Tag Archives: holocaust

Eugen Baer’s Escape from Germany, Part II: The Cancelled Ship

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We saw last time that Eugen Baer and his family left Griedel for Bad Nauheim and were in Bad Nauheim until August 1, 1939. According to their ship manifests, his wife Hedwig and son Adolf had visas for the US from the consulate in Stuttgart dated August 11, 1939, ten days later. But Eugen did not obtain his visa until October. And yet even Hedwig and Adolf did not sail for the US until November and Eugen not until December.

This had me perplexed. What could have held them up? Why didn’t they travel together? I had several theories. Maybe Eugen was sick. Maybe he had a harder time getting a visa. Maybe there were quotas for men that were different from women. Theories but no answers. I didn’t know why Eugen’s visa was dated so much later than that of his wife and son or why he didn’t get a ticket on the same ship as Hedwig and Adolf. Maybe there was no more room on that ship, maybe he needed to tie up loose ends before he could leave.

One thing my general research indicated was that none of them could have received a visa from the US consulate unless they already had tickets on a ship to the US.1 That meant that by August 11, 1939, at least Hedwig and Adolf and perhaps even Eugen already had purchased their tickets. And yet they didn’t arrive in the US for months.

And then I found a 2020 obituary for their son Adolf that revealed part of the story. It included this information:

Ed [as he was known in the US] was born on January 7, 1930 in Greidel [sic], Germany, and immigrated to New York City in 1939 with his mother, Hedwig. They settled in Baltimore, MD in 1940 when his father, Eugene, was able to join them after being separated from his family and held falsely in a French internment camp in Falaise.

So Eugen had been separated from his wife and son, but when? And why in France?

Only when I received the documents relating to the compensation claim that Eugen filed after the war was I able to put together more of their story. In detailing his emigration costs as part of that claim, Eugen claimed in part, “2½ tourist-class passages (per attached invoice) RM 1,163.12. These tickets were not used, since the ship was recalled before Southampton.”2

 

The file from Germany also included a confirmation of the purchase of these tickets from Hamburg-Amerika Linie, otherwise referred to as HAPAG, the shipping company from which Eugen and his family originally planned to travel to New York. This meant that at that time the ship was to sail in August, 1939, Eugen also must have had a visa from the US Consulate in Stuttgart, likely obtained the same time that Hedwig and Adolf received theirs.

HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Norddeutscher Lloyd/Hamburg-Amerika Linie Bestätigung, 1 Aug. 1939, p. 22.

But that ship was recalled, as Eugen wrote, because two weeks after they obtained their visas on August 11, 1939, Hitler ordered all German commercial ships to return to Germany or a neutral port, and no German ships could leave Germany after that date.3

This explains why despite having visas in August, Hedwig and Adolf did not leave until months later. Their original plan to leave failed once the ship had to return to port. The family thus had to purchase new tickets from a non-German shipping company sailing out of a non-German port. As Eugen wrote:4

We consequently had to stay in France. My wife and son could only continue on with the “Manhattan” after 3 months. I myself was interned and could only travel on 6 Dec. with a French ship, the “Oregon,” arriving here only on 28.12.39. These passages were paid in advance by my brother-in-law from New York and I had to repay him:
1½ passages from Verdun, approx. $175.—
1 [passage] from Le Havre, approx. $150.—
Stay in France for 3 months cost approx. $500.—

But when had they gotten to France? And where did they stay? The compensation claim file included a statement from Julius Baer, Eugen’s brother, who, as you may recall, had left Germany in 1936 and settled with his family in Molsheim, France, in the Alsace region. Julius wrote:

My brother Eugen came 8 days before the outbreak of war, with his family (wife and son) to us in Molsheim, in order to emigrate to America from here. He had already paid for the ship tickets on the “Hansa” and wanted to board the ship with his family at the port of Cherbourg. Due to the war events the ship did not sail, and so he traveled back from Cherbourg to Paris. He himself was held as a foreigner in a camp until the end of 1939, and his wife and son were sent to Bordeaux and Limoges. Since all three had no financial means and had not anticipated these events, I of course, as the only brother living here, had to provide for their support. I lent them, successively, sums amounting to the equivalent of 500 dollars.[translation by Claude.ai]

HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Jules Baer, eidesstattliche Versicherung, 3 June 1957, p. 47

World War II started on September 1, 1939, and eight days before September 1, 1939, was August 24, 1939. A separate confirmation from HAPAG indicates that August 24, 1939 was the day that Eugen, Helga, and Adolf were supposed to embark from Hamburg:

We hereby confirm that Mr. Eugen Baer and family traveled with our former ship S.S. HANSA on 24 August 1939 from Hamburg, and that this steamer was recalled one day after departure due to the threat of war, so that the family had to withdraw from the voyage. As is further evident from our records, the family’s assets were confiscated pursuant to an order of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD dated 2 November 1942.

HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Hamburg-Amerika Linie to Regierungspräsident Darmstadt, 25 April 1957, p. 52.

Thus, Eugen and family went to Molsheim after their ship was turned back, leaving behind their possessions. I cannot explain why Julius said they were sailing from Cherbourg and HAPAG says Hamburg, but as we will see, their possessions were confiscated in Hamburg. More on that to come in my next post.

We know from their ship manifest that Hedwig and Adolf were eventually able to get tickets on the US-owned ship, the SS Manhattan, and left from Le Verdun, France on November 7, 1939. But Eugen was left behind. I am hoping to get more information about his arrest and time in the French concentration camp, but for now we know that Eugen was later able to get a new visa to travel to the US in October and sailed out of France in December. On December 28, 1939, he joined his family in the United States.

 

 

  1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Immigration to the United States, 1933–41,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/immigration-to-the-united-states-1933-41. ↩
  2. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (HHStAW), Abt. 518, Nr. 23400 (Wiedergutmachungsakte Eugen Baer, 1954–1960) eidesstattliche Erklärung (emigration costs), 4 Feb. 1957, p. 21. [hereinafter cited as ” HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Eugen Baer” with the appropriate title and page number in the file.] ↩
  3. See, e.g., “The S.S. Bremen: Last Voyage of a Luxury Liner,” Cruising the Past, https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/the-s-s-bremen-last-voyage-of-a-luxury-liner/; also, see the Kriegstagebuch der Seekriegsleitung 1939–1945 (KTB Skl), the official daily war diary of the German Naval High Command, at https://uboatdata.ussleahy.com/SKL/1/Trans/wardiarygermanna11939germ.pdf ↩
  4. See Note 2, supra. ↩

Eugen Baer, Escaping the Nazis, Part I: Bad Nauheim

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Now that I am back from traveling, I will return to the saga of the Baer siblings, in particular the one remaining Baer sibling, Eugen. And his story, like that of his brother Julius, is quite complicated. Eugen and his wife Hedwig and son Adolf did not arrive in the US until after World War II had started. Hedwig and Adolf arrived on November 15, 1939, and Eugen arrived six weeks later on December 28, 1939.

I was curious as to why they arrived so late and why they arrived separately. Piecing together that story was a challenge. Rather than tell the story in a direct way, I’d like to take you on the roundabout journey I took to figure it out.

The first documents I studied about their departure were the two ship manifests, one for Hedwig and Adolf and one for Eugen. According to the information on the passenger manifest for Hedwig and Adolf, they had obtained US visas in Stuttgart on August 11, 1939, before the war started; they listed their last residence as Griedel, Germany.

Hedwig and Adolf Baer, ship manifest, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715; RG Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; RG: 85, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Looking at the passenger manifest for Eugen, however, I noticed that he did not receive his visa in Stuttgart until October 12, 1939, two months after his wife and son received theirs and six weeks after the war started. But since the US was not yet at war with Germany at that time, Eugen was still able obtain a visa from the US Consul in Stuttgart.

Eugen Baer, ship manifest, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, New York, 1897-1957; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715; RG Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; RG: 85, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Unlike Hedwig and Adolf’s manifest, which listed their last residence as Griedel, Eugen’s manifest listed his last residence as Bad Nauheim, a town where there was and is a resort and spa and that is less than ten miles from Griedel (and incidentally the town where his brother Arthur had moved to after his home and business were vandalized). I wondered: Why was Eugen living in Bad Nauheim, not Griedel? Was he ill? Is that why he left later? Is that why he didn’t apply for a visa when his wife and son did? Was the family living separately?

Thus began a search that took me through archives in Germany and France and through many other sources.

I found my next important clues in the LostLift Database, a database created by the German Maritime Museum that contains documents detailing the Nazi expropriation and sale of the belongings of Jewish refugees.1 I located a file in that database for Eugen Baer that included the following comment: “The furnishings of their apartment in Griedel near Friedberg were destroyed. The family then moved to Bad Nauheim and later emigrated to the USA.”

So I learned that the family’s home in Griedel had been ransacked and that the family had fled to Bad Nauheim, but there were no dates included as to when these events occurred. It took until more recently when I acquired files from the Hesse Archives in Wiesbaden2 that I learned more details. These files related to a claim for compensation that Eugen made after the war in part for boat tickets he had purchased for himself, his wife, and his son to leave Germany and immigrate to the United States, just as many of his siblings had already done.

Eugen filed this sworn statement as part of his compensation claim [translation by Claude.ai]: 3

Since 1929 I operated the cattle-trading business and butcher shop that had existed for many years, run by my late father, under the firm name Eugen Baer, Griedel b/Friedberg/Hessen.

After the seizure of power by the Third Reich on 30 January 1933 and the boycott of Jewish businesses, I had no way to continue my livelihood and was forced by measures of the Party to close the butcher shop already in 1933 and to give up the cattle trade in 1935.

The methods used are generally known and I consider it unnecessary to go into them further. However, I cannot fail to mention the following incident:

My son had to be transferred to the Israelite Hospital in Frankfurt/M for an operation, and my wife and I stayed overnight with the boy. The next day we returned to Griedel. When we entered our apartment, we were met with a scene of devastation that can hardly be described. On the evening of the previous day, a number of SS and SA men had forced their way into the house after breaking down the front door, and smashed everything that wasn’t nailed or bolted down. All the cupboards had been torn open and all valuables, clothing, linens, etc. destroyed and largely stolen. All the windowpanes and doors were smashed, nothing was spared. Pepper had been strewn in quantity throughout all the rooms, so that it was impossible to remain in the house. …

As a witness I can name the entire population of Griedel.
Signed: Eugen Baer

HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Eugen Baer, “Verfolgung,” p. 4.

Eugen did not include the date on which these attacks occurred, but from his statement and the description of the vandalism, I assume that it took place after 1935 and could have been during Kristallnacht on November 8-9, 1938, when many Jewish homes and synagogues were attacked by the Gestapo and SA and heavily vandalized and even destroyed.

An article entitled “A Special Homecoming” about Eugen’s family published on December 7, 2022, in JMore, the Baltimore Jewish community newspaper, provided an indication that this attack had occurred during Kristallnacht. It reported that, “Growing up in the German village of Griedel, Adolph “Ed” Baer [Eugen’s son] was often the victim of antisemitic bullying by his classmates. He witnessed the torching of his town’s synagogue during Kristallnacht, the 1938 “night of broken glass” ….” That language would suggest that the family had not left Griedel until after Kristallnacht.

One additional clue that helps to corroborate this possibility is the fact that Eugen and his family left Griedel by April 26, 1939. That fact appeared in another document in this compensation file. The town of Bad Nauheim reported that Eugen Baer was registered as a resident of Bad Nauheim from April 26, 1939, until August 1, 1939.4

HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Meldebestätigung, Bad Nauheim, 12 March 1957, p. 24.

Why did they choose Bad Nauheim as their refuge? There appear to have been two possible reasons. First, he had family there. Included in the LostLift database was a document that revealed that Eugen and presumably Hedwig and Adolf were living in Bad Nauheim at the address of Berthold Baer, Eugen’s second cousin.5 That may also explain why Eugen’s brother Arthur had also fled to Bad Nauheim.

Also, Bad Nauheim had had a Jewish community for centuries and had three hundred Jewish residents in 1933. Its synagogue was looted and severely damaged during Kristallnacht but not destroyed as was the case for so many other synagogues in Germany.

This article from the Jerusalem Post from November 11, 2017, provides more context:

BAD NAUHEIM, known for its hot springs, attracted many visitors, including Jews, looking for health benefits. There were a number of kosher hotels, and a significant percentage of the doctors who served the townspeople and guests were Jews.

Prior to the Nazi takeover, antisemitism was somewhat muted – the presence of paying guests who were Jews made overt hostility bad for business….The many guests from all over the world – including Dwight Eisenhower, who would later instruct the US Army Air Force to refrain from bombing the town – probably mitigated open antisemitism to a certain degree and may well have played a part in the preservation of the synagogue.….

IN BAD NAUHEIM, as elsewhere, Kristallnacht was traumatic for the Jewish community. On November 10, local Brownshirts gathered at a tavern and set out from there, with the active assistance of other residents, to destroy Jewish homes and shops. They looted and threw merchandise into the street. Hitler Youth joined them in removing clothing and furniture from destroyed homes and burning them.

The vice mayor and head of the local Nazi cell attempted to restrain the mob to some degree, especially when it came to private homes and the synagogue – an attempt that was only partially successful. The hooligans broke into the synagogue and defaced the large Stars of David on the building’s facade. Ritual articles and costly rugs were destroyed, although some holy objects had been removed to a different location for protection.

They set the building aflame – but it was extinguished by town residents recruited for the task. A French Red Cross delegation was visiting Bad Nauheim to observe its spa and therapeutic facilities, and municipal officials did not want foreign visitors to be eyewitnesses to the barbarity.

This is what ultimately saved the synagogue. Yet the damage was significant.

Thus, Eugen likely chose to move to Bad Nauheim because he had relatives there and because it was a safer place for his family to hide. Not that there weren’t Nazis there, but, as the article above indicates, the antisemitism was not as virulent there as in other places in Germany because it was a destination for many foreigners.

But obviously at some point Eugen and Hedwig realized that they had to get out of Germany and by August 1, 1939, one month before the war started, they left Bad Nauheim. But where did they go?

That requires another post.

  1. LostLift database, German Maritime Museum – Leibniz Institute for Maritime History, Person: Eugen Baer, Permalink: https://lostlift.dsm.museum/en/detail/person/3439a55b-b0da-43a3-8305-20e8d46ee767 (Last modified: 8.9.2025) [translated by Google] ↩
  2. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (HHStAW), Abt. 518, Nr. 23400 (Wiedergutmachungsakte Eugen Baer, 1954–1960) [hereinafter cited as ” HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Eugen Baer” with the appropriate title and page number in the file. ↩
  3. HHStAW Abt. 518 Nr. 23400, Eugen Baer, “Verfolgung,” p. 4. ↩
  4. I can’t explain why Hedwig and Adolf’s last residence was given as Griedel on their manifest except to say it seems to be an error. ↩
  5. LostLift Database (Hamburg State Archives), Eugen Israel Baer file, Order for Auction, Aktz. U.89, Nov. 1942  Eugen’s father Eisemann Adolf Baer was the first cousin of Berthold Baer’s father Meier Baer. Eisemann and Meier were the grandchildren of Eisemann Baer and Breinie Bendheim. Berthold was born in Bad Nauheim. Berthold Bär, Gender männlich (Male), Birth Date 20 Dez 1895 (20 Dec 1895), Birth Place Bad Nauheim, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany), Civil Registration Office, Bad Nauheim, Father Meier Bär, Mother Nannÿ Bär, Certificate Number 86, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 924; Laufende Nummer: 1167, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901 ↩

Arthur Baer Leaves Germany

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By the end of July 1938, only two of the eight Baer siblings were left in Germany: Arthur and Eugen. Five (Klara, Selma, Jenny, Paula, and Meyer) were in the US, and Julius was in France. This post will tell more about what I’ve learned about Arthur Baer and a correction to what I once thought.

As I wrote earlier here, Arthur was eventually able to escape from Germany to England, but I was wrong when I wrote that he had been arrested after Kristallnacht. Hanno Muller’s entry for Arthur Baer in his book about the Jewish families in Butzbach1 states:

He was born in Griedel, married in Nieder-Weisel, and was a merchant (ready-made clothing business together with his brother Julius Bär in Butzbach at Wetzlarerstraße 31 and Römerstraße 27; F[ather]: Adolf Bär in [Butzbach]). He was a member of the Griedel gymnastics club (Turnverein Griedel) (WOLF, 1998 p. 14) and was a witness to the death of Berta Kaufma[nn] Speyer, who died in his apartment. During the night of September 16 to 17, his house was defaced with the word “Jude” (Jew) written in oil paint (WOLF, 1988 p. 49). Best men (wedding witnesses) were Leopold Krä[mer] from Nieder-Weisel and Julius Bär from Butzbach. The family relocated on June 27, 1938, to Bad N[auheim], thereafter to England, and later to the USA (WOLF, 1988 p. 55). The wife was born in Nieder[-Weisel], F[ather]: Adolf Krämer II. The son was born in the Johanniter Hospital in Nieder-Weisel.

I wrote to the archivist in Butzbach to see if they would scan those two pages (49 and 55) from the source Muller referred to, that is, Dieter Wolf’s book Zur Geschichte der Juden in Butzbach (On the History of the Jews in Butzbach), which was published in 1988. I was hoping that those pages would clarify exactly when Arthur Baer’s house was vandalized and when they left Bad Nauheim for England.

The archivist, Gerd Becker, graciously sent me the scans of those two pages. 2 On page 49, it lists events for 1935 and says as to September 16/17 the following:

16./17. September:

During this night, the house at Wetzlarerstraße 31 is defaced with the oil paint inscription “Jude” (Jew); the local group leader (Ortsgruppenleiter) of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) intends to point out the cessation of such “isolated actions” (Einzelaktionen) at the next members’ meeting. – Smearings of antisemitic content are also frequently applied to other Jewish houses and businesses at night.

Wetzlarerstraße 31 was the same address Muller cited as the location of the clothing business owned by Arthur Baer and his brother Julius. It is also the address given for Arthur on p. 55 of Wolf’s book, which confirms that Arthur and his family left Butzbach on June 27, 1938.3

This residence card from Butzbach further confirms that they left on June 27, 1938.

Stadtarchiv Butzbach, Butzbach, Germany. Bestände des Einwohnermeldeamts: Meldekarten der jüdischen Einwohner. Registration card for Arthur Bär (born 28 August 1905), recording residential changes and family details from 1929 to 1938. Digital Images 1 & 2.

But did they go directly to Bad Nauheim and when did they leave Bad Nauheim? Gerd Becker suggested I contact someone in Bad Nauheim for that information, and I wrote to the archivist there, but he never wrote back. Now I have written to another person and am hoping that I will get a response.

For now, I know that Arthur and his family were in Germany until at least June 27, 1938, when they left Butzbach. And it seems that they were in England by September 29, 1939, when the England and Wales Register was taken and compiled.

Arthur Baer 1939 England and Wales Register, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/625D, Enumeration District: AYBQ, Ancestry.com. 1939 England and Wales Register

The marked-out name underneath Arthur and Erna’s names must have been for their son Erich; names of those who were minors in 1939 were covered over for privacy reasons when these records were released.

As we will see, Arthur Baer and his family later went to the United States and joined the relatives who were already there.

  1. Hanno Muller, Familienbuch Butzbach Band V: Judenfamilien in Butzbach und seinen Stadtteilen (Family Book Butzbach Volume 5: Jewish Families in Butzbach and its Districts). Translation by Google AI. ↩
  2. Dieter Wolf, Vor 50 Jahren brannten die Synagogen: Aus sieben Jahrhunderten jüdischen Lebens in Butzbach und Umgebung (Butzbach: Stadtarchiv und Museum Butzbach, 1988), 49, entry for 16./17. September 1935. Translated by Google AI. ↩
  3. Dieter Wolf, Vor 50 Jahren brannten die Synagogen: Aus sieben Jahrhunderten jüdischen Lebens in Butzbach und Umgebung (Butzbach: Stadtarchiv und Museum Butzbach, 1988), 55, entry for 27 June 1938. ↩

The “Case” Against Julius Baer: A Page out of Kafka’s The Trial

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It’s been several weeks since I last posted about my Baer cousins, the children of Therese Spier and Eisenmann Adolf Baer and great-great-grandchildren of Sprintz Blumenfeld, the sister of my three-times great-grandmother, Breine Blumenfeld. I had an incredible couple of weeks with my own children and grandchildren and a chance to re-energize myself for more genealogy research. Discussing my latest novel, The Women Before Us, with my daughter has made me realize once again how important it is to preserve the stories and memories of our ancestors.

And so now I will return to the story of Julius Baer, the youngest child of Therese Spier Baer, and his experiences during the Nazi era.

In my last post I confessed that I had gotten myself into a deep hole by confusing my cousins Julius and Arthur Baer with two unrelated men with the same names and concluding that both of my cousins had been arrested after Kristallnacht in 1938 and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. But thanks to Bryan Knobloch, who shared with me pages from Hanno Muller’s book Familienbuch Butzbach Band V: Judenfamilien in Butzbach und seinen Stadtteilen (Family Book Butzbach Volume 5: Jewish Families in Butzbach and its Districts), I discovered that mistake and learned that my Julius Baer was not even in Germany in 1938.

Muller’s note on Julius Baer indicated that he had owned a ready-made clothing store in Butzbach, Germany, and that he was “said to have been a communist and was brought to the Osthofen concentration camp near Worms in February 1933 together with Josef Oppenheimer.”  The note further reported that Julius and his family had left Germany for France in 1936, then fled to Switzerland in 1942, returning to France after World War II ended.

Having made one mistake, I wanted to be sure I was more careful before relying on Muller’s report, and so I wrote to the Hesse Archives in Darmstadt for documentation of Julius’ arrest and imprisonment in Osthofen and to Switzerland for documentation of his time there during the war. I also wrote to France for information about Julius’ life in France and asked a cousin in France for further help in that country. I’ve received the documents from Darmstadt and from Switzerland and will now report on some of the German documents.1

The documents from Germany are, of course, in German, so I used claude.ai to translate them. Since most of them were typed, not handwritten, the translations are likely accurate. Rather than post the entire text and images, I will summarize the important points and quote and include the appropriate images of the documents where appropriate.

I immediately noticed two errors in the Muller note about Julius Baer and his arrest and imprisonment. First, it took place in 1934, not 1933, and second, he was arrested with a man named Julius Ehrlich, not Joseph Oppenheimer, as named in the Muller note. Both Julius Ehrlich and Julius Baer were charged with making disparaging remarks about the SA leader Ernst Roehm on January 5, 1934, in Ehrlich’s shoe store. SA is the abbreviation used to refer to the Sturmabteilung, or Stormtroopers, the Nazi’s paramilitary force.

Two women, Luisa Zahrt and Ria Artz, were in the shop at the time and reported Ehrlich and Baer to the local Nazi government, which then issued the following order on January 10, 1934:2

Enclosed I am sending you a sworn statement against the Jew Julius Bär, born 5/15/1900 in Griedel; residence: Wetzlarerstrasse 31 (Butzbach), who disparaged and insulted Chief of Staff Röhm through his remarks in a public shop. I request that this Jew be sent to Osthofen without delay, along with his racial fellow Julius Ehrlich, Butzbach, Cleebergerstrasse 11, born January 3, 1882 in Friedberg, who provoked the conversation in question through his provocative questions.

According to Ria Artz’s sworn statement:3

On Friday, January 5, 1934, after 6 pm, I went with Miss Luise Zahrt, born 8/6/1915 in Lang-Göns, into the Ehrlich shoe shop, Butzbach, Wetzlarerstrasse, to exchange shoes for acquaintances.

On this occasion the shop owner Ehrlich asked: “Do you also need brown SA boots?” The Jew Bär, [of the] textile trade, Butzbach, who was present, then said the following words to us: “From now on the girls will get SA boots too, and Chief of Staff Röhm will become the Führer!”

Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Bestand G 15, Nr. Q 149 (Schutzhaftsache Julius Ehrlich, Butzbach, und Julius Baer, Griedel, 1934), p. 7

(Interestingly, Roehm was perceived as a rival and a threat by Hitler and was killed on Hitler’s orders on July 1, 1934, just six months after these charges were filed.)

It was those alleged words by Ehrlich and Baer that led to their arrest and interrogation; both denied much of Ria Artz’s story. On January 18, 1934, on being questioned by the police, Julius Ehrlich gave the following sworn statement:4

It is correct that in early January of this year, Luise Zahrt from Lang-Göns was in my shop with a female friend. Zahrt exchanged shoes there. I cannot recall precisely whether it was on 5.1.34. I know Luise Zahrt very well, as she has bought from my shop on several occasions before. Owing to the long-standing business connection with Zahrt and her relatives, I address the young woman informally (“Du”) and make jokes with her whenever she makes a purchase.

It is possible that I therefore said to the girls, jokingly: “May I try some long boots on you?” I also stock long boots in various styles. I use this humorous turn of phrase often with good acquaintances.

However, I must dispute that I said to the girls: “Do you also need brown SA boots?”

The merchant Julius Bär of this town happened also to be in my shop as a customer while the girls were there. Whether Bär said to the girls: “From now on the girls will get SA boots too, and Chief of Staff Röhm will become the Führer,” is not within my knowledge, as I was occupied elsewhere at the time. However, I can recall that Bär did speak with the girls.

It was absolutely far from my intention to insult anyone in any way, especially since girls do not wear SA boots at all.

Julius Baer initially gave the following statement on January 19, 1934:5

I have been in Ehrlich’s shop several times before. That I am supposed to have been at Ehrlich’s on 5.1.34, when two young women were exchanging shoes, is not known to me and I cannot recall anything of the sort.

The accusations that the two girls raise against me are invented.

I definitely cannot recall having said to two girls, at Ehrlich’s or anywhere else: “From now on the girls will get SA boots, and Chief of Staff Röhm will become their leader.”

I can give no further information on the matter.

But Julius then amended his statement, saying,6

After careful reflection, it occurs to me that I was in Ehrlich’s shop, where the two girls in question were also present. Mr. Ehrlich, on that occasion, spoke jokingly with the girls and offered them long boots. It is possible that I said, on that occasion: “The girls are getting SA boots now too.” But that Chief of Staff Röhm was to become their leader — that I definitely did not say.

I have to admit that Julius undermined his credibility by his recanting of his initial denial of being in the store, but nevertheless, the question remains, even if Ehrlich and Baer said exactly what the two women claimed, what was the crime? Joking about the SA’s boots? Its leader? Apparently so.

On January 22, 1934, Ehrlich was sentenced to four weeks and Julius Baer to six weeks of “protective custody” in the Osthofen prison camp and were transported there on February 1, 1934.7

Julius Baer’s lawyer petitioned for early release of Julius. He introduced a number of witness statements in support of his client’s release: a letter from a doctor attesting to the poor health of Julius’ mother, Therese Spier Baer, who was suffering from angina pectoris; a statement from the mayor of Griedel attesting to the service of Julius’ father guarding prisoners of war during World War I despite being beyond draft age; a statement from the mayor of Butzbach as to Julius Baer’s good standing in that town; a statement from Julius’ brother Meier listing his service for Germany during World War I, including being wounded at the Battle of Verdun on August 10, 1918; and a statement from the mayor of Griedel about Julius’ own service for Germany during World War I. In exchange for 150 Reichmarks to be donated to the Butzbach Winter Relief Fund, the authorities agreed to release Julius Baer after four weeks in custody on March 1, 1934, the same day that the four-week term of Julius Ehrlich expired.8

So for allegedly making a joke about the SA and its leader, my cousin Julius Baer was sent to a prison camp for a month. Imagine his own fear, imagine how terrified his wife and child must have been. This is how a fascist government operates; it uses fear and force to intimidate its citizens so that they cannot even make jokes about that government without fear of imprisonment. It turns other citizens into informers who rat out their fellow citizens. It makes all of us suspicious of each other and frightened to speak up against those who are persecuted.

The next post will discuss what happened to Julius Baer and his family after he was released from Osthofen on March 1, 1934.

  1. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Bestand G 15, Nr. Q 149 (Schutzhaftsache Julius Ehrlich, Butzbach, und Julius Baer, Griedel, 1934). There are 28 pages of documents in this folder. I will refer to the relevant pages below. ↩
  2. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Bestand G 15, Nr. Q 149 (Schutzhaftsache Julius Ehrlich, Butzbach, und Julius Baer, Griedel, 1934), document 3 ↩
  3. Ibid., p. 7 ↩
  4. Ibid., p. 25 ↩
  5. Ibid., p. 27 ↩
  6. Ibid., p. 28 ↩
  7. Ibid., p. 28 ↩
  8. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Bestand G 15, Nr. Q 149 (Schutzhaftsache Julius Ehrlich, Butzbach, und Julius Baer, Griedel, 1934)(multiple pages in the file) ↩

When I Assume, I Make An Ass Out of ME!

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As we saw in the last post, the four daughters and one of the sons of Therese Spier Baer escaped from Germany before Kristallnacht and ended up in the United States. Klara was in Baltimore as was Paula while Jenny and Selma were living in New York. Their brother Meyer/Manfred settled in Baltimore. Another son, Arthur Baer, escaped with his family to England.

But I realized after publishing my last post that I had made an error in my research about Arthur Baer and that he had never spent time in Buchenwald. I have updated my last post to correct this error, and I’ll write more about Arthur Baer’s actual story in a later post. I only realized I’d made that error when I discovered I’d made a similar error in researching Arthur’s brother Julius. In researching both Julius and Arthur, I made stupid assumptions that led me down a deep rabbit hole that led me nowhere for quite a while.

According to records in the Arolsen Archives, a man named Julius Baer was arrested during June 1938 as part of a mass arrest of Jewish men to force their emigration from Germany. The record revealed that he was released from Sachsenhausen concentration camp on July 16, 1938.1 There was no birthdate or birthplace on those records, and I made the fatal novice genealogist error of assuming that this was my Julius Baer. That assumption was unfortunately reinforced when I saw that that a Julius Baer also was sent to Buchenwald and released on the same day as an Arthur Baer.2 I assumed—incorrectly—that the two brothers had been released together after some pressure from their relatives. After all, their names were listed one after the other on one of  the Arolsen documents (along with many other names).

But then I hit a dead end on Julius. I knew only that at some point my Julius Baer ended up in France because he died there in 1981.3 But I didn’t know when or how he got to France or anything about his life there during or after World War II.

When I found that there were Stolpersteine laid for Julius and his wife and sons in Butzbach, Germany, that report that the family fled to France in 1936, I was confused. How could Julius have been in France in 1936 if he was arrested in Germany and sent to concentration camps in 1938? I dismissed it as an error on the Stolperstein and shrugged.

Stolperstein in Butzbach, Germany, for Julius Baer, GeorgDerReisende@Vicuna, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

But it turns out that I was the one who’d made errors. And I learned that when Bryan Knobloch, another genealogist, sent me scans of pages from Hanno Muller’s book about the Jews of Butzbach.4 Bryan had seen my first post about the Baer family and commented on my blog about Muller’s book and its content related to the Baer family. I wrote to him and asked if he would scan the relevant pages, and he graciously did so.

On page 50 there was this entry about Julius a/k/a Jules Baer [as translated by Google]:

  1. Baer, Julius
    171 | 15.05.1900 | 03.11.1929 | France
    He was born in Griedel, was a merchant (in 1927 he founded a ready-made clothing store together with his brother Arthur Bär; see Chap. 9.3.2: 1926) in Butzbach, Marktplatz 20 and Weiselerstraße 14, and was a marriage witness in 1929 for Arthur Bär; V: Adolf Bär in Griedel. He is said to have been a communist and was brought to the Osthofen concentration camp near Worms in February 1933 together with Josef Oppenheimer [105] (WOLF, 1988 p. 45). His textile business had to close in 1934 as a result of the boycott of Jewish businesses (WOLF, 1988 p. 47). The wife was born in Nonnenweier in Baden, and the marriage took place there too. The family moved to Molsheim in Alsace on February 19, 1936 (HELLRIEGEL, 1968 p. 45). From there they fled to Southern France in 1940 and in early October 1942 to Switzerland (WOLF, 1988 p. 51). After the end of the war, they returned to Molsheim in Alsace, where both died in 1981 (according to Arnold BAER: Mein Vater Julius Baer, Jerusalem 2005, in: Stadtarchiv Butzbach Judaica Familie “Bär”).
    oo Wertheimer, Erna | 19.07.1907 | France

That paragraph tells a far different story about Julius. It indicates that the Stolperstein was correct—Julius did flee to France in 1936. And it also reports that once World War II started, they fled to Switzerland, returning to France after the war ended.

It was also Muller’s book that alerted me to the fact that Arthur Baer had not spent time in Buchenwald. As with Julius, I had incorrectly assumed that records for an Arthur Baer in the Arolsen Archives were for my cousin because the two names—Julius and Arthur—were listed together on one of the documents.

But how could I verify the information in Muller’s book? I requested the original files from Germany regarding Julius’ arrest in 1933 and from Switzerland regarding his time there; I also have asked another researcher to help me find information about his life in France, including possible descendants. In my next post I will report on what I learned from the German documents I’ve received and what really happened to Julius Baer and his family.

I will be taking a break from blogging until after Labor Day to enjoy the next two weeks with my children and grandchildren. Enjoy the last days of summer, everyone! And this might be a great time to read The Women Before Us!  It’s available on Amazon here in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

 

 

  1. Name Julius Baer, Nationality H., Record Type Register, Departure Date 16 Jul 1938, Prisoner Type A. S. R., Prisoner Number 5268, Reference Number 00115100112, Arolsen Archives; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Group 1 Camp Lists, Reference Number: 00115100112, Ancestry.com. Arolsen Concentration Camp Lists, 1939-1944. ↩
  2. Julius Baer, Religion Jude, Record Type Register, Departure Date 28 Dez 1938 (28 Dec 1938), Prisoner Type Schutzhaft, Prisoner Number 20699, Reference Number 00116100004, Arolsen Archives; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Group 1 Camp Lists, Reference Number: 00116100004, Ancestry.com. Arolsen Concentration Camp Lists, 1939-1944 ↩
  3. Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/283584356/jules-baer: accessed 14 Aug 2026), memorial page for Jules Baer (1900–26 Jul 1981), Find a Grave Memorial ID 283584356, citing Cimetière Israélite de Rosenwiller, Rosenwiller, Département du Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France; Maintained by Laura (contributor 48852786). ↩
  4. Hanno Muller, Familienbuch Butzbach Band V: Judenfamilien in Butzbach und seinen Stadtteilen (Family Book Butzbach Volume 5: Jewish Families in Butzbach and its Districts). ↩

Momberg, The Ancestral Town of the Blumenfelds

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The article below was written by my fifth cousin, Richard Bloomfield, who recently visited our mutual ancestral town, Momberg, Germany, with his first cousins (and my fifth cousins) Jim and Steven Bloomfield. Momberg is where our mutual four-times great-grandparents Abraham Blumenfeld I and Geitel Katz lived and raised their children, including my three-times great-grandmother Breine Blumenfeld Katzenstein and Richard, Jim, and Steven’s three-times great-grandfather Jakob Blumenfeld.

In this article, Richard discusses the construction and history of the Momberg synagogue, including the terrible story of how it was damaged on Kristallnacht and of the Torah scroll that the Blumenfeld family rescued and brought to America. Richard mentions many Blumenfeld relatives whom I’ve mentioned and written about on this blog, including Abraham Blumenfeld IIA,  Sitta Blumenfeld Spier and her daughter Gisela Spier-Cohen, Fritz Blumenfeld, Kathinka Blumenfeld Rosenberg, and some of their descendants including my cousins Simeon Spier, Michael Rosenberg, and Alan Blumenfeld, all of whom have helped me with my research and with whom I’ve exchanged emails and zoomed.

I am so grateful to Richard for sharing this article and his photographs so that I can share them with my readers, especially all the Blumenfeld cousins I’ve been so lucky to connect with through my blog and my research.

Meier Rothschild, Part VI: Anna Rothschild Hamberg

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The youngest child of Meier Rothschild and Bertha Lorge was their daughter Anna. And unlike with her older siblings, I was able to learn where she and her family were in the 1930s and 1940s. I found the Palestine immigration files for Anna, her husband (and my cousin) Julius Hamberg, and for two of their three children, Alice and Ernst, on the Israel State Archives website. They all had immigrated from Germany to Palestine in 1934 when Alice was twelve, Hans Leo was eleven, and Ernst was eight. Here are two pages from Julius Hamberg’s application that show their date of immigration.

Julius Hamberg, Palestine immigration file found at the Israel State Archives, https://www.archives.gov.il/

Among the interesting things I learned from these immigration files is that Julius listed his occupation as a “commission agent,” meaning most likely a broker who handled commercial sales for sellers and buyers, Alice was a children’s nurse, and Ernst was an agricultural laborer.

Here are the photos of them from their immigration files:

Anna Rothschild Hamberg, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

Julius Hamberg, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

Alice Hamberg, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

Ernst Hamberg, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

I was not able to find a Palestine naturalization file for Hans Leo Eliezer Hamberg, but he was mentioned in his father Julius’ file when Hans later sought immigration to Israel in 1990 under the Law of Return and had to establish his Jewish identity to qualify. Although I cannot find him elsewhere, I assume Hans Leo Eliezer must have come to Palestine in 1934 with his parents since he was just a young boy; he perhaps left Palestine/Israel at some point and then wanted to return in 1990.

Hans Leo (Eliezer) Hamberg mentioned in Julius Hamberg’s immigration file, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

As an aside, the fact that Anna Rothschild Hamberg and her family arrived in Palestine in 1934 helps to understand how Helene/Hana Rothschild, Berthold’s daughter, was more able to come to Palestine in 1937 without her sister or her father (her mother had died). She had an aunt, her father’s sister, living there so did have family already established in the country.

Returning to the family of Anna Rothschild Hamberg, a letter in her daughter Alice’s file from when she was applying for naturalization in 1941 includes the sentence: “The applicant came to Palestine together with her parents and on the ppt [passport] of her father, whose whereabouts she does not know.” Alice was nineteen at that time, and her family had been in Palestine since 1934. Where could Julius have gone? Or is the writer of the letter referring to her father’s passport and its whereabouts? I think that seems more likely, but the sentence is certainly poorly drafted.

Letter in Alice Hamberg’s Palestinian immigration file, 1941, found at https://www.archives.gov.il/

On IGRA I found the marriage record of Alice Hamberg to Fritz Shalom Mayer on February 10, 1947, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Fritz was 35 at the time, Alice was 24. Fritz was the son of Gerson Leo and Alza Sara Mayer, according to the marriage record.

Alice Hamberg and Fritz Shalom Mayer marriage record, found at https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

At this point I have not found any further records for Anna, Julius, or any of their children. Perhaps a descendant will find me and fill in the gaps.

This brings me to the end (for now) of my attempt to learn about the children of Meier Rothschild and Bertha Lorge. There is so much I still don’t know. What I do know is that all five of their children and all of their grandchildren survived the Holocaust, except Berthold’s ex-wife Sarah, who died in a sanatorium in Germany.

Berthold himself ended up in South Africa where he died in 1964, and his daughter Adelheid survived the concentration camp at Celle/Bergen Belsen and ended up in Israel after the war. His daughter Helene/Hana escaped to Palestine in 1937.

Theodor Rothschild and his wife Bettina ended up in Monaco, and their daughter Doris died in France. I don’t have further records for their daughter Ellen.

As for Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn and her husband Gustav and daughter Ruth, I know they were in Tel Aviv for some time, but Ruth and her children ended up in Mexico later on.

Siegfried and his wife Gisela are buried in Israel, their son Zeev died in British Columbia, and their son Gunther Michael lived in the United States.

Finally, Anna Rothschild Hamberg and her husband and children immigrated to what was then Palestine in 1934.

So Meier and Bertha’s children and grandchildren were not killed by the Nazis, but they ended up spread to all corners of the earth: Israel, France, Monaco, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. They may have survived the Holocaust, but their family was torn apart forever. They also were therefore all victims of the Holocaust.

With this final chapter in story of the children of Gelle Blumenfeld and Simon Rothschild, I have also closed the chapter on Gelle’s father Moses, the first of the six children of my four-times great-grandparents Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz. I started this particular chapter of the Blumenfeld family over four years ago, and now I can finally move on to the second child of Abraham and Geitel, their daughter Sprintz.

 

Adelheid Rothschild: How She Survived the Holocaust

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My cousin Adelheid Rothschild survived the Holocaust, as did her father Berthold and sister Helene/Hana, as we have seen,  but unlike her father and sister, Adelheid spent time in a concentration camp. She was deported from Amsterdam to the concentration camp at Bergen Belsen. She survived the war and at some point immigrated to Palestine/Israel, where she lived near her sister for the rest of her life. Her nephew Meir has shared a number of photos of Adi (as she was known in Israel) and his mother Hana, two of which I already shared. Here’s one more:

Helene/Hana and Adelheid/Adi in Germany, 1998.
Courtesy of the family

But one of the many questions that remained was when did Adi leave Germany for Amsterdam? Her father left for South Africa in 1936 when she was just sixteen, and her sister left for Palestine in 1937 around the same time that their mother Selma/Sarah Adler died. Adi was the last remaining member of that family to be left in Germany if she was still there after her sister left and mother died.

It took me quite some doing, but I believe I finally have some answers. I found in the Amsterdam Archives the following resident registration card for Adi.

Adelheid Rothschild Samson registration card from the Amsterdam Archives, found at https://archief.amsterdam/archief/30238/691

The card contains the following information, including pertinent information about Adi’s whereabouts in the Netherlands. Note that it starts with Adelheid being single and then was updated to show her marriage information. The card contains the following information:

Surname: Rothschild. First names: Adelheid Gertrud Sara

Born10 December 1920, Frankfurt am Main, Germany–Female

Father: Berthold, born 5 Dec 1889 in Hoff b. Kassel, Germany

Mother: Adler, Selma Sarah

Occupation: Housewife/without 

Married to: Samson, Manfred,  born 2 December 1923, Leipzig, Germany

Married on: 22 November 1943

Place of marriage: Westerbork

Address History 

| Date | Municipality | Address |

| 4 Jan 1939 | Cologne, Germany | (arrival from abroad) |

| 4 Jan 1939 | Amsterdam – Zeeburg | |

| 10 Jan 1939 | Etten en Leur, Liesberg | Hoofdstraat 63 |

| 3 Apr 1939 | Driebergen-Rijsenburg | |

| 1 Dec 1939 | Ommen, BB | |

| 4 Jun 1940 | Amsterdam | Valkenburgerstraat 186hs |

| 4 Sep 1940 | Franeker | Harlingerweg 45 |

| 29 Dec 1941 | Westerbork | |

| 27 Jan 1944 | Abroad – Germany | 

| 9 Aug 1945 | Amsterdam | Merwedeplein 39 II |

| 22 Oct 1947 | Amsterdam | VOW |

Of particular interest to me was the date of Adelheid’s arrival in the Netherlands: January 4, 1939, from Cologne, Germany. She was then not yet nineteen years old and had been without any immediate family member in Germany for almost two years.

Adelheid then lived in various towns in the Netherlands between January 4, 1939, and December 1941 when she was sent to Westerbork, the location where the Nazis sent the Jews they rounded up while awaiting transport to the concentration camps. It was there that Adelheid met and married Manfred Samson, a marriage of convenience, according to Meir.

I was curious about what advantages that marriage afforded Adelheid and/or Manfred, so I decided to dig a little deeper. What I learned was that people held at Westerbork learned that it was better to be deported to Bergen Belsen, which was not a death camp, than to Auschwitz or another death camp. One article described the purpose of the Bergen Belsen camp:

In late 1942, Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler agreed to make a camp for the purpose of setting aside Jewish families as hostages, with specific instructions that they be given healthy living conditions, so that they could be used at an unspecified later to be traded as hostages for Germans civilians living in allied and allied-occupied countries, for foreign currency, or for much-needed supplies. For this purpose, Jewish people were to be chosen under categories such as those who had special influential connections in foreign countries; those who were themselves of some importance in foreign countries; those who already had so-called ‘Palestine certificates’ giving them the right to emigrate to Palestine; those who already had authorized travel visas to allied countries; those who had ‘hostage value’ via political or economic means, or who were leading Jewish functionaries….Despite the name, the camp was still a part of the Nazi concentration camp system. Belsen was unique in the Nazi camp system in a number of ways, however. From the very start it was a camp intended for families, with a large number of children and teenagers. As a rule, entire families rather than single persons were not [sic??]sent to Belsen, even if only one person in family fulfilled the above criteria for ‘hostage value’.

Thus, perhaps Manfred and Adelheid married because they wanted to go to Bergen Belsen, a safer camp, and only one of them qualified as having “hostage value.” I was curious what a Palestine certificate was and how one obtained one and learned that they were issued by the Jewish Agency in Palestine to give those living under Nazi control permission to escape to Palestine. But only those who had a family member living already in Palestine were eligible to obtain one of these certificates. Remember that Adelheid’s sister Helene (Hana) had already immigrated to Palestine in 1937, so Adelheid was eligible to apply for a Palestine certificate. Perhaps Manfred was not, so Adelheid married him to save him from being sent to Auschwitz. Although they later divorced, Adelheid likely saved his life.

The chronology then continues, showing that in January 1944, Adelheid was deported. From other documents we learned that she and Manfred ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. According to a record I located at JewishGen.com, Adelheid Rothschild and her husband Manfred Samson were liberated at Tröbitz on April 23, 1945, just a week after the war in Europe ended.

I looked up Tröbitz and learned that that was where “the Lost Train” ended up as described in an article at the Yad Vashem website:

Between 6-10 April 1945, days before the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, three trains were sent from the camp with some 7,000 Jews on board, bound for the Terezin ghetto.  The first train was liberated by the Allies.  The second train reached Terezin on 21 April, and the third, later known as “The Lost Train”, never reached its destination.  After a journey of approximately two weeks, the train was stopped on a destroyed bridge on the Elster River, and on 23 April, it was liberated by the Red Army on the outskirts of the German village of Tröbitz.

The article then tells the story of Betje Andriesse, and her children Bram, Tett and Mirjam, passengers on that train presumably along with Adelaide Rothschild Samson. Betje’s husband Hermann died in February 1945 from starvation and illness at Bergen Belsen (as did Anne Frank). Like Adelaide and Manfred, the Andriesse family had been sent from Amsterdam to Westerbork and then to Bergen-Belsen around the same time. Perhaps they all knew each other. And they likely were all on the same Lost Train. According to an article on JewishGen, there were initially 2500 people on that train, which was supposed to be going to Theriesenstadt, but never made it there.

The Yad Vashem article continued, “For two interminable weeks, the train zigzagged between bombed tracks and destroyed bridges, and on 23 April, it was liberated by the Red Army on the outskirts of the German village of Tröbitz.  Survivors of the journey were given lodging in the village.” But over 600 of the people on that train died during that trip or afterwards in Tröbitz—from disease and malnutrition. Fortunately, Adelheid and Manfred were among those who survived.

In June 1945, the survivors were brought to the Netherlands, and if you look at the chronology on Adelheid’s registration card, you will see that she is registered again as a resident of Amsterdam in August 1945.

The last entry on the card says that on October 22, 1947, she was “VOW,” which stands for “Vertrokken Onbekend Waarheen,” which translates to “Departed to Unknown Destination.” Although I cannot be sure until the Israel State Archives reopen after the war, I am going to guess that that’s when Adelheid and Manfred left Amsterdam for what was then Palestine, soon to be Israel.

It’s remarkable to me to think of all Adelheid survived. I know her marriage to Manfred Samson did not, but somehow together the two of them survived the terrors of Bergen Belsen and the Lost Train and both ended up living the rest of their lives in Israel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn and Family

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Today I am sharing another update, this time with additional information about Gertrud Neuhahn Rothschild, whose family I wrote about just three weeks ago. I had many questions left even after I wrote that post, including how this family survived the Holocaust.

My cousin and fellow family history researcher Richard Bloomfield left a comment on that blog post, saying, “Did you know that Gustav was first missing and then a POW in WWI? He belonged to the Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 83 – 9. Kompanie according to the records published on August 31, 1916. His return was recorded on May 14, 1918. From the German lists of ‘Losses.’ ”

As always, Richard is a superb researcher, and I am blessed to have his support. Richard sent me the two records he’d found. Although I had written in the blog post that Gustav had served in World War I, I had not researched his service details. I went back to Ancestry and located citations for the two lists that Richard sent me. The first document, dated August 31, 1916, reported that Gustav (misindexed as “Reuhahn”) had been previously reported missing but was now in captivity:

Gustav Neuhahn, Residence Year 1914, Residence Country Deutschland (Germany), List Date 31 Aug 1916, List Number 1131, Volume 1916_XVIII, Ancestry.com. Germany, World War I Casualty Lists, 1914-1919, Original data: Deutsche Verlustlisten 1914 bis 1919. Berlin, Deutschland: Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt).

A second record, dated May 14, 1918, reported that Gustav had been released from captivity:

Name Gustav Neuhahn, Residence Year 1914, Residence Country Deutschland (Germany)
List Date 14 Mai 1918 (14 May 1918), List Number 1894, Volume 1918_XVI, Casualty List: Verlust-Liste Nr 1894 (14 Mai 1918), Ancestry.com. Germany, World War I Casualty Lists, 1914-1919 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data:Deutsche Verlustlisten 1914 bis 1919. Berlin, Deutschland: Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt).

He then returned to Germany, and as I wrote in my prior post, he married Gertrud Rothschild on May 16, 1919, in Hoof, almost exactly a year after his release. They had two daughters, Ruth on March 18, 1920, and Ursula (later known as Tirza) on March 9, 1921, according to what Richard found on MyHeritage in the “Jewish Holocaust Memorials and Jewish Residents of Germany 1933-1945” database. I searched for actual birth records for Ruth and Ursula/Tirza in the Hesse online archives, but the birth records available there do not extend as recently as the 1920s.

The family lived in Grebenstein at least until 1924, as seen in a page about Grebenstein from the Alemannia Judaica that Richard shared with me.  That page mentions Gustav Neuhahn as one of the leaders of the Grebenstein Jewish community in 1924 when there were 53 Jewish residents out of a population of almost 2500 people.

What I still don’t know is what Gustav and Gertrud and their daughters did after Hitler came to power. As I wrote in that prior post, I know all four survived the Holocaust and ended up in Palestine/Israel since they were all registered as voters in Tel Aviv as early as 1944. But I don’t know when they left Germany.

In the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, Richard found a listing for a Tirza Rosenbaum, born Tirza Neuhahn, born in 1921. Thus, it appears that Tirza may have married someone named Rosenbaum, presumably sometime after 1944 when she was still listed as Neuhahn with her parents in the Tel Aviv voter registry. But I cannot find a marriage record for her on the IGRA website.

When I saw that Tirza was buried in the Menuha Nehona Alternative Cemetery in Kefar Sava, Petach Tikva, Central District, Israel, I searched for another Rosenbaum buried in that cemetery to see if I could find her husband. I found a Manfred Rosenbaum, born in 1924 who died in 2023, buried in that same cemetery. But was that Tirza’s husband?

A man with that same name, Manfred Rosenbaum, who was born in Berlin in May 15, 1924, was interviewed by the Shoah Foundation in 1997 in Tel Aviv,1 and his wife is identified on that site as Tirza Rosenbaum, but I cannot access the actual interview to verify that that is my relative, Tirza/Ursula Neuhahn. Ancestry’s data for that interview, however, lists Tirza’s birth date as March 9, 1921, the same date that was listed on MyHeritage for my relative, as seen above.2

However, it also lists Tirza’s death date as January 8, 1990,3 not in 2012, as listed in the JOWBR. Since these sources—the MyHeritage database, the JOWBR, the table of contents to the Shoah interview, Ancestry’s index to the interview, and BillionGraves—are not primary sources, I cannot say with any certainty whether Tirza Neuhahn married this Manfred Rosenbaum, but it seems a possibility. I also cannot say with any certainty when she died.

Richard also found Gertrud (Gerta) in the JOWBR, showing that she died on December 28, 1973.

Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn burial record

Once I saw where Gertrud (Gerta) was buried, Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv, I searched for Gustav there, using the Hebrew version of the name Neuhahn, נויהן, and found Gustav’s gravestone on the Gravez.com website. He died on May 18, 1960, when he was 74.

With Richard’s help, I now know a great deal more about Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn and her family.  I am still hoping to learn more, including more about when they immigrated to Israel and more about their daughters Ruth and Tirza and their families. I will continue to update the blog as I learn more.

Thank you, Richard!

  1. Manfred Rosenbaum, Gender Male, Birth Date 15 May 1924, Birth Place Berlin, Germany, Interview Date 4 Mar 1997, Interview Place Givatayim, Tel Aviv, Israel, Relationship Self (Head), Role Interviewee, USC Shoah Foundation; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Visual History Archive: the Holocaust, Free Access: USC Shoah Foundation, Holocaust – Jewish Survivor Interviews, Original data: Visual History Archive: The Holocaust. Los Angeles, CA, USA: USC Shoah Foundation. Also, see https://vha.usc.edu/testimony/28600?mm=bio for the Shoah Foundation page for Manfred Rosenbaum. ↩
  2. Name Tirza Rosenbaum, Gender Female, Birth Date 9 Mar 1921, Birth Place Germany, Death Date 8 Jan 1990, Relationship Wife, Role Relative of Interviewee,
    Survivor No, USC Shoah Foundation; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Visual History Archive: the Holocaust, Free Access: USC Shoah Foundation, Holocaust – Jewish Survivor Interviews, Original data: Visual History Archive: The Holocaust. Los Angeles, CA, USA: USC Shoah Foundation. ↩
  3. Ibid. ↩

UPDATE! Berthold Rothschild and His Family

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On March 11, 2026, just a little over a month ago, I wrote about the family of Berthold Rothschild and his family, including his wife Sarah Adler and their daughter Adelheid. As I wrote in that blog post, I did not know very much about how Berthold survived the Holocaust but knew he ended up in South Africa. I also knew that Adelheid had been in Amsterdam and sent to Bergen-Belsen with her husband Manfred Samson and that they both survived and possibly ended up in Israel after the war. But there were definite holes in my story, and I hoped a family member would find me and help fill in those holes.

Then, lo and behold, last week I heard from Meir, a grandson of Berthold Rothschild, who coincidentally was researching his family and looking to learn what had happened to his grandmother Sarah at just about the same time that I posted about his grandparents.

From Meir I learned that Berthold and Sarah had had a second daughter, Helene, Meir’s mother. Helene (who later became Hana in Israel) was born on March 30, 1922, in Frankfurt. In 1937 at the age of just fifteen she immigrated alone to what was then Palestine. On the Israel Genealogy Research Association website I located a document showing that Helene registered with the German consulate in Palestine in 1938, where she indicated that she intended to stay there indefinitely and that her German passport had expired. Here are those documents, the passport provided by Meir and the consulate registration from IGRA:

Helena Rothschild’s German passport
Courtesy of the family

 

Helene Rothschild registration form for the German Consulate in Jerusalem, 1938, found at IGRA, https://genealogy.org.il/AID/index.php

Helene Rothschild registration form for the German Consulate in Jerusalem, 1938, found at IGRA, https://genealogy.org.il/AID/index.php

In Israel she met and married Benjamin Kestenbaum, who later changed his surname to Armon in Israel. He was born in Berlin on July 28, 1918, and also immigrated to Palestine in 1937. He and Hana met while they were both working on Kibbutz Ein HaNetziv in the early 1940s. After marrying, they moved to Jerusalem where they had three children, including Meir, all born in Jerusalem. Meir’s father Benjamin died on February 20, 2000, and his mother Hana died on November 23, 2023, at the age of 101.1

Meir could not answer some of my questions about his grandfather Berthold—how he survived the Holocaust, when or why he ended up in South Africa, or whether he ever remarried. He did recall that Berthold came to Israel in the late 1950s with a South African woman and operated a photography studio in Jerusalem, but after a year or so they returned to South Africa.2

As for Meir’s aunt Adelheid (or Adi, as she was known in Israel), Meir wrote that her marriage to Manfred Samson was a marriage of convenience so that they could get a certificate to go to Bergen-Belsen. I am still trying to learn more about what that means. In any event they did not stay married after the war, but both did end up in Israel. There Adi married Asher Zarkover, another survivor, in 1948. They had two sons and divorced in 1960. Adi died in 2013 at the age of 93.3

Finally, Meir shared a photograph of his grandfather Berthold and his mother Hana.

Helena (Hana) Rothschild and her father Berthold Rothschild, undated. Courtesy of the family

I am so delighted that Meir reached out to me, and we are still exchanging emails, so if I learn more, I will update again.

  1. Email correspondence with Meir Armon, April 2026. Also, I found Benjamin’s burial record on JewishGen at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/notglue_s2.php?rec=J_ISRAEL_bg1089704  In addition, I found a record on the IGRA website that shows the legal name chance from Helene Kestenbaum to Hana Armon dated 1953. ↩
  2. Email correspondence with Meir Armon, April 2026. ↩
  3. Ibid. ↩