Tag Archives: holocaust

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. ↩

Meier Rothschild’s Daughter Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn and Her Family: How and Where Did They Survive the Holocaust?

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Finally, after a few weeks without a post, I return to the children of Meier Rothschild and Bertha Lorge. Meier was the youngest child of Gelle Blumenfeld and my second cousin, three times removed. I am up to his third child, Gertrud.

As with her brothers Berthold and Theodor, I have also struggled to find reliable information about the third child of Meier Rothschild and Bertha Lorge, their daughter Gertrud Rothschild, her husband Gustav Neuhahn, and their daughter Ruth.

I found Gertrud on a passenger manifest card dated January 22, 1962, for a flight to Houston from Mexico City. On that card her residence is given as Tel Aviv, Israel. I could not find a comparable card for Gustav or their children.

Gertrud Rothschild Neuhahn passenger manifest card, The National Archives At Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving At Houston, Texas; ARC Number: A3982; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 50, Ancestry.com. Texas, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1893-1963

I searched for them all in Israel and found this interesting document in the Israel Genealogical Research Association (IGRA) website:

This is a list of packages sent from Israel to people in Europe who were Holocaust survivors; the program was organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. One of those sending packages in 1945 was “Neuhahn-Rothschild,” presumably Gertrud, and the intended recipient was Theodor Rothschild, her brother, in Monte Carlo, Monaco. That reaffirms the fact that Theodor was in Monaco and also establishes that Gertrud was in Tel Aviv in 1945, but not anything more.

A search on the IGRA site for Ruth Neuhahn revealed more evidence of the Neuhahn family in Palestine in 1944. A list of registered voters in 1944 shows Ruth, her parents, and a previously undiscovered sister Tirza living in Tel Aviv.

Neuhahn family on 1944 Voters Registration list found at IGRA, https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

This translates as:

Yosef Neuhahn, son of Zelig

Gertrud Neuhahn, daughter of Shlomo

Ruth Neuhahn, daughter of Yosef

Tirza Neuhahn, daughter of Yosef

That matches what I know about Gustav; his father was Selig Neuhahn. Gustav’s Hebrew name must have been Yosef. I was confused by Gertrud’s name since her father was Meier, but perhaps he used Shlomo as his Hebrew name. And I have no prior record for a daughter named Tirza or by any other name. Unfortunately, I cannot find any later record for Tirza Neuhahn.

I did, however, locate a marriage record for Ruth Neuhahn on the IGRA website:

Marriage of Ruth Neuhahn to Moritz Neumann, found at IGRA, https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

The record shows that Ruth Neuhahn, daughter of Yosef and Gertrud Neuhahn, age 22, married Moritz Neumann, son of Shimon and Chaya Neumann, age 35, on  February 2, 1945, in Tel Aviv. Both resided in Petah Tikva, Moritz was a clerk, and Ruth a typist.

On Ancestry I located some passenger manifest cards for Ruth and two women with the same surname and addresses who I presume are her daughters. For example, here is a passenger card for Ruth Neumann in June 1959, stating that her nationality was Israeli, but her residence was in Mexico. She was traveling and staying in San Antonio, Texas. She also traveled in Miami in 1960 and in 1962,1 reporting the same facts. Her residence in Mexico may explain why her mother Gertrud had been flying from Mexico to San Antonio in 1962, as seen above.

Ruth Neumann passenger manifest card 1959, The National Archives At Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger Manifests of Airplanes Arriving At San Antonio, Texas; ARC Number: A3524; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 28, Ancestry.com. Texas, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1893-1963

Thus, in 1962 Ruth was still living in Mexico, still an Israeli citizen, and now visiting Miami, Florida. As for her husband Moritz, one tree on Ancestry shows that he died in Mexico City in 2003 and that Ruth died there as well. I have written to the owner of that tree and am hoping that she can share more information about Gertrud, Gustav, and Ruth, and their family.

If I can get more information about Gertrud and her family, I will update the blog. But for now this is the best I can do. The good news is that it appears that all of Gertrud’s family all survived the Holocaust.

  1.  Name Ruth Neumann, Nationality Israeli, Arrival Age 40, Birth Date 18 Mar 1920
    Birth Place Kassel, Germany, Record Type Arrival Arrival Date 2 May 1960, Arrival Place Miami, Florida, USA, Flight Number 150, Airline Guest Aerovias Mexico, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving At Miami, Florida.; NAI Number: A3995; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, Ancestry.com. Florida, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1898-1963; Ruth Neumann, Nationality Israeli, Arrival Age 42, Birth Date 18 Mar 1920, Birth Place Germany, Record Type Arrival, Arrival Date 19 May 1962, Arrival Place Miami, Florida, USA, Flight Number 100, Airline Gam, The National Archives in Washington, DC; Washington, DC, USA; Series Title: Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes Arriving At Miami, Florida.; NAI Number: A3995; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, Ancestry.com. Florida, U.S., Arriving and Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1898-1963 ↩

Meier Rothschild’s Son Berthold And An Important Lesson about AI

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Although I had a fairly easy time locating the names, birth dates, marriages, and children of the five children of Meier Rothschild and Bertha Lorge and I knew that all five lived beyond World War II, I have had a much harder time finding information about how they survived the Holocaust—did they leave in time or did they get sent to the camps? And where did they go after the war?

Each of those five children presented some research challenges because it appears that none of them ended up in the same place and almost all ended up somewhere other than the United States. So the records are harder to locate—if they exist at all. But I will do my best to trace their histories during the 1930s and thereafter.

Starting with the oldest child, Berthold Rothschild, his wife Sarah Adler, and their daughter Adelheid, one fact I was able to establish was that Sarah died on May 15, 1937, when she was only 43. The death record says she died in Herborn, which is a small town about 60 miles from Frankfurt, where the death record states she was living. So why was she in Herborn and not Frankfurt where Berthold lived? What caused her death? Was it related to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis? I didn’t know.

Sarah Rotschild, Maiden Name Adler, Gender weiblich (Female), Death Age 43, Birth Date Abt 1894, Death Date 15 Mai 1937 (15 May 1937), Death Place Herborn, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany), Civil Registration Office Herborn, Certificate Number 74, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 4139; Laufende Nummer: 911, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

I thought that perhaps there was more information in the parts of the death record that I could not read and asked in the GerSIG group on Facebook for help. Ralf, a member there, provided me with this translation:

The management of the state sanatorium has announced that Sara Rothschild, née Adler, without occupation, 43 years old, resident of Frankfurt am Main, born in Rüsselsheim, district of Gross-Gerau, divorced, died in the state sanatorium in Herborn on the afternoon of the fifteenth of May 1937 at five and a half o’clock.

I added the emphasis to two parts here. First, Sarah’s marital status was reported as divorced. I went back to the marriage record for Berthold and Sarah and now saw there was a marginal comment that in fact says that they were divorced as of August 22, 1927.

From the marriage record of Berthold Rothschild and Sarah Adler, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903
Source Information
Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Then I looked a little further and learned that there was (and is) a psychiatric hospital in Herborn known then as Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Herborn (State Healing and Nursing Institution Herborn).  I was disgusted when I learned that this hospital was a place used by the Nazis for forced sterilization; 561 women and 623 men were forcibly sterilized, many after a diagnoses of “feeblemindedness.”  Patients slept on straw sacks instead of mattresses. Later, after Sarah’s death, Jewish patients were deported from the hospital to the concentration camps. I don’t know what circumstances caused Sarah to be sent to Herborn, but I imagine that the conditions there and the Nazi control of the facility were factors in her early death at 43.

As for her ex-husband Berthold, I have not been able yet to locate his whereabouts before 1943. As seen below, I know that in 1943 he was living in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and in 1957 he traveled from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to England, reporting that he was a photographer. The passenger manifest indicates that he planned to stay in England permanently.1

But he died on May 17, 1964, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, not in England. The death certificate reported that he was a photographer, a widower, and wanted to be buried in Jerusalem, Israel. Unfortunately, I have not found any further information yet. I don’t know when he left Germany, when he ended up in South Africa, or anything else about his life between his divorce in 1934 and his travels in 1959 and then his death in 1964.

Berthold Rothschild death certificate, “South Africa, Civil Death Registration, 1953-1967”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6Z3Z-F3SN : Wed Jan 15 15:31:44 UTC 2025), Entry for Berthold Rothschild, 17 May 1964.

As for Berthold and Sarah’s daughter Adelheid, I also only have random pieces of information about her life.  I have inferred that she was sent to Westerbork sometime during the Nazi era—that is, the detention camp outside of Amsterdam where Jews were sent before being transported to the death camps. A record on the WieWasWie site includes the marriage certificate of Adelheid Rothschild and Manfred Samson. They were married on November 22, 1943, in the Westerbork camp.

Marriage record for Adelheid Rothschild and Manfred Samson, found at https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/111087321

I asked ChatGPT, having been told that AI can be helpful on translations, to transcribe and translate this marriage record. And this is a warning to anyone else who relies on ChatGPT for this type of inquiry. It made several errors. This was the first translation it produced.

Record No. 116. On Thursday, 23 December 1943, before me, Registrar of Civil Status of the municipality of Westerbork, appeared for the purpose of entering into marriage:

Manfred Samson, aged  29, merchant, born in Leipzig, Germany, residing in Westerbork, son of Sami Samson and Berta Samson, both residing in Bielefeld.

Adelheid Rothschild, aged 29, without occupation, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, residing in Westerbork, daughter of Siegfried Rothschild, merchant, residing in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and Paula Rothschild, without occupation, residing in Baden.

After the required announcements and with no impediment having appeared, they declared that they accepted one another as husband and wife.

I knew that the information in bold could not be correct. On the WieWasWie page itself, it had different information based on the same record. After several inquiries about this to ChatGPT, it admitted it had read the handwriting incorrectly and made the changes. The translation now reads:

Manfred Samson, aged  19, merchant, born in Leipzig, Germany, residing in Westerbork, son of Josef Samson and Zerlina Hoelzer, both residing in Bielefeld.

Adelheid Rothschild, aged 22, without occupation, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, residing in Westerbork, daughter of Siegfried Rothschild, merchant, residing in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and Sarah Adler, deceased.

Thus, a word of caution to those relying on ChatGPT or any other AI tool for transcribing records: DO NOT TRUST THEIR WORK!!!

But one thing that I did learn from the translation is that Berthold was already in South Africa in 1943 when his daughter Adelheid was married in Westerbork. Why had she gone to the Netherlands instead of to South Africa with her father? I wish I knew.

Manfred Samson was born on December 2, 1923, in Leipzig and was a student of agriculture and horticulture.2 A record in the Arolsen Archives indicates that Manfred left Leipzig for Holland on November 28, 1938. He was sent to Westerbork on November 7, 1942.3

Manfred Samson registration as Jew in Leipzig, Arolsen Archives, 7 Archival records of microforms (new material / document acquisition) / 7.5 Document acquisition in Germany / 7.5.4 Leipzig, Archiv der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde /Mitgliederkartei, Reference Code
754003

Other Arolsen Archives records, one for Manfred and one for Adelheid, both contain the notation “BB 11.1.44,” I wondered whether that meant that Adelheid and Samson were deported to Bergen Belsen on January 11, 1944.

Manfred Samson, Arolsen Archives, 1 Incarceration Documents / 1.2 Miscellaneous / 1.2.4 Various Organizations /Documents with names from SALOMONS, Eva, Reference Code
01020402 220

Adelheid Samson Arolsen Archives, 1 Incarceration Documents / 1.2 Miscellaneous / 1.2.4 Various Organizations /Documents with names from ROSIANSKI, Jozef, Reference Code
01020402 217

Fortunately both Adelheid and Manfred survived the camps. They are both listed on several documents created after the war by the Joint Distribution Committee that identify Jews who were liberated from the Celle/Frankfurt an der Oder camp.4

I had never heard of this camp before but learned that it was located eleven miles north of Bergen-Belsen, so that reinforces my assumption that BB stood for Bergen Belsen and that Celle was just another way of referring to Bergen-Belsen or a satellite camp nearby.

For a long time I could find no clue as to where Manfred and Adelheid went after being liberated from the camp. Then I saw the reverse of one of the Arolsen Archives documents and noticed this:

Manfred Samson, Arolsen Archives, 7 Archival records of microforms (new material / document acquisition) / 7.5 Document acquisition in Germany / 7.5.4 Leipzig, Archiv der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde /Mitgliederkartei, Reference Code 754003

From this document it appears that Manfred (and perhaps Adelheid) ended up in a kibbutz in Israel. But I haven’t found any other records for them on either the IGRA website or the Israel State Archives website. Kibbutz Schluchoth was the first kibbutz created after the formation of the State of Israel, according to their website, and was founded primarily by Holocaust survivors from Germany and Austria. I sent them an email asking if they had information about Manfred and Adelheid Samson, but have not received a response.

It took hours of work to string together this information about Berthold and his family, and I wish I knew more. But perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from this research is NOT to rely on ChatGPT to transcribe and translate documents accurately.

  1. Berthold Rothschild, passenger manifest, The National Archives in Washington, DC; London, England, UK; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Inwards Passenger Lists; Class: Bt26; Piece: 1382; Item: 67, Month: Jun, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 ↩
  2.  Arolsen Archives; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Record Group 1 Incarceration Documents; Reference: 1.2.4.2, Ancestry.com. Germany, Incarceration Documents, 1933-1945; https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/111087321&#160;↩
  3. Arolsen Archives, 1 Incarceration Documents / 1.2 Miscellaneous / 1.2.4 Various Organizations /Documents with names from SALOMONS, Eva, Reference Code
    01020402 220 ↩
  4. E.g., Adelheid Samson, Manfred Samson, Arolsen Archives; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Registration of Liberated Former Persecutees at Various Locations (F18 lists); Reference: DE ITS 3.1.1.3 DE, Reference Number: 008804350, Ancestry.com. Registration of Liberated Former Persecutees, 1945-1950 ↩

Malchen Rothschild Rosenblatt’s Youngest Child, Siegmund

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The other surviving son and the youngest child of Malchen Rothschild and Daniel Rosenblatt was their son Siegmund. Like his brother Felix, he escaped from Nazi Germany to Argentina with his wife Else Schwab and their three children, Arno, Ruth, and Margot.

I was very fortunate that Ellie Roden, a first cousin, once removed, of Siegmund’s wife Else, reached out to me through my blog. Ellie wrote that “Siegmund wanted all the family on both sides to leave Germany but before Kristallnacht many hoped and believed that the Nazi reign would end.”1 Unfortunately, as we have seen, Siegmund’s three sisters Julchen, Jette, and Auguste, did not heed that advice. According to Ellie, Siegmund, Else, and their children left Germany for Argentina in July 1937. They joined the same community, Colonia Avigdor, where Siegmund’s brother Felix had settled the year before. According to Siegmund’s great-niece Carmen, Siegmund and his family left Colonia Avigdor in about1955 and moved to Buenos Aires. After receiving compensation from the German government, they could afford to live in the city.2

Ellie shared these wonderful photographs of Siegmund and his family, first a photograph of Siegmund and Else and their children in 1937 before they left their home in Kassel, Germany:

Siegmund Rosenblatt and family in 1937, Kassel, Germany
Courtesy of Ellie Roden

This second photograph is undated, but is of Siegmund and Else. I assume it was taken in Argentina some years later.

Else Schwab and Siegmund Rosenblatt. Courtesy of Ellie Roden

The third photo may have been taken at the same event as the one above; it was taken in Buenos Aires:

The Rosenblatt family in Buenos Aires: Margot, Siegmund, Else, Ruth, Arno, and Danny. Courtesy of Ellie Roden

I don’t have any records for the family’s life in Argentina, but Ellie was able to confirm that Arno, the oldest child, had a son named Danny, presumably named for his grandfather Daniel Rosenblatt; he must be the young boy in the photo above. Margot, the middle child, married someone named Kurt Oppenheimer; I don’t know whether they had children. And Ruth, the youngest child, may have married someone named Arno Kaufman. I don’t know whether they had children.

I was able to find burial records for Siegmund and Else and for two of their three children in the records for Argentina in the JOWBR at JewishGen.org. Siegmund died on November 3, 1982, and is buried in Buenos Aires.3 His wife Else died on August 11, 1984, and is buried in Buenos Aires.4 Their daughter Ruth Rosenblatt Kaufmann died on January 12, 1989, and is also buried in Buenos Aires.5 Finally, their son Arno Rosenblatt died on December 31, 2008, and is buried in Buenos Aires.6 I was not able to locate a burial record or any other record for Margot, but did locate one for her husband, Kurt Oppenheimer, which named her as his spouse. Kurt died on February 13, 2007, and is buried in the same cemetery as his in-laws.7

I am so grateful to my cousins Julio and Carmen and to Ellie Roden for sharing the photographs and information about the families of Malchen Rothschild Rosenblatt’s three sons, Felix, Julius, and Siegmund. Although the family of Malchen Rothschild and Daniel Rosenblatt suffered terrible losses during the Holocaust, it was uplifting to learn that there are still living descendants living in many countries around the world. I am so grateful for that.

I have now completed the stories of the children of Malchen Rothschild Rosenblatt and will move on to Malchen’s younger sister, Sara Rothschild Adler, and her family. But first a few updates on earlier posts.

 

 

  1. Email from Ellie Roden, August 13, 2025. ↩
  2. Email from Carmen Rosenblatt, September 17, 2025. ↩
  3. Burial record in the JOWBR database at JewishGen, found at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/jowbr.php?rec=J_ARGENTIN_0199329&#160;↩
  4. Burial record in the JOWBR database at JewishGen, found at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/jowbr.php?rec=J_ARGENTIN_0199309&#160;↩
  5. Burial record in the JOWBR database at JewishGen, found at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/jowbr.php?rec=J_ARGENTIN_0164434&#160;↩
  6. Burial record in the JOWBR database at JewishGen, found at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/jowbr.php?rec=J_ARGENTIN_0199303&#160;↩
  7. Burial record in the JOWBR database at JewishGen, found at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/jowbr.php?rec=J_ARGENTIN_0189236&#160;↩