The Katzenstein Clan: Who Got Here First?

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Amy

One of the main questions I had about Gerson Katzenstein, my great-great-grandfather, was why did he come to the United States? Did he have other relatives who had paved the way, or was he the first in his family to arrive?

When I first did some research about Gerson almost five years ago, I was unable to find any relatives aside from his wife and children, and so I had no information about the rest of his family. But thanks to the work of Barbara Greve and David Baron, I now have a long list of names of relatives, including the names of Gerson’s siblings. I thought that there might have been other relatives living in the United States when Gerson arrived that I’d not known about during my initial research several years ago.

What I learned from Barbara Greve’s work was that Gerson was one of the eight children of Scholem Katzenstein; there were four half-siblings born to Scholem’s first wife, Gella: Hannchen (1798-1840), Mendel, who died as an infant in 1799, Jacob (1803-?), and Gela, who also died as an infant in 1808. Gerson had three full siblings born to his mother, Breine Blumenfeld: Freudchen (1809-1818), Rahel (1813-1861), and Moses, for whom the only record is a birth record dated November 4, 1814. Perhaps Moses also had died as an infant. Thus, of the eight children of Scholem Katzenstein, the only ones for whom there are records indicating survival to adulthood are Gerson, Hannchen, Jacob, and Rahel.

Gerson’s birth is recorded as somewhere between 1811 and 1815, depending on the source. He married Eva Goldschmidt of Oberlistingen sometime before 1848, when their first child, Scholem, was born in Jesberg. Two more children followed, Jacob in 1851 and Brendina (Branche in German—presumably named for Gerson’s mother) in 1853.

Gerson, Eva, and their three children left Germany and arrived in New York City on July 3, 1856. On the ship manifest, Gerson listed his occupation as a butcher and their final destination as Philadelphia.

Gerson Katzenstein and family on 1856 ship manifest
Year: 1856; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: M237, 1820-1897; Microfilm Roll: Roll 164; Line: 1; List Number: 589

Just a little over a month later, Eva gave birth to their fourth child, Perry, who was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1856. Eva had obviously been far into her pregnancy when they left Germany. Why did they leave then? Why did they go to Philadelphia? Was there another family member there? Had any of Gerson’s siblings preceded them? Or a cousin?[i] Did his wife Eva have family there?

I knew that Eva Goldschmidt had relatives already in the US. Her uncle Simon Goldschmidt had arrived in 1845 with his wife Fradchen Schoenthal, who was the aunt of Eva’s future son-in-law, Isidore Schoenthal, my great-grandfather. They were living in Pittsburgh in 1850. In 1860, Simon, at that point a widower, was living with his son Jacob in Washington, Pennsylvania. But no one from the Goldschmidt family was living in Philadelphia in 1856 when Gerson and Eva and their family arrived, at least as far as I can tell.

I decided to look more closely at Gerson’s siblings to see whether they or their children had emigrated. According to the work done by Barbara Greve and David Baron, Gerson’s half-brother Jacob married Sarchen Lion in 1829 in Jesberg, and they had nine children: Gelle (1829), presumably named for Jacob’s deceased mother, Michaele (1832), Schalum (1834); Rebecca (1826), Johanna (1838), Pauline (1841), Baruch (1844), Meier (1849), and Levi (1851). From the Greve/Baron research, it appears that neither Jacob nor any of these children left Germany.

As for Gerson’s sister, Rahel, she married Jacob Katz, and they had six children: Blumchen (1838), Moses (1839), Meier (1842), Abraham (1852), Samuel (1853), and Sanchen (1854). Of these six children, only Abraham and Samuel emigrated from Germany. According to the 1900 census, Abraham immigrated to the United States in 1872, many years after Gerson’s departure from Jesberg; he lived in Kentucky for many years.

Abraham J Katz and family 1900 US census Year: 1900; Census Place: Louisville Ward 5, Jefferson, Kentucky; Roll: 530; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 0053; FHL microfilm: 1240530

Abraham J Katz and family 1900 US census, line 39
Year: 1900; Census Place: Louisville Ward 5, Jefferson, Kentucky; Roll: 530; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 0053; FHL microfilm: 1240530

Samuel also emigrated in 1872, and also lived in Kentucky before moving and settling in Omaha, Nebraska. Rahel’s other four children did not leave Germany, although some of the next generation did. Both Samuel and Abraham thus arrived in the United States long after their uncle Gerson had emigrated in 1856, and they settled far from Philadelphia where their uncle was living.

Samuel Katz 1905 passport application
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, 1795-1905; Roll #: 669; Volume #: Roll 669 – 01 Feb 1905-28 Feb 1905

The remaining sibling who survived to adulthood was Gerson’s half-sister, Hannchen. She married Marum Mansbach, who was from Maden, Germany, which is where Hannchen and Marum lived after marrying. They had three children born in Maden: Gelle (later Henrietta) (b. 1833), Abraham (b. 1835), and Hendel (later Harry) (b. 1840). Hannchen died the day Harry was born, so Marum was left with three young children including a newborn to raise on his own. These children and their father ended up in the US, but when had they emigrated? Were they the ones who led the way for Gerson, Eva, and their children in 1856?

I went back to look at the documents relating to Gerson that I’d collected years back, and I started with the ship manifest pictured above. This time I noticed something I’d not seen before. Right below the family of Gerson Katzenstein were the names of two more people: Heinemann Mansbach, a sixteen year old male who was a peddler and headed for “Libanon,” and Malchen Mansbach, a sixteen year old female headed to Baltimore. Both were from Maden, Germany.

Ship manifest close up
Year: 1856; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: M237, 1820-1897; Microfilm Roll: Roll 164; Line: 1; List Number: 589

I hadn’t seen any connection to the Katzensteins originally since the two Mansbachs were from Maden, not Jesberg, and because they were headed to different cities, not Philadelphia. Plus I had no reason to see any connection to anyone named Mansbach. But now, thanks to the Greve/Baron work, I knew that Gerson had a niece and nephew from Maden with the surname Mansbach. Could Heinemann Mansbach be the person known later as Harry Mansbach? Could Malchen Mansbach be Henrietta, his older sister? She would have been 23 in 1856, not 16, but perhaps she, like so many others, had lied about her age. Or could this be an entirely different Mansbach not even related to Gerson Katzenstein?

And was there anyone from the Mansbach family already in the US, and if so, where? Why was Malchen going to Baltimore and Heinemann to “Libanon”? And where is “Libanon”? There is a Lebanon, Pennsylvania about 90 miles west of Philadelphia, so perhaps that is where Heinemann was headed. But why? A search of the 1860 census for Lebanon, PA, for those born in Germany did not uncover anyone who appears to have been connected to the Mansbach/Katzenstein family.

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lebanon County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Then I wondered about Hannchen Katzenstein and Marum Mansbach’s older son Abraham. Where was he when his brother was apparently sailing with their uncle Gerson? I searched for him and found an Abraham Mansbach on an 1852 ship manifest; no age was given, but he was a merchant from Hesse. The ship arrived in Baltimore on December 14, 1852. Gerson’s nephew Abraham Mansbach would have been seventeen in 1852. This could have been him.

Abraham Mansbach on 1852 passenger list “Maryland, Baltimore Passenger Lists, 1820-1948,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1961-32011-12875-22?cc=2018318 : 25 September 2015), 1820-1891 (NARA M255, M596) > 9 – Jun 2, 1852-Aug 29, 1853 > image 503 of 890; citing NARA microfilm publications M255, M596 and T844 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

Abraham Mansbach 1852 immigration card “Maryland, Baltimore Passenger Lists Index, 1820-1897,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-37337-15431-34?cc=2173933 : 17 June 2014), NARA M327, Roll 98, No. M462-M524, 1820-1897 > image 2545 of 3335; citing NARA microfilm publication M327 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

So perhaps Abraham Mansbach, Gerson’s nephew, was the first of the Katzenstein clan to come to the US. I don’t know whether he stayed in Baltimore or not, but by 1860, it appears that he was living in Philadelphia with his uncle Gerson and the other members of the Katzenstein family:

Gerson Katzenstein and family 1860 US census
Year: 1860; Census Place: Philadelphia Ward 13, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Roll: M653_1163; Page: 519; Image: 105; Family History Library Film: 805163

Gerson was working as a salesman and had a personal estate worth $400. He and Eva had had a fifth child, Hannah, who was a year old. Their oldest child Scholem was now using the name Joe and was twelve years old; Jacob was nine, Brendina was six, and Perry was three.

Gerson Katzenstein in the 1859 Philadelphia directory

Living with them were a seventeen year old clerk named Benjamin Levi and a 24 year old bookkeeper named David Frank. In addition, there was a 25 year old salesman named Abraham Anspach; this could have been Abraham Mansbach, Gerson’s nephew. Finally, there was a twenty year old domestic named “Marley Manspach;” perhaps this was the same person as the Malchen Mansbach who was listed on the ship manifest.

Closeup of Katzensteins and Mansbachs on 1860 census

But was Malchen/Marley really the daughter named Henrietta who would have been 29 in 1860, not 20? And where was Heinemann/Harry living if not with his brother and uncle? It’s too bad that the 1860 census did not include information about the relationships among those living in a household. That might have cleared some of this up.

But what did seem clear was that by 1860 my Katzenstein great-great-grandparents and the first four of their children were living in Philadelphia. It also seemed likely that at least two of the children of Gerson’s half-sister Hannchen and her husband Marum Mansbach had also arrived in the United States by then.

But many questions remained. Fortunately, David Baron helped me find some answers.

**************************

I admit that it’s been hard for me to get back into genealogy right now, but I am trying to find ways to deal with all my anger and grief, and while I look for ways of fighting back against Trumpism, I also am trying to find ways of clearing my head. Genealogy has done that for me before, and I am hoping it will help me now. This post was written before the election, and now I am trying to work on the next one.

[i] I also went through the rest of the family report prepared by David Baron to see if any of the more distant Katzenstein or Katz relatives had arrived in the US before 1856. There were none who arrived that early, although there were a few who were in the US by the 1890s and more who came after Hitler came to power.

Introducing The Katz and Katzenstein Families of Jesberg

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Amy

According to the work done by David Baron, the earliest known Jesberg Katz/enstein ancestor was Bonum Katz ,who was also known as Pinchas ha Kohen. Those two surnames actually share the same meaning and origins. The name “Katz” is an acronym for Kohen Tzedek or “priest of justice” in Hebrew and is another name like Cohen usually indicating that the father’s family descended from the Cohanim, the priestly tribe traced back to Aaron, Moses’ brother. It is a fairly common Jewish surname as is Cohen.

All I know about Bonum Katz is that he died in Jesberg sometime after 1720 and that he had at least two children: a son named Schalum Ha Cohen, and a daughter named Jitl Katz. I don’t know when or where Pinchas was born, what he did for a living, who he married, or when he died.

Deutsch: Reste der Allee im Prinzessingarten bei Jesberg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nor do I know very much about his son Schalum, though I know a little more about him than I do about Pinchas. According to the research done by David Baron, Schalum was born about 1720 in Jesberg and died there on February 3, 1774. He married a woman named Brendelchen, who was born in Treysa, Germany, and who died on May 17, 1776, in Jesberg.

According to David Baron, Schalum and Brendelchen had at least two children: my 4^th great-grandfather, Meier Katz, born sometime before 1744, in Jesberg, and his brother Schneuer ha Kohen, also known as Salomon Katz, born in Jesberg on November 11, 1752.[1] Salomon had ten children with two different wives.

Barbara Greve disagrees with David Baron as to whether or not the Katzenstein line began with Bonum Katz; she believes that that line is separate from the Katzenstein line. Whereas David believes that Schalum and Brendelchen had two sons, Salomon and Meier, Barbara believes that Meier was not their son but part of a separate family. I have at this point no way of knowing who is right and thus have included both views here for the moment. If Barbara is right, my Katzenstein line would begin with Meier Katz.

Meier Katz, my four times great-grandfather, only had one child: my third great-grandfather Abraham Schalom Ha Cohen, also known as Scholem Meier Katzenstein. It is interesting that whereas Meier used the surname Katz, his son Scholem used Katzenstein.

Deutsch: Burg Jesberg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scholem Meier Katzenstein, my third great-grandfather, thus may have been the first in my direct line to use the name Katzenstein. He was born in September 1769 and died on October 13, 1826, in Jesberg. He was an “Ellenwarenhandler,” according to Barbara Greve. Thanks to the help of the German Genealogy group on Facebook, I learned that Ellenwarenhandler is a term that was used to describe someone who sold dry goods according to specific measurements.

Scholem Katzenstein was married twice, first to Gella Katz (Katten) in January 1795 in Jesberg.[2] Gella died on January 31, 1808, after giving birth to her fourth child with Scholem, Gela. The four children born to Gella and Scholem Meier were Hannchen (1798-1840), Mendel (1799-1799), Jacob (1803-1880), and Gela (1808-1808). Only Hannchen and Jacob survived infancy.

Scholem remarried on September 29, 1808; his second wife was my third-great-grandmother, Breine Katz Blumenfeld. She was born in Momberg, Germany, and David Baron thought was she probably the daughter of Abraham Katz Blumenfeld, and Geidel Katz, who would thus be my fourth-great-grandparents.

Deutsch: Gilsabrücke in Jesberg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Scholem and Breine had four children. The first was Freudchen, born on November 4 1809 in Jesberg; she died September 8, 1818 when she was not yet nine years old.

A second daughter, Rahel, was born on January 15, 1813, in Jesberg. She married Jacob Katz, also of Jesberg; he and Rahel were cousins. Jacob was the great-grandson of Bonum Katz; Rahel was the great-great-grandaughter of Bonum Katz. Thus, Rahel and Jacob were second cousins, once removed. Rahel and Jacob had five children. Rahel died on December 7, 1861, in Jesberg.

(Since Barbara Greve believes that Bonum Katz was not the great-great-grandfather of Rahel, this statement may not be correct. For the moment I will let it stand, subject to change.)

Scholem and Breine also had a son named Moses, who was born in Jesberg on November 4, 1814. There was no further information about Moses on David’s family tree.

But most important to me was the remaining child of Scholem and Breine, Gerson Katzenstein, my great-great-grandfather. Although most American records have Gerson’s birth year at roughly 1815, the German records show that he was born on August 11, 1811, making him the second oldest child and oldest son of Scholem and Breine. Since Freudchen had died as a child, Gerson was effectively the oldest child, assuming that the Jesberg record as transcribed is more accurate than the US records.

So where do I begin to tell the story of this large family that extends back 300 years? I think it makes sense to start with my great-great-grandfather Gerson Katzenstein and his siblings.

[1] Given the seven year age gap between Salomon and Meier, it seems likely that Schalum and Brendelchen had other children who have not yet been found; the 1744 Jesberg census, for example, lists another son named Mendel, but no other information about him has been found.

[2] Despite the Katz surname, it does not appear that Gella was closely related to the Jesberg Katz/Katzenstein family as she was born in Halsdorf, another Hessian town; but given the marriage patterns in these families, there is likely some connection.

Herding Katz

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Amy

The title of this post has a double meaning, as you will see.

As I wrote in my last post, about ten years ago when I first found the genealogy page about the Katzenstein and Goldschmidt family compiled by David Baron and Roger Cibella, David (who is their family genealogist) at that point had traced the Katzenstein family line back as far as Gerson Katzenstein, my great-great-grandfather.

Fast forward to 2012 when I began to explore my family’s history and discovered, with the help of others, Barbara Greve’s work, which took the Katzenstein line back yet another generation to Scholum Katzenstein, my three-times great-grandfather. Now I could trace the family back as early as 1769 when Scholum was born in Jesberg, Germany. I entered all the data into my Ancestry family tree and thought, “Well, that’s incredible. But that must be as far as it can go, for sure.”

But I was wrong. Just recently I spoke again to David Baron, and he provided me with his new 2016 update to the Katzenstein family tree. Based on more recent data from Barbara Greve’s transcriptions of birth, marriage and death records from Jesberg and from photographs and transcriptions of headstones from the Jewish cemetery for Jesberg, David had been able to extrapolate even more information about the Katzenstein line.

Now he was able to go back three more generations. Scholum Katzenstein’s father was Meier Katz, my four-times great-grandfather. Meier was the son of Scholum ha Kohen, who was born in about 1720 in Jesberg; he was my five-times great-grandfather; his wife was Brendelchen, my five-times great-grandmother. Scholum’s father was Pinchas ha Kohen, also known as Bonum Katz. He was my six-times great-grandfather. Like all those who followed until Gerson emigrated, Pinchas had died in Jesberg, Germany.

(Update: As I described in a later post, there is disagreement between Barbara Greve and David Baron as to whether or not Bonum Katz/Pinchas ha Cohen was an ancestor of Meir Katz and thus my Katzenstein line. I’ve left this post as written subject to reaching some resolution of that disagreement.)

Now that I know how deep my family’s roots are in Jesberg, Germany, I am even more excited that I will be there next year, seeing the place where my Katzenstein ancestors lived at least as far back as the early 1700s. I will be able to see where they were born, where they lived, where they died, and where they are buried.

So I’ve done some research about this little town in Germany.

Location of Jesberg in district Schwalm-Eder-Kreis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jesberg is a small town located in the Schwalm-Eder-Kreis district of the state of Hesse in Germany. It is about forty miles south of Breuna, where my Hamberg relatives lived, and about fifty miles south of Sielen, where my Schoenthal relatives lived. According to Wikipedia, as of the end of 2015, the population of Jesberg was 2,347 people, and the town’s area is 19.22 square miles.

I could not find much of the history of Jesberg online, but Wikipedia reports that the Linsingen family built the Burg Jesberg, the castle, in 1241. Beyond that and a reference to the Prinzessgarten built by Maximilian von Hessen, I could not anything else online that describes the general history of Jesberg. I have written to the town to see if I can learn more about the history and the current economic and social aspects of the town.

Deutsch: Burg Jesberg, Gewölbe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was surprisingly able to find more information about Jesberg’s Jewish history from several different sources. (See below.) There was first a Jewish presence in Jesberg in 1664. In 1774, there were five Jewish families in Jesberg; two years later there were seven Jewish families. At least one of those seven families had to have been members of my Katzenstein family.

Although Jews prayed together before 1832 in Jesberg, it wasn’t until that year that a synagogue was built. It was a two-story building that accommodated 44 men and 41 women; there was also space for a school and an apartment for the teacher, who generally also acted as the cantor and schochet (Kosher butcher).

Jesberg synagogue
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/jesberg_synagoge.htm

By 1835, there were 53 Jewish residents of Jesberg. There was a mikveh and a cemetery, shared with a nearby community. Jews were engaged in farming, horse and cattle trading, trading of goods, and various other trades. Jesberg itself was a center for the cattle trade, and David Baron believes that many members of the Katz/enstein family were engaged in the cattle business.

Jewish cemetery in Jesberg
http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/jesberg_friedhof.htm

By 1871, the Jewish population had grown to 77 people, constituting 8% of the overall population of 960 people. The Jewish population continued to grow, peaking at 89 people in 1905, which was more than 10% of the overall population of the town at that time. During that time period, there were also twenty to thirty children enrolled in the Jewish school.

As the twentieth century progressed, the Jewish population started to decline. The school closed in 1922, and in 1931, there were only six children receiving religious instruction in Jesberg. In 1932, the synagogue was renovated in honor of its 100^th anniversary. The Jewish population in 1933 when Hitler came to power was 53 people.

Between 1933, and 1938, 27 Jesberg Jews emigrated from Germany; twenty went to the United States, seven to Palestine. Two families moved to Frankfurt. After the synagogue was destroyed in November 1938 during Kristallnacht, more Jews left. But not enough. At least 25 Jews from Jesberg were killed in the Holocaust, including a number of those from the extended Katz and Katzenstein families.

Jesberg was never a big town, and its Jewish population never exceeded much more than ten percent of the overall population. But there was once a real Jewish community there: a synagogue, a school, a mikveh, a kosher butcher, and a cemetery. Today there is no Jewish community there. Nevertheless, I want to see Jesberg just as I want to see Sielen, Breuna, Gau-Algesheim, Bingen, Schopfloch, and all the other towns where my ancestors lived in Germany.

English: Jesberg (Hessen) viewed from the castle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fortunately for me, my last direct ancestor to have been born in Jesberg, Gerson Katzenstein, my great-great-grandfather, emigrated from Germany in the mid-19^th century. Because of that courageous move, my Katzenstein line has flourished. Not the same can be said for the families of most of Gerson’s siblings and cousins. More on that in posts to come.

Sources:

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust: A-J (Shmuel Spector, Geoffrey Wigoder, eds., NYU Press, 2001) p. 573. Found here.

Destroyed German Synagogues and Communities website, found here.

The Alemannia-Judaica site: http://www.alemannia-judaica.de/jesberg_synagoge.htm

The Work is Never Done

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Amy

It’s time to move on to the next family line, although there is still so much to do on those I’ve started. As my most recent discoveries about the Brotman line reveal, there is always more to learn, more to find. I still have collateral lines to complete in the Schoenthal family—the families of my great-great-great-aunts, Mina Schoenthal Rosenberg and Fradchen (Fanny) Schoenthal Goldschmidt. In fact, however, Fanny’s family is intertwined with the next family’s story as well.

Because now it is time to turn to my remaining great-grandparent—my father’s maternal grandmother, Hilda Katzenstein Schoenthal, wife of Isidor Schoenthal and mother of my grandmother, Eva Schoenthal. Hilda was the daughter of Gerson Katzenstein of Jesberg, Germany, and Eva Goldschmidt of Oberlistingen, Germany. My grandmother Eva was presumably named for her grandmother, Eva Goldschmidt.

Hilda Katzenstein Schoenthal

Just over a year ago, I wrote about the crazy twist in my family tree involving Eva Goldschmidt, my great-great-grandmother. She was the daughter of Seligmann Goldschmidt, a brother of Simon Goldschmidt, who married Fanny Schoenthal, my great-great-grandfather’s brother.

Marriage of Simon Goldschmidt and Fradchen Schoenthal
HHStAW Abt. 365 Nr. 669, S. 11

In other words, my great-grandmother Hilda was a Goldschmidt, and her husband, my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal, was the nephew of Fanny Schoenthal Goldschmidt and thus had cousins named Goldschmidt. In fact, one of those cousins, Simon’s son Jacob Goldschmidt from his first marriage, was likely the first member of the extended family to settle in Washington, Pennsylvania, where my grandmother was born in 1904. More on the Goldschmidt family tree twist here. And more on the Goldschmidt family to come.

But for now I am going to focus on the Katzenstein side of my great-grandmother Hilda’s family. As I’ve indicated before, when I first started looking into my family’s history, this was the one line that had already been extensively researched by others. Long before I started my own research, David Baron and Roger Cibella had posted their research on an old Geocities page. And who even remembers Geocities!? Roger is my third cousin, once removed. I had contacted David and Roger years ago when I somehow fell upon their website (I don’t remember how), and was amazed that they were able to trace my family back to Gerson Katzenstein, my great-great-grandfather.

And although I was fascinated by their research, I didn’t pursue it further. I hadn’t yet been bitten by the genealogy bug.

Isidore, Hilda (Katzenstein), and Eva Schoenthal

Then when I was first bitten in 2012 and started to explore genealogy on my own, I found a family tree on Ancestry that included some of my Katzenstein relatives, and I contacted the tree owner, a woman named Jennifer with whom I’ve been in contact ever since as we continue to find ways that our families overlap. Back in June 2012, Jennifer put me in touch with an entire group of people with ties to the Katzenstein family, and from that group I also received a copy of the extensive report on the Jesberg Katzenstein family that had been done by a researcher named Barbara Greve.

Barbara Greve was born in Berlin, Germany after World War II. As an adult, she developed an interest in the history of the Jewish communities that had once lived in the Hesse region where she now lived and taught school. She began to research those communities and what had happened to the people who had lived in them, compiling extensive information and genealogies for those Jewish families, including the Katzensteins of Jesberg. In 2010, Greve received the esteemed Obermayer German Jewish History award. You can read more about her here.

I was both awestruck and overwhelmed by Barbara Greve’s research. At that point in time I was a total newbie and knew nothing about genealogy research or about my family’s history. All I had done at that point was the fourteen day free trial on Ancestry, where I had randomly searched for any name I knew from my family’s history. She had traced the Katzenstein line back another whole generation before Gerson Katzenstein to Scholum Katzenstein, my three-times great-grandfather, and included not only Gerson and his descendants, but Gerson’s four siblings and many of their descendants. Now I could trace the family back as early as 1769 when Scholum was born in Jesberg, Germany.

I had no idea that there were ancient records still in existence in places like Germany. Seeing all those names and dates going back over 200 years was amazing to me.

My reaction to the Katzenstein research at that time in 2012 was—well, I guess it’s all done. Nothing much left for me to do. This was over a year before I started blogging. I thought just collecting the names and dates was all I needed to do, and someone else had done it. So I moved away from the Katzensteins and returned to the other lines where the research was not as complete.

And along the way I learned that genealogy is not just about collecting names and dates, although that is a big part of the work. It’s also about trying to learn the stories of the lives of all those people behind the names and dates. It’s about putting yourselves in their shoes and recognizing the legacy that we have all inherited from our ancestors.

HIlda (Katzenstein) Schoenthal, Eva (Schoenthal) Cohen, Eva HIlda Cohen, and Harold Schoenthal

Thus, I now return to the Katzensteins knowing that there is still work to be done. There are stories to tell about these people, questions to ask, memories to honor. The work is never done.

Ernest Lion’s The Fountain at the Crossroad: An Unforgettable Book

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Amy

I am very excited to announce that Ernest Lion’s memoir, The Fountain at the Crossroad, has now been published and is available on Amazon.com both as a paperback ($10.50) and an ebook ($2.99). [UPDATE: the Kindle version is now available!] It has been my honor and privilege to bring this book to the public with the permission and assistance of Ernest’s son Tom. I did this because I found the book unforgettable and because I don’t want Ernest or his life to be forgotten. Tom and I are not deriving any financial gain from sales of the book. All net proceeds received from sales of the book will be donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in memory of Ernest Lion.

https://www.amazon.com/Fountain-at-Crossroad-Ernest-Lion/dp/1539535657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477353578&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Fountain+at+the+Crossroad

I have written about some aspects of Ernest’s life on the blog as he was married to my cousin, Liesel Mosbach, granddaughter of Rosalie Schoenthal, my grandfather’s sister. Ernest and Liesel were deported from Germany to Auschwitz in early 1943; Liesel was murdered there, but Ernest survived.

The story of what he endured and how he survived is moving and horrifying. His determination and courage in the face of unimaginable suffering is a story of what it means to be human when you are surrounded by inhumanity. And Ernest’s escape from the Nazis kept me on the edge of my seat even though I knew that he would survive.

But the book is not only about Ernest’s experience during the Holocaust. It also tells the story of his childhood growing up with his parents in Germany and of his early adulthood when he dreamed of being an actor. In addition, Ernest wrote about his life after the war—how he rebuilt his life in the US, starting all over, scarred by his experiences, but nevertheless determined to have a full and meaningful life.

Ernest only started talking about his Holocaust experiences late in his life, and then he was persuaded to write his memoirs. In doing so, he relived much of the pain, but also reached a very poignant conclusion about the value of his own life.

If you have an interest in history, in World War II, in the Holocaust, in fact, if you have an interest in human beings and what they are made of, you should read this book. You can find it here.

Mathilde’s Brothers: Wilhelm, Isidor, and Karl Gross

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Amy

Mathilde Gross Mayer, my distant cousin and the author of Die Alte und Die Neue Welt, had three younger brothers in addition to her younger sister Anna about whom I wrote in my last post. In this post, I will tell what happened to the three brothers. In order to learn a little more about them, I decided to use my little bit of German (along with a dictionary and Google Translate) to try and read some of Mathilde’s book myself, in particular Chapter 4, which is entitled “Geschwister,” or siblings. I also relied on the family biography on the Arbeitskreis Judische Bingen website in addition to traditional genealogy sources.

Wilhelm, the third child of Bertha Seligmann and Bernhard Gross, was born on April 14, 1872, in Bingen. He married Sophie Hirsch, who was a relative of his sister Anna’s husband, Wilhelm Lichter, and they, like Anna and her family, settled in Stuttgart. They had a son, Bernhard, born in Stuttgart in 1905; he was presumably named for his grandfather Bernhard, who had died from carbon monoxide poisoning in 1901. According to Mathilde’s book (pp. 48-50), Wilhelm suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized for many years, dying in a sanatorium in Wurttemberg in 1928.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wilhelm’s widow Sophie and son Bernhard Gross immigrated to Rio de Janeiros, Brazil, where Bernhard became a very successful and well-known physicist. He was appointed to the staff of the National Institute of Technology in Rio and eventually became the director. He also served on various scientific committees of the United Nations and traveled all over the world serving on those committees; later, he was the director of the Brazilian National Commission of Nuclear Energy. You can read more about his life and career here and here and here. He died at age 97 in 2002 in Brazil.

Bernhard Gross
http://dielektrika.kvalitne.cz/entributegross.html

Mathilde’s second brother Isidor, whom I’ve mentioned before for his role as a contributor to Mathilde’s book, was born on September 25, 1873, in Bingen. He married Klara Emrich, and like his sister and her husband, Anna (Gross) and Wilhelm Lichter, Isidor and Klara settled in Stuttgart where Isidor worked as a banker. Isidor and Klara had one child born in 1903 and presumably also named for his grandfather; his name was Hans Bernard Gross. When Wilhelm’s widow and son, Sophie and Bernard Gross, left for Brazil in 1933, they took Isidor’s son Hans with them as well, according to the Arbeitskreis Judische-Bingen website. Hans was at that time a law student.

Isidor and Klara were not yet ready to leave Germany in 1933. As indicated by a September, 1937 ship manifest, Isidor and Klara sailed from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Southampton, England; the manifest shows that their last permanent residence was in Germany and that they were going to stay at a hotel in London, but that their “country of intended future permanent residence” was a foreign country outside of the United Kingdom. (It looks like the far right column says “..o de Jan,” so I assume that Isidor and Klara had been visiting Hans in Rio.)

Isidor and Klara (Emrich) Gross on 1937 ship manifest
The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 1138; Item: 48

The immigration cards below indicate that Isidor and Klara moved to Brazil in June 1939:

isidor-gross-brazil-immigration-card-from-famsearch-p-1

Brasil, Cartões de Imigração, 1900-1965,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-22436-27549-86?cc=1932363 : 10 November 2014), Group 4 > 004914427 > image 44 of 203; Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (National Archives, Rio de Janeiro).

isidor-gross-brazil-immigration-card-p-2

klara-emrich-gross-brazil-immigration-card-from-family-search

Brasil, Cartões de Imigração, 1900-1965,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-12579-62878-12?cc=1932363 : 10 November 2014), Group 1 > 004551542 > image 34 of 203; Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (National Archives, Rio de Janeiro)

klara-emrich-gross-brazil-immigration-card-from-family-search-p-2

They both lived the rest of their lives in Brazil, as did their son Hans. Isidor died and is buried in Petropolis in 1950; Klara is also buried there; she died in 1969. Hans died in Rio de Janeiro in 1979.

(Thank you to Andre Convers of the LatAmSIG on JewishGen.org for finding the information about Klara and Isidor’s deaths and burial for me; they are listed in Egon and Frieda Wolff’s book, Sepulturas de Israelitas Il, p.100; Sophie Gross, widow of Wilhelm Gross, is listed on p. 101 and also buried in Petropolis, but her date of death says “19.5” so I assume it was partially illegible. There are also several people named Emrich on p. 100, presumably relatives of Klara Emrich Gross.)

Egon and Frieda Wolf, Sepulturas de Israelitas II, p. 100 (Petropolis Municipal Cemetery)

Egon and Frieda Wolf, Sepulturas de Israelitas II, p. 101 (Petropolis Municipal Cemetery)

Unfortunately, the youngest child and third son of Bertha Seligmann and Bernhard Gross was not as fortunate as his older brother Isidor or his sister Mathilde. Karl Gross was born on March 6, 1876, in Bingen, Germany. According to the Arbeitskreis Judische Bingen page dedicated to Karl, he married Agnes Neuberger, and they had two daughters. Bertha was born in 1906 and presumably named for Karl’s mother, Bertha Seligmann Gross, who had died with her husband in 1901 from carbon monoxide poisoning; sadly, Bertha suffered brain damage at birth and required special care.

A second daughter, Ilse, was born in 1921, after Karl returned from service in the Germany army during World War I. He had served from August, 1914, through the end of the war and was honored several times for his service.

After returning from the war, Karl worked in the Gross family winemaking business. Two years Hitler’s rise to power, he and Agnes decided to send fourteen year old Ilse to the International School in Geneva, Switzerland in 1935. In 1938, when she was just seventeen, Ilse left Switzerland for England.

Karl and Agnes, however, stayed in Germany to be near their other daughter, Bertha. In December, 1940, the German Reich required that Bertha be admitted to the Israelite Hospital and Sanatorium in Bendorf-Sayn, also known as the Jacoby Institute. It had been founded almost a century before as a mental institution for Jewish patients. Its role was altered terribly by the Nazis.

According to this website,

During the first years of National Socialism the Jacoby Institute was left in relative peace; probably as an acknowledgement of the fact that it was an important employer for Sayn and the region. ….A circular decree issued by the Ministry of the Interior on 12th December 1940 decreed that “mentally ill Jews” were only to be accommodated in Sayn because “a cohabitation of Germans and Jews is not acceptable in any length of time” (illustr. 7). The option of concentrating all the patients in one location served as preparation of their deportation. In the course of five transports (between March and November 1942) 573 people were taken to the death camps in the East.

Bertha Gross was one of those 573 people; she was deported to a concentration camp in Izbica, Poland, where she died.

Karl and Klara Gross also were killed in the Holocaust. They were sent to Theriesenstadt on July 27, 1942, where Karl worked as a stretcher-bearer until he died on February 1, 1944. In October, 1944, Klara was deported from Theriesenstadt to Auschwitz where she was murdered.

karl-gross-and-family-stolpersteine-from-judische-bingen

Stolpersteins for Karl Gross, Agnes Gross, and Bertha Gross http://www.juedisches-bingen.de/?id=54

Their younger daughter Ilse, however, survived, and like so many in this family, she ultimately thrived. As described in her obituary, after leaving Switzerland for England in 1938, at first she worked as an unpaid mother’s helper. After England was at war with Germany, however, Ilse, along with many other Jewish refugees from the Nazis, was imprisoned as an “enemy alien” in an internment camp on the Isle of Man, according to her obituary.

Ilse, who had been writing poetry in German since she was a teenager, began writing short stories in English while in the camp and continued her writing after she was released in 1941. In 1948, she married Kit Barker, a British artist. Ilse began writing under the pseudonym Kathrine Talbot and published a number of well-regarded works, including three novels, many articles, and short stories. She died in 2006, and her obituary in The Guardian includes an extensive description not only of her life but of her work. “Ilse Barker,” The Guardian (June 2, 2006), located here.

Thus, Mathilde Gross Mayer lost both her sister Anna and her brother Karl in the Holocaust, as well as their spouses, Wilhelm Richter and Klara Emrich, respectively; her niece Bertha also was a victim of the Nazis. Her brother Wilhelm had died years before, so Mathilde’s only surviving sibling after 1944 was her brother Isidor, who had immigrated to Brazil along with his wife and son and Wilhelm’s widow and son and thus lived a continent away from where Mathilde was in New Rochelle, New York.

Although Mathilde was fortunate that all of her children and grandchildren and almost all her nieces and nephews had survived the Holocaust, there is no overstating the tragedy she endured—from the loss of her parents in 1901, the loss of her husband in 1934, the uprooting of her children, grandchildren, and herself from their homeland, and the cruel deaths of a number of her family members at the hands of the Nazis.

Perhaps now you can better understand why I want to be able to read her book and get a feel for the real person who endured so much and lived so long.

A Family Uprooted by the Nazis: Mathilde Gross Mayer and Her Family

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Amy

My last post ended with the tragic deaths in November 1901 of my cousin Bertha Seligmann and her husband Bernhard Gross; they had died from carbon monoxide poisoning while in their own home in Bingen, Germany. Bertha was the first cousin of my great-great-grandfather, Bernard Seligmann. We are both descendants of my 4x-great-grandfather, Jacob Seligmann.

Much of what I have learned about the life of Bertha and Bernhard came from the memoir written by their daughter Mathilde, Die Alte und Die Neue Welt (1951). As I mentioned in the last two posts, Mathilde lived a hundred years, from 1869 until 1969, and resided on two continents during her remarkable life, first in Germany, then in the United States. This post will focus on Mathilde and her family and descendants and their lives after 1901.

Mathilde was the oldest of Bertha and Bernhard’s five children. [1] As stated above, she was born in 1869, and she married Marx Mayer in 1888. They had three children: Wilhelm (known as Willy) Mayer-Gross (1889), Ernst (1893), and Alice (1896). All three would live interesting lives.

Although Alice Mayer was the youngest of the children of Mathilde Gross and Marx Mayer, I am going to write about her first because it is her daughter, Ellen Kann Pine, whose book One Life in Two Worlds (self-published, 2009) provided me with insights into the life of the Mayer family in the 1920s and 1930s. All the facts related in this post came from Ellen Kann Pine’s memoir, except where noted.

According to Ellen’s memoir, her mother Alice Mayer married Arthur Kann, whose father was in the wholesale grain business in the Bingen area. Their twin daughters Ellen and Hannelore were born in 1921 in Bingen. Ellen’s description of her childhood growing up in Bingen sounds quite idyllic. She describes Bingen in those days as the largest town in the area with about 10,000 residents.

Her family shared a house with her father’s brother Julius Kann and his wife. The house was on the edge of town and was located across the street from Ellen’s grandparents, Mathilde (Gross) and Marx Mayer. She saw her grandparents every day. Ellen wrote:

No day passed without a visit from one or both of them. Our Grandfather (Opapa) was usually the first to come. He always brought each of us a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil in the shape of a coin. …Our Grandmother (Omama) usually visited in the afternoon and she was always interested in what we had been doing and asked us to tell her.

Pine, p. 7.

Their grandmother Mathilde would take them for walks in the neighborhood every day. In addition, numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins lived nearby. The town was small enough that most people knew each other, and the Kann home had a big enough yard for the children to play.

In 1927, the twins started school at the local Volksschule where both Jewish and Christian children attended. At that time, they became more aware of their Jewish background. As Ellen described, “[i]n Germany, religious instruction was part of the overall curriculum and was taught during regular school hours by clergy of each denomination.” Pine, p. 20. Ellen and Hannelore were taught by their cantor and received instruction in Hebrew and Bible stories.

The family had Shabbat dinners with their Mayer grandparents and celebrated the Jewish holidays together. The Kann family also liked to travel, and Ellen recalled family trips to the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, and Austria during her childhood.

Ellen’s uncles Wilhelm and Ernst, the sons of Mathilde Gross and Marx Mayer, were also living comfortable lives in Germany in the years before Hitler came to power. Wilhelm became a renowned psychiatrist. According to Edward Shorter’s A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, Feb 17, 2005), Wilhelm studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg and then further specialized in psychiatry at Heidelberg. His doctoral thesis was on “the phenomenology of abnormal feelings of happiness,” and by 1929, he was an assistant professor of psychiatry in Heidelberg.

On the personal side, according to Shorter’s book, Wilhelm had married in 1919; his wife was Carola Meyer, and they had one child. Around the time of his marriage, Wilhelm adopted the surname Mayer-Gross, hyphenating his mother’s maiden name with his father’s surname.

Willy Mayer-Gross http://www.tphys.uni-heidelberg.de/Ausstellung/pic/151-L-Willy_Mayer-Gross.jpg

Wilhelm’s younger brother Ernst served in the German military during World War I. Once again Matthias Steinke helped me out and translated the documents reporting Ernst’s military record. According to Matt’s translation, Ernst served in the military first from October 1907 until September 1909 as a private in the 9th Infantry Regiment in Zabern. Then when World War I started, he was on active duty from August 1914 until September 1918, again serving in the infantry. He was a bona fide war hero for Germany.

He fought in over twenty battles all over Europe: in France, in Italy, in Bukovina and Slovenia, and at the border of Greece. On the 5th of October he was shot in the back during a battle near Lille, France, but returned to the front by June, 1915, where he fought in a battle near Tirol. Beginning in December, 1914, he served as a ski trooper for some of his time in the army. His service ended when he was sent to the hospital in September, 1918, with influenza. His rank at the end of his service was a reserve lieutenant. He received several commendations for his service including the Prussian Iron Cross, the Edelweiss medal, and two Hessian orders.

Bavaria, Germany, World War I, Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918, for Ernst Mayer
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Mnchen; Abteilung IV Kriegsarchiv. Kriegstammrollen, 1914-1918; Volume: 11697. Kriegsstammrolle: Bd.1

Bavaria, Germany, World War I, Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918, for Ernst Mayer Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Mnchen; Abteilung IV Kriegsarchiv. Kriegstammrollen, 1914-1918; Volume: 11697. Kriegsstammrolle: Bd.1

After the war, Ernst became the owner of a successful publishing house in Berlin, Mauritius Verlag. He married Helene Hirschberg, and they had two daughters and were living in Berlin.

Thus, as of 1933, Mathilde (Gross) and Marx Mayer and their three children were successful citizens of Germany. The world and lives of all these members of the family changed drastically with the election of Hitler as chancellor in 1933.

Ellen Kann Pine was then twelve years old and remembers well how things changed in Bingen. She wrote:

As soon as Hitler became chancellor, fierce looking men wearing different colored uniforms appeared everywhere. … Part of the uniform was a red armband with a large black swastika on a white background. Almost all teenagers of both sexes belonged to the Hitler Youth and wore similar brown uniforms and red armbands. They all were disturbing and frightening as they marched in the streets day and night carrying Nazi flags and singing Horst-Wessel Lied and other vicious anti-Semitic songs. Swastikas were painted everywhere: on walls, on buildings, on flags, and on women’s brown blouses. ….

It was soon obvious that the anti-Semitic propaganda and lies that abounded in the streets had their desired effect. It helped turn our previously friendly and courteous Christian neighbors and their children into hostile anti-Semites. Now we rarely went for walks, and when we did, we kept strictly to ourselves. We could not go shopping, or to the movies, or a theater, since most of these activities were out of bounds for Jews.

Pine, pp. 35-36.

Things changed for Ellen and her sister at school as well because they were Jewish. Friends ignored them, as did their teachers.

Adding to the family’s stress and sorrow was the heartbreaking death of Mathilde’s husband and the family patriarch, Marx Mayer. Ellen wrote:

Our beloved Opapa died in 1934. It was the first family death we experienced and it was wrenching. I cannot forget the look on our Omama’s face when we came to visit her. Sitting on the sofa, she looked utterly lonely and sad with grief.

Pine, p. 29

http://www.steinheim-institut.de/daten/picsbng/xl/2193_bng.jpg

After September, 1935, with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, Ellen and her siblings could no longer attend school at all. Their father also lost his job as director of a synthetic fertilizer company. The family made the important but painful decision to send the twins and their younger brother to boarding school in England. For two years from 1936 until 1938, the children lived away from their parents. Ellen wrote movingly about the experience and the issues the children had adjusting to life away from home.

Fortunately their uncle, Willy Mayer-Gross, was in England and was a source of comfort and support for the children while they lived there. The Nazi laws prohibiting Jewish doctors from practicing medicine on non-Jewish patients and other restrictions had led Willy to emigrate in 1933. He was able to obtain funding through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to go to England to work and live. His niece Ellen Kann Pine wrote this about her uncle Willy:

Learning a new language, a new culture, new ways of treating patients, and having to retake his medica exams made his first years there very difficult. Although Uncle W. was in his forties he persevered, brought his family to England and was able to continue his research. … He was our guardian and his support was invaluable when my sister and I entered boarding school in England in 1936.

Pine, p. 32

Willy did in fact have a remarkable career in England; Edward Shorter described him as the “Importer of German scientific rigor and psychopathological thinking to English psychiatry.” A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, Feb 17, 2005).

According to the Whonamedit website:

In the 1933 Mayer-Gross came to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, to work with Edward Mapother, who provided fellowships for German academics who were fleeing Hitler, such as Guttmann and Mayer-Gross. He worked at the hospital from 1933 to 1939, when he became a licentiate of the Royal College pf Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons. He subsequently became senior fellow with the department of experimental psychiatry, Birmingham Medical School 1958; Director of Research, Uffcalme Clinic. He was a fellow of the British Eugenics Society 1946, 1957. It was Mayer-Gross who first suggested, in about 1955, that tranquilizers converted one psychosis into another. Wilhelm Mayer-Gross was the winner of the Administrative Psychiatry Award for 1958.

Willy’s younger brother Ernst also suffered due to the Nazi persecution of Jews. Despite his distinguished service to Germany during World War I, like other Jewish business owners he was forced to sell his publishing business in accordance with the Nazi policies requiring “Aryanization” of all businesses. Like his brother Willy, Ernst decided to leave Germany once he’d lost his business.

He arrived in New York on June 8, 1935, leaving his family behind until he could bring them over as well.

Ernst Mayer passenger manifest 1935 page 2

Ernst Mayer passenger manifest, June 8, 1935, line 8 Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867.

Soon after arriving in New York, he and two other German Jewish refugees, Kurt Safranski (whom Ernst had listed as his contact in NY on the manifest) and Kurt Kornfeld, formed Black Star Publishing Company. Marvin Hefferman wrote in the New York Times blog “Lens” on July 15, 2013, that Ernst Mayer and his partners were “innovators in Germany’s picture press and publishing world and fled from the Nazis. Their New York-based company commissioned and brokered the use of photographs that documented important events, the comings and goings of notables, and human interest stories.” Marvin Hefferman, “Black Star Shines Anew,” The New York Times (July 15, 2013), available here.

Among their early clients were the magazines Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier’s, which retained their services for the procurement of photographs. The Black Star company’s website describes Ernst’s important role in the success of Black Star:

It was Mayer who made the decisive step uptown into the Rockefeller Center to Time Inc. He brought with him an enormous pile of essays from photographers including Fritz Goro and Paul Wolff, whom he had brought safely from Berlin to New York. Soon after, the chief editors of Life Magazine had chosen Black Star as one of their main suppliers of pictures. Emigre photojournalists viewed the agency as their best means of gaining access to the magazine. For the mostly Jewish photographers, Black Star was a piece of Europe in the middle of New York.… According to photo historian Marianne Fulton, Life brought Black Star 30 to 40 per cent of its business. Black Star, in turn, contributed to Life becoming the most popular magazine in America for nearly three decades, with tens of millions of readers.

A little over a year after arriving himself, Ernst was able to bring his wife and daughter to the United States on August 11, 1936.[2]

Ernst Mayer and family passenger manifest August 11, 1936
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867.

One year after that, on October 11, 1937, he returned once more to Germany to bring his mother Mathilde back to the US.[3] As you can see, the manifest shows they left from England, not Germany. Ellen Kann Pine wrote that her grandmother Mathilde came to see her and her sister at boarding school in England before leaving for the US.

Mathilde Mayer passenger manifest October 1 1937 page 2

Mathilde Mayer and Ernst Mayer on passenger manifest, October 11, 1937 Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867.

Ernst and his family and his mother were all living in New Rochelle, New York, at that time.

In August, 1938, the daughters of Alice Mayer Kann, Ellen and Hannelore, left England to come to the US. Their parents and brother followed a month later, and the Kann family also settled in New Rochelle, New York. Thus, by the fall of 1938, just a few months before Kristallnacht and the increased violence against Jews in Europe that followed, all of Mathilde’s children and grandchildren were safely out of Germany, as was she.

I will leave for another day what Mathilde’s life was like once she got to America—that is, until I can read the rest of her memoir. As for her granddaughter Ellen Kann Pine, like her two uncles Willy and Ernst, she not only survived, she thrived—she worked hard, ultimately obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and became a successful research scientist. I highly recommend her memoir as another lesson in the resilience of people and their ability to start life over in a new place and find not only security but happiness. Her book is available on Amazon here.

Sadly, Ernst Mayer’s wife Helene Hirschberg died on July 19, 1945, at age fifty. Willy Mayer-Gross died in 1961; he was 72. Mathilda outlived her oldest child, dying at 100 in 1969. Her other two children also lived long lives. Ernst died at ninety in 1983, and Alice died in 1993 when she was 97. Her husband Arthur Kann had died many years before in 1966 when he was 83.

My cousin Mathilde had suffered greatly during her life: she had lost her parents in a terrible tragedy, her husband had died too soon, and she had been forced to leave her homeland and the place where her family had lived for hundreds of years. But she and her three children and all of her grandchildren escaped Nazi Germany in time and survived. Although all of them suffered from the Nazi treatment of Jews, they all found success. It’s hard to say they were lucky, given what they’d endured, but they at least survived.

Other members of their extended family were not as fortunate.

[1] Later posts will relate what happened to Mathilde’s siblings and their families.

[2] Ernst and Helene Mayer had another daughter Dorothea, who had died before the family left Germany.

[3] It appears that Mathilde was listed on an earlier ship manifest to leave Germany in February, 1937. There is a notation “Ext. 9/17/37,” which I assume meant she extended her ticket for an additional seven months. Perhaps she did not want to sail alone, and it was only when Ernst returned to bring her back in October that she came to the US. Or maybe she did come in February and returned because there is another notation that says “RT.” Return trip? I am not sure.

Mathilde Mayer-Gross on passenger manifest Feb 1937 page 2

Mathilde Mayer-Gross listed on February 1937 manifest Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867.

Life in Bingen, Germany 1850-1901: The Family of Martha and Benjamin Seligmann

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Amy

As I wrote last time, Mathilde Gross Mayer (known sometimes as Mathilde Mayer-Gross) lived a long life—a hundred years that spanned two centuries (1869-1969) and two countries—Germany until she was 68 and then the United States for the last 32 years of her life. Her autobiography, Die Alte and Die Neu Welt, records the story of her remarkable life. I have read the small portion of her autobiography that I had translated by Ute Brandenburg.[1] I hope to read the book in its entirety once I know enough German to make that possible.

But from the excerpt I’ve read in translation along with information I obtained from other sources, I have learned quite a bit about Mathilde’s family and her early life in Germany.

First, a little background. As I wrote last time, Mathilde was my second cousin, three times removed. Her great-grandparents were my four-times great-grandparents, Jacob Seligmann and Martha Mayer. Jacob and Martha had ten children, including Moritz Seligmann, my three-times great-grandfather, and Martha Seligmann, Mathilde’s grandmother.

I have written about Moritz and his family in several places. His son Bernhard (later Bernard), my great-great-grandfather, was one of the Seligmann brothers who came to the United States and settled in Santa Fe where they established the important trading business known as Seligman Brothers.

Moritz Seligmann, Courtesy of the Family of Fred and Ilse Michel

Bernard Seligman

I have also written about Martha and how I discovered, thanks to the family tree discovered by my cousin Wolfgang, that in 1824 she married her first cousin (and also my cousin) Benjamin Seligmann, son of Hirsch Seligmann, who was Jacob Seligmann’s brother. Martha and Benjamin lived in Bingen, Germany, where they had seven children: Siegfried (1824), Emilia (1826), Hermann (1828), Karolina (1831), Ferdinand (1836), Lambert (1838), and Bertha (1841).

Emil Seligmann’s handwritten tree courtesy of Wolfgang Seligmann

The facts below are all based on Mathilde’s book, except where noted. All quotations are from the translation by Ute Brandeburg of Chapter 2 of Mathilde’s book.

Benjamin Seligmann was initially in the scrap metal business and then later in the money changing business, but according to his grandson Isidor Gross (who contributed to his sister Mathilde’s book), Benjamin was actually more academically inclined by nature. It was his wife Martha and their sons Lambert and Ferdinand who really ran the business. Benjamin and two of his sons, Lambert and Hermann, also served as accountants for the Jewish congregation in Bingen.

Isidor wrote about his uncle Ferdinand that he had traveled to Paris and when he returned, he brought home a top hat. “He would promenade around Bingen, wearing this hat and using a skinny walking stick, just as he had in Paris.” (DADNW, p. 10). As a result, he earned the nickname “Hat,” and Isidor and Mathilde referred to Ferdinand as “Uncle Hat.”

After their father Benjamin died in 1862, his sons Ferdinand and Lambert took over the business, which was eventually renamed “Ferdinand Seligmann.” Neither Ferdinand nor Lambert ever married, and they lived together in Bingen and were known as Die Herren, or The Gentlemen. A third brother, Hermann, also never married; he was for a time involved in the business, but ran into some financial troubles and was bought out by Ferdinand.

Bingen, c. 1830s
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AClarkson_Stanfield_Bingen.jpg

The oldest child of Martha and Benjamin, Siegfried, married his first cousin, Carolina, who was a daughter of Moritz Seligmann, my three-times great-grandfather. Siegfried and Carolina had seven children together, including Emil, the one presumed to have recorded the family tree I discussed here. Emilia, the second child of Benjamin and Martha Seligmann, married Salomon Lorch and had four children. Karolina Seligmann (Benjamin and Martha’s daughter, not the one who married Siegfried) married Sigmund Marx; I don’t have any record of children born to that couple.

Bertha Seligmann, the youngest child of Benjamin and Martha and the mother of Mathilde and Isidor, married Bernhard Gross on June 30, 1868. Bernhard was the son of Wolfgang Gross and Fanny Nathan, who lived in Gau-Bickelheim where Wolfgang was in the wine business, working with his sons Bernhard, Moses, and Julius.

The marriage contract between Bertha Seligmann and Bernhard Gross is included in Mathilde’s book and reveals the contributions that each side made to the marriage. It is quite apparent that this couple came from families of some means.

Bertha brought clothing and personal items worth 850 gulden and house furnishings worth 350 gulden to the marriage as well as 2000 gulden in cash. Her mother also made a gift of 3500 gulden to the couple (to be deducted from Bertha’s inheritance). Bertha’s brother Siegfried promised to pay the rent on the couple’s home in Bingen for two years, or a total of 260 gulden.

Bernhard also contributed to the marriage. He brought 300 guldens’ worth of personal items and clothing and 418 gulden’s worth of home furnishings. His parents provided a gift of 2000 gulden to the couple (also to be deducted from their son’s inheritance).

Thus, Bertha’s contribution amounted to 6,960 gulden, and Bernhard’s was 2,718 gulden. As converted by Isidor Gross in 1938 as described in his sister’s book, that combined amount would have been equivalent to about 16,000 goldmarks in 1938. According to one source, in 1938 there were 2.49 marks to a dollar, so that would mean that 16,000 marks was equivalent to $6425 in 1938. Using an inflation calculator, I calculated that $6425 in 1938 would be worth about $108,000 today. Not a bad start for a young couple.

When they married, Bertha and Bernhard moved to an apartment in Bingen where less than a year later their first child, Mathilde, was born on April 14, 1869. She was followed by her sister Anna a year later, her brother Wilhelm in 1872, and then her brother Isidor in 1873. By the time Isidor was born, the family had moved to a house of their own. The prior owner, a baker, continued to occupy the first floor, which he used for his business, and a police officer lived on the third floor. Isidor described the house as “a large building with a passageway to Eselgasse, where the driveway was located. The courtyard and back buildings offered us children much space to play.” DADNW, p. 16 A sixth child was born to Bertha and Bernhard in March 1876, a son Karl.

Bingen, Germany, c. 1890
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABingen_and_the_bridge%2C_the_Rhine%2C_Germany-LCCN2002714061.jpg

Mathilde described her father Bernhard as “a highly respected citizen who had no enemies, did much for the common good, and helped however and wherever he could. He supported the congregation in word and deed, and whenever possible he went to Saturday services.” DADNW, p.18 She continued:

Father was a hardworking, ambitious businessman. He was well liked with the customers. Nearly every morning, he would head out early to the train station, his bags heavy with wine samples. But he never left the house without first bringing a little sample of his breakfast, bread rolls with egg, a “morsel.” As he called it, to the children’s bed….. Although he was often serious and judicious, he did have a cheerful disposition and was always in a good and light-hearted mood when attending social and family events….Despite his occupation, which had him taste alcohol on a daily basis, he always sought moderation in drinking. He could not tolerate more than two or three glasses of good wine; then he would become exceedingly merry, climb onto chairs and tables, stretch out his arms, and exclaim: “My dear friends, this is the world!”

DADNW, p. 18

Mathilde’s portrait of her mother Bertha Seligmann Gross, is quite different:

She was serious and strict, with herself as well as others. She rarely participated in fun and laughter. … Mother strove to manage the household with as much frugality as possible. The boys often came home with holes in the bottoms of their pants and the knees of their socks. [Heels?] Sometimes there would be a pat on the backside. Then [I] would have to spend [my] Saturday evenings and Sundays mending the work day clothes and darning the socks instead of reading or going to visit [my] girlfriends. …. There would many weeks where I had to polish the metal stove pipes with scouring paper until they shone before I could return to school at 2 o’clock. Mother was a heavy-handed person who did not know how to make life easier for herself and others.

DADNW, pp.19-20

Mathilde also wrote about her brothers that they were “wild and spunky. They were always up for pranks, didn’t spend much time in the books, and went outside the moment Mother looked the other way.” DADNW, p. 18.

Obviously as the oldest child and daughter, Mathilde had a lot of responsibilities, but she did have some happy childhood memories. She enjoyed ballroom dancing lessons, and she and her sister Anna spent school holidays with her mother’s brother Siegfried Seligmann and his family in nearby Mainz. She also spent some time in 1885 when she was sixteen living with her Uncle Hat (Ferdinand) in Nancy in Alsace, but was not happy going to school there and returned to her family in Bingen.

The family of Bertha and Bernhard Gross moved a few times in Bingen to accommodate their growing family. The second home was bigger, but needed work. Isidor wrote, “There was no gas, no plumbing, no electric light, and the toilets were very primitive. They were outside the apartment, which was quite unpleasant in the winter and in bad weather.” DADNW, p. 17 Mathilde also described the house’s shortcomings: “only kerosene lamps that needed to be cleaned every morning, no warm water, and only much later running water—before that one had to fetch water in pails from the pump in the courtyard. It was a lot of work to keep three or four stoves going in the wintertime.” DADNW, p. 20

Bingen synagogue
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASynagogue_Bingen.jpg

On April 11, 1888, Mathilde married Marx Mayer, a man one of her aunts had introduced to her. On the Judische-Bingen site I found Mathilde’s description of her husband:

My husband Marx was a cheerful person, a life-affirming character, who knew how to make friends everywhere. He was a good dancer, loved to dance, and we seldom missed seeing the New Year begin at the New Year’s ball in Caecilienverein.

Mathilde went on to describe the yearly three-day carnival celebration in Bingen, which Marx enjoyed greatly, often staying out until four in the morning.[2]

Mathilde and Marx had three children between 1889 and 1896: Wilhelm, Ernst, and Anna. Mathilde’s siblings also married in these years. Her sister Anna married Willhelm Lichter; her brother Wilhelm married Sophie Hirsch. Isidor married Clara Emmerich, and Karl married Agnes Neuberger. They all would have at least one child.

With their children all grown, Bertha and Bernhard decided to purchase another home at Mainzer Strasse 16 in Bingen, though it needed substantial renovations. Bertha and Bernard moved into the house in late 1898. Sadly, they only lived in the house for a few years because on November 1, 1901, both Bernhard and Bertha were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning that had resulted from some faulty renovations being made on the house. Bernhard was only 61, Bertha just 60 when they died.

Headstones for Bertha Seligmann Gross and Bernhard Gross in the Jewish cemetery in Bingen
http://www.juedisches-bingen.de/43.0.html

Mathilde wrote of how she learned the news of her parents’ awful death:

On that fateful Thursday morning when Emil Seligmann [son of Siegfried and Caroline Seligmann and Mathilde’s first cousin] came to get me and then told me, as we were walking, of the accident, he lead me over Schlossberg rather than through town where people already knew and would have stared at me. I could not immediately comprehend the scale of the tragedy that had befallen us. DADNW, p. 19.

Understandably, Mathilde was devastated. She wrote that her father’s death “was a heavy blow that left a big void.” DADNW, p. 19.

Thus, the new century did not begin well for the family of Bertha Seligmann and Bernhard Gross. In fact, it was a century marked by a great deal of tragedy for the family. Although I cannot yet read enough of Mathilde’s book to provide a reliable translation of her own words for the years that followed her parents’ deaths, I have been able to learn more about the fate of her family from other sources and will reveal what happened to them all in posts to follow.

[1] Ute Brandenburg provides professional translation services for German texts, including texts written in the old German script. You can see her website at https://germanscriptexperts.com/ References to translated quotes from the German version of Mathilde’s book are indicated by “DADNW” and the appropriate page numbers. All translations of the book were done by Ute Brandenburg.

[2] Unfortunately, Google Translate’s translation of these pages is quite awful, so I am hoping to obtain a better translation.

The Little Sister Who Went Back Home: Rosalie Schoenthal, Part I

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Amy

Finally I have come to the youngest of my great-grandfather’s siblings, the only one born after he was, his younger sister Rosalie. Her story is even more tragic than that of her brother Jakob.

Rosalie was born in Sielen, Germany, in 1863, five years after my great-grandfather Isidore. As I wrote earlier, she came with her mother and Isidore to the United States in 1881 when she was eighteen, but returned to Germany to marry Willy Heymann of Geldern, to whom she was apparently engaged even before leaving Germany. They were married on December 8, 1884, in Geldern.

Geldern, Germany
Photo by Gerhard Seybert,
accessed at http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/geldern/landleben-zum-mitnehmen-aid-1.1041128

I was fortunate that there were numerous sources available that provided me with information about Rosalie, Willy, and their family. Two German websites had biographies of Willy and Rosalie Heymann and their children. One, a site about the Geldern Jewish community, indicated that Willy and Rosalie had had six children, although it only named two of them, Helene and Hilda. A second website containing information about the Heymann family was the Steinheim Institute site, which confirmed the fact that there had been six children and provided the names and birth years of all six as well as other pertinent facts that helped me with my research of Rosalie’s children.

From these two sources, I learned that Willy was a horse trader like his father Levi Heymann and was born in Geldern in February, 1857. Geldern is about 150 miles from Sielen, so I’ve no idea how Rosalie and Willy knew each other; perhaps their fathers had known each other. Willy and Rosalie settled in Geldern; their six children were: Lionel, born in 1887 and presumably named for Rosalie’s father, my great-great grandfather Levi Schoenthal; Johanna, born in 1889; Helene, born in 1890 (perhaps named for Henriette Hamberg, Rosalie’s mother), Max, 1893; Walter, 1896; and Hilda, born in 1898.

The Geldern site had a photograph of the Heymann home in Geldern, depicted below.

Home of Willy and Rosalie Schoenthal Heymann in Geldern
http://hv-geldern.de/images/juden/juden.htm

The Steinheim Institute site reported that Rosalie died on August 7, 1937, when she was 74 and that Willy Heymann died on January 15, 1939; it provided this description of his death:

Willy Heymann wurde nach seinem Tod von dem 14jährigen Fritz Davids, der erst kurze Zeit zuvor aus dem KZ Dachau zurückgekehrt war, in das man ihn nach der Pogromnacht mit seinem Vater verschleppt hatte, ganz alleine und heimlich zum Friedhof gebracht und begraben.

Translated by a member of the German Genealogy Facebook group as:

After his death, Willy Heyman was brought secretly to the cemetery and buried by 14 year old Fritz Davids alone, who had returned only a short time before from the concentration camp of Dachau where he had been brought with his father after the [Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938].

How would you interpret that sentence? Does it mean that Willy had died outside of Geldern and been secretly returned by this fourteen year old boy? Had Willy also been at Dachau or just Fritz and his father? Or does it mean that Willy and Fritz’s father had been brought to Dachau after Kristallnacht? Does the “he” in that last phrase refer to Willy or Fritz? I am inclined to think that Willy was at Dachau because otherwise, why would he have had to have been secretly brought to the Geldern cemetery?

UPDATE: Thanks to Renate Adolfs and Cathy Meder-Dempsey, I now have more information about what happened to Willy, and it is awful. Both Renate and Cathy found a link here that describes the terrible fate of Willy Heymann. As translated by Cathy, this is the full story:

Aus dem KZ zurück, muß Fritz Davids schon zwei Monate später miterleben, wie schlimm es mittlerweile den Juden erging. Selbst vor dem Tod hat man nämlich keine Achtung mehr : Der Jude Willy Heymann war fast 84-jährig verstorben. Da ihn niemand begraben wollte oder konnte, lädt der 14-jährige Fritz die Leiche auf eine Schubkarre und fährt sie im Morgengrauen zum Boeckelter Weg auf den jüdischen Friedhof, wo er, ganz der ‚Würde” der Zeit entsprechend, dem alten Mann ein Grab schaufelt und den Kaddish spricht. Auch David Cain und Jakob Heymann wurden unter solchen entwürdigenden Umständen begraben.

Recently back from the concentration camp, Fritz Davids experienced, two months later, how bad the Jews had fared. There was no respect even for the dead. The Jew Willy Heymann died at the age of almost 84 years old. Since nobody wanted to bury him or could, the 14-year-old Fritz put the corpse in a wheelbarrow and at dawn wheeled it to Boeckelter Weg (street name) to the Jewish cemetery, where he, fully in dignity of the time, shoveled a grave for the old man and spoke the Kaddish. David Cain and Jacob Heymann were also buried under such humiliating circumstances.

Thank you, Renate and Cathy, for allowing me to memorialize Willy Heymann more completely.

http://www.steinheim-institut.de/daten/picse05/xl/0100_E05_1_1984.jpg

The information about Willy and Rosalie and their children was also confirmed by a third source, Juden in der Geschichte des Gelderlandes (2002), a book edited by Gerd Halmanns and Bernhard Keuck that contains information, photographs, articles, documents, and maps of the Jewish communities in Geldern and the surrounding towns. Rodney Eisfelder from the GermanSIG of JewishGen kindly sent me a copy of page 370 from that book, which lists information about Willy Heymann and his family. That page also provided me with numerous clues about the Heymann children.

From these sources, I knew that Lionel Heymann, the oldest child, had moved to Chicago, but I found out that before he immigrated to the US, he had left Germany for England; he is listed on the 1911 English census as a 24 year old German national, living in London and working as a hotel waiter.

Lionel Heymann 1911 UK census
Ancestry.com. 1911 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Census Returns of England and Wales, 1911. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA), 1911. Data imaged from the National Archives, London, England.

In 1912 he sailed from England to Algiers, still a German citizen, but listing his intended future permanent residence as Switzerland. He was working as a hotel manager, according to the ship manifest.

Lionel Heymann 1912 passenger manifest
Ancestry.com. UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Original data: Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Outwards Passenger Lists. BT27. Records of the Commercial, Companies, Labour, Railways and Statistics Departments. Records of the Board of Trade and of successor and related bodies. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England.

He next surfaced on a passenger ship manifest for a ship sailing from England to New York in 1924. He was still a German citizen, stating that his last permanent residence was Geldern, Germany, and listing his father “Wilhelm Hyman” of Geldern as his contact in that place. He said that he was going to his uncle Harry Schoenthal of 260 Riverside Drive in New York City. At first I was thrown by this, but then realized he must have meant Henry Schoenthal, his mother’s oldest brother, who was in fact living in New York at that time. Lionel indicated on this manifest that he intended to settle permanently in the United States.

Lionel Heymann 1924 passenger manifest
Ancestry.com. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1820-1897. Microfilm Publication M237, 675 rolls. NAI: 6256867.

By 1928, Lionel was living in Chicago and working as a waiter, as reflected on this October 30, 1928 passenger manifest. He was still an alien resident, listing his father again as his contact in Germany, but providing his Chicago address as his permanent address. He was returning from Germany, so he probably had been visiting his family back home.

Lionel Heymann 1928 passenger manifest
Year: 1928; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4280; Line: 1; Page Number: 200

Interestingly, Lionel’s younger brother Walter had arrived in the US just a few months earlier in June, 1928. This was consistent with the information in the above-mentioned sources—that is, that Walter also had ended up in Chicago. On the ship manifest for Walter’s arrival it reports that Walter was a cook, that he was 32, that his last residence had been Cologne, Germany, and that he was heading for Chicago where his brother Lionel resided.

Walter Heymann 1928 ship manifest
Year: 1928; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 4373; Line: 1; Page Number: 141

After searching the 1930 census as many ways as I could, including using Lionel’s address as given on both the 1928 ship manifests and his 1933 naturalization papers (1411 Winnemac Avenue), I concluded that the census enumerator had completely missed that address. The listings include 1409 and 1413, but not 1411. Just my luck.

Although I could not find Lionel on the 1930 census, Walter is listed on that census, living as a lodger in Chicago and working as a chef in a hotel. He was then 34 years old and had been in the US for two years and had filed his papers for citizenship.

As mentioned, Lionel became a naturalized US citizen in 1933.

Ancestry.com. U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992 (Indexed in World Archives Project) [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

According to the Cook County, Illinois Marriage Index, Walter Heymann married Lucie Goldschmied on March 16, 1934. Lucie was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on February 11, 1908, the daughter of Miksa (later Americanized to Michael) Goldschmied, a Hungarian native, and Bertha Hirschberg, a native of Eschbach, Germany. Lucie first came to the US in 1928, according to the 1930 census, which has her listed as residing at the Moraine Hotel in Highland Park, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago), where she was employed as a pantry servant. I assume that this was the same hotel where Walter was employed as a chef.

The Chicago Tribune described the history of the Moraine Hotel in an article published on May 11, 1986:

In the early years of this century, the Hotel Moraine-on-the-Lake sparkled as a North Shore glamor resort. Built on 15 acres overlooking Lake Michigan in Highland Park, the hostelry opened in 1900 with 140 rooms.

The Moraine immediately caught the eye of the rich and famous. Glancing through old guest registries (now in the Highland Park Historical Society), you`ll spot some well-known Chicago names–the Marshall Field family, the Swifts, the Pullmans, the Florsheims, and many others.

Guests came from all over the U.S. and even from abroad. Some of the more affluent even traveled with their chauffeurs and maids.

… The heyday of the Moraine continued into the 1920s, when the increasing number of guests necessitated additions to the hotel. Then came the Depression and even the Moraine was not spared–it declared bankruptcy in 1937.

By 1939, the once-grand hotel had become a barracks for military officers. But sunnier days were just around the corner. In 1942, the hotel was purchased, rehabbed, and reopened. It regained some of its former glory and operated until 1969, when the last guest checked out.

In 1972, the Hotel Moraine-on-the-Lake itself checked out. It was torn down and the site was turned into a public park.

“North Shore Glamor Hotel Reborn,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1986

Hotel Moraine, postcard found at
http://www.idaillinois.org/cdm/ref/collection/posttest/id/404

If this is indeed where Walter and Lucie were working when they met, they were certainly working in quite a grand place.

Max Heymann, the middle brother, was still back in Germany during this period, but he finally came to the US with his wife Frieda and their eleven year old son Klaus on January 7, 1939, escaping from Nazi Germany. They had been most recently living in Essen, Germany, where Klaus was born. Max listed his occupation as a merchant, his father Willy Heymann as the person he was leaving behind, and his brother Lionel as the person he was going to in the US. I was surprised to see that Lionel was then living in Detroit, not Chicago.

Max and Frieda Heymann 1939 ship manifest
Year: 1939; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6274; Line: 1; Page Number: 8

By 1940, all three of the sons of Rosalie Schoenthal and Willy Heymann were living in Chicago. According to the 1940 census, Lionel was living in the household of his brother Max in 1940, apparently having returned from Detroit. Lionel was now the head waiter at a hotel, according to the census. Max was a salesman for a paper box manufacturing company. Lionel, Max, Frieda, and Klaus were living at 1441 Belle Plaine Avenue in Chicago.

Walter and his wife Lucie as well as Lucie’s recently arrived parents, Michael and Bertha Goldschmied, were living a mile away from Max and Lionel at 3325 North Paulina Street in Chicago. Walter was continuing to work as the cook in a hotel, and Lucie was working as a waitress, perhaps in the same hotel restaurant. Lucie and Walter did not have any children.

All three brothers registered for the World War II draft in 1942. According to those registrations, Lionel was still living with Max on Belle Plaine Avenue and working for the Blackstone Hotel. Max was now working for Parfeit Powder Puff Company in Chicago. Walter was still living on North Paulina Street and working for “Martin,” a restaurant.

Lionel Heymann World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration.

Max Heymann World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration

Walter Heymann World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: United States, Selective Service System. Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registrati

Max died a year later on May 31, 1943. He was only 49 years old. Walter died ten years after his brother Max on August 14, 1953; he was only 57. Did the stress of uprooting themselves and worrying about their relatives back home contribute to their early deaths? I don’t know.

Lionel, the oldest brother, lived the longest. He died on November 29, 1966, when he was 79 years old. I was fortunate to find both a death notice and an obituary for Lionel (but none for his brothers). Those two records revealed more about Lionel than I’d been able to glean from the passenger ship manifests or the census records. He’d had a whole other life not reported on those documents.

Fighting their Native Country in World War II: Jakob Schoenthal’s Grandsons

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Amy

As I wrote last time, the two sons of Jakob Schoenthal and Charlotte Lilienfeld had arrived in the US long before Hitler came to power in Germany. They were working as tailors and living in Washington, Pennsylvania, where their uncles and aunt had lived for many years. Then Hitler came to power, and their family back home was in danger.

In 1938, Lee and Meyer’s sister Erna arrived from Germany with her son Werner. I have now learned more about Erna’s husband Arnold Haas. He was born in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1893, and had served his native country during World War I. He and Erna Schoenthal had married on February 13, 1925, and their son Werner was born on April 14, 1926. Then Arnold died at age 38 on January 23, 1931, leaving behind his young widow Erna and his not-yet five year old son Werner. Fortunately Erna had the good sense to leave Germany in May, 1938, and bring her son and herself to safety in the US. In 1940, they were living in Pittsburgh.

Darmstadt register for Arnold Haas and family indicating birth, marriage, and death of Haas and birth of son Werner

Darmstadt register for Arnold Haas and family indicating birth, marriage, and death of Arnold Haas and birth of son Werner

Helmut Levi, the son of Julius and Henriette (Schoenthal) Levi, had also arrived by then and was living in New York City. Both Helmut and Werner soon found themselves fighting their former homeland when the US entered World War II at the end of 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Werner Haas joined the US Navy on March 15, 1944, when he was 18, and served until March 6, 1946. He spent time at the Naval Air Stations in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Corpus Christi, Texas, before being assigned to the Destroyer Escort USS Wesson in June, 1945. According to Michael Moskow, who has done extensive research on Jewish military service during World War II, the Wesson had been struck by a kamikazi in April, 1945, two months before Werner was assigned to that vessel.

As seen in the caption on the photo below, the Wesson was “in overhaul” from May to July 1945, so it would seem likely that Werner was working on her repairs when he was first assigned to that ship. Werner served as a fireman on the destroyer; according to this site about military careers, “The training received as a Fireman or in the related engineering skill specialties is equivalent to that received as an electrician, electrical or power plant/co-generation plant operator or supervisor, diesel mechanic, or electronics repair technician.” From various military records it appears that Werner was assigned to the Wesson for at least a year and was then assigned to two other naval ships.

English: 26 June 1945: Mare Island Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, Cal. – Forward plan view of USS Wesson (DE 184) at Mare Island. She was in overhaul at the yard from 16 May to 1 July 1945. USS Blessman (APD 48) inboard of Wesson and USS Hazelwood (DD 531) is on the opposite side of the pier. (U.S. Navy photo #DE-184-4842-45) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Werner’s older cousin Helmut Levi served in the US Army, enlisting on November 28, 1942. He served as a private and then a corporal during the course of World War II. Although I am still looking for more information about Helmut’s service during the war, I was able with the help of Michael Moskow to find this letter that Helmut Levi (presumably the same one) wrote to Yank magazine in September, 1944:

Pvt Helmut Levi letter to Yank magazine, September 29, 1944, p 14, found at http://www.unz.org/Pub/Yank-1944sep29-00014

Not surprisingly, Helmut had strong feelings about the need for Germany (and Japan) to be occupied and supervised carefully after the war. It appears that he was stationed in Britain in September, 1944, just months after the D-Day invasion and the beginning of the Allies’ advances in France against Germany. During that time, Helmut’s aunt and uncle, Johanna (Schoenthal) and Heinrich Stern, were living in France, hiding from the Nazis. His parents had already been killed at the Chelmno death camp.

Lee and Meyer both registered for the World War II draft, though being almost in their sixties when the war began, neither served in the military during the war. Note that Meyer was both working for and living with Lee in April 1942. (Lee seems to have listed his work address as his residence.) Although Meyer listed his brother Lee as the person who would always know his address, Lee listed someone named Mary Reinbold, who as listed in the 1940 census, was then a 39 year old single woman living with her father and brothers and working as a telephone operator.

Lee Schoenthal World War II draft registration
The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; World War II draft cards (Fourth Registration) for the State of Pennsylvania; State Headquarters: Pennsylvania; Microfilm Series: M1951; Microfilm Roll: 278

Meyer N Schoenthal World War II draft registration
Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

Why wouldn’t Lee have listed Meyer as his contact just as Meyer had listed him? More on that in a later post.

Once the war ended, the family apparently spent a year trying to learn what had happened to Henriette Schoenthal and Julius Levi. My heart broke when, with Michael Moskow’s help, I found this notice in the June 14, 1946 issue of Aufbau, the newspaper published beginning in the 1930s for German Jewish immigrants in the United States:

Aufbau June 14, 1946 found at http://archive.org/stream/aufbau1219461946germ#page/n475/mode/1up

Translation: After a one year search in Europe, we today know that our beloved parents and siblings, Julius Levi and Henriette Levi (nee Schoenthal) from Cologne have fallen to the Nazi terror …. [followed by the names of their son and their siblings].

By the time Helmut Levi had enlisted in the US Army in November 1942, his parents had already been murdered by the Nazis. It must have just been unbearable for him to realize that while he had been fighting to defeat Hitler and the Nazis, it had already been too late to save his parents.

This notice also indicates that as of June 14, 1946, Helmut was still in the Army; although I am not sure what “Liaison Sec” refers to, G-2 is military shorthand for military intelligence staff. It appears that Helmut was doing some kind of intelligence work in Berlin after the war, which makes sense, given his familiarity with Germany and the German language. Being in Berlin may have also allowed him to search more quickly for what had happened to his parents.

As for Johanna Schoenthal Stern and her husband Heinrich Stern, they arrived in the US in 1947 from France. As I mentioned in my prior post, Johanna and Heinrich had listed a friend named Henry Kahnweiler of Paris as their contact person in France. I was curious as to who he was and how Johanna and Heinrich were connected to him. I wanted to know more about their story—how and when did they go to France? How did they survive the Nazi occupation of France? Had they had children who had not survived the war?

Although I don’t have all the answers, I now have at least some answers to those questions. I will address those in my next post.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: Germany

The Katzenstein Clan: Who Got Here First?

Introducing The Katz and Katzenstein Families of Jesberg

Herding Katz

The Work is Never Done

Ernest Lion’s The Fountain at the Crossroad: An Unforgettable Book

Mathilde’s Brothers: Wilhelm, Isidor, and Karl Gross

A Family Uprooted by the Nazis: Mathilde Gross Mayer and Her Family

Life in Bingen, Germany 1850-1901: The Family of Martha and Benjamin Seligmann

The Little Sister Who Went Back Home: Rosalie Schoenthal, Part I

Fighting their Native Country in World War II: Jakob Schoenthal’s Grandsons

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