Doing family history research is a labor of love. I have said that many times over the almost fifteen years that I’ve been engaged in this work. Being able to honor the memories of those I never knew but who are somehow related to me is a joy and a privilege. Connecting with and getting to know so many living “long-lost” cousins has given me great joy.

Researching the family of Clara Rothschild and Moritz Katz has led me to a really special opportunity for such joy—-the opportunity to talk to their son Hal Katz, my one-hundred-year-old fourth cousin, once removed. Imagine having lived through an entire century and seeing all the horrors and all the miracles since 1924—the Holocaust, World War II, the creation of the state of Israel, the Cold War, the social activism and unrest of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Vietnam War, all the civil rights movements, the election of the first African-American president, the COVID pandemic, and the introduction of so many scientific inventions good and bad—-the atomic bomb, television, cell phones, the internet, and now AI. It’s mind-boggling how much the world has changed in the last hundred years.

Hal Katz has lived through it all, starting as a small boy in Germany, living in a small town, escaping from Germany in 1938 shortly after his bar mitzvah, settling in New York City as a young teenager, fighting for the US in World War II, building a lifelong career with General Electric, marrying and having children, and now still living on his own, playing bridge, and talking to me on Zoom as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Over the course of three Zoom calls, I have been blessed to talk to Hal as well as his daughter, his nieces, his nephew, and another Rothschild cousin, all of whom are my cousins.

And so now as I turn to the story of the sixth of Gerson and Fanny’s children who lived to adulthood, their daughter Clara Rothschild, I feel so fortunate that I was able to hear her story and the stories of her family from her son Helmut Harold “Hal” Katz. Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this post came from Zoom calls or emails with Hal and members of the family or from interviews with Hal or Hal’s brother Otto done by Otto’s daughter Judy, Hal’s niece.¹

As we saw, Clara Rothschild was born on July 15, 1891, in Waltersbrueck, Germany.  According to Hal, this photograph of Clara was probably taken when she was nineteen and working as an apprentice bookkeeper in a dry goods store.

Clara Rothschild c. 1910
Courtesy of the family

On November 1, 1921, she married Moritz Katz, who was born in Neuenhain, Germany, on November 4, 1894. Here is a photograph of Moritz taken in 1912 when he was eighteen, a photograph of Clara in the 1920s, and an undated one of Clara and Moritz taken years later.

Moritz Katz in 1912. Courtesy of the family.

Clara Rothschild in the 1920s. Courtesy of the family.

Clara Rothschild and Moritz Katz undated
Courtesy of the family

Clara and Moritz had three children, Otto, born in 1922, Helmut (Hal) born in 1924, and Ilse, born in 1928. Hal told me that until he was six years old, he and his family lived with his paternal grandmother, Caroline Rosenblatt Katz, in Neuenhain. His paternal grandfather Jacob Katz had died many years before in 1899. Neuenhain was a very small village, about two hundred people. Hal’s parents and grandmother ran a grocery business out of their home selling produce grown on their farm. This is a photograph of Hal’s paternal grandmother Caroline in 1930 in Neuenhain.

Caroline Katz 1930. Courtesy of the family

Hal said that they were the only Jewish family in the village, and he never understood how his father had become so knowledgeable about Judaism and Hebrew since there was no Hebrew school in Neuenhain. The closest synagogue was within walking distance, but it was a challenge finding the ten men to make a minyan. His father was able to lead services and even acted as the kosher butcher on the side.

Here is a beautiful photograph of Hal with his older brother Otto taken when they lived in Neuenhain. Hal looks no more than two years old, so this photograph was probably taken in about 1925-1926.

Otto and Helmut Katz, c. 1925-1926. Courtesy of the family

I asked Hal what he remembered about his maternal grandfather Gerson Rothschild, and he told me that he was in the coal business. He also said that the first funeral he ever went to was Gerson’s funeral in 1930 when Hal would have been six years old.

When Hal was six, the family moved to a larger town, Borken, which was about six miles from Neuenhain and had a population of about two thousand people and more of a Jewish community than Neuenhain. There his father Moritz had a business selling the raw materials needed to make clothing. Hal compared it to being a peddler. From the way Hal spoke, it sounds like those early years of his life were happy and secure. He had many cousins from his Rothschild side—-all the children of his mother’s siblings—who were living in other towns in the Hessen region. He also had many relatives from his Katz side.

This is a photograph of the three Katz siblings taken in Borken in 1934. It was probably Ilse’s first day of school since she is holding a cone filled with candy traditionally given to children in Germany on their first day of school.

Otto, Ilse, and Hal Katz 1934 in Borken. Courtesy of the family

Of course, everything changed after Hitler came to power. In an interview Judy did with her father Otto, he reported that once the Nazis came to power, the children had to change schools as they were no longer allowed to go to school with Christians, so they went to a Jewish school. In addition, the family was forced to sell their land and their business and lived on the money from those sales until that money ran out.

In 1937 when he was fifteen, Otto left school and was doing an apprenticeship in a retail clothing store in Wolfhagen, a town about 40 miles north of Borken. Apparently this was a common practice—-to send a teenage boy to live with another Jewish family and learn a trade. In an interview with his daughter Judy,  Otto said that the store had so little business that he spent his days gardening. One day Otto was riding his bike in Wolfhagen and a group of Hitler Youths tried to take his bike from him; Otto hit them with the bike pump and escaped. When Otto told the man with whom he was apprenticing what had happened, that man contacted Moritz.

Moritz went to Wolfhagen and took Otto to Kassel to stay with relatives for six months. Fortunately, Moritz had had the foresight to see what was happening with the Nazis, and this gave him the extra incentive to work on getting them out of the country. He was able to get the necessary papers to leave Germany with the help of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society and a sponsor named Albert Decker. First, Moritz left with Otto and went to Hamburg where the two of them were able to board a ship and travel to America. Leaving Clara, Hal, and Ilse behind was very difficult because none of them knew when they would see each other again.

Hal believes this family photograph was taken not too long before Moritz and Otto left Borken for the US.

Katz family in Borken, maybe 1936. Courtesy of the family

Moritz and Otto arrived in New York on August 27, 1937.²

Fortunately, Clara was able to leave with Hal and Ilse eight months later, just a few months after Hal celebrated his bar mitzvah in Borken without his father or brother. In an interview Judy did with Hal in 2023, Hal told her that Clara and the children were living with a family from Borken, the Blums, until April 8,1938 when they left to go to the US. First, they took a train to Antwerp, where they stayed with the Tiefenbrunners at the orphanage they were running. (See earlier blog post here.) Then they boarded a freighter, a slower moving form of transport that was crowded with mostly Jewish people escaping Hitler. This photograph was taken before they boarded the ship to leave Germany on April 11, 1938.

Clara, Ilse, and Hal (on the right side of the photo) on the day they left Germany for the US in 1938. Courtesy of the family

They arrived in New York after an uncomfortable eleven day journey on April 21, 1938.³

Thanks to Moritz’s foresight, he and Clara and their children were now safely out of Germany, and they were the first ones in the extended Rothschild family to get out—-before Siegmund and before Max, Clara’s brothers.

And as we have already seen, most of the rest of the family did not escape in time. Hal said that his parents did all they could to get other family members out, but unfortunately as we have seen and as we will see, those efforts did not succeed. Hal said that they eventually lost contact with those still in Germany. When I asked why those who remained—-e.g., Clara’s sisters Katchen, Auguste, Jenny, Rosa and Amalie—-hadn’t also tried to get out of Europe when Moritz and Clara did, Hal said he thought they all just believed it would all blow over and that they would be safe.

But Clara, Moritz, Otto, Hal, and Ilse were now in New York, starting over in a new country.

More on that to come in my next post.