Category Archives: Leaving Germany

The Legacy of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum: Family Photos

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I mentioned in my last blog post that I have recently connected with another cousin, Robin Kravets, the great-granddaughter of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum. Robin is my fifth cousin, once removed. We are both descendants of Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz, Robin through their son Moses and me through their daughter Breine.

Robin has generously shared with me a collection of photographs of her family, and I am delighted to be able to share them with you. All the photos in this post are courtesy of my cousin Robin. I am providing a summary of what I posted two years ago about Robin’s direct ancestors to provide context to the photos and to add some additional insights Robin shared with me. The blog posts from 2021 contain more details and my sources.

Salomon Blumenfeld, Robin’s great-great-grandfather, first married Caecilie Erlanger, but she died when she was only 24 years old, leaving behind two very young children: Thekla (Robin’s great-grandmother), not yet two, and Felix, just seven months old. Two years after his first wife Caecilie died, Salomon married Emma Bendheim and had a third child, Moritz, in 1877. And then sometime within the next five or six years, Salomon left Germany for Spain with Emma and Moritz, leaving his first two children, Thekla and Felix, behind. As best I can tell, Thekla and Felix, still both young children, must have been raised by their mother’s family, the Erlangers, in Marburg.

I had wondered whether Salomon or his son from his second marriage, Moritz, had remained in touch with Thekla and Felix. Robin provided this photograph of Moritz with his half-niece Cecilie, Thekla’s daughter, and another unidentified woman, so there is some evidence that at least Moritz had some contact with his half-sister Thekla and her family.

Moritz Blumenfeld and Cecilie Gruenbaum (with unknown woman on the left)
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

This is the oldest photograph in Robin’s collection. It shows Thekla as an infant with her mother, Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld and must have been taken in about 1872 when Thekla was born. Thank you to Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photogenealogist, for pointing out the correct dating of this photograph.

Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld with Thekla Blumenfeld, c. 1872 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Here are two beautiful photographs of Thekla as a young woman.

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla married Max Gruenbaum in 1894. Here is a photograph of them taken in 1895.

Thekla Blumenfeld and Max Gruenbaum 1895
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla and Max had four children: Cecilie (1895), Curt (1897), Franz (1899), and Rosemarie, Robin’s grandmother (1912).

Cecilie, Curt, and Franz Gruenbaum c. 1908 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Cecilie, Franz, Rosemarie and Curt Gruenbaum, 1918  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla’s brother Felix married Thekla Wertheim in 1902, and they had two sons, Edgar (1903) and Gerhard (1906). Robin had just a few photos of Felix; he appears to be in uniform during World War I in these first two. The caption on the first translates as “to commemorate the first nailing of the Zaitenstock.” I am not sure what that means, but Wikipedia explains (as translated by Google) that zaitenstocke were part of the pipe systems used to carry water into the cities.

Felix Blumenfeld, 1915 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

Felix Blumenfeld, 1916
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

As I wrote in my earlier posts, both Felix and his sister Thekla lost their spouses at relatively young ages. Thekla’s husband Max Gruenbaum died in 1917, and Felix’s wife Thekla died in 1923.

But even more tragically, both Felix and Thekla were among the six million who were killed in the Holocaust, Felix by suicide in 1942, as detailed here, when he was in despair and had no hope in surviving, and Thekla at Treblinka in 1943.

Felix Blumenfeld
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla had refused to leave Germany, and her daughter Cecilie would not leave her mother behind. Robin wrote that “[Cecilie] was very smart and saw the writing on the wall but her mother would not leave.  I remember my family talking about them having tickets on a boat somewhere. But the boat was cancelled.”1 Fortunately, Cecilie’s children were safely in England.

But Cecilie and her husband Walter Herzog were sent to the concentration camp in Riga in 1941. Walter did not survive, but against all odds, Cecilie did even after being sent to Stutthof, a camp where the conditions were truly horrible, as I wrote about here. When I asked Robin whether she had any information as to how Cecilie had survived, she wrote that “since she was trained as a nurse during WWI, she used her skills to help people in the camps. I have always believed it gave her a purpose to survive. The story I heard as a child was that when the Allies liberated the camp, she knew she had to get west. She collected a group of people and helped them make their way west. As a nurse, she knew that they needed to be very careful about overeating after being in the camps and made sure they did not die from bloating.”2 As was not uncommon with Holocaust survivors, Cecilie never wanted to talk about her experiences.

Cecilie Gruenbaum Herzog Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

The other children of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum and Felix Blumenfeld had all managed to escape Germany before it was too late, as I wrote about here. Robin’s grandmother Rosemarie, the youngest of Thekla’s children, had married while still in Germany. In fact, as Robin explained, she had married her husband Ernest Heymann in absentia as Ernest was in England at the time, having gone there on business and then realizing it was not safe to return. I’d never heard of being married in absentia, but apparently Rosemarie’s nephew stood in as a surrogate groom.3

Rosemarie was able to get out of Germany and join Ernest in London where their first child, Robin’s mother, was born. After the war started, Ernest was one of the many Jewish refugees who was sent to an internment camp as a “enemy alien.” He was interned from June 21, 1940, until October 17, 1940.

Ernst Heymann, he National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: Ho 396/178
Piece Number Description: 178: German Internees Released in Uk 1939-1942: Hertzke-Hoj
Ancestry.com. UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945

After he was released, he and Rosemarie and their daughter immigrated to the US and settled in New York. They had another child in New York after the war.

Rosemarie’s sister Cecilie made it to the US in 1946 and went to live with Rosemarie and her family in New York. The two sisters lived together for the rest of their lives and remained close to their brothers Curt and Franz (later known as Frank), who visited them often from Massachusetts.  Cecilie lived to 95, dying in 1990, and Rosemarie to 91, dying in 2004.3

The story of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum is tragic: motherless as toddler, left behind by her father, widowed at a young age, and then killed by the Nazis. The fact that Thekla’s two daughters Cecilie and Rosemarie lived together and survived into their 90s is quite a tribute to the strength their mother must have had and that they both had.

Thekla with her daughter Rosemarie Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

 

 

 

  1. Email from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023. ↩
  2. Ibid. ↩
  3. Emails from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023, and October 27, 2023. ↩ ↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Part IV: Her Children in Shanghai

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As we saw, Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen had five children. They all had their lives and destinies changed by the Holocaust. Her oldest child Jakob died in 1937, and his widow and daughter were killed in the Holocaust. Friederike’s second oldest son, Moritz, immigrated with his family to the US in the late 1930s to escape the Nazis.

The other two surviving children of Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Auguste and Isaak, ended up in Shanghai, China, during the war. I don’t have any details about how they got to Shanghai or what their lives were like there, but there have been many books1, articles2, and memoirs3 written about the experience of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, and there was even an exhibit about Jewish refugee life in Shanghai in August 2023 in New York City.

I have read some of the articles, but not the books, so I can only briefly touch on the outline of this period in history to give context to what happened to Auguste, her husband Willi, their son Julius, and her brother Isaak, but in the footnotes I have listed sources for those who may want to learn more about the Shanghai Jewish community during the Nazi era.

When I first heard many years ago that Shanghai had been a place that many Jews sought refuge during the Nazi era, I was surprised. I’ve since learned that there was in fact a small Jewish community in Shanghai even before the 1930s, most of whom had fled from Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917. But it was not until the 1930s that the Jewish population in Shanghai grew to about 20,000 refugees. Why Shanghai? One reason was that unlike most other places in the world including the United States, no visas were required to enter Shanghai until August 1939.4

In 1937, after a fierce battle with the Chinese, the Japanese took control of large sections of Shanghai and created a ghetto in a section called Hongkew, where Jewish refugees lived in poverty-stricken conditions. They were not allowed to leave or enter the ghetto without passes and were often mistreated by the Japanese officials who oversaw the ghetto. The Chinese residents of Shanghai also were persecuted and suffered greatly during this occupation, which lasted until the end of World War II when Japan was defeated and required to leave China.5

Jewish Ghetto Memorial in Shanghai, gruntzooki, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

I wish I knew more about the experiences of my relatives Auguste Schoen Speier and her family and her brother Isaak Schoen in Shanghai, but aside from finding their names on various lists and in a 1939 directory for Shanghai located by Richard Bloomfield, I know no details other than that at some point they arrived there from Germany and lived there until after the war.

Auguste, Willi, and Julius Speier and Isaak Schoen are all listed on a 1950 list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai who were helped by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an organization that continues to exist today for those in need.

I also found them all here in a collection of records of Shanghai refugees made in 1944.

Richard located them in this November 1939 directory of emigrants in Shanghai, so obviously they had immigrated there by November 1939:

But I could not locate them on this list of refugees who had arrived in Shanghai between 1937 and 1944, so perhaps they had arrived before 1937.

In his interview with the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Kurt Schoen, Moritz’s son, mentioned that one of his cousins had died from typhoid while living in Shanghai, but I have no record or even a name of that cousin. He or she does not appear on any of the lists cited above. Maybe that cousin had passed away before these lists were compiled. Or maybe Kurt was confused.6

In any event, it is clear that Auguste, Willi, Julius and Isaak all ended up in Shanghai, and then after the war, they all immigrated to the US.

Auguste’s son Julius was the first to make it to the US. He arrived in San Francisco on March 19, 1947, with his wife Hildegarde Gabriel. They had married in Shanghai on December 9, 1945.7 Hildegarde was the daughter of Julius Gabriel and Berta Gross and was born on September 8, 1919, in Bromberg in what was then part of Prussia but is now in Poland.8

On the ship manifest, Julius listed his father Willi as the person he was leaving behind, Hildegarde listed her father Julius. They both listed Moritz Schoen, Auguste’s brother, as the person they were going to in the US and listed their destination as New York City. Julius listed his occupation as a shoemaker, and Hildegarde listed hers as a nurse.

Julius and Hildegarde Speier ship manifest, he National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 388, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959

Julius’ parents Auguste (Schoen) and Willi Speier arrived in San Francisco six months later on September 24, 1947. The ship manifest indicates that they were headed to New York City where their son Julius was residing. Like his son Julius, Willi was a shoemaker or “cobbler,” as listed on the manifest. The person they were leaving behind in Shanghai was Auguste’s brother Isaak.9

Isaak himself arrived just a few months later on December 17, 1947. He also entered the US in San Francisco, indicating that he also was heading to New York City where his brother Moritz was living. He listed his occupation as a salesman.10

Auguste and Willi did end up in New York City, where in 1950 Willi was working as a “platform spotter” in a shoe factory. I don’t know what that means, but I would guess that it means he watched shoes on an assembly line. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.11 I’ve been unable to locate their son Julius and his wife Hildegarde on the 1950 census nor can I locate Isaak Schoen on that census.

Thus, three of Friederike Blumenfeld and Mannes Schoen’s children and four of their grandchildren had escaped Nazi Germany and survived World War II. Their lives after 1950 will be discussed in my next post.

 

  1. See, e.g., Alex Ross, Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (1993, Free Press); Gao Bei, Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy Toward European Jewish Refugees During World War II (2016, Oxford University Press); Irene Eber, Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees From Central Europe: Survival, Co-Existence, and Identity in a Multi-Ethnic City (2012, DeGruyter). ↩
  2. See, e.g., the articles at the following links:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-holocaust-survivors-found-refuge-shanghai-told-through-stories-and-photos-180978235/  and https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/jewish-wwii-refugees-found-safety-shanghai-are-focus-new-exhibit-rcna96478 and https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-and-austrian-jewish-refugees-in-shanghai and https://www.npr.org/2023/08/06/1192118339/jewish-refugees-shanghai-world-war-ii&#160;↩
  3. E.g., Ernest Heppner, Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto (1995, University of Nebraska Press); Berl Falbaum, ed., Shanghai Remembered…: Stories Of Jews Who Escaped To Shanghai From Nazi Europe (2005, Momentum Books, LLC.); Sigmund Tobias, Strange Haven: A Jew­ish Child­hood in Wartime Shanghai (2009, University of Illinois Press). ↩
  4. See Note 2, above. ↩
  5. See Note 2, above. ↩
  6. Kurt L. Schoen, July 24, 2004 interview,  Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.512 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0512, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive, found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn566135. There was another puzzling thing about Kurt’s interview. He mentioned that his father had one sister (Auguste) and one unmarried brother (Isaak), but did not mention Jakob, his father’s older brother.  Jakob, as we saw, had died in 1937 when Kurt was ten, and his wife and daughter were killed in the Holocaust. Had Kurt never known his uncle Jakob and his family? Had Moritz never mentioned them? Or was it just too painful for Kurt to talk about what had happened to his uncle, aunt, and cousin? ↩
  7. Marriage notice for Julius Speier and Hildegarde Gabriel, The Jewish Voice in Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 23. November 1945, p. 8 ↩
  8. Hildegard Speier, Gender Female, Race White, Birth Date 8 Sep 1919, Birth Place Bromberg Pos, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date Aug 1994, Father Julius Gabriel, Mother Berta Gross, SSN 079242443, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  9. Willi and Auguste Speier, ship manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 392, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 ↩
  10. Isaak Schoen ship manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 ↩
  11.  National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 4546; Page: 18; Enumeration District: 31-1702, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Part III: Her Son Moses Escapes to America

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I have been unable to do any new research in these last few weeks since the horrendous massacre in Israel by Hamas on October 7. I just can’t seem to focus on research right now. Fortunately I had several blog posts ready in my queue and will publish those, including this one. Perhaps the best way I can support Israel right now is to educate and remind people about the long history of persecution of Jews and antisemitism so that they best understand why Israel exists and why it must survive.

Although Friederike’s oldest child Jakob died in 1937 and his widow and daughter were killed by the Nazis, her other three surviving children all managed to escape the Nazis.

Friederike’s son Moses, more commonly known as Moritz, wanted to leave Germany quite early. As described by his son Kurt Leopold Schoen in the oral history interview he did with the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Moritz had had a successful wholesale and retail shoe business in Kassel, but once the Nazis came to power the business suffered. Non-Jews boycotted the store, and Moritz had to close the business and work as a shoemaker.1

But leaving Germany was difficult. The family needed affidavits from someone in the US to get a visa to enter the country, and the relatives in the US were reluctant to sponsor a family with three young children. Fortunately, Moritz and Else’s fourteen-year-old daughter Alice was given an opportunity to leave when the National Council of the Jewish Women in the US organized a rescue mission that brought many children out of Germany.2 Alice came to the US on May 13, 1938, and was sent to live with a Jewish family in San Antonio, Texas, the Rosenbergs, as seen on the 1940 US census.3

Alice Schoen passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

The website for the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio reported that Abe and Bella Rosenberg “took [Alice] into their lives as if she were a long lost relative. The Rosenberg children, Miriam and Stanley, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins who treated her with affection and kindness made her adjustment to a new life easier.” In his oral history interview, Alice’s brother Kurt mentioned that the Rosenbergs were a very nice family, but nevertheless Alice was naturally very homesick.  She did not see her family again until 1940.4

But Alice was able to get help from the Rosenberg family to bring her father Moritz to the US from Germany. As reported on the website for the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio, they signed affidavits pledging financial support for him.

Once he had an affidavit from the Rosenbergs, Moritz was able to go to the US consulate in Germany and receive a visa. But before he could leave, he was arrested during the Kristallnacht riots in November, 1938. According to his son Kurt, Moritz was not sent to Buchenwald like so many other Jewish men were after Kristallnacht because he already had a visa to leave Germany. He was released within a day or two from police custody in Kassel and prepared to leave for the US.5

Moritz arrived on December 3, 1938, seven months after Alice’s arrival, and settled in New York City. His ship manifest lists his wife Else as the person he was leaving behind in Kassel, Germany, and his sister-in-law Betty Lutz (born Babette Freimark) as the person he was going to in the US. He listed his occupation as a shoemaker.6

Meanwhile, back in Germany, Else and her two young sons Manfred and Kurt moved to Frankfurt; the boys were sent to a Jewish orphanage and Else moved in with one of her sisters. Kurt described the orphanage as a place where he and his brother were well treated. They went to school and learned English. Finally in April 1939, they were released and reunited with their mother and allowed to leave Germany for the US. Kurt, who was eleven at the time, recalled that the Nazis tore through their luggage and stole everything Else had packed except one small teapot.7

Else arrived in New York with Manfred and Kurt (listed as Kurt Leopold Israel on the manifest) on May 19, 1939.

Else Schoen and children, passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957
Ship or Roll Number: Deutschland, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

The family moved into a small apartment riddled with bed bugs; Moritz worked doing shoe repairs and barely made a living. But as Kurt said, they were happy to be out of Germany and safely living in New York. They moved frequently from one apartment to another in order to get the benefit of one or two free months of rent being offered by landlords. Manfred and Kurt started school where they quickly learned English and rose from the lower levels of their grade to the highest within a year.8

Alice was reunited with her parents and brothers sometime in 1940 when the Rosenberg family brought her to New York after taking a trip to Canada to see the Dionne Quintuplets. She married just three years later when she was nineteen, according to her brother Kurt.9 Her husband, Albert Bernhard Schwarz, was born on October 22, 1922, in Busenberg, Germany, to Alfred Lazarus Schwarz and Berta Levy. Like Alice, he was refugee from Germany; he had arrived on August 13, 1938.10 He was the only member of his family to survive. His parents and all his siblings were killed by the Nazis.11

Albert entered the US Army on March 26, 1943, listing his marital status as single.12 He and Alice must have married later that year. According to one biography of Albert, he was assigned to Camp Ritchie in Maryland and trained for military intelligence. As a Ritchie Boy, as they were known, Albert was trained to interrogate German prisoners of war. Starting in October 1944 he was with the 7th Armored Division of the II English Army in France and the northern part of Belgium. On November 5-6, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, Albert’s jeep hit a German mine near a bridge over the Meuse River. Albert suffered severe head injuries from which he suffered the rest of his life. He was in a coma for over a month in a English military hospital and remained there until February, 1945. He returned to the US in the spring of 1945, but was hospitalized until July. On Aug. 02, 1945, he was discharged from military service at Camp Edward, Massachusetts.13

Alice and Albert had three children born after the war. In 1950 they were living in New York City, and Albert was working as a butcher.14 Alice’s parents Moritz and Else Schoen and her brothers Manfred and Kurt (listed as Leo here) were also living in New York City. Moritz now owned his own shoemaking business. Manfred was an industrial engineer, and Leo/Kurt was a chemist in a cosmetics company.

Morris Schoen and family, 1950 US census, National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 3572; Page: 9; Enumeration District: 31-2294, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census

Meanwhile, Moritz’s two remaining siblings had survived the war in Shanghai, China. More on that in my next post.

  1. Many of the personal details in this post came from Kurt Leopold Schoen’s interview with the USHMM. Kurt L. Schoen, July 24, 2004 interview, Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.512 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0512, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive, found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn566135.  Although Kurt is listed as Leopold or Leo on many US records, he used the name Kurt for most of his adult life in the US and will be referred to here as Kurt for that reason. ↩
  2. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  3. Alice Schoen, 1940 US Census, Year: 1940; Census Place: San Antonio, Bexar, Texas; Roll: m-t0627-04201; Page: 61A; Enumeration District: 259-6, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩
  4. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  5. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  6. Moses Schoen, passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957, Ship or Roll Number: Hamburg, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  7. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  8. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  9. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  10. Albert Schwarz, Declaration of Intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description
    Description: (Roll 610) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 481301-482200), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  11. Family history of Schwarz family, Arbeitskreis Judentum im Wasgau, Elisabeth & Otmar Weber, Schillerstraße 10b, 66994, found at /https://judentum-im-wasgau.de/images/geschichte/jugemeinden/jufbusenberg/02_schwarz_jakob_hauptstr_49_bu.pdf ↩
  12. Albert B Schwarz, Race White, Marital Status Single, without dependents (Single)
    Rank Private, Birth Year 1922, Nativity State or Country Danzig or Germany, Citizenship Not Yet a Citizen, Residence New York, New York, Education 2 years of high school
    Civil Occupation Stock clerks, Enlistment Date 26 Mar 1943, Enlistment Place New York City, New York, Service Number 32874464, Branch No branch assignment, Component Selectees (Enlisted Men), National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland, USA; Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938-1946; NAID: 1263923; Record Group Title: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, 1789-ca. 2007; Record Group: 64; Box Number: 05772; Reel: 241, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 ↩
  13. See Note 11, supra. ↩
  14. Albert Schwarz and family, 1940 US census, National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 6203; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 31-1913, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩

Guest Post: My Cousin Miki Katzenstein’s Trip to Jesberg and Munich—Retrieving History and Honoring the Past

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A few months ago I wrote about how I had connected with my cousin Miki Katzenstein Dror from Israel. Miki is a daughter of Aryeh Katzenstein, who was murdered in a terrorist attack in Munich, Germany, in 1970, when he was just 32 and Miki was a young child. Aryeh gave his life to save the lives of others, including the life of his father, Heinz Katzenstein. The city of Munich is now planning to install a memorial to Aryeh on the grounds where the attack occurred in collaboration with a corporation called BrainLab, which now owns the land where Aryeh was killed.

In preparation for this memorial, Miki and her brother Ofer and their spouses recently traveled to Germany to meet with the people there who are working on the memorial. In addition, Miki made a trip to Jesberg, the small village where our mutual Katzenstein ancestors once lived and where Miki’s grandfather Heinz Katzenstein lived until he left for Palestine in the 1930s. I asked Miki if she would share her thoughts on her visit to her grandfather’s childhood home in Jesberg and also on her trip to Munich, and she has graciously done so. All photos are also courtesy of Miki.

Miki wrote:

For many years I dreamed of traveling to Germany with my grandfather, Heinz Katzenstein, to see the districts of his childhood. I hadn’t heard much about his childhood in Germany, except for the simple facts he told me; he said that he was born in Kassel, immigrated to Palestine in 1933, and had managed to return to Germany in 1936 to take his parents and siblings to his new home. My grandfather often returned to Germany to go to Baden-Baden, but always refused to travel with me to the region where he grew up. I thought it was because it would have been hard for him to see again the home he ran away from so many years ago.

After my grandfather passed away, it became clear to me that although he always talked about Kassel, he actually was born and raised in the village of Jesberg, a really small village about a 40-minute drive from Kassel. Maybe it was easier for him to talk about a more well-known city. I became even more curious, and when the municipality of Munich invited us in June 2023 to preparatory meetings for the establishment of the memorial site for my late father, Aryeh Katzenstein, I decided to combine a roots trip to Jesberg with the meetings in Munich.

I started the preparations with the help of my cousin Amy Cohen, whose blog I found when I was looking for information about Jesberg online. Thanks to her, I met a lovely man named Heinz Hildebrandt, who volunteered to guide me in the village along with his wife Erika. I told him a little about our family, and he told me not to worry – he would already know what to show me. We set a date, and I waited anxiously. In the meantime, I had a lot of preparatory work for the meetings in Munich, and time was running out.

On June 16th my husband and I took off to Frankfurt; from there we went to Kassel and walked around the city for two days. On June 18, we met with the Hildebrandt family in Jesberg at 9 am, as prearranged. I will never forget the Jesberg welcome. Heinz and his wife Erica, Mrs. Regina Ochs, Herald England, Mayor Heiko Mans, and Pastor Reinhard Keller all accompanied us for the visit, and we ended up staying with them until six in the evening. Hans-Peter Klein and his friend Irina also came especially to meet us. It was one of the most exciting days of my life.

Miki and her husband with the mayor of Jesberg

Amy, my cousin, had given me a piece of advice: imagine the life your grandfather lived in the village while visiting there. This is what I did: we saw the tower overlooking the village and the surrounding agricultural area, we saw the well-kept village and all the Jewish houses that remained mostly in their original form, including the ancient synagogue that is now used as a residence. 

Overlooking Jesberg with Miki, her husband, and their guide Heinz Hildebrandt

We even managed to enter the house where my grandfather was born and raised, thanks to the current owner, Michael Jung. It was very emotional for me; the house is in need of repairs and is about to be completely renovated. But I could easily see its beauty, size, and even glory. The ceiling is spectacular. In some ways the house reminded me of my grandfather’s home in Haifa, with all the wooden hand-crafted furniture.

Miki standing in front of the house where her grandfather lived in Jesberg

We said Kaddish at the well-preserved grave of Levi Katzenstein and Jeanette Bendheim, my grandfather’s grandparents, and we saw a gravestone for the victims of the First World War from which the name of our relative Max Katzenstein had been erased during the Nazi era; his name was returned to that memorial a few decades ago. A fascinating presentation was prepared for us that dealt with the history of the Jewish families in the village and in the region, especially the story of our Katzenstein family. It amazes me to think that if my grandfather could have remained in Jesberg undisturbed, my children would have been the 11th generation in the village.

The grave of Levy Katzenstein, Miki’s great-great-grandfather

World War I memorial in Jesberg where you can see that Max Katzenstein’s name was removed and then later restored

My grandfather loved Germany all his life and missed it endlessly. There wasn’t a year he didn’t go there. It also became clear to me from records Mrs. Ochs shared that a year before his death he even came to Jesberg, but without me.

The second part of this busy week was no less emotionally difficult. We went to Munich for three days where we met my brother and sister-in-law who came from Israel and were hosted by the people of the municipality, whom we were very happy to meet after about three years of seeing them only on the small screens of Zoom in our conference calls. The program was very busy, and the terrible heat and the fact that there was no air conditioning made it very difficult. The truth is that even there we were shocked by the welcome we received.

The project to commemorate my father, which started from a humble initiative of family friends, Michael Weidenhiller and Werner Haberkorn, has developed into a huge project that combines our family, the municipality of Munich, and the high-tech company BrainLab. We were invited to lunch with the mayor of Munich, with the head of the Jewish community in Munich, and with the Israeli consulate there. We visited BrainLab’s amazing offices and met with the CEO, Stefan Fieldsmeier, his employees, and the artist chosen to create the artwork that will be erected on the site. We participated in a press conference where the launch of the project was announced, and millions of German residents were exposed to it.

Miki at the press conference in Munich

The site where the memorial to Aryeh Katzenstein will be installed

The highlight for me and my brother was the visit that was organized for us at the municipal archives, where we were exposed for the first time to four huge files of evidence that were prepared for the trial of the three terrorists who murdered my late father. Those files were never used because the terrorists were released without a trial three months later when a Pan Am jet was hijacked and the German government agreed to release those three terrorists in exchange for the safe release of the three hundred passengers on that plane.

The files from the Munich Archives about the 1970 terrorist attack

[For more on this exchange and its historical significance, here is one writer’s views.]

Our faithful translator translated for us from German into Hebrew the testimonies of my grandfather, who was interrogated right after the terrorist incident while he was injured in the hospital, of Hana Maron, the Israeli actress who was seriously injured in the attack, of Uri Cohen, the heroic captain who fought the terrorists with his bare hands, and the bus driver who drove the passengers from the terminal to the plane.

The pictures were very difficult to see but important. We saw drawings of the terminal and timeline of the chain of events. We read what they found with my father after his death: coins, a horseshoe-shaped gold necklace that I really remember as a child, a list my mother sent with him of things to buy in Germany including Pantene diaper cream and decorations for a Purim party they were planning to throw for their friends, and a picture of us – his three children.

We left with tears in our eyes and a heavy heart. On the other hand, we now know much more than we knew before the visit, we met lovely people who tried to help with infinite sensitivity, and we are waiting for the launch of the memorial website, which will be in 2024.

Thank you, Miki, for sharing this with me and my readers. We will always remember the story of your father and the lessons we all must learn about the destructive consequences of hatred in all forms.

 

Genealogy Fun: How My Friend and I Discovered We Have Mutual Cousins

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One of the first people I ever met who did genealogy research is my friend Amanda Katz Jermyn. I met Amanda through mutual friends over thirty years ago, and we have been members of the same small havurah group for many years now. When Amanda long ago described her genealogy research and the connections and stories she had found, I was amazed. She helped to inspire me to start my own journey.

Amanda and I both have paternal ancestry from Germany, and over the years we’ve wondered whether we would ever find an overlap in our German Jewish ancestry. Well, I finally found one, although it is very attenuated and only by marriage. Nevertheless it was fun to find this connection.1 Here’s the story of my third cousin, twice removed, Moritz Rosenberg, and his wife Berta Blum, Amanda’s third cousin, once removed.

As we saw in my earlier post, Moritz, the third child of Rebecca Blumenfeld and Mendel Rosenberg, was born on September 15, 1887, in Rosenthal, Germany, and married Berta Blum on August 10, 1919, in Frankenau, Germany. Berta was born on September 5, 1896, in Frankenau to Elias Blum and Amalie Katz.

Marriage of Moritz Rosenberg and Berta Blum, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Signatur: 3254, Year Range: 1919, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Moritz and Berta had two children, Jacob (later Theodore), born on January 17, 1921,2 and Rebecca (later Ruth), born on January 4, 1925, both in Rosenthal, Germany.3

Moritz and his family were among the very fortunate ones who all were able to escape safely from Nazi Germany. Moritz, Berta, and their 13-year-old daughter Rebecca arrived in New York on September 15, 1938. Moritz listed his occupation as a butcher. Berta’s cousin Herman Blum was listed as the person they knew in the US.4

It took me longer to find out when Jacob arrived in the US because I was searching for him as Jacob, as that is how he was listed on Moritz’s naturalization petition. But the 1940 census has him identified as Theodore (and Rebecca as Ruth),5 and that gave me the necessary clue to find Jacob a/k/a Theodore’s naturalization petition. He arrived in the US as a 16-year-old on May 15, 1937. And on his 1942 petition he used his newly adopted name, Theodore.

Moritz Rosenberg, Declaration of Intention, (Roll 548) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 426401-427400), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Theodore Jack Rosenberg a/k/a Jakob Teo Rosenberg, Declaration of Intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 561) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 438701-439600), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

The date of his arrival helped me locate Theodore’s ship manifest, where he identified his father as the person he was leaving behind, and his uncle, Herman Blum, as the person he was going to in the US. He is identified as Teo Rosenberg. (See the last line on the image below.)

Teo Rosenberg, ship manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957, Ship or Roll Number: Manhattan, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

In 1940, Moritz, Berta, and both of their children were living in New York City. Moritz and Berta were both working as salespeople for a wholesale dress business, and Theodore was a handyman for a venetian blinds company. They also had four lodgers living with them.

Moritz Rosenberg and family, 1940 US Census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02670; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 31-1885, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

But while I was searching for information about Theodore/Jacob, I found Moritz and Berta and their children on an Ancestry family tree called the 2020 Jermyn Tree, owned by someone with a memorable name, James Bond. I might have thought that that name was a pseudonym, but fortunately I knew that my friend Amanda had a distant cousin with that name. So seeing the title with her surname and the name of the owner, I assumed there had to be some connection between my relative Moritz Rosenberg and his family and my friend Amanda.

Although Amanda’s name wasn’t revealed on the tree since she is still living, I knew her parents’ names, and they were on the tree. The connection appeared to be through Moritz Rosenberg’s wife Berta Blum, whose mother was Amalie Katz, but I couldn’t quite sort out how Robert Katz, Amanda’s father, was related to Amalie Katz.

I contacted Amanda, and she confirmed the connection and said that Berta Blum was in fact her relative—her third cousin, once removed, through Berta’s mother Amalie Katz and Amanda’s father Robert Katz. Even better, Amanda had been in touch with Moritz and Berta’s daughter Ruth (born Rebecca) and was able to provide me with more information about Ruth and her brother Theodore and their children.

For example, Amanda shared that Ruth had told her that her brother Theodore had enlisted in the US Army in the intelligence division and that the army had him change his surname from Rosenberg to Rogers since he was being sent to Germany. This helped me locate Theodore’s draft registration, which I had had trouble locating when searching for Theodore Rosenberg.

Theodore registered for the draft on February 15, 1942, and was still working for the venetian blinds company at that time. As you can see, he crossed out Rosenberg on his draft registration and inserted Rogers as his surname.

Theodore Rosenberg/Rogers, World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

Ruth Rosenberg married Henry Hammer (born Hammerschlag) after the war; their New York City marriage license is dated June 12, 1945.6 Henry was born on March 29, 1919, in Giessen, Germany.7 In 1950, Ruth and Henry were living in New York City, and Henry was working as a salesman for wholesale dry goods company. Ruth and Henry would have two children.8

Meanwhile, in 1950, Moritz, Berta, and Theodore were living together (along with Berta’s mother Amalie Blum) in New York City. Moritz and Berta now were in the wholesale liquor business together, and Theodore was continuing to sell venetian blinds.

National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 4547; Page: 3; Enumeration District: 31-1731, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census

Theodore didn’t marry until 1960 when he was 39 years old.9 His wife was Sylvia Kapp (originally Kappenmacher), born on February 20, 1938, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to Willi Kappenmacher and Erna Wolf. Sylvia and her parents had immigrated to the US on June 8, 1946,10 and were living in New York City in 1950. Theodore and Sylvia had two children born in the 1960s.

Sadly, those children lost their father when they were very young as Theodore died on November 13, 1971, at the age of fifty.11 He was survived not only by his wife and children, but also by both of his parents and his sister Ruth and her family.

Fortunately, Theodore’s father and especially his mother and sister were graced with very long lives. Moritz Rosenberg died on September 22, 1976, five years after his son. He had turned 89 years old just a week before.12

Berta Blum Rosenberg achieved a remarkable distinction—living to 112 years and becoming the oldest living Jewish person in the world at that time, as reported in her obituary in the January 30, 2009, Hackensack (NJ) Record:

Berta Blum Rosenberg obit

The Record Hackensack, New Jersey • Fri, Jan 30, 2009 Page L6

Berta died on January 28, 2009, in New York.13 She was survived by her daughter Ruth and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Her daughter Ruth also lived a long life. She died on March 8, 2021, at the age in 96; her husband Henry Hammer had predeceased her by many years, having passed away on May 17, 1986, at the age of 67.14 Ruth was survived by her children and grandchildren as well as the children and grandchildren of her brother Theodore.

Those children and grandchildren of Ruth and Theodore create a link between my friend Amanda and myself. They are our mutual cousins—the descendants of my cousin, Moritz Rosenberg, and Amanda’s cousin, Berta Blum.

Isn’t genealogy fun?

  1. Amanda also shares some DNA with my husband, but given the different ancestral homes of each of them and the very small amount of DNA shared, it is likely just endogamy. ↩
  2. Theodore Jack Rosenberg a/k/a Jakob Teo Rosenberg, Declaration of Intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 561) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 438701-439600), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  3. Moritz Rosenberg, Declaration of Intention, (Roll 548) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 426401-427400), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  4. Ibid. ↩
  5. Moritz Rosenberg and family, 1940 US Census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02670; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 31-1885, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census. See image below. ↩
  6. Ruth R Rosenberg, Gender Female, Marriage License Date 12 Jun 1945
    Marriage License Place Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse Henry M Hammer. License Number 14437, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number: 21, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  7. Henry Hammerschlag World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 ↩
  8. Henry Hammer and family, 1950 US census, National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 4377; Page: 19; Enumeration District: 31-2183, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩
  9. Theodore Rogers, Gender Male, Marriage License Date 1960, Marriage License Place Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse Sylvia Kapp, License Number 11021, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  10. Kappenmacher, ship manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957, Ship or Roll Number: Marine Tiger, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957.  Erna Kapp, SSACI, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. ↩
  11. Theodore Rogers, Birth Date 17 Jan 1921, Death Date 13 Nov 1971, SSN 116105571, Enlistment Branch ARMY, Enlistment Date 3 Mar 1943, Discharge Date 23 Dec 1945, Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 ↩
  12. Moritz Rosenberg, SSDI, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014. Headstone at Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/36414768/moritz-rosenberg: accessed 07 August 2023), memorial page for Moritz Rosenberg (15 Sep 1887–Sep 1976), Find a Grave Memorial ID 36414768, citing Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, USA; Maintained by dalya d (contributor 46972551). ↩
  13. Berta Rosenberg, SSDI, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  14. Henry Hammer, Age 67, Birth Date 29 Mar 1919, Death Date 17 May 1986
    Death Place North Bergen, Hudson, New Jersey, USA, New Jersey State Archives; Trenton, New Jersey; New Jersey, Death Indexes, 1904-2000, Ancestry.com. New Jersey, U.S., Death Index, 1848-1878, 1901-2017 ↩

Rebecca Blumenfeld Rosenberg’s Daughter-in-Law Bella: An Admirable Woman

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Rebecca Blumenfeld and Mendel Rosenberg’s second child was their son Joseph. As we saw, Joseph was born on February 4, 1886, in Rosenthal, Germany, and married Bella Oppenheim on February 21, 1913, in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. Bella was born there on June 8, 1891, to Aron Oppenheim and Hannchen Klebe. Bella’s sister Emma Oppenheim had married Meier Blumenfeld III on April 5, 1905, in Bad Hersfeld. Meier, the son of Giedel Blumenfeld and Gerson Blumenfeld, her first cousin, once removed, was thus Joseph Rosenberg’s first cousin, since their mothers Giedel and Rebecca were sisters.

Joseph and Bella had one child, Kurt, born in Sobernheim, Germany, on April 20, 1914.1 As I wrote in my earlier post, Sobernheim is not in the Hesse region where both Joseph and Bella were born and raised and where they married, but over 160 miles away in the Rhine Palatinate region.

Tragically, as we saw, Joseph, who was a doctor, died on May 4, 1922, at the age of 36, and was buried in Frankfurt, so perhaps he and his family had relocated from Sobernheim. His son Kurt was only eight years old when he lost his father.

Bella remarried a year after losing Joseph. Her second husband was Arthur Marx, born in Kempten, Germany, on August 4, 1890. They married in Frankfurt on June 22, 1923, in Frankfurt, and were living in Frankfurt.

Marriage of Bella Oppenheim Rosenberg to Arthur Marx, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Year Range: 1923, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Kurt immigrated to the United States on October 16, 1937, when he was 23.2 His mother Bella and stepfather Arthur left Germany for the United States on May 27, 1938, and arrived in New York on June 2, 1938.

Arthur and Bella Marx passenger manifest, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 5; Page Number: 142, Ship or Roll Number: Europa, 
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Bella Oppenheim Rosenberg Marx then played a pivotal role in saving her niece Ruth Blumenfeld, the daughter of Emma Oppenheim and Meier Blumenfeld III, as I wrote about here. According to Ruth’s grandson Matthew, Bella, Ruth’s aunt, sponsored Ruth’s entry into the United States on March 4, 1940. Ruth was the only member of Emma and Meier’s family to survive the Holocaust. Her parents and her two sisters and their families were murdered by the Nazis. Matthew shared this photograph of Bella with her niece Ruth and Ruth’s husband Leo Friedman.

Bella Oppenheim Marx, Leo Friedman, and Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

On the 1940 census, Bella and Arthur were living in Brooklyn, New York, and Arthur was working as a bank clerk and Bella as a practical nurse. They had two boarders living with them in addition to a niece (not Ruth), but not their son Kurt.

Arthur Marx and family 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, Kings, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02580; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 24-1310, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

Kurt, like his father Joseph, had become a doctor and was residing at Boulevard Hospital in Queens, New York, at the time of the 1940 census.2 He registered for the draft on October 16, 1940.

Kurt Rosenberg World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

After the war Kurt married Gertrude Stein,3 and in 1950 they were living in Queens and Kurt was practicing medicine.4 Kurt and Gertrude would have three children.

Unfortunately, like his father before him, Kurt died too young. He was 56 years old when he died suddenly on January 28, 1970, at the hospital where he worked as a gynecologist in Queens, New York. He was survived by his wife and children as well as his mother Bella.5

Bella died at the age of 94 on December 22, 1985.6 She had outlived her first husband Joseph Rosenberg and then her second husband Arthur Marx, who died on November 14, 1963, as well her son Kurt.7 She also had outlived her niece Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman, whose life she had helped to save back in 1940. Although she was only related to me by her marriage to my cousin Joseph Rosenberg, I feel a deep respect and a connection to her because of the life she lived and the things she endured along the way.

  1. Kurt Rosenberg, World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 ↩
  2. Kurt Rosenberg, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, Queens, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02721; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 41-105, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩ ↩
  3.  New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Queens, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  4. Kurt Rosenberg and family, 1950 US census, United States of America, Bureau of the Census; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007; Record Group Number: 29; Residence Date: 1950; Home in 1950: New York, Queens, New York; Roll: 4301; Sheet Number: 10; Enumeration District: 41-1012, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩
  5. Obituary for Kurt Rosenberg, Daily News, New York, New York, Thu, Jan 29, 1970
    Page 318. Kurt Rosenberg, Gender Male, Birth Date 20 Apr 1914, Death Date Jan 1970
    Claim Date 7 Mar 1970, SSN 072164680, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  6. Bella Marx, Social Security Number 079-22-4508, Birth Date 8 Jun 1891, Issue year Before 1951, Issue State New York, Last Residence 11375, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date Dec 1985, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014; Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/77845632/bella-marx: accessed 29 May 2023), memorial page for Bella Marx (unknown–22 Dec 1985), Find a Grave Memorial ID 77845632, citing Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens County, New York, USA; Maintained by Athanatos (contributor 46907585). ↩
  7. Arthur Marx, Age 73, Birth Date abt 1890, Death Date 14 Nov 1963, Death Place Queens, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number 14536, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩

Hilde Blumenfeld Meinrath, Part II: Leaving Germany and Life in Brazil

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As we saw in my prior post, I had learned more about Hilde Blumenfeld Meinrath, thanks to connections made through her granddaughter Gabriela. I learned that after spending four years in New York working as a German-English translator, Hilde decided to return to Germany in 1932 for what was initially supposed to be an extended visit with her family. But then she met and married her husband Ludwig Meinrath and decided to stay longer. She found employment as a translator and secretary for the American author, William March.

But everything began to change after Hitler came to power.

As Hilde reported in her Shoah Foundation interview,  her employer William March was attacked by Nazi youths because he was mistakenly identified as Jewish and ended up in the hospital. He decided to leave Germany and urged Hilde to leave before it was too late; he invited her to come and work for him in New York. .1

Meanwhile, a month after Hitler came to power in April 1933, Hilde’s husband Ludwig, who had  been working as a representative for German companies making ribbons and wool products, lost his job as a sales agent because he was Jewish.. So Hilde and Ludwig agreed it was time to leave Germany.2

But Hilde and Ludwig disagreed about where to go, according to their son Roberto. Hilde wanted to return to New York, but Ludwig feared that he would be unable to make a living there with only a high school education. He had a cousin Helmut in Rio de Janeiro who persuaded him that life was wonderful there, so they went to Brazil in 1934, even though neither of them knew any Portuguese.3

HIlde and Ludwig Meinrath ship manifest, Month: Band 424 (Mär 1934)
Staatsarchiv Hamburg. Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934

Hilde continued to be a true go-getter. Roberto wrote:

Upon arrival in Rio by ship, and literally one block from the harbor, was Rio’s largest high rise of the day (some 20 stories).  On top of the building was a large advertising poster for US Steel.  My mom walked right into the building to find out whether US Steel would be interested in a German/English secretary, not knowing that at that time Brazilian secretaries were mostly male.  Of course, at that time, Rio was Brazil’s capital and … home to the president of US Steel, who immediately hired her at a salary that was higher than what cousin Helmut was then earning, after a year in Rio.  Anyway, due to my mom’s high salary, my father was able to dedicate his time to learn Portuguese and to become a wholesale textile salesman for several companies.

Hilde and Ludwig’s first child (Gabriela’s father) Pedro John Meinrath was born in 1936; according to Roberto, his mother insisted that Pedro have an American/English middle name, presumably because of her fond memories of living in the United States.

Meanwhile, back in Germany, conditions worsened for Hilde’s parents and her sister Gretel and her family. After Kristallnacht in November, 1938, Salomon Blumenfeld and his son-in-law David Katz were arrested and sent to Buchenwald.4 After they were released, Hilde used her connections and borrowed money to bring her parents to Brazil. Hilde stated in her Shoah Foundation interview that when her parents arrived in Brazil, her father looked emaciated  from his time in Buchenwald, despite the fact that his son-in-law had given Salomon half of his own rations so that Salomon would survive.  5

Hilde’s parents lived with her and her family in Rio for a short time, but according to Hilde, the climate there didn’t agree with them, so she and Ludwig purchased a small house in Petropolis, a city in the mountains north of Rio for her parents, and they moved out of their apartment in Rio and moved to a rented room. When the war in Europe started, Ludwig’s import business suffered, so Hilde had to work full-time to help support the family. Pedro, who was just a four year old at the time, stayed with his grandparents in Petropolis, and Hilde and Ludwig would come on the weekends to be with them all. 6

Here are two photographs that Gabriela shared with me of Pedro with his maternal grandparents Salomon and Malchen Blumenfeld:

Malchen Levi, Pedro Meinrath, and Salomon Blumenfeld c. 1939 Courtesy of the family

Pedro Meinrath with his parents and maternal grandparents c. 1940 Courtesy of the family

Ludwig and Hilde’s second child Roberto came along five years later in 1941—he was, as he wrote, “a surprise baby.” Hilde’s job at the US Embassy ended up being important in saving Roberto’s life.  When Roberto contracted diphtheria when he was three years old, his mother Hilde was able through her job at the American Embassy to obtain life-saving penicillin, which was not otherwise readily available in Brazil at that time because of the war.7

Hilde Blumenfeld Meinrath with her sons c. 1941 Courtesy of the family

Pedro Meinrath, Salomon and Malchen Blumenfeld, Hilde Blumenfeld Meinrath, Roberto Meinrath 1944 in Petropolis Courtesy of the family

According to Roberto, after the war ended in 1945, Ludwig was able to restart his import business, and Hilde and Roberto moved to Petropolis. But Hilde’s parents at that point decided to leave Brazil because there was no kosher food or orthodox synagogue in Petropolis; they went to New York where Hilde’s sister Gretel was living. Hilde and her sons stayed in Petropolis until 1950 when Hilde and Roberto moved back to Rio. Pedro stayed in Petropolis where he went to boarding school until he graduated and went to university.

Malchen and Salomon Blumenfeld USA 1953 Courtesy of the family

Roberto described his life in Rio as an idyllic adventure for a young boy; he sadly described the changes that came to Rio in the 1960s:

I basically grew up as a single child in Rio, right in between Copacabana and Ipanema beaches.  Once or twice a week, I helped fishermen bring in their nets with piles of fish and, as compensation, got a free take home fish.  At that time, Rio had trees everywhere, few cars, cobblestone streets and tramways (which I took every day to school).  With the advent of the car industry in Brazil in the sixties, Rio’s streets were asphalted and widened, trees had to be cut down as most of the buildings had been built without garages and cars had to park on streets and sidewalks.  I miss old Rio, new Rio is sort of a tourist mecca only because of the beaches and the largest city park in the world.

Hilde and Ludwig belonged to a liberal Jewish synagogue in Rio, and Hilde insisted that Roberto attend after school classes in Hebrew and Jewish history. Roberto described an experience that ended up being a turning point in his life:

Because our synagogue was not very large, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services were held in the headquarters of one of Rio’s great soccer teams… and while watching the team practice during the 1959 Yom Kippur service, I was asked whether I would be interested in representing our congregation in the year-long youth leadership training program in Israel.  I jumped at that, as I sought personal freedom from what I felt to be a fairly strong-willed mom.

Roberto’s trip to Israel in 1960 allowed him to meet and get to know Hilde’s sister Jenny and her husband Sigmund Warburg. And thus he was able to give me information about Jenny and Sigmund and answer the questions I’d been hoping to answer when I wrote the blog post about the three sisters back in May, 2022. More on that in my next post.

But first a photograph that Gabriela shared with me of Hilde and her sons taken at her 100th birthday party in 2011. She died six years later in 2017 at the age of 106. She was truly a remarkable woman.

Pedro Meinrath, Hilde Blumenfeld Meinrath, and Roberto Meinrath 2011 Courtesy of the family

 

 

 

 

  1. The references in this post to the interview of Hilde Meinrath and the information contained therein are from her interview with the Shoah Foundation, March 18, 1998, which is in the archive of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. For more information: http://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi  Roberto, Hilde’s son, also told me this story in his emails to me. ↩
  2. Ibid. ↩
  3. All the information in this post attributed to Roberto Meinrath as well as the quotations were shared through emails sent between February 11 and February 16, 2023. ↩
  4. Phone conversation with Michael Katz, March 9, 2023. ↩
  5. See Note 1, supra. As we will see in a later post, William March helped get Gretel and David Katz out of Germany and into the US. ↩
  6. See Notes 1 and 3, supra, . ↩
  7. See Note 3, supra. ↩

Rudolph Meyer: “A Great Man”

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Back in late December, a new reader, Candice, left a comment on my blog saying that her grandparents were Rudolph Meyer and Ruth Cohn and that we were related. I love when a new cousin finds my blog and seeks to connect with me.

Candice and I are fifth cousins, once removed, through my Blumenfeld branch. Her grandfather Rudolph was the son of Rebecca Strauss, the grandson of Dusschen Blumenfeld Strauss, the great-grandson of Isaak Blumenfeld I, the great-great-grandson of Moses Blumenfeld I, and the great-great-great-grandson of Abraham Blumenfeld I, my four times great-grandfather. This chart shows Rudolph’s relationship to my father; they were fourth cousins, so Rudolph was my fourth cousin, once removed:

I wrote about Rudolph and his family here, but Candice and her father Albert were able to give me a more complete portrait of Rudolph and his wife Ruth Cohn. I already knew that Rudolph was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1908, and had arrived in the US from Germany in 1937 and settled first in New York City. By 1940 he was living in Albany, New York, and working for Cotrell & Leonard, a manufacturer of graduation caps and gowns.

Rudolph’s son Albert filled in some of the gaps in the story in the obituary he wrote about his father in 1984. Albert wrote in part:

Rudolf Raphael Meyer was born in Bonn, Germany, on March 17, 1908. He was to experience many of the history shaping events which influenced the course of his life and development. As the child of Albert and Rebecca Meyer with his sister Ilse he at the ages through 6-10 went through the trauma of World War I. The war brought hardship to him as did the period following it. The economic chaos of Weimar Germany with its rampant inflation left its mark on him in that no matter how well might do, he felt he never knew if he and his family would have enough just to provide for the basic necessities of life.

As the economic and political situation remained explosive in Germany and with Anti-semitism on the rise, he, his sister, and mother, his father having died, immigrated to the United States. However, life in the new country soon underwent its earthquake also with the coming of the Great Depression and World War II. The Depression only added to his feelings of anxiety regarding economic matters and [he] became a fervent supporter of the new deal with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then Harry Truman representing the type of leadership he felt a society needed.

During the later years of the 30s he met Ruth Cohn and after a 3 year courtship they were married on August 10, 1941.

Rudolph enlisted in the US Army on September 6, 1943, and successfully petitioned for naturalization three months later in December 1943 from Spartanburg, South Carolina, where he was then stationed. What I did not know was that Rudolph then served overseas in Europe, fighting against the Nazis and the country where he was born.

Candice shared this photograph of her grandfather Rudy (as he was known) in uniform during World War II.

Rudolph Meyer during World War II. Courtesy of the family

Rudy wrote this poem about his outfit in World War II, the Blue Devils. Obviously, he was a proud American soldier out to defeat his former home country.

“Blue Devils,” by Rudolph Meyer c. 1944 (c) Courtesy of the family

What I also had not realized until Candice shared the family story is that Ruth was pregnant when Rudy left for Europe; their son Albert was born while he was abroad, fighting the Nazis. Rudy did not meet his child until after the war was over when Albert was already sixteen months old. Albert addressed this in his 1984 obituary for his father:

[Albert was born] while [Rudolf] was stationed overseas in Italy. The notice of his birth filled him with special joy as can be told by a reading of his letters from the war. As an additional sacrifice he did not get to see his child for another year.

Although the war was difficult and he was certainly not a young man while fighting in both North Africa and Italy for the Allies, his experience in the army gave him great pride. He felt he contributed to the service of his country and had helped to smash the Fascist Beast that had destroyed so many Europeans who could [not] leave and so many of his religious faith.

In fact among the things that gave him pride were his experience as a soldier, his role as a law abiding citizen, a good family provider. His citizenship was marked by regular voting, paying debts, attention by regular public affairs, and occasionally involvement in Democratic Party politics.

Here is a photograph of Albert as a baby taken while his father was away at war:

Albert Meyer Courtesy of the family

Ruth wrote this wonderful tribute to her husband, Rudy, whom she considered a “great man.”

Essay by Ruth Cohn Meyer (c) Courtesy of the family

A Great Man

My choice for the meaning of the word Great would be important. I write of a great man that I knew many years ago. His name was Rudolph Meyer. Now Rudy had a loving wife, and as is the nature of things, she became pregnant—and Rudy and his wife were very happy.

But then came fears of war from a country across the sea—a country from far away which hundreds of people were fleeing for they were afraid of what might now happen at this time. And Rudy and many of his fellow countrymen had found refuge in this country, the good old USA.

Then came the day when their fears for their country were alas confirmed. Atrocities! Tortures—and then War and Holocausts! Rudy immediately went to enlist. But at the recruitment center, he was told that because of his poor eyesight he would have to be rejected. But Rudy insisted—he must fight against the evil ones were who trying to destroy civilization. So—Rudy went to war!

I was sad. I was pregnant—but I knew in my heart that it was for those qualities in him—great devotion to family and country—that I loved him. And though I was sad—I was proud. My Love was a great man.

I waited—I would go to the grocery store. A pound of butter, if you please. Hey, Lady—don’t you know there’s a war on. Ah,yes—there’s a war on over there!

It is 4 years later—the end of the war. Rudy comes home. He holds in his arms a loving wife and 16 mo. old son. A great man has come home to us.

This was obviously a strong and loving marriage that endured for many years after Rudy returned home. This photograph of Ruth and their son Albert was taken after the war.

Albert Meyer and Ruth Cohn Meyer. 1948. Courtesy of the family

As I wrote in my earlier post, Rudy and Ruth moved to the Bronx after the war, and in 1950 they were living in the Bronx, and Rudy was now an accountant for motion pictures distributors. Ruth was an elementary schoolteacher.  Rudy’s mother Rebecca and Ruth’s father Benjamin were also living with Rudy and Ruth and their child, and Benjamin was working as a tailor.

I want to express my gratitude to Candice and her father Albert for sharing these stories and photographs about my cousin Rudolph Meyer, a man who truly lived up to his wife Ruth’s description, a great man.

 

 

Irmgard Johanna (Joan) Lorch Staple (1923-2022): A Woman Ahead of Her Times

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Last month my cousin Wink Lorch informed me that her aunt and my fourth cousin, once removed, Joan Lorch Staple had passed away on November 27, 2022, after living a remarkable life for more than 99 years. Joan was related to me through our mutual ancestors, Jacob Seligmann and Martha Mayer, she through their daughter Martha and me through their son Moritz, my three-times great-grandfather.

Joan was born in Offenbach, Germany, on June 13, 1923, escaped from Nazi Germany to England with her parents during the 1930s, and married Peter Staple in England in 1952. Together they had two sons and immigrated to the US, settling first in Alabama and later in Buffalo, New York. Joan also had a long and successful career while raising her family; she was truly a woman ahead of her times..

Joan had a remarkable career as a scientist and as a scholar and teacher, as described below in her obituary, and she wrote two memoirs about her life: Chance and Choice: My First Thirty Years (2007) and Change and Challenge: My Life After Thirty (2009). I have read them both, and they are fascinating. They tell not only the story of Joan and her family, but provide valuable historical insights into living in Germany before the Nazi era, the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era in Germany in the 1930s, life in England during World War II, and racism in Alabama before and during the Civil Rights movement, as well as the struggles of being a woman scientist in the years before, during, and after the Women’s Movement.

But the obituary written by Joan’s sons tells her story much better than I can. Thank you to my cousin Wink Lorch, Joan’s niece, for sharing it with me.  

Irmgard Joan Staple: Path-Breaking Canisius Scientist and Women’s Advocate Has Died

Joan Staple (known professionally as Dr. I.J. Lorch) passed away at the age of 99 on November 27, 2022, in her home at Canterbury Woods, Williamsville, New York.

A Professor of Biology at Canisius College for more than 30 years, Dr. Lorch also pioneered women’s studies programs at Canisius. Her ground-breaking research in the field of cell biology at the University of Buffalo was recognized by the New York Times and led to more than 30 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Early Life and Education

Dr. Lorch was born into a Jewish family in Offenbach am Main, Germany. Her father was a co-owner of Rowenta, the innovative electric appliance brand. Her family escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Birmingham, England in 1938. Lorch’s forced emigration from Germany is marked by a series of Stolpersteine — commemorative bronze plaques — set into the sidewalk outside her former home at 19 August Bebel Ring.

She attended public schools in Offenbach until 1935 when Jewish children were banned from secondary education. After emigrating, she continued her education at King Edwards High School for Girls and later graduated from Birmingham University. She went on to earn a PhD in histochemistry from the University of London in 1949.

Scientific Career

As one of the very few women working in the ‘hard sciences’ at that time, she continued her post-doctoral research on cellular aging at Kings College, London. Rosalind Franklin worked in the lab next door. The many challenges facing women in building scientific careers are well documented in the struggle to properly credit Franklin for her critical role in discovering the structure of DNA.

In 1952, Dr. Lorch married Dr. Peter H. Staple, research dentist and fellow post-doctoral student. For the next 10 years she became a homemaker raising two sons and over-seeing the family’s move to Birmingham, Alabama in 1959, and then to Buffalo in 1963.

Once in Buffalo, Dr. Lorch rejoined her King’s College mentor and colleague, James Danielli, who was then the Director of The Center for Theoretical Biology at the University of Buffalo. The team was funded by NASA and carried out pioneering work on how cells age and whether living cells can be created from cellular components. This work came to a spectacular conclusion from the controversy created by the Nov. 13, 1970 New York Times article declaring that University of Buffalo scientists had documented “the first artificial synthesis of a living and reproducing cells”. Hundreds of media outlets picked up on the story that UB scientists were creating living cells that might be shipped by NASA on spaceships to Mars.

These reports misrepresented the research and the ensuing publicity upended the  research agenda. In 1973, Dr. Lorch left the University of Buffalo accepting an offer from Canisius College. 

She shifted her professional focus from research to teaching becoming Professor and Chair of the Department of Biology. To address the discrimination against women in scientific fields, with the support of the Canisius College leadership, she spent over 20 years training and hiring women scientists and also broadening the scope for women’s participation in the management of the College. Dr. Lorch founded the women’s studies program at Canisius, now called Women and Gender Studies. She created a course for non-majors called the Biology of Women (sex ed for college kids) that soon attracted so many men that she had to limit enrollment.

In recognition of her devoted advocacy for women, in 1992 Canisius established the annual I. Joan Lorch Award to “honor a person who has made a significant contribution to women and who exemplifies the pursuit of liberation and justice regarding sex, gender, and sexuality.”

Following her retirement from Canisius in 2003, Dr. Lorch published a two-volume memoir: Chance and Choice (2007) and Change and Challenge (2009).

As recounted in her memoir, Dr. Lorch witnessed many of the 20th century’s historic events. She saw Hitler speak at the opening of an autobahn near Frankfurt in 1935, and Martin Luther King at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo in 1967. She personally knew the discoverers of DNA (Watson, Crick and Franklin) and saw the fruits of her own research on amoeba used for cloning new organisms.

In 2019, Canisius College awarded Dr. Lorch the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters to celebrate “her exceptional achievements in scientific research, unwavering dedication as an educator and for being a steadfast advocate for women.”

Since learning to ski as child in Switzerland, Dr. Lorch was also an avid outdoors woman. She skied well into her eighth decade in Europe and North America and was also an active member of the Adirondack Mountain Club. In recent years, she loved playing Scrabble with her family and connecting on-line daily with other players of “Words with Friends”.

She was pre-deceased by her husband of almost 60 years, Dr. Peter Staple, Professor of Oral Biology at the University of Buffalo’s Dental School. She is survived by her sons Gregory (Siobhan) of Chevy Chase, Maryland, and Alan of Chestertown, Maryland; four grandchildren, Nicole, Nico, Justin and Camille; and one great grandchild, Naomi Joan.

A memorial service will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Amherst in 2023. Donations, in lieu of flowers, should be made to Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. https://www.hospicebuffalo.com/give-get-involved/donate-now

A more abbreviated version of her obituary appeared here in The Buffalo News on December 4, 2022.

Joan’s life and career are an inspiration. She overcame leaving her homeland, adjusting to two different countries (and two different regions within the US), learning English, separating from her family, facing prejudice and discrimination, and nevertheless having a highly successful career balanced with a highly successful family life. Her two memoirs taught me so much about grace and strength and persistence.

My Fifth Cousin Matthew, Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman’s Grandson

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Happy 2023, everyone! For today’s post I am updating a post I wrote back in April 2022. Thank you to my cousin Matthew Steinhart for making this post possible.

Back on April 22, 2022, I wrote about the children of Meier Blumenfeld III and Emma Oppenheim and the teamwork it took to locate their three daughters, Gertrud, Ruth (also known as Bertha), and Hanna. Meier, my second cousin, three times removed, was the son of Giedel Blumenfeld, Isaak’s daughter, and her first cousin, once removed, Gerson Blumenfeld I (not to be confused with Giedel’s brother Gerson Blumenfeld II, whose story I just completed.)

Meier and Emma and their family were destroyed by the Holocaust. Of the five of them, only Ruth managed to escape from Germany in time to survive the Holocaust. The others were all murdered by the Nazis.

Ruth immigrated to the US and settled in New York City, where she married Leo Friedman on March 21, 1942, as I wrote about here. Ruth and Leo had two children, and I was recently contacted by one of Ruth and Leo’s grandsons, Matthew Steinhart, son of Eileen Dinah Friedman Steinhart.

Matthew works in video production and is the manager of the video production team at the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Washington, DC.1 He created three short videos about his search to learn more about his grandparents and their families. With his permission and courtesy of the USHMM, I can provide links to those three videos. They are very touching, and I highly recommend you spend the time watching them.

Matthew also shared some wonderful photographs of his grandmother and her family and generously has allowed me to share them on the blog. He also shared some family stories and other information to fill in some of the holes in the story of Ruth and her family that were left unanswered in my April 22, 2022 post.

One of those unanswered questions involved the fate of Ruth’s sister Gertrud. Yad Vashem reported that she had been killed in the Holocaust, but an Arolsen Archive document indicated that she and two children had left for the US. Which was true? Sadly, Matthew confirmed for me that the Yad Vashem information was accurate. He wrote that “the story I was told of Gertrud was that she and her husband and children intended to leave but Erwin, her husband, had an eye condition which prevented him from emigrating. Gertrud refused to leave without him, and eventually all four were deported to Lodz. All four perished.”2

I also asked Matthew about Ruth’s younger sister Hanna because again there were records that suggested she had escaped the Holocaust because she had a visa for Cuba. But Matthew had to confirm that Hanna was in fact killed in the Holocaust. He wrote that he was told that “she and her husband [Siegfried Levi] took a train to Portugal with the intent to emigrate to Cuba. In fact, Hanna had sent some of her furniture and clothing to Ruth in anticipation for her eventual arrival to the US. Apparently, this train was stopped and turned around to France. Both were put into slave labor camps. Hanna was eventually deported to Auschwitz and died. Her husband survived and emigrated from Luxembourg.”3

Matthew’s grandmother Ruth was sponsored by her aunt Bella Oppenheim Marx, her mother’s sister, and was the only one who was able to leave Germany and get to the US safely.4

Matthew has a large collection of old photographs of the family, but unfortunately, he has been only able to identify the people in a limited number of those photographs. I am sharing only those he could label with certainty. Most of those are of his grandparents, Ruth Blumenfeld and Leo Friedman.

Here are two photographs of Ruth, one as a baby and the other as a toddler.

Ruth Blumenfeld, c. 1920. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

Ruth Blumenfeld, c. 1922 Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

These two photos show Ruth as a younger adult, but are undated. They may have been taken in the US since Ruth was nineteen when she immigrated, but they also might have been taken in Germany. We do not know who the woman is on the left in the first photo or who the child is in the second.

Ruth Blumenfeld on right. Date and place unknown. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

Ruth Blumenfeld with unknown child. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

The next photograph is of Ruth and Leo with Ruth’s aunt, Bella Oppenheim Marx, the woman who sponsored Ruth when she left Germany in 1940. I am sorry the image is so small.

Bella Oppenheim Marx, Leo Friedman, and Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

This next group of photographs were taken in 1972 when Ruth and Leo visited their respective hometowns in Germany. Unfortunately we cannot identify who the couple is standing with Ruth or where these photos were taken—presumably either Bad Hersfeld, where Ruth grew up, or Crailsheim, Leo’s hometown.

Ruth Blumenfeld and Leo Friedman, 1972, in Germany. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

Ruth and Leo in Germany, 1972 Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

Ruth with unknown couple, 1972, in Germany. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

Speaking of Bad Hersfeld, here is a postcard depicting the town sent to the family of Leo Friedman in Forest Hills, New York, from someone named Minna.. I can’t decipher the date on the postmark, but it must have been written after June 1, 1963, because that is when the US adopted zip codes.

Thank you to Simone Simiot of the GerSIG Facebook group for translating the message on the card; she said that Minna wrote that she had moved and gave her new address. She said it was fine that she moved because Dudenstrasse had become too busy and noisy. She also said that she could have moved in with her son Josef but she doesn’t want to be away/move from her pretty Bad Hersfeld. And she sent regards to Tante Bella—Aunt Bella Oppenheim Marx. I don’t know who Minna is, but if she was a relative, she must have been related to Ruth’s mother.

Since there are so many other photographs that Matthew cannot provide labels for, I have suggested that he contact Ava Cohn a/k/a Sherlock Cohn, the photogenealogist, for help in identifying the people in the other photographs. I hope that he has success doing that.

I am very grateful to my cousin Matthew for sharing his videos, his photographs, and his stories with me. It is always good to be able to have faces to put with the names and answers to questions, but it is especially meaningful to be able to connect with a new cousin who can share all this with me.

  1. Email from Matthew Steinhart, September 24, 2022. ↩
  2. Email from Matthew Steinhart, October 11, 2022. ↩
  3. Ibid. ↩
  4. Ibid. I will be writing more about Bella in an upcoming post. ↩