Tag Archives: The Holocaust

Erwin Rothschild As Remembered By His Wife Irma

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Although two daughters of Moses Max Rothschild appear to have survived the Holocaust, his son Erwin was not as fortunate. The only official records I have for Erwin Rothschild are two that relate to his death, but they also include his birth date and his parents’ names. He was born on December 5, 1904, in Nordeck, Germany, and he died of typhus on March 28, 1945, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. These two records also both provide evidence that Erwin was a dentist and that he was married to Irma Simon. But not much else can be discerned about Erwin’s life from these two documents.

Erwin Rothschild death record from the Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, The National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland; Microfilm: A3355; ARC: 596972; Title: Lists and Registers of German Concentration Camp Inmates, 1946 – 1958; Record Group: 242; Record Group Title: National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675 – 1958
Source Information
Ancestry.com. Germany, Concentration Camp Records, 1937-1945

Erwin Rothschild death certificate, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Signatur: 135; Laufende Nummer: 926
Year Range: 1951, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

Fortunately, Erwin’s widow Irma Simon Rothschild Haas gave testimony to the Shoah Foundation and filled in the details of Erwin’s life as well has her own quite moving and amazing life story. I am so grateful to the Shoah Foundation for recording and preserving these stories.

Irma was 89 years old when she was interviewed on August 4, 1997. But you would never know it from the sharpness of her mind, the depth and precision of her memories, and her ability to answer probing and difficult questions. She was an incredible storyteller, and I felt like I was with her during those awful years of the Holocaust. I started out wanting to learn more about Erwin, but by the end of Irma’s testimony I was moved to tears by not only what I’d learned about Erwin, but by what I’d learned from Irma about the best side of human nature. Find two hours in your busy lives and listen to what Irma has to say. You also will never forget her. 1

Although I cannot do justice to Irma’s testimony in a brief paraphrasing of its content, I want to tell the story of Erwin and Irma as best I can. Irma Simon was born on October 9, 1907, in the small town of Londorf, Germany. Irma had two older brothers, Siegfried and Julius, and a younger sister Hilde.

Irma went to school to become a kindergarten teacher and worked in Cologne, Frankfurt, and Berlin before the Nazi era. She was working in a children’s home for 150 children in 1935 outside of Berlin when the Nuremberg Laws were enacted and the home was no longer able to obtain kosher meat. Irma left the home and found a new job teaching in Berlin. She lived with an unnamed cousin of Erwin Rothschild, and I assume that that is how she met Erwin. He was practicing dentistry in Berlin at that time.

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, the school where Irma had been working closed, and Erwin and Irma and her parents tried to get out of Germany . One of her brothers, Julius, was already in the US, her sister Hilde was married to Simon Eisenmann and living in Amsterdam, and her other brother Siegfried had been arrested after Kristallnacht and sent to Sachsenhausen. With Irma’s help and a visa obtained by her sister Hilde in Holland, Siegfried was released and left for South America. Later, Hilde was also able to get a visa for their parents and for her sister Irma to come to Holland.

Meanwhile, Erwin Rothschild, who was now engaged to Irma Simon, had gotten a ticket to leave Germany on the ill-fated ship, the St. Louis in the spring of 1939. I’ve previously told the story of the St. Louis, the ship that was turned away from Cuba and from the US and had to sail back to Europe in June, 1939, returning its passengers to a likely death in the Holocaust. Erwin ended up in Holland where Irma and her family were living.

Jewish refugees aboard the SS St. Louis attempt to communicate with friends and relatives in Cuba, who were permitted to approach the docked vessel in small boats. |Source=USHMM, courtesy of National Archives and Records Adminis (public domain)

But Erwin was not able to live in Amsterdam where Irma was living; as a refugee from the St Louis, he was required by the Dutch to live in the internment camp in Westerbork. But he was free to work as a dentist in Amsterdam and to see Irma, who was working at a children’s home in Amsterdam.

However, when the Nazis invaded Holland in May, 1940, the school was forced to close and the children were evicted. Irma helped find homes for 130 of those children with families in Amsterdam. The Nazis also took over the camp at Westerbork where Erwin was living.

Nazi troops and supporters in front of De Bijenkorf, Dam Square, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1941 (crop of original 1941 public domain photo). 47thPennVols, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1942 Erwin and Irma married, but Irma stayed with her parents in Amsterdam because they all believed she would be safer there. But by the end of that year her parents were taken to Westerbork. To avoid being taken to a concentration camp at Vught where conditions were worse, Irma voluntarily moved to Westerbork to be with her husband Erwin as well as her parents and her sister Hilde and brother-in-law Simon. Conditions at Westerbork were at that time not bad at all, and Irma became a dental assistant working with Erwin.

In September 1943, Irma’s parents were put on a transport to Bergen-Belsen, where conditions were much worse. Then Irma’s sister Hilde and her husband Simon Eisenmann were put on a list for transport despite having certificates to go to Palestine, which were supposed to keep them (and Erwin and Irma) off the transport lists. Erwin figured out that there was confusion regarding a different man named Eisenmann and got Hilde and Simon off the list.

In December 1943, they were told that the Westerbork camp was to be dissolved and all those with Palestine certificates would go to a Red Cross camp, but in fact  Erwin, Irma, Hilde, and Simon and the others were all sent to Bergen-Belsen, arriving there on February 1, 1944, just a day after Irma’s parents had been transferred from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. Irma was heartbroken not to have had a chance to see her parents. She never saw them again. They died at Theresienstadt.

The conditions at Bergen-Belsen were terrible. Irma, Erwin, Hilde, and Simon all worked in a quarry, where Erwin feared his hands would be so damaged from smashing rocks that he would never practice dentistry again. But then one of the older camp dentists died, and Erwin was drafted into being a camp dentist. That meant he could live in the hospital with the doctors with better living conditions than being in the barracks.

Women and Children at Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, 1945, No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Morris (Sgt), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When a young SS officer who was also a dentist needed dental care one day, he asked Erwin to help him. At first Erwin refused, saying he was not allowed to treat Aryans. But the officer insisted, saying the other (non-Jewish) dentist was not as good. So Erwin treated him, and the officer arranged to have Irma become his assistant and to live in the hospital with the nurses.

But Hilde and her husband Simon were still in the barracks, and in November 1944, Simon died from typhoid fever. Hilde was bereft, and Erwin and Irma did everything they could to give her support. But she became very sick, and Erwin, without permission, had her brought to the camp hospital. Although he was caught and punished for doing that, he saved Hilde’s life.

But unfortunately, Erwin could not save his own life. In early 1945, a camp was set up near Bergen-Belsen for women who had been transferred from Auschwitz. Erwin was sent there to provide dental care for these women and contracted typhoid fever from them. He died from the disease on March 28, 1945,2 leaving Irma, like her sister Hilde, a young widow still imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen.

I will tell the rest of Irma and Hilde’s story in my next post. But this post is to honor the memory of my cousin Erwin Rothschild, a man who not only cared for those at Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, but who managed to keep his wife Irma and her sister Hilde safe. From the way Irma spoke about him more than 50 years after he died, I could tell that theirs was a true love story and that Erwin was a good, decent, courageous, and compassionate man. How tragic that he died caring for others just a few weeks before the war ended in Europe.

 

 

  1. Haas, Irma. Interview 32295. Interview by Miriam Horowitz. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, 04 August 1997. https://vha.usc.edu/testimony/32295. Accessed 14 Jan 2024.  You do not need to download Irma’s testimony; it is available online at the citation above. All the information in this post came from Irma’s testimony. ↩
  2. In her testimony Irma said that Erwin died on March 27, 1945, but the death records above both indicate that he died on March 28. I don’t know which is more accurate, but I am using the recorded date. ↩

The Children of Katincka Blumenfeld Heymann: Lost and Found and Lost Again

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Thanks once again to a new reader of my blog and a newly found cousin, I have updates to two of my earlier posts. I am so grateful to my new cousin Ofra for telling me about additional relatives I’d not been able to find and for giving me the records to verify that these were in fact our mutual cousins.

This new information all relates to the descendants of Abraham Blumenfeld III and his wife Fredericke Rothschild. I wrote back on February 8, 2022, over two years ago, that their daughter Katincka Blumenfeld and her husband Samuel Heymann “immigrated to Brazil in the summer of 1939 just before World War II started. I have no further information about their lives, but they had no children after their daughter Frieda died in 1911 at ten months of age. There are no descendants of Katincka and Samuel.” But I was wrong. Although they had no children after Frieda died, they had had other children before she was born.

As Ofra pointed out, Katincka and Samuel had at least three other children born before their daughter Frieda, all born in Biskirchen, Germany: Isidor, born June 9, 1905, Hedwig, born December 2, 1906, and Jakob, born May 24, 1909.1 Tragically, all three were killed in the Holocaust. Although I was able to find records for all three of these individuals on Yad Vashem, none of those records mentioned the names of their parents. And the birth records for Biskirchen start in 1910, so there are no birth records for these children online. I asked Ofra if she had any records that identified these three people as the children of Katincka and Samuel Heymann. And she did.2

Here are two Arolsen Archives documents that show that Isidor and Jakob Heymann were the sons of Samuel Heymann. Notice also that they were both living at the same address.

Arolsen Archives, DocID: 6096427 (ISIDOR HEYMANN) DeepLink: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/6096427

Arolsen Archives, DocID: 6096431 (JAKOB HEYMANN)
DeepLink: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/document/6096431

Although Ofra did not have a similar document tying Hedwig to Katincka and Samuel Heymann, she did provide me with links to pages showing the Stolpersteine established for Hedwig and other members of her family in Biskirchen, Germany. From one of those pages I learned the following:

Henriette Neter (*1906) was married to Isidor Heymann (*1905). The couple was deported from Gildehaus (Bielefelder Transport). Henriette was murdered in Stutthof in 1943, her husband on October 24, 1944 in the Landsberg/Lech camp.…

Erich Neter (*1913) married Isidor Heymann’s sister, Hedwig Heymann (*1906), in his first marriage. They had two children. Zilla Neter – 4 years old – and Semi Neter – 1½ years old – were shot together with their mother in December 1943 near Riga.

Erich Neter survived and later remarried and had two more children.3

Although this is not an official record, it is sufficient in my mind to establish that Hedwig was Isidor Heymann’s sister and thus also the child of Katincka Blumenfeld and Samuel Heymann.

But what a terrible, heartbreaking story to have to add to my family history. Isidor and his wife and his sister Hedwig and her two young children were murdered by the Nazis. The Nazis also killed Jakob Heymann. All of those newly found cousins were killed in the Holocaust. Here are the Stolpersteine placed in their memory in Biskirchen.

Meikel1965, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Meikel1965, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Meikel1965, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Meikel1965, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Meikel1965, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

In addition to helping me document and add these additional children of Katincka and Samuel to my tree, Ofra also had information about another descendant of Abraham Blumenfeld III and Fredericke Rothschild—their grandson Julius Blumenfeld, the son of Hugo Blumenfeld and Blanka Rosenberg. I had written that Julius had emigrated to Palestine/Israel on August 23, 1934, and married Ettel Helfgott on March 26, 1940, in Haifa, but I had no further information about him. Ofra sent me a link to an obituary of Julius that reported that Julius had died of illness while serving in the IDF on May 31, 1954. He was only 46 years old and left behind his wife and two children, whose names were not given in the obituary.

Once again, I want to thank Ofra for all her help in allowing me to update this blog as well as my family tree. Although all these lives ended far too soon, I am glad that I can honor all of their memories.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Although Yad Vashem has Jakob’s birthdate as April 24, 1909, the Arolsen Archive document reproduced below says his birthdate was May 24, 1909. Since Jakob signed that document, I assume it is more accurate. ↩
  2. Ofra also named a fifth child of Katincka and Samuel, a son named Max Heymann who was born January 12, 1908, and who emigrated to the United States and/or Brazil. I am still trying to locate information for Max. ↩
  3. Yad Vashem has different information about the death of Isidor Heymann. It says he was killed at Dachau on November 6, 1944, as does the Stolpersteine shown above. ↩

The Legacy of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum: Family Photos

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I mentioned in my last blog post that I have recently connected with another cousin, Robin Kravets, the great-granddaughter of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum. Robin is my fifth cousin, once removed. We are both descendants of Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz, Robin through their son Moses and me through their daughter Breine.

Robin has generously shared with me a collection of photographs of her family, and I am delighted to be able to share them with you. All the photos in this post are courtesy of my cousin Robin. I am providing a summary of what I posted two years ago about Robin’s direct ancestors to provide context to the photos and to add some additional insights Robin shared with me. The blog posts from 2021 contain more details and my sources.

Salomon Blumenfeld, Robin’s great-great-grandfather, first married Caecilie Erlanger, but she died when she was only 24 years old, leaving behind two very young children: Thekla (Robin’s great-grandmother), not yet two, and Felix, just seven months old. Two years after his first wife Caecilie died, Salomon married Emma Bendheim and had a third child, Moritz, in 1877. And then sometime within the next five or six years, Salomon left Germany for Spain with Emma and Moritz, leaving his first two children, Thekla and Felix, behind. As best I can tell, Thekla and Felix, still both young children, must have been raised by their mother’s family, the Erlangers, in Marburg.

I had wondered whether Salomon or his son from his second marriage, Moritz, had remained in touch with Thekla and Felix. Robin provided this photograph of Moritz with his half-niece Cecilie, Thekla’s daughter, and another unidentified woman, so there is some evidence that at least Moritz had some contact with his half-sister Thekla and her family.

Moritz Blumenfeld and Cecilie Gruenbaum (with unknown woman on the left)
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

This is the oldest photograph in Robin’s collection. It shows Thekla as an infant with her mother, Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld and must have been taken in about 1872 when Thekla was born. Thank you to Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photogenealogist, for pointing out the correct dating of this photograph.

Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld with Thekla Blumenfeld, c. 1872 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Here are two beautiful photographs of Thekla as a young woman.

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla married Max Gruenbaum in 1894. Here is a photograph of them taken in 1895.

Thekla Blumenfeld and Max Gruenbaum 1895
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla and Max had four children: Cecilie (1895), Curt (1897), Franz (1899), and Rosemarie, Robin’s grandmother (1912).

Cecilie, Curt, and Franz Gruenbaum c. 1908 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Cecilie, Franz, Rosemarie and Curt Gruenbaum, 1918  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla’s brother Felix married Thekla Wertheim in 1902, and they had two sons, Edgar (1903) and Gerhard (1906). Robin had just a few photos of Felix; he appears to be in uniform during World War I in these first two. The caption on the first translates as “to commemorate the first nailing of the Zaitenstock.” I am not sure what that means, but Wikipedia explains (as translated by Google) that zaitenstocke were part of the pipe systems used to carry water into the cities.

Felix Blumenfeld, 1915 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

Felix Blumenfeld, 1916
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

As I wrote in my earlier posts, both Felix and his sister Thekla lost their spouses at relatively young ages. Thekla’s husband Max Gruenbaum died in 1917, and Felix’s wife Thekla died in 1923.

But even more tragically, both Felix and Thekla were among the six million who were killed in the Holocaust, Felix by suicide in 1942, as detailed here, when he was in despair and had no hope in surviving, and Thekla at Treblinka in 1943.

Felix Blumenfeld
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla had refused to leave Germany, and her daughter Cecilie would not leave her mother behind. Robin wrote that “[Cecilie] was very smart and saw the writing on the wall but her mother would not leave.  I remember my family talking about them having tickets on a boat somewhere. But the boat was cancelled.”1 Fortunately, Cecilie’s children were safely in England.

But Cecilie and her husband Walter Herzog were sent to the concentration camp in Riga in 1941. Walter did not survive, but against all odds, Cecilie did even after being sent to Stutthof, a camp where the conditions were truly horrible, as I wrote about here. When I asked Robin whether she had any information as to how Cecilie had survived, she wrote that “since she was trained as a nurse during WWI, she used her skills to help people in the camps. I have always believed it gave her a purpose to survive. The story I heard as a child was that when the Allies liberated the camp, she knew she had to get west. She collected a group of people and helped them make their way west. As a nurse, she knew that they needed to be very careful about overeating after being in the camps and made sure they did not die from bloating.”2 As was not uncommon with Holocaust survivors, Cecilie never wanted to talk about her experiences.

Cecilie Gruenbaum Herzog Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

The other children of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum and Felix Blumenfeld had all managed to escape Germany before it was too late, as I wrote about here. Robin’s grandmother Rosemarie, the youngest of Thekla’s children, had married while still in Germany. In fact, as Robin explained, she had married her husband Ernest Heymann in absentia as Ernest was in England at the time, having gone there on business and then realizing it was not safe to return. I’d never heard of being married in absentia, but apparently Rosemarie’s nephew stood in as a surrogate groom.3

Rosemarie was able to get out of Germany and join Ernest in London where their first child, Robin’s mother, was born. After the war started, Ernest was one of the many Jewish refugees who was sent to an internment camp as a “enemy alien.” He was interned from June 21, 1940, until October 17, 1940.

Ernst Heymann, he National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: Ho 396/178
Piece Number Description: 178: German Internees Released in Uk 1939-1942: Hertzke-Hoj
Ancestry.com. UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945

After he was released, he and Rosemarie and their daughter immigrated to the US and settled in New York. They had another child in New York after the war.

Rosemarie’s sister Cecilie made it to the US in 1946 and went to live with Rosemarie and her family in New York. The two sisters lived together for the rest of their lives and remained close to their brothers Curt and Franz (later known as Frank), who visited them often from Massachusetts.  Cecilie lived to 95, dying in 1990, and Rosemarie to 91, dying in 2004.3

The story of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum is tragic: motherless as toddler, left behind by her father, widowed at a young age, and then killed by the Nazis. The fact that Thekla’s two daughters Cecilie and Rosemarie lived together and survived into their 90s is quite a tribute to the strength their mother must have had and that they both had.

Thekla with her daughter Rosemarie Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

 

 

 

  1. Email from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023. ↩
  2. Ibid. ↩
  3. Emails from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023, and October 27, 2023. ↩ ↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Part V: Her Family in America After the War

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By 1950, the three surviving children of Friederike Blumenfeld and Mannes Schoen, Auguste, Moritz, and Isaak, were all living in the United States. But none of the three lived past the age of 66.

Auguste died in 1951 at the age of 65. Although I don’t have an official death record, I do have a photo of her gravestone from FindAGrave. Also, there is an “Augusta Speyer” listed in the New York, New York Death Index, who died at age 64 on March 24, 1951; this could be Auguste, given that the age and year of death almost match, even if the name is misspelled.1

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/236656909/auguste-speier: accessed 9 September 2023), memorial page for Auguste Schoen Speier (1886–1951), Find a Grave Memorial ID 236656909, citing Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, USA; Maintained by dalya d (contributor 46972551).

Auguste was survived by her husband Willi Speier, who died in New York City on January 1, 1964, at the age of seventy,2 and by her son Julius and his wife Hildegard. I was unable to find any further information about Julius and Hildegard’s lives once they got to the US. I do not even know whether they had children. All I know is that Julius died in Florida on November 22, 1992,3 when he was seventy, and Hildegard died two years later in Florida in August 1994.4 Aside from a brief death notice for Hildegard in the Miami Herald on August 13, 1994,5 there are no obituaries to provide more information about their lives.

UPDATE: Thank you to the amazing researcher, Barbara Zimmer, on Tracing the Tribe, I now have a bit more information about Julius and Hildegarde. Barbara found documents online in Florida that show that Julius and Hildegard moved from New York City to Miami in 1987 and that they had no children. See the search engine here.  Also, Michael Rosenberg, whose father Walter was a second cousin to Julius, recalled a couple by that name being friends of his family in New York.

As for Auguste’s brother Moritz and his family, I again have relatively little information about their post-war years in the US. As I mentioned in my earlier post, his daughter Alice married Albert Schwarz in 1943, and they had three children and were living in New York City. Alice’s brother Manfred Schoen married in 1951; as his wife is still living, I will not disclose her name or details, and I do not know whether they had children.6 Kurt, the youngest sibling, married Berta Cooper in 1955. They had three children, according to his interview with the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum.7

Moritz Schoen died in New York City on January 23, 1957. He was 66 years old.8 He was survived by his wife Else Freimark Schoen, who died April 20, 1982, twenty-five years after her husband.9 She was 86. They were both survived by their three children, Alice, Manfred, and Kurt, and their grandchildren.

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/230090815/else-schoen: accessed 9 September 2023), memorial page for Else Freimark Schoen (1896–1982), Find a Grave Memorial ID 230090815, citing Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, USA; Maintained by dalya d (contributor 46972551).

Isaak Schoen, the youngest of the children of Friederike Blumenfeld and Mannes Schoen, also died before he turned 70. He died when he was 66, just like his brother Moritz, on May 21, 1960, in New York City.10 Isaak had never married or had children and was survived by his niece and nephews and their children.

Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/247906520/isaac-schoen: accessed 9 September 2023), memorial page for Isaac Schoen (1893–1960), Find a Grave Memorial ID 247906520, citing Beth-El Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, USA; Maintained by dalya d (contributor 46972551).

Moritz’s three children lived longer lives than their father or their aunt and uncle. Manfred was seventy-seven when he died in Florida on January 20, 2004.11 Alice lived to 91; she died on June 9, 2015.12 Her husband Albert Schwarz predeceased her; he died on August 5, 2010.13 They were survived by their three children. And Kurt Schoen died just last year on February 24, 2022, at the age of 94. His children survive him as well as his grandchildren. His wife Berta predeceased him on May 26, 2016.14

Thus ends the story of the family of Friederike Blumenfeld and Mannes Schoen. Sadly, their sons Jakob and Isaak have no living descendants, nor does their son Willi, who died as a boy. I don’t know whether their daughter Auguste has any descendants. But I do know that their son Moritz had six grandchildren and that this line continues at least through those grandchildren and their descendants.

And not only does this bring me to the end of Friederike’s story; it also brings me to the end of the long saga of her father Isaak Blumenfeld I, the second child of Moses Blumenfeld I. I started Isaak’s story and those of his ten children on January 25, 2022, over a year and a half ago.

I can now turn to the story of his younger sister Gelle Blumenfeld Rothschild. Like her brother Isaak, she had ten children. I may still be telling her story a year and a half from now. Imagine April 2025—what will the world be like then? I just hope it’s still here and that Jews and Israel are still here also.

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving. I am going to try to focus on the many things for which I am grateful and on all the good I see in most people. It will be a challenge, but surrounded by my family, it will be very doable.

See you the week after Thanksgiving!

 

 

  1. Augusta Speyer, Age 64, Birth Date abt 1887, Death Date 24 Mar 1951, Death Place Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number 6867, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965. ↩
  2. Willi Speier, Age 70, Birth Date abt 1894, Death Date 1 Jan 1964, Death Place Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number 12, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩
  3. Julius Speier, Gender Male, Race White, Birth Date 10 Aug 1922, Birth Place Niederurff K, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date 22 Nov 1992, Father Willi Speier, Mother Auguste Schoen, SSN 079242442, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  4. Hildegard Speier, [Hildegard Gabriel], Gender Female, Race White, Birth Date 8 Sep 1919, Birth Place Bromberg Pos, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date Aug 1994, Father Julius Gabriel, Mother Berta Gross, SSN 079242443, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  5. The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida, Sat, Aug 13, 1994, Page 34 ↩
  6. Name Manfred Schoen, Gender Male, Marriage License Date 1951, Marriage License Place Queens, New York City, New York, USA, License Number 5534, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Queens, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  7. Oral history interview with Kurt L. Schoen, Oral History | Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.512 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0512, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive, found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn566135&#160;↩
  8. Moritz Schoen, Birth Date 6 Jul 1890, Death Date 23 Jan 1957, Claim Date 26 Jan 1957, SSN 111288575, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  9. Else Schoen, Social Security Number 094-20-5551, Birth Date 5 Apr 1896, Issue year Before 1951, Issue State New York, Last Residence 11372, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date Apr 1982, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  10. Isaac Schoen, Age 66, Birth Date abt 1894, Death Date 21 May 1960, Death Place Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number 11253, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩
  11. Manfred Schoen, Social Security Number 118-14-1280, Birth Date 13 Sep 1926
    Issue year Before 1951, Issue State New York, Last Residence 33180, Miami, Miami-Dade, Florida, USA, Death Date 20 Jan 2004, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  12. Schwarz Family Tree, Arbeitskreis Judentum im Wasgau, Elisabeth & Otmar Weber, Schillerstraße 10b, 66994 Dahn ↩
  13.   Albert B. Schwarz, Social Security Number 057-16-8097, Birth Date 22 Oct 1922
    Issue year Before 1951, Issue State New York, Last Residence 11372, Flushing, Queens, New York, Death Date 5 Aug 2010, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
  14. “Holocaust Survivor Kurt Schoen Dies at 94,” Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, March 10, 2022, found at https://www.jewishexponent.com/holocaust-survivor-kurt-schoen-dies-at-94/  Berta Schoen, obituary, found at https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/inquirer/name/berta-schoen-obituary?id=9451473&#160;↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Part IV: Her Children in Shanghai

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As we saw, Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen had five children. They all had their lives and destinies changed by the Holocaust. Her oldest child Jakob died in 1937, and his widow and daughter were killed in the Holocaust. Friederike’s second oldest son, Moritz, immigrated with his family to the US in the late 1930s to escape the Nazis.

The other two surviving children of Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Auguste and Isaak, ended up in Shanghai, China, during the war. I don’t have any details about how they got to Shanghai or what their lives were like there, but there have been many books1, articles2, and memoirs3 written about the experience of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, and there was even an exhibit about Jewish refugee life in Shanghai in August 2023 in New York City.

I have read some of the articles, but not the books, so I can only briefly touch on the outline of this period in history to give context to what happened to Auguste, her husband Willi, their son Julius, and her brother Isaak, but in the footnotes I have listed sources for those who may want to learn more about the Shanghai Jewish community during the Nazi era.

When I first heard many years ago that Shanghai had been a place that many Jews sought refuge during the Nazi era, I was surprised. I’ve since learned that there was in fact a small Jewish community in Shanghai even before the 1930s, most of whom had fled from Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917. But it was not until the 1930s that the Jewish population in Shanghai grew to about 20,000 refugees. Why Shanghai? One reason was that unlike most other places in the world including the United States, no visas were required to enter Shanghai until August 1939.4

In 1937, after a fierce battle with the Chinese, the Japanese took control of large sections of Shanghai and created a ghetto in a section called Hongkew, where Jewish refugees lived in poverty-stricken conditions. They were not allowed to leave or enter the ghetto without passes and were often mistreated by the Japanese officials who oversaw the ghetto. The Chinese residents of Shanghai also were persecuted and suffered greatly during this occupation, which lasted until the end of World War II when Japan was defeated and required to leave China.5

Jewish Ghetto Memorial in Shanghai, gruntzooki, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

I wish I knew more about the experiences of my relatives Auguste Schoen Speier and her family and her brother Isaak Schoen in Shanghai, but aside from finding their names on various lists and in a 1939 directory for Shanghai located by Richard Bloomfield, I know no details other than that at some point they arrived there from Germany and lived there until after the war.

Auguste, Willi, and Julius Speier and Isaak Schoen are all listed on a 1950 list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai who were helped by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an organization that continues to exist today for those in need.

I also found them all here in a collection of records of Shanghai refugees made in 1944.

Richard located them in this November 1939 directory of emigrants in Shanghai, so obviously they had immigrated there by November 1939:

But I could not locate them on this list of refugees who had arrived in Shanghai between 1937 and 1944, so perhaps they had arrived before 1937.

In his interview with the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Kurt Schoen, Moritz’s son, mentioned that one of his cousins had died from typhoid while living in Shanghai, but I have no record or even a name of that cousin. He or she does not appear on any of the lists cited above. Maybe that cousin had passed away before these lists were compiled. Or maybe Kurt was confused.6

In any event, it is clear that Auguste, Willi, Julius and Isaak all ended up in Shanghai, and then after the war, they all immigrated to the US.

Auguste’s son Julius was the first to make it to the US. He arrived in San Francisco on March 19, 1947, with his wife Hildegarde Gabriel. They had married in Shanghai on December 9, 1945.7 Hildegarde was the daughter of Julius Gabriel and Berta Gross and was born on September 8, 1919, in Bromberg in what was then part of Prussia but is now in Poland.8

On the ship manifest, Julius listed his father Willi as the person he was leaving behind, Hildegarde listed her father Julius. They both listed Moritz Schoen, Auguste’s brother, as the person they were going to in the US and listed their destination as New York City. Julius listed his occupation as a shoemaker, and Hildegarde listed hers as a nurse.

Julius and Hildegarde Speier ship manifest, he National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 388, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959

Julius’ parents Auguste (Schoen) and Willi Speier arrived in San Francisco six months later on September 24, 1947. The ship manifest indicates that they were headed to New York City where their son Julius was residing. Like his son Julius, Willi was a shoemaker or “cobbler,” as listed on the manifest. The person they were leaving behind in Shanghai was Auguste’s brother Isaak.9

Isaak himself arrived just a few months later on December 17, 1947. He also entered the US in San Francisco, indicating that he also was heading to New York City where his brother Moritz was living. He listed his occupation as a salesman.10

Auguste and Willi did end up in New York City, where in 1950 Willi was working as a “platform spotter” in a shoe factory. I don’t know what that means, but I would guess that it means he watched shoes on an assembly line. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.11 I’ve been unable to locate their son Julius and his wife Hildegarde on the 1950 census nor can I locate Isaak Schoen on that census.

Thus, three of Friederike Blumenfeld and Mannes Schoen’s children and four of their grandchildren had escaped Nazi Germany and survived World War II. Their lives after 1950 will be discussed in my next post.

 

  1. See, e.g., Alex Ross, Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (1993, Free Press); Gao Bei, Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy Toward European Jewish Refugees During World War II (2016, Oxford University Press); Irene Eber, Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees From Central Europe: Survival, Co-Existence, and Identity in a Multi-Ethnic City (2012, DeGruyter). ↩
  2. See, e.g., the articles at the following links:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-holocaust-survivors-found-refuge-shanghai-told-through-stories-and-photos-180978235/  and https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/jewish-wwii-refugees-found-safety-shanghai-are-focus-new-exhibit-rcna96478 and https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-and-austrian-jewish-refugees-in-shanghai and https://www.npr.org/2023/08/06/1192118339/jewish-refugees-shanghai-world-war-ii&#160;↩
  3. E.g., Ernest Heppner, Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto (1995, University of Nebraska Press); Berl Falbaum, ed., Shanghai Remembered…: Stories Of Jews Who Escaped To Shanghai From Nazi Europe (2005, Momentum Books, LLC.); Sigmund Tobias, Strange Haven: A Jew­ish Child­hood in Wartime Shanghai (2009, University of Illinois Press). ↩
  4. See Note 2, above. ↩
  5. See Note 2, above. ↩
  6. Kurt L. Schoen, July 24, 2004 interview,  Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.512 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0512, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive, found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn566135. There was another puzzling thing about Kurt’s interview. He mentioned that his father had one sister (Auguste) and one unmarried brother (Isaak), but did not mention Jakob, his father’s older brother.  Jakob, as we saw, had died in 1937 when Kurt was ten, and his wife and daughter were killed in the Holocaust. Had Kurt never known his uncle Jakob and his family? Had Moritz never mentioned them? Or was it just too painful for Kurt to talk about what had happened to his uncle, aunt, and cousin? ↩
  7. Marriage notice for Julius Speier and Hildegarde Gabriel, The Jewish Voice in Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt, 23. November 1945, p. 8 ↩
  8. Hildegard Speier, Gender Female, Race White, Birth Date 8 Sep 1919, Birth Place Bromberg Pos, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date Aug 1994, Father Julius Gabriel, Mother Berta Gross, SSN 079242443, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  9. Willi and Auguste Speier, ship manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, NARA Roll Number: 392, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 ↩
  10. Isaak Schoen ship manifest, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving At San Francisco, California; NAI Number: 4498993; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group Number: 85, Ancestry.com. California, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1959 ↩
  11.  National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 4546; Page: 18; Enumeration District: 31-1702, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen, Part III: Her Son Moses Escapes to America

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I have been unable to do any new research in these last few weeks since the horrendous massacre in Israel by Hamas on October 7. I just can’t seem to focus on research right now. Fortunately I had several blog posts ready in my queue and will publish those, including this one. Perhaps the best way I can support Israel right now is to educate and remind people about the long history of persecution of Jews and antisemitism so that they best understand why Israel exists and why it must survive.

Although Friederike’s oldest child Jakob died in 1937 and his widow and daughter were killed by the Nazis, her other three surviving children all managed to escape the Nazis.

Friederike’s son Moses, more commonly known as Moritz, wanted to leave Germany quite early. As described by his son Kurt Leopold Schoen in the oral history interview he did with the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum, Moritz had had a successful wholesale and retail shoe business in Kassel, but once the Nazis came to power the business suffered. Non-Jews boycotted the store, and Moritz had to close the business and work as a shoemaker.1

But leaving Germany was difficult. The family needed affidavits from someone in the US to get a visa to enter the country, and the relatives in the US were reluctant to sponsor a family with three young children. Fortunately, Moritz and Else’s fourteen-year-old daughter Alice was given an opportunity to leave when the National Council of the Jewish Women in the US organized a rescue mission that brought many children out of Germany.2 Alice came to the US on May 13, 1938, and was sent to live with a Jewish family in San Antonio, Texas, the Rosenbergs, as seen on the 1940 US census.3

Alice Schoen passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

The website for the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio reported that Abe and Bella Rosenberg “took [Alice] into their lives as if she were a long lost relative. The Rosenberg children, Miriam and Stanley, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins who treated her with affection and kindness made her adjustment to a new life easier.” In his oral history interview, Alice’s brother Kurt mentioned that the Rosenbergs were a very nice family, but nevertheless Alice was naturally very homesick.  She did not see her family again until 1940.4

But Alice was able to get help from the Rosenberg family to bring her father Moritz to the US from Germany. As reported on the website for the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio, they signed affidavits pledging financial support for him.

Once he had an affidavit from the Rosenbergs, Moritz was able to go to the US consulate in Germany and receive a visa. But before he could leave, he was arrested during the Kristallnacht riots in November, 1938. According to his son Kurt, Moritz was not sent to Buchenwald like so many other Jewish men were after Kristallnacht because he already had a visa to leave Germany. He was released within a day or two from police custody in Kassel and prepared to leave for the US.5

Moritz arrived on December 3, 1938, seven months after Alice’s arrival, and settled in New York City. His ship manifest lists his wife Else as the person he was leaving behind in Kassel, Germany, and his sister-in-law Betty Lutz (born Babette Freimark) as the person he was going to in the US. He listed his occupation as a shoemaker.6

Meanwhile, back in Germany, Else and her two young sons Manfred and Kurt moved to Frankfurt; the boys were sent to a Jewish orphanage and Else moved in with one of her sisters. Kurt described the orphanage as a place where he and his brother were well treated. They went to school and learned English. Finally in April 1939, they were released and reunited with their mother and allowed to leave Germany for the US. Kurt, who was eleven at the time, recalled that the Nazis tore through their luggage and stole everything Else had packed except one small teapot.7

Else arrived in New York with Manfred and Kurt (listed as Kurt Leopold Israel on the manifest) on May 19, 1939.

Else Schoen and children, passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957
Ship or Roll Number: Deutschland, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

The family moved into a small apartment riddled with bed bugs; Moritz worked doing shoe repairs and barely made a living. But as Kurt said, they were happy to be out of Germany and safely living in New York. They moved frequently from one apartment to another in order to get the benefit of one or two free months of rent being offered by landlords. Manfred and Kurt started school where they quickly learned English and rose from the lower levels of their grade to the highest within a year.8

Alice was reunited with her parents and brothers sometime in 1940 when the Rosenberg family brought her to New York after taking a trip to Canada to see the Dionne Quintuplets. She married just three years later when she was nineteen, according to her brother Kurt.9 Her husband, Albert Bernhard Schwarz, was born on October 22, 1922, in Busenberg, Germany, to Alfred Lazarus Schwarz and Berta Levy. Like Alice, he was refugee from Germany; he had arrived on August 13, 1938.10 He was the only member of his family to survive. His parents and all his siblings were killed by the Nazis.11

Albert entered the US Army on March 26, 1943, listing his marital status as single.12 He and Alice must have married later that year. According to one biography of Albert, he was assigned to Camp Ritchie in Maryland and trained for military intelligence. As a Ritchie Boy, as they were known, Albert was trained to interrogate German prisoners of war. Starting in October 1944 he was with the 7th Armored Division of the II English Army in France and the northern part of Belgium. On November 5-6, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, Albert’s jeep hit a German mine near a bridge over the Meuse River. Albert suffered severe head injuries from which he suffered the rest of his life. He was in a coma for over a month in a English military hospital and remained there until February, 1945. He returned to the US in the spring of 1945, but was hospitalized until July. On Aug. 02, 1945, he was discharged from military service at Camp Edward, Massachusetts.13

Alice and Albert had three children born after the war. In 1950 they were living in New York City, and Albert was working as a butcher.14 Alice’s parents Moritz and Else Schoen and her brothers Manfred and Kurt (listed as Leo here) were also living in New York City. Moritz now owned his own shoemaking business. Manfred was an industrial engineer, and Leo/Kurt was a chemist in a cosmetics company.

Morris Schoen and family, 1950 US census, National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 3572; Page: 9; Enumeration District: 31-2294, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census

Meanwhile, Moritz’s two remaining siblings had survived the war in Shanghai, China. More on that in my next post.

  1. Many of the personal details in this post came from Kurt Leopold Schoen’s interview with the USHMM. Kurt L. Schoen, July 24, 2004 interview, Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.512 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0512, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive, found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn566135.  Although Kurt is listed as Leopold or Leo on many US records, he used the name Kurt for most of his adult life in the US and will be referred to here as Kurt for that reason. ↩
  2. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  3. Alice Schoen, 1940 US Census, Year: 1940; Census Place: San Antonio, Bexar, Texas; Roll: m-t0627-04201; Page: 61A; Enumeration District: 259-6, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩
  4. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  5. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  6. Moses Schoen, passenger manifest, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at and Departing from Ogdensburg, New York, 5/27/1948 – 11/28/1972; Microfilm Serial or NAID: T715, 1897-1957, Ship or Roll Number: Hamburg, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
  7. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  8. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  9. See Note 1, supra. ↩
  10. Albert Schwarz, Declaration of Intention, The National Archives at Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA; 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
    Description: (Roll 610) Declarations of Intention For Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 481301-482200), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
  11. Family history of Schwarz family, Arbeitskreis Judentum im Wasgau, Elisabeth & Otmar Weber, Schillerstraße 10b, 66994, found at /https://judentum-im-wasgau.de/images/geschichte/jugemeinden/jufbusenberg/02_schwarz_jakob_hauptstr_49_bu.pdf ↩
  12. Albert B Schwarz, Race White, Marital Status Single, without dependents (Single)
    Rank Private, Birth Year 1922, Nativity State or Country Danzig or Germany, Citizenship Not Yet a Citizen, Residence New York, New York, Education 2 years of high school
    Civil Occupation Stock clerks, Enlistment Date 26 Mar 1943, Enlistment Place New York City, New York, Service Number 32874464, Branch No branch assignment, Component Selectees (Enlisted Men), National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland, USA; Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938-1946; NAID: 1263923; Record Group Title: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, 1789-ca. 2007; Record Group: 64; Box Number: 05772; Reel: 241, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 ↩
  13. See Note 11, supra. ↩
  14. Albert Schwarz and family, 1940 US census, National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: 6203; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 31-1913, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩

Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen’s Son Jakob: Another Family Lost in the Holocaust

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Friederike Blumenfeld Schoen died in 1927, as we saw, leaving behind her four surviving children, Jakob, Auguste, Moses, and Isaac, and her grandchildren. Thus, she was spared from experiencing the Holocaust and seeing what would happen to her children and their families.

Her oldest child, Jakob, was living a good life with his wife Hannah Freimark (sometimes known as Johanna, sometimes as Maria Anna.) Their daughter Ruth was born on New Year’s Day in 1924, as seen in this birth announcement published in Der Israelit newspaper in Frankfurt on January 3, 1924.

Der Israelit, 3 January 1924, page 7

Thank you once again to my cousin Richard Bloomfield who located this notice and the others in this post and translated them for me. The birth announcement says, “Jakob Schön and wife Hanna, née Freimark are delighted to announce the healthy [lit. happy, successful] birth of a daughter. Frankfurt am Main, Baumweg 22, 1 January 1924 / 24. Tebet 5684.”

Jakob was working as a successful butcher in Frankfurt. The ad below says, “Wanted for my store, closed on Shabbat and holidays, a young journeyman. Meat Market Jakob Schön, Frankfurt am Main, Uhlandstrasse 50.”

1925-08-27 Der Israelit, page 7

And then his life was cut short when he died on June 22, 1937, at the age of 52. His daughter Ruth was only 13 years old.

Jakob Schoen death record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Signatur: 11071; Laufende Nummer: 903
Year Range: 1937, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

Jakob’s obituary reflects how well loved he was by his family and his  community. Richard Bloomfield, who located this obituary as well as the ads and notices above, graciously translated the obituary for me as follows:

Der Israelit, July 1, 1937, p. 11

Suddenly and without warning Jakob Schön’s successful and industrious life came to an end. Together with his wife and daughter a large circle of friends mourns this dutiful man known for his unbending character and his scrupulous business practices. With hard work and great zeal Jakob Schön and his like-minded wife built up his meat market from its small beginnings into a remarkably prospering business which brought him the complete trust of the rabbinate and the supervisory board of the IRG, as well as the respect and friendship of his customers. The Reichsbund Jüdischer Frontsoldaten [National Association of Frontline Soldiers] loses with Jakob Schön an active and faithful member. In earlier years the deceased was a valuable member of the Synagogue Choir of the Jewish Community who gladly gave of his time and energy for the enriching of the worship services. May the family’s intense grief be alleviated by knowing that his memory will last and his S’chus [merit] will live on forever.

It appears that Jakob died suddenly, perhaps of a heart attack or stroke. Although there is nothing in the obituary discussing this, I wonder what effect Nazi oppression and the Nuremburg Laws had on his business and on him personally. Did the stress of dealing with persecution contribute to his sudden death? Was Jakob an uncounted victim of the Holocaust?

In any event, at least he was spared knowing what would happen to his wife and daughter in the years to come. They did not leave Germany in time, and both were murdered by the Nazis. They were deported from Frankfurt to Theriesenstadt on September 15, 1942, and then to Auschwitz, where they were murdered on October 12, 1944. Hannah was 56, and Ruth only twenty years old.

Johanna Freimark Schoen Page of Testimony, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1414651&ind=1

May their lives be remembered. May we never forget.

 

 

 

 

Isaak Rosenberg: A Family With No Survivors

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The youngest child of Rebecca Blumenfeld and Mendel Rosenberg was their son Isaak. As we saw, Isaak was born in Rosenthal, Germany, on June 15, 1892, and on December 22, 1922, he married Bella Gans, daughter of Jacob Gans and Esther Ehrenreich, in Niederaula, Germany.

Isaak and Bella had one child, a daughter Rita Rosenberg, born on April 29, 1924 in Frankfurt.

Unfortunately, all of them—Isaak, Bella, and Rita—were murdered by the Nazis. According to Yad Vashem, Isaak was deported from Frankfurt on August 10, 1942, and sent to the concentration camp in Majdanek, Poland, where he was murdered. His wife Bella’s nephew Israel Gans filed this Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem in his memory. The Hebrew written where it says “circumstances of death” merely says “perished in the Holocaust.” (Thank you to Hanna Gafni of Tracing the Tribe on Facebook for translating this line on this Page and the two below.)

The information available regarding the fates of Bella and Rita is far less specific. The Gedenbuch (Memorial Book) only reports that Bella was deported to Poland and killed there; perhaps she was deported on the same date as Isaak and to the same camp, but that isn’t stated. Nor does the Page of Testimony filed at Yad Vashem by Bella’s nephew Israel Gans provide any further details. The line for “Circumstances of Death” translates as “deported to Poland. Her fate is not known. Perished in the Holocaust.”

The information about Rita is even more limited. The Gedenbuch doesn’t even have information about where she was deported to or killed nor does her cousin Israel Gans’ Page of Testimony for her. The Hebrew written where it says “circumstances of death” says “perished in the Holocaust.”


This may be the first time that I have learned of family members who were killed in the Holocaust for whom there are no recorded details of their fates. Did Bella and Rita accompany Isaak to Majdanek? Or was the family separated? The lack of information somehow makes their deaths sting even more. The fact that the Nazis didn’t even document their murders makes it more likely that those deaths would have been somehow swept under the rug. So it is my task here to make sure that their lives and their murders are not forgotten.

That brings me to the end of the story of Rebecca Blumenfeld Rosenberg, the seventh child of Isaak Blumenfeld I and Gelle Strauss. Although Rebecca lost one son, Willi, as a young adult, and her son Isaak and his family were all murdered in the Holocaust, she was survived by seven grandchildren and has descendants still living today in Israel and the United States.

Next I turn to Rebecca’s younger sister, Friederike Blumenfeld, the eighth child of Isaak Blumenfeld I and Gelle Strauss and the last of their children to live to adulthood.

Rebecca Blumenfeld Rosenberg’s Daughter-in-Law Bella: An Admirable Woman

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Rebecca Blumenfeld and Mendel Rosenberg’s second child was their son Joseph. As we saw, Joseph was born on February 4, 1886, in Rosenthal, Germany, and married Bella Oppenheim on February 21, 1913, in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. Bella was born there on June 8, 1891, to Aron Oppenheim and Hannchen Klebe. Bella’s sister Emma Oppenheim had married Meier Blumenfeld III on April 5, 1905, in Bad Hersfeld. Meier, the son of Giedel Blumenfeld and Gerson Blumenfeld, her first cousin, once removed, was thus Joseph Rosenberg’s first cousin, since their mothers Giedel and Rebecca were sisters.

Joseph and Bella had one child, Kurt, born in Sobernheim, Germany, on April 20, 1914.1 As I wrote in my earlier post, Sobernheim is not in the Hesse region where both Joseph and Bella were born and raised and where they married, but over 160 miles away in the Rhine Palatinate region.

Tragically, as we saw, Joseph, who was a doctor, died on May 4, 1922, at the age of 36, and was buried in Frankfurt, so perhaps he and his family had relocated from Sobernheim. His son Kurt was only eight years old when he lost his father.

Bella remarried a year after losing Joseph. Her second husband was Arthur Marx, born in Kempten, Germany, on August 4, 1890. They married in Frankfurt on June 22, 1923, in Frankfurt, and were living in Frankfurt.

Marriage of Bella Oppenheim Rosenberg to Arthur Marx, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 903, Year Range: 1923, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Kurt immigrated to the United States on October 16, 1937, when he was 23.2 His mother Bella and stepfather Arthur left Germany for the United States on May 27, 1938, and arrived in New York on June 2, 1938.

Arthur and Bella Marx passenger manifest, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 5; Page Number: 142, Ship or Roll Number: Europa, 
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Bella Oppenheim Rosenberg Marx then played a pivotal role in saving her niece Ruth Blumenfeld, the daughter of Emma Oppenheim and Meier Blumenfeld III, as I wrote about here. According to Ruth’s grandson Matthew, Bella, Ruth’s aunt, sponsored Ruth’s entry into the United States on March 4, 1940. Ruth was the only member of Emma and Meier’s family to survive the Holocaust. Her parents and her two sisters and their families were murdered by the Nazis. Matthew shared this photograph of Bella with her niece Ruth and Ruth’s husband Leo Friedman.

Bella Oppenheim Marx, Leo Friedman, and Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman. Courtesy of Matthew Steinhart

On the 1940 census, Bella and Arthur were living in Brooklyn, New York, and Arthur was working as a bank clerk and Bella as a practical nurse. They had two boarders living with them in addition to a niece (not Ruth), but not their son Kurt.

Arthur Marx and family 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, Kings, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02580; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 24-1310, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

Kurt, like his father Joseph, had become a doctor and was residing at Boulevard Hospital in Queens, New York, at the time of the 1940 census.2 He registered for the draft on October 16, 1940.

Kurt Rosenberg World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947

After the war Kurt married Gertrude Stein,3 and in 1950 they were living in Queens and Kurt was practicing medicine.4 Kurt and Gertrude would have three children.

Unfortunately, like his father before him, Kurt died too young. He was 56 years old when he died suddenly on January 28, 1970, at the hospital where he worked as a gynecologist in Queens, New York. He was survived by his wife and children as well as his mother Bella.5

Bella died at the age of 94 on December 22, 1985.6 She had outlived her first husband Joseph Rosenberg and then her second husband Arthur Marx, who died on November 14, 1963, as well her son Kurt.7 She also had outlived her niece Ruth Blumenfeld Friedman, whose life she had helped to save back in 1940. Although she was only related to me by her marriage to my cousin Joseph Rosenberg, I feel a deep respect and a connection to her because of the life she lived and the things she endured along the way.

  1. Kurt Rosenberg, World War II draft registration, National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Wwii Draft Registration Cards For New York City, 10/16/1940 – 03/31/1947; Record Group: Records of the Selective Service System, 147, Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 ↩
  2. Kurt Rosenberg, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, Queens, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02721; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 41-105, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩ ↩
  3.  New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Queens, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
  4. Kurt Rosenberg and family, 1950 US census, United States of America, Bureau of the Census; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007; Record Group Number: 29; Residence Date: 1950; Home in 1950: New York, Queens, New York; Roll: 4301; Sheet Number: 10; Enumeration District: 41-1012, Ancestry.com. 1950 United States Federal Census ↩
  5. Obituary for Kurt Rosenberg, Daily News, New York, New York, Thu, Jan 29, 1970
    Page 318. Kurt Rosenberg, Gender Male, Birth Date 20 Apr 1914, Death Date Jan 1970
    Claim Date 7 Mar 1970, SSN 072164680, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
  6. Bella Marx, Social Security Number 079-22-4508, Birth Date 8 Jun 1891, Issue year Before 1951, Issue State New York, Last Residence 11375, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date Dec 1985, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014; Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/77845632/bella-marx: accessed 29 May 2023), memorial page for Bella Marx (unknown–22 Dec 1985), Find a Grave Memorial ID 77845632, citing Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens County, New York, USA; Maintained by Athanatos (contributor 46907585). ↩
  7. Arthur Marx, Age 73, Birth Date abt 1890, Death Date 14 Nov 1963, Death Place Queens, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number 14536, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩

Good for A Single Journey by Helen Joyce: A Review of A Wonderful New Book and An Interview with the Author

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Today I have the great pleasure of sharing my virtual interview with author Helen Joyce. She has recently published a family history novel titled Good for A Single Journey, a moving and beautifully written telling of her maternal family’s story. Joyce’s great-grandparents were living in a small town in what was then Galicia in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century when oppression and poverty forced them to relocate to Vienna, where they hoped to have greater freedom and economic security. And they did find great success there. But like so many Jewish families, they eventually suffered from the horrors of the Holocaust. Although many, including Joyce’s mother, survived, many others were murdered, and all suffered from persecution and financial loss. And those who survived were once again forced to relocate and start all over in a new country.

Joyce has combined what she learned from her mother and other relatives with historical research to create a fascinating and illuminating look at the history of this era and its effect on one Jewish family. The book is a mix of fact and fiction, some parts totally created from her imagination and other parts entirely based on fact. The book reads like a novel. She has created wonderful three-dimensional characters, each with distinctive and memorable personalities and stories. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history and in Jewish history in particular. It is appropriate for young adults as well as adults and available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes & Noble here.

Good for a Single Journey has received a finalist’s award in the 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and has also received a highly favorable review from Neville Teller in the June 12, 2023, issue of The Jerusalem Report. You can also learn more about Helen Joyce and her book at her website found here.  And in the interest of full disclosure, I should reveal that she is my fifth cousin on her paternal side; we are both descended from Jacob Falcke Goldschmidt and Eva Seligmann, our mutual four-times great-grandparents.

And now, let me introduce you to Helen Joyce and her wonderful book, Good for a Single Journey..

Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview with me and to share more about your book, Good for a Single Journey.  Have you ever written a book or other fiction/non-fiction before?

No! I have written the odd article, contributed a chapter to two each of two academic books, and edited a community magazine which often entailed tightening the contributions of others. Otherwise, no formal writing experience.

So what made you decide to write this book at this time?

Old age! I always wanted to write an account of my mother’s life and never found the right time. Work, kids, and life in general always interfered. That and the self-defeating belief that the project was beyond me; that I was deluding myself if I thought I could write an account/memoir/novel of the type I imagined would do justice to her story. Finally, the reality of the fact that I was not getting any younger and triggered by taking our youngest granddaughter on a trip to Vienna where we visited my mother’s birthplace proved to be the catalyst for getting to work.

The author’s parents Max and Klari. Courtesy of Helen Joyce

I really enjoyed reading the book, and it reads like fiction. But I know that the book is based on the real lives of your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as well as many aunts, uncles, and cousins. How much of the book is fictionalized and how much is non-fiction?

It would take a long time to unravel fact from fiction but basically, I knew the ‘bare bones’ of the stories of all the characters. In the case of the two brothers, Chiel and Beresh, I knew very little indeed beyond the fact that they made Aliyah to pre-State Israel long around WWI. Therefore, I invented their adventures. I gave them experiences and put them in situations which were factually correct and allowed some of the history of the early Yishuv to come to light. I knew a little about Peppi, my grandmother’s sister, and of course the story of Suzanne became legendary!

Zissel, my other great-uncle, was a closed book to me until I unlocked the memoir of his son Yitzchak. That gave me the details of not only his travels across Europe and today’s Ukraine before reaching the shores of British mandate Palestine, but also revealed the entire saga of his grandparents’ (my great grandparents’) flight from Rozwadów to Ukraine and onwards to Siberia. I knew a great deal about my grandparents from my mother’s tales and, again through her, background details about day-to-day life in Vienna and the market town of Rozwadów, which she visited frequently on trips to her grandparents. The rags to riches story of my grandfather is true. Accounts of the flight from Vienna, the period in Prague, my mother’s experiences in London are also from my mother’s various shared memories.

My independent sources of research (apart from the internet and the cousin’s memoir which I mentioned) were my mother’s diaries and a stash of family letters collated and self-printed by my late uncle which charted the agony of desperation and fear as various members of the family tried to help and find ways to get those still trapped in Europe out. Obviously the most fictionalized accounts are those of the imagined conversations and emotions displayed by the various characters. The best I could do was to try and imagine I was them and put myself in their place at that time. What would I feel? How would I react?

The author’s grandmother Ida. Courtesy of Helen Joyce
The author’s grandfather Salomon Courtesy of Helen Joyce

How did you decide where to create fictional elements versus non-fiction?

Honestly, I don’t know! It just sort of flowed seamlessly. I wove elements of drama and fiction around the basic facts I knew. For example, I needed to get the two brothers from Vienna to Palestine during WWI. How would they have gone? What might they have done? WWI was raging so I thought it would be interesting to place them into an Austro-Hungarian unit which ended up in Palestine. When I started researching that possibility, I learned a great deal about the involvement of Jewish soldiers in the army, the unit I put them in was a real one (as was the officer which commanded it). The facts surrounding Aaron Aaronsohn, NILI, and their role in helping the British defeat the Ottomans in
Palestine and how these contributed to the fact of the Balfour Declaration was too good an opportunity to miss including. So, I did! Throughout the book I also wanted to give the lie to the myth that Jews were passive, never fought in armies and were pale scholars led to slaughter like sheep. Jews fought bravely (on all sides) in every theatre of war.

How did you research the parts of the book that are fact-based?

I read several books on WWI, biographies about Aaron Aaronsohn and NILI as well as books about the history of the Middle East. My mother’s cousin’s memoir was also very helpful. The internet is also a phenomenal resource. What was the weather like in Gallipoli in November 1915 – click. What train routes were available on the Chemins de fer Orientaux during WWI – click! What date was Rosh Hashanah in 1914 – click. All there in your hand-held mobile phone!

Your book begins with your great-grandparents leaving Rozwadów. Why did you decide to begin there?

The book begins with a train journey, the journey of my great grandparents fleeing their hometown in Galicia. I decided to start with that train ride as it gave me the opportunity to introduce all the main characters as well as a major theme of the book. Migration and journeys. The entire book is about the journey of individuals, families, and the Jewish people. Trains feature quite prominently. That opening train ride. Greetings and goodbyes at train stations. The brothers’ train ride to war and onwards to Palestine. The train ride carrying my great grandparents and their youngest son to Siberia. The train ride my mother took to Scotland to meet her brother serving in the Jewish Brigade of the British army and of course the final horrific train rides to the death camps.

The author’s great-grandfather Shmaryahu Courtesy of Helen Joyce
The author’s great-grandmother Pessya Courtesy of Helen Joyce

You include some living people and some recently deceased people in the book. How did you approach the issues of privacy with respect to those people? Were there things you had to change or avoid to protect the interests of your family?

Yes, absolutely. A lot was excluded! However, in discussion with as many of my cousins as I could track down, I realized they were quite happy for me to give details of their stories. I offered each of them drafts so they could check they were happy with what I had written. However, as nearly all the family descendants live in Israel, many of them do not read in English. That said, they were quite happy to know I had written some account and did not mind if it was fictionalized. The Israeli branch is very easy going! I gave my sister an early draft and she enjoyed the first half but did have some comments and suggestions about the second half of the book. I have tried to accommodate her feelings on this but, ultimately, we agreed that the book was a fictionalized novel.

Your family endured many of the challenges and horrors faced by many Jewish families in the 20th century: immigration to new countries (several times), World War I, and Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. What impact do you think that history has had on you and the other living descendants of your great-grandparents?

It’s hard to speak about this in general. The impact is surely quite different for each family and on each individual. For me, knowing what previous generations lived and died for made me want to cling to a Jewish lifestyle replete with the traditions that Hitler tried so hard to erase. I didn’t want to give Hitler any kind of posthumous victory and so I have tried to raise a Jewishly faithful family. Beyond that? I guess a sense of the importance of justice and the need to respect equality of all people regardless of gender, race, or religion.

You ultimately decided to leave England and make Aliyah to Israel. What in your family history contributed to that decision? Have you made connections to the cousins who were refugees to Israel during the Nazi era?

Many factors contributed to that decision. My husband comes from a very ‘English’ Jewish family but his mother, eldest of ten, was the only child left in the UK after the creation of the State of Israel. The rest were all pioneers in Israel (although two had died before that was possible). So, he already has a huge network of family here. Our son made Aliyah twenty years ago and was raising his children here and of course we wanted to be close to them. We have a daughter with special needs and she made Aliyah with us – we couldn’t contemplate leaving her behind and she is so very happy here with excellent care. Our youngest child followed us five years ago and so, to our delight, all our children and grandchildren are here. Yes, I have contact with some of my many cousins, but they are numerous and spread out so we do not meet that often although I do meet my first cousins more frequently.

Your book has many themes and covers many topics: different ways to practice Judaism, antisemitism, Zionism, mental health, marriage, parental love, and so on. Was there a specific point or theme that mattered most to you?

They all mattered and, in a way, I suppose several of them nestle into each other like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls! Parental love leads to stability and contributes to the type of marriage partnership one is likely to create as does a strong sense of community and belonging. Antisemitism and Zionism also have a kind of Yin and Yang partnership! If I had to choose one (you didn’t ask me that!) maybe I would say resilience and survival!

Who did you see as the audience for your book? Your own family and descendants? Young adults? Jewish readers? The entire universe of adult readers?

The entire universe! My family and their descendants were not really the target audience. Had they been, the book would have been far more factual and memoir-based. I hoped it would appeal to young adults and prove educational and am being told that teenagers are totally gripped by the story – which, given the amount of history in it – is great! However, I would dearly love the non-Jewish world to gain insight about a Jewish way of life, the history of persecution and the holocaust but also the historical underpinnings of the State of Israel under international law which was brought about together with the dismantling of previous empires. If Israel is to be accused of being a ‘colonialist enterprise’ then equally so is Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Not to mention the many ‘new’ European countries created in the wake of WWI. Without understanding the impact of WWI, nothing about the modern world makes sense (including current events in Ukraine!)

This book focused on your maternal family. Do you plan to write a book about your paternal side?

Yes! And your blog will be a fantastic resource for me!!! However, marketing this book is taking up a lot of time at the moment. I have been invited to take part in Jewish Book Week School Events for schools around the UK which is fantastic. Events can be online so I can do them from here. This is really part of my dream – to bring the reality of the Jewish experience to a wider audience.

The author, Helen Joyce. Courtesy of Helen Joyce

Thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions, and I look forward to reading your next book and hope that my research will be helpful to you! Best of luck in your marketing efforts—your book deserves a wide and large audience.