna Bielefeld, the one whom Elsa Oppenheimer had claimed was not a daughter of Hieronymus Seligmann in her July, 1984 letter.

Perhaps Elsa was wrong; after all, she was wrong about Adolph Seligman not being the child of Moritz and Babetta, as discussed last time. Or maybe Johanna was the daughter of Benjamin Seligmann. I am not sure yet, but I do know that she was born in Gau-Algesheim. Wolfgang found this registration card for her, dated January 12, 1939, issued by the police in Mainz. It gives her birth name as Seligmann, her birth date as March 15, 1881, and her birthplace as Gau-Algesheim. I have written to my contact in Gau-Algesheim, asking him to see if he can find a birth record for Johanna so I can determine who her parents were. Notice also the large J on her card, indicating that she was Jewish.

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/aj/STANDREG/FFM1/PDF/B_5.1_Abt_IV_0748.pdf

Here is the companion card for her husband Alfred Bielefeld:

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/sonst/aj/STANDREG/FFM1/PDF/B_5.1_Abt_IV_0402.pdf

The list of heirs provided the names of Johanna and Alfred’s children, Hans and Lili (or Lily). It indicated that Johanna had died as had Hans, he in 1948. Then it provided a married name for Lili, Mrs. Fred Hecht, and an address on West 97^th Street in New York City. Searching for Hans Bielefeld brought me to someone with that name on the 1940 census, living in Cleveland, Ohio. He was working as an insurance agent, was 37 years old, and had been residing in Mainz, Germany, in 1935.

Year: 1940; Census Place: Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Ohio; Roll: T627_3221; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 92-451

Further searching found an index listing in the Ohio Deaths database on Ancestry for Hans Bielefeld, indicating he had died on September 13, 1948, the same year of death given on the list of heirs document. On Fold3.com, I then found naturalization papers for Hans Ludwig Bielefeld, indicating that he was divorced, that he was born on July 1, 1902 in Maine (sic), Germany, and that he had arrived in the US on the SS Gerolstein on July 14, 1938.

Publication Number: M1995
Publication Title: Naturalization Petition and Record Books for the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, Cleveland, 1907-1946
Content Source: NARA
National Archives Catalog ID: 1127790
National Archives Catalog Title: Naturalization Petitions, compiled 1867 – 1967
Record Group: 21
Partner: NARA
State: Ohio
Court: Northern District, Eastern Division
Catalog Keywords: Petitions Naturalization Immigration Citizenship
Fold3 Publication Year: 2008

That led me to a passenger manifest for the SS Gerolstein, where I found Hans listed as a divorced merchant from Mainz. It seemed like this could be the son of Johanna Seligmann Bielefeld, but I couldn’t be sure.

So I searched for his sister Lili. I first searched for her as Lili Hecht, but had no luck, so I searched for Lili Bielefeld and found her first on an English ship manifest dated September 18, 1940, from Liverpool bound for Montreal, Quebec. Lili was listed as 36, having last resided in London, but born in Germany. Her occupation was given as a domestic. The age, birthplace and name seemed correct, so I considered it likely that this was the right person.

Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Then I found her listed with the same information on a US manifest for passengers entering the United States from Canada. But since Lili did not arrive until September, 1940, she is not listed on the 1940 census, making it extremely difficult to find her in the online databases on Ancestry. There were a number of Fred Hechts, but how would I know if any of them were married to Lili?

So I turned to Google and entered “Lili Bielenfeld Fred Hecht,” and once again I hit the jackpot. Like Fred and Ilse Michel, Fred Hecht and Lili Bielenfeld have papers in the collection at the Leo Baeck Institute entitled “Hecht and Gottschalk Family Collection; AR 5605.” In the biographical note included with this collection, I learned that Fred Hecht came from a German Jewish family with a long history. I will quote here only the sections relevant to Fred, Lili and Hans:

Jakob and Therese Hecht had a son, Siegfried Max Hecht (alternatively Fritz, later Fred, 1892-1970). Siegfried Hecht became a merchant and served in the German military during World War I. Siegfried and his wife Emma née Cahn divorced in 1939, and he immigrated to the United States in 1940, where he took on the name Fred. He settled in New York City and became a jewelry salesman. In December of 1944, he and Lili née Bielefeld (1904-1977) were married.

The Bielefeld family can be traced back to the late 18th century. The family lived in Karlsruhe, Mainz, and Mannheim until the 1930s, when some members immigrated to the United States. Lili Hecht née Bielefeld was the daughter of Alfred Bielefeld, a wine merchant, and Johanna Bielefeld née Seligmann. Despite efforts to procure passage to the U.S., both Alfred and Johanna perished in the Holocaust. Alfred died in Theresienstadt, and Johanna was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where she perished.

Lili Hecht née Bielefeld’s brother Hans Ludwig Bielefeld (1902-1948) was a merchant. He married Lilli née Kiritz in 1933, and the couple divorced in 1936. Hans Ludwig immigrated to the United States under the sponsorship of his cousin, Irma Rosenfeld, and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in insurance. After his death, his sister Lili Hecht née Bielefeld was the sole heir to the Bielefeld family property, which she claimed in the 1960s alongside restitution for her parents’ deaths.

Thus, from these papers and this biographical note, I was able to find out a great deal about what had happened to Johanna Seligmann Bielefeld, her husband, and her two children, Hans and Lili. I will write more about them in a separate post once I have a chance to examine the LBI collection more carefully and obtain translations where necessary.

Number 4 on the list, Bettina Arnfeld, was more difficult to locate, but I found a Bettina Elizabeth Arnfeld listed on FindAGrave with the notation, “Body Lost or Destroyed.” Her birthdate was given as March 17, 1875. This may have been the “Elizabeth” whom Elsa claimed was not a child of Hieronymus Seligmann. I then looked for and found Bettina Elizabeth Arnfeld in the Yad Vashem Database. The entries there confirmed that her birth name was Seligmann, that she was born on March 17, 1875, and that she had resided in Muelheim Ruhr in Germany at the time she was deported. She was exterminated at Thieresenstadt on January 23, 1943.

The list of heirs indicated that Bettina had a son, Heinz Arnfeld, living on 22 Gloucester Square in London, and he was not difficult to locate. I found several entries for Heinz and Liselotte Arnfeld at that address in London, England, Electoral Registers on Ancestry. I also found Heinz and Liselotte listed in the England & Wales Marriage Index on Ancestry. They were married in Doncaster, Yorkshire West Riding in 1945. Heinz is also listed as a survivor of the Holocaust in the Shārit ha-plātah database on JewishGen.

Heinz died in 1961 and left his estate to Liselotte; she died in 1988. I do not know whether they had any children. Since they were married in 1945 when Liselotte was 37, it does not seem likely.

That brings me to Numbers 17 and 18 on the list, putting Numbers 5 and 14 aside for now. Who were Eva Hansu and Rosa Reisz? If these were nieces of English James Seligmann, then they had married and changed their surnames, so how could I find them? Since they were listed right after Emil and Eugen, sons of Carolina Seligmann and Siegfried Seligmann, I went back to the list of Carolina’s children and realized that she had daughters named Eva and Rosa. Thus, I assumed that Eva became Eva Hansu and Rosa became Rosa Reisz.

I had good luck searching for Rosa Seligmann Reisz. I knew her daughter’s name was Hedwig Neter from the list of heirs, and that seemed unusual enough that I decided to search for it first. Sure enough the name came up on a passenger’s manifest dated August 31, 1940, for the ship Cameronia departing from Glasgow, Scotland, for New York. Sailing with Hedwig was her husband Emil Neter and her mother Rosa Reis. Emil was a 61 year old manufacturer, Hedwig a 48 year old housewife, and Rosa was 73 without occupation. They all had last been residing in London and said the US was their intended permanent residence.

Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

According to FindAGrave, Rosa Seligmann Reis died on January 29, 1958, and is buried at Hauptfriedhof in Mannheim, Germany. Her son-in-law Emil Neter died on July 8, 1971, in Washington, DC, and is also buried at Hauptfriedhof in Mannheim, as is her daughter Hedwig Reis Neter, who died on May 28, 1979, in Washington. I found it very interesting that after living in the United States all those years, Rosa, Emil, and Hedwig chose as their burial place the country they had escaped so many years before. A little more searching turned up Hedwig’s birth certificate and a family record from 1891, both of which revealed that Rosa’s husband’s name was Ludwig Reis, son of Callman Reis, a merchant.

Ancestry.com. Mannheim, Germany, Births, 1870-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data: Personenstandsregister: Geburtsregister Standesamt Mannheim und Vororte 1876-1900, Stadtarchiv Mannheim, Mannheim. Deutschland.

Hedwig Reis Birth Certificiate Ancestry.com. Mannheim, Germany, Births, 1870-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Personenstandsregister: Geburtsregister Standesamt Mannheim und Vororte 1876-1900, Stadtarchiv Mannheim, Mannheim. Deutschland.

Ancestry.com. Mannheim, Germany, Family Registers, 1760-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Original data: Polizeipräsidium Mannheim Familienbögen, 1800-1900. Digital images. Stadtarchiv Mannheim — Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Mannheim, Germany

Searching at Hauptfriedhof on FindAGrave, I found that Ludwig had died in 1928 and had been buried at Hauptfriedhof. It seems that Rosa and her daughter Hedwig wanted to be buried where Ludwig had been buried years before. With the help of Matthias Steinke in the German Genealogy group on Facebook, I was able to locate the headstone for all four of them at the Stadtarchiv Mannheim website.

https://www.stadtarchiv.mannheim.de/jh/Bilder_08/B2-A-07-07/B2-A-07-07a.JPG

https://www.stadtarchiv.mannheim.de/jh/Bilder_08/B2-A-07-07/B2-A-07-07e.JPG

At first I couldn’t find anything about Eva Hansu, Number 17. I couldn’t find her husband’s first name, and although the heirs’ list gives her daughter’s married name as Alice Kauffman of France, I had not been able to find her either. Then after Matthias introduced me to the Stadtarchiv Mannheim website where he had found the headstones for Rosa and her family, I decided to search for all people with the birth name Seligmann and found Eva as Eva Seligmann Hanau, not Eva Hansu as I had mistakenly read it on the list of heirs. It provided the same birth date I’d already found for Eva, March 18, 1861, and it reported her date of death as March 18, 1939. Her husband was Lion Hanau, born May 24, 1854, in Altforweiler, Germany, and he died February 7, 1921. The archive also included photographs of their headstone.

https://www.stadtarchiv.mannheim.de/jh/Bilder_08/D1-MGr-18/D1-MGr-18.JPG

As for their daughter, now that I had the correct spelling of her birth name Hanau, I was able to find her marriage certificate for her marriage to Ernst Kaufmann on August 10, 1911.

Ancestry.com. Mannheim, Germany, Marriages, 1870-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data: Personenstandsregister: Heiratsregister Standesamt Mannheim und Vororte, Stadtarchiv Mannheim, Mannheim. Deutschland.

I do not know what happened to either Alice or Ernst during or after the war.

So that leaves me with only two names on the list of heirs for whom I as yet have no answers: Anna Wolf, Number 5, and Bettina Ochs, Number 14. Anna Wolf is listed as a fraulein, so that is her birth name, not a married name. It says that Johanna Bielfeld was her aunt, so presumably Anna’s mother was a sister of Johanna. If, in fact, Johanna was a child of Hieronymus Seligmann, she had two sisters, Mathilde and Auguste and perhaps Bettina. I don’t have any information about them aside from what was listed in Elsa’s letter, posted above. More work to be done.

And Number 14, Bettina Ochs, is even more of a puzzle. I’d have assumed that Ochs was her married name, Seligmann her birth name. But the note on the document mentions a brother as her next of kin, and his name was Arthur Erlanger. That would suggest that Bettina Ochs was born Bettina Erlanger, not Seligmann. So how is she related? Who was her husband? Which one is the blood relative of English James Seligmann? I found one listing on JewishGen.org for Bettina Ochs-Erlanger with a secondary name as Bettina Oberdorfer. She was born May 7, 1870, and her nationality was Italian, consistent with the Milan address provided on the heirs list. She was listed in the Switzerland, Jewish Arrivals, 1938-1945 database; I can’t see the original document, but the index indicates that she arrived in Switzerland on August 5, 1944.

It’s amazing how much information I could mine from this one little document. Unfortunately, although I should have gotten great satisfaction from finding so many people and so much information, I ended up feeling very sad and very drained as I added all these names of my cousins to the list of those killed in the Holocaust. It is beginning to overwhelm me. So much loss, so much evil. Incomprehensible.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Category Archives: Holocaust

Lotte’s Story, Part II: Life in Nazi Germany

My Ever-growing Seligmann Family Tree

Impressions of Vienna and Some Concluding Thoughts on our Trip

Three Days in Budapest

Walking in the Shadows of My Brotman Great-Grandparents

Auschwitz

Krakow

Home Sweet Home

A Difficult Life: Julius Seligmann

Too Many Missing Pieces: Part II

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