In the last post we saw that Hedwig Goldschmidt Cramer’s daughter Rosa Cramer Oppenheimer died young, her grandson William Oppenheimer died very young, and her son-in-law Arthur Oppenheimer also died young. But Rosa and Arthur’s three remaining children survived those losses and also survived the Holocaust.
This post will look at Hedwig’s three sons, Max, Sally, and Herbert Cramer, and their families in the 20th century. Unfortunately, there are many places in this post where I had to rely on secondary sources, which I am always reluctant to do, but I was unable to find many primary sources for the Cramer sons and their descendants. If anyone has suggestions—especially for finding Israeli birth, marriage, and death records and some English death records—please let me know.
UPDATE: Thank you to the many people who reached out to help, including Yehuda from Tracing the Tribe, Anne from the German Genealogy Group on Facebook, Shirley, my cousin by marriage and friend, and a blog reader BRegenstein. I am updating this post with some of the new information and records I’ve received from them.
I was, however, able to learn more about the three Cramer sons from the book written by their nephew Arnold Selig Oppenheimer, and that source provided more inisghts into these three men. It also included some wonderful images including these portraits of Selig Goldschmidt and his wife Clementine Fuld and two photographs of their daughter Hedwig Goldschmidt Cramer:
From Arnold S Oppenheimer, The Story of My Life (2007)
From Arnold S Oppenheimer, The Story of My Life (2007)
Now, the story of Hedwig’s sons in the 20th century.
Max Cramer
From Arnold S. Oppenheimer, The Story of My Life (2007)
Max Cramer married Sidonie Charlotte Gestetner, the daughter of David Gestetner and Sophie Lazarus, in 1908. Sidonie was born in Islington, England, on March 12, 1888, and that’s where the two married.
Max and Sidonie settled in Frankfurt where their first child Ilse Caroline Cramer was born on September 17, 1909. Her sister Ellen was also born in Frankfurt, two years later on September 21, 1911. A third daughter Hilda was born on February 3, 1916, followed almost exactly two years later by Max and Sidonie’s fourth daughter Nelli Else, born February 13, 1918.
When the Nazis took power in Germany, Max and his children all left Germany. Max went to Palestine. According to his Palestinian immigration papers, Max Cramer and his first wife Sidonie divorced in May, 1935, and Sidonie returned to England. Max then went to Palestine on October 21, 1935, first as a visitor, but he ultimately decided to stay and become a citizen. In 1949, he married Elfriede Sachs Gluecksohn in Israel. Max died in Jerusalem on July 22, 1952, according to his profile on Geni.
UPDATE: Thank you to Yehuda from TTT for locating Max’s headstone on Gravez, which confirms his date of death.
As for the children of Max and Sidonie, their oldest daughter, Ilsa Caroline Cramer, was the only one who did not immigrate to England, according to various secondary sources. According to the research of David Baron and Roger Cibella, Ilsa married Marcel Fruchter Peri in Palestine in 1939, had one child, and died on March 21, 1954, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Profiles on My Heritage list her husband as Walter Skotzki and with no children, but with the same year of death. I’ve been unable to locate any primary source to verify any of these facts other than other profiles on My Heritage, Geni, and Ancestry.
Max and Sidonie’s three other daughters ended up in England with their mother Sidonie, who married Hans Feibusch, an artist, in 1935 right after her divorce from Max Cramer. The 1939 England and Wales Register lists Sidonie, Hans, and the three Cramer daughters in one household living in London. Hilda was working as a secretary-copywriter, Nelli was not employed, and Ellen was a studio photographer, listed under the surname Kay.
Sidonie Cramer Feibusch and family , The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/467I, Enumeration District: AROJ, Ancestry.com. 1939 England and Wales Register
According to Baron and Cibella, Ellen Theresa Cramer had married Leo Knoepfelmacher in Prague, Czechoslovakia (today, the Czech Republic) on April 15, 1933. Leo was born on October 23, 1904, in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. I have no marriage record for Ellen and Leo. They had two sons born in the 1930s, one in Vienna, one in Tel Aviv.
I located a ship manifest for Ellen and her two sons dated September 21, 1936, showing that she and her sons were residents of Palestine, sailing to England to become permanent residents. It also indicates that she and her sons were Czech citizens. Leo was not sailing with them.
Ellen Cramer Knoepfelmacher, ship manifest, The National Archives of the UK; Kew, Surrey, England; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and successors: Inwards Passenger Lists.; Class: BT26; Piece: 1110, Month: Sep, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960
So by 1939, as suggested by the 1939 England and Wales Register shown above, Ellen and Leo were apparently no longer together and she had changed her suname to Kay. But where were her sons on the 1939 register? And where was Leo?
He married a second time in England in 1942 to Elizabeth Irvine, but died less than four years later in England in January 1942 when he was only 41. Ellen Cramer Kay died June 28, 1962, in England; her listing on the probate calendar names her sisters Nelli and Hilda, but not her sons. I cannot find any record for either of them after that 1936 ship manifest.
UPDATE: Shirley located a marriage listing for one of the sons, showing he married in 1961. Since he may still be living, however, I won’t publish the specific details. Thank you, Shirley!
As for Ellen’s two sisters who survived her, Nelli and Hilda, Hilda married Frank Werth in London on March 24, 1950. They had two children in the 1950s. Frank died December 2, 1990. I’ve not been able to locate any record of Hilda’s death. Perhaps she is still living at 104.
UPDATE: Thank you to Anne from the German Genealogy Group on Facebook for alerting me to the fact that the General Register Office in the UK had updated its listings for births and deaths. Anne located Hilda Werth’s death on that index as being registered in the first quarter of 2013. To know the exact date, I need to order a copy of the record itself. I also searched for a death notice in The Gazette, as BRegenstein suggested, but unfortunately have not found one.
Nelli Cramer, the youngest of Max Cramer’s daughters, married Alfred Bozwiecki, who according to Baron and Cibella was born in Warsaw, Poland, on February 18, 1899. Alfred died in London on September 30, 1971, and Nelli died five years later on February 4, 1976, also in London. She was 57. As far as I can tell, Nelli and Alfred had not had children.
Sally Cramer
From Arnold S. Oppenheimer, The Story of My Life (2007)
As with Max Cramer, I am missing many records for his brother Sally. I’d love help tracking them down. For example, I have no marriage record, only information from his nephew Arnold Oppenheimer’s book and from Baron and Cibella. Like his older brother Max who married a woman from England, Sally Cramer married a woman from a foreign country. Baron and Cibella report that on January 29, 1911, he married Felicitas Weil in Strasbourg, France. Felicitas was born in Strasbourg on August 10, 1889. According to Arnold Oppenheimer, Felicitas became nearly blind after a failed operation, but had a “vivacious educated personality and played the piano well.”
Like Max, Sally returned to Germany, and Sally and Felicitas had two children born there. A daughter Marion was born in Frankfurt on April 3, 1913, and a son Robert was born December 29, 1918, in Bad Neuheim, Germany.
By 1939, Sally and Felicitas had escaped from Nazi Germany and were living in London. On the 1939 England and Wales Register, Sally described his occupation as a “veterinary preparations maker.” I have absolutely no idea what that means!
Sally Cramer and family, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/827H, Enumeration District: BKEN, Ancestry.com. 1939 England and Wales Register
There is one line blacked out on the register, which I assume was for their son Robert. I only have two records for Robert. One is the card from the index of those whose German nationality was nullified by the Nazis, and the other is the card exempting him from being interned as an enemy alien by England in 1939. That card shows that Robert was training with the Modern Telephone Company and was living at the same address—26 Eagles Lodge—as his parents in 1939. Robert would marry Elizabeth Rosenberg in London in 1950, and they had two children born in London.
Robert Cramer, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: HO 396/14, Piece Number Description: 014: Internees at Liberty in UK 1939-1942: Cohn-Cz, Ancestry.com. UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945
Marion, Sally and Felicitas’ daughter, was already married and living in New York by 1939. She had immigrated to New York on September 2, 1937, and married Fritz Ludwig (Fred) Wolf in New York two and a half weeks later on September 19, 1937. Fritz was born on October 23, 1911, in Hamburg, Germany. On her declaration of intention, Marion’s occupation is listed as interpreter/housewife. That was also true on her ship manifest, where she indicated that Fritz Wolf, her fiance, was the person she was traveling to in New York.
Marion Cramer Wolf, declaration of intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; NAI Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1/19/1842 – 10/29/1959; NAI Number: 4713410; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: 21, Description: (Roll 529) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 407701-408700), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943
On the 1940 census, Marion and Fritz were living in Queens, New York, and Fritz was working as a “customer man” for a stock brokerage and Marion as a private secretary for an architect. Marion indicated that she had been living in Hamburg in 1935 while Fritz said he’d been living in Paris. He and Marion had two children born after the 1940 census.
I don’t have much information about Sally and his family after 1940. According to the English Probate Calendar, Sally died on June 12, 1951, in London, but Arnold Oppenheimer wrote that he died in the US while visiting his daughter Marion. His widow Felicitas died on October 24, 1983. I could not find any record of deaths for either of their children. Marion and Robert would both be over one hundred years old now.
UPDATE: Thank you to Anne from the German Genealogy Group on Facebook for pointing out that I misread this! Sally’s probate notice does say he died in the US.
UPDATE: I went back and found an obituary for Marion Cramer Wolf. She died on July 26, 2017, at the age of 104. Death notice, New York Times, August 4, 2017. The notice described Marion as “Former Guggenheim museum reading room librarian. Lover of the arts, books and everything beautiful.” It can be found here.
Herbert Cramer
From Arnold S Oppenheimer, The Story of My Life (2007)
The youngest child of Hedwig Goldschmidt and Hirsch Cramer, Herbert, volunteered for the German army in World War I and served at the front. After the war he opened a small art gallery in Frankfurt. He married Elsa Seligmann on August 6, 1920, in Frankfurt. Elsa was the daughter of Leopold Seligmann and Anna Bockmann and was born on July 11, 1894, in Frankfurt.
Herbert Cramer marriage record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930
Herbert and Elsa had one child, a daughter Ruth born in Frankfurt, on August 14, 1921.
In the 1930s Herbert organized the first exhibit of Chagall paintings in Frankfurt. Then in 1933 he and his family left Germany for Italy. From there they immigrated to Palestine on March 2, 1939, and became naturalized citizens of Palestine on April 16, 1941. He listed his occupation as manager of the Society of the Friends of the Jewish National Museum on his application for Palestinian citizenship.
Sadly, Herbert died just six years later on April 24, 1947, in Jerusalem, according to a profile on My Heritage. His nephew Arnold Oppenheimer wrote that Herbert was killed when a convoy he was traveling with was ambushed by Arabs. His widow Else and daughter Ruth and Ruth’s husband Charles Taubes moved to Australia where Else died in 1983 and Ruth in 2011. They were survived by Ruth’s daughter.
UPDATE: Thank you to Yehuda from TTT for locating Herbert’s gravestone on Gravez and Ruth Cramer’s marriage record.
Thus, Hedwig Goldschmidt Cramer’s children and descendants ended up spread all over the world—to Israel, England, the United States, and Australia. Now if I only could find more records for them.
UPDATE: Once again, thanks to those who helped. I am still looking for the birth records for Max Cramer’s children born in the 1920s in Frankfurter, marriage records for Ilse Cramer, Max’s daughter, a marriage and death record for Robert Cramer, who may have died in Israel or in England. I will keep looking.
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