In Honor of Yom HaShoah and Yom HaAtzmaut: Hermann Blumenfeld and His Family

Posted on April 29, 2022 by Amy

After Moses IIB and Sara (Stern) Blumenfeld died, Moses in 1911, Sara in 1928, they had five surviving children and eleven grandchildren.

Hermann and his wife Helma had two children: Hilde Nomi and Hans. Bertha and her husband Ludwig Fernich had two children: Jenny and Else. Salomon and his wife Malchen or known more often as Amalie had three: Gretel, Jenny, and Hilde. Clementine and her husband Richard Abraham had three: Lilli, Martin, and Walter. Max and his wife Johanna Gruenwald had one child, a son Fritz.

Of those twenty-one family members, only about half are known to have survived the Holocaust. In addition, some of the great-grandchildren of Moses IIB and Sara were also killed in the Holocaust. This post will tell the story of Hermann Blumenfeld, the oldest child of Moses IIB and Sara. It is an appropriate post for today, just a day after Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and just six days before Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day, because although Hermann and his wife Helma were murdered in the Holocaust, their two children survived by escaping to what was then Palestine, but what became the independent state of Israel in 1948.

Hermann Blumenfeld and his wife Helma were deported from Frankfurt to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Lodz, Poland, on October 19, 1941, and were killed sometime thereafter.

Hermann Blumenfeld, Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem by his daughter Hilde, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1899981&ind=1

Helma Lillienstein Blumenfeld Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem by her daughter Hilde, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1899975&ind=1

Fortunately, their two children both left Germany earlier and eventually immigrated to what was then Palestine.

Hilde Nomi left Germany for Oslo, Norway, on August 19, 1933, and then entered Palestine on April 22, 1936. She applied for citizenship there on May 23, 1938, when she was living near Haifa and working as a teacher. She became a Palestinian citizen on June 21, 1938. You can see her full immigration file at Blumenfeld Hilda _ מחלקת ההגירה – ממשלת ארץ ישראל – בקשות לאזרחות _ ארכיון המדינה

Hilde Blumenfeld, Palestine Immigration file found at the Israel State Archives at https://www.archives.gov.il/en/

She remained in Palestine, later Israel, and married Isaac Schattner in Jerusalem on February 17, 1942.

Marriage record of Hilde Blumenfeld and Isaac Schattner, found at the Israel Genealogy Research Association at https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

Hilde Nomi died on February 1, 2012.

Hilde Schattner grave found at GRAVEZ at https://gravez.me/en/deceased/EB68819A-D75B-452E-AC83-D46D1B20317F?lang=en

Her brother Hans arrived in Palestine on July 1, 1935, when he was seventeen. He applied for Palestinian citizenship on September 13, 1938, and was granted citizenship on October 16, 1938. He was working as a laborer at that time and living in Jerusalem. His full immigration file can be seen here: Blumenfeld Hans _ מחלקת ההגירה – ממשלת ארץ ישראל – בקשות לאזרחות _ ארכיון המדינה

Hans Blumenfeld Palestine immigration file found at the Israel State Archives at https://www.archives.gov.il/en/

Hans remained in Palestine, later Israel, and married Ruth Herman in Jerusalem on August 8, 1941. His marriage record confirmed my earlier assumption that he was in fact the son of Hermann and Helma Blumenfeld.

Marriage record of Hans Blumenfeld and Ruth Herman, found at the Israel Genealogy Research Association at https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

In 1947, Hans changed his first name to Hanan.

IGRA website found at https://genealogy.org.il/AID/

At some later point Hanan changed his surname to Bar Sadeh. He and his first wife Ruth were divorced, and in November 1954, he married Esther Asch, daughter of Hillel and Fredericka Asch. I am indebted to David Lesser of Tracing the Tribe who translated the headstone and then went even further and found the wedding announcement for Hanan and Esther on p. 3 of the November 22, 1954, issue of Hatzofe (the Observer), an the Israeli newspaper. David translated the announcement as follows: “Hanan Bar-Sadeh (Blumenfeld) son of Herman, Divorcee, Germany Tel-Aviv to Esther Ash Daughter of Hillel, Single, Germany Tel-Aviv.”

According to their gravestone, Esther was born May 29, 1925, and died on June 25, 2006. Hans died on September 1, 2004.

Hanan Bar-Sadeh gravestone found at GRAVEZ at https://gravez.me/en/deceased/9A0712A0-3749-4251-A557-E8EDAA465AF2

Thus, because they were able to escape to what was then Palestine and is today Israel, the children of Hermann Blumenfeld and Helma Lillienstein survived the Holocaust. Unfortunately, Hermann and Helma did not.

Nor did Bertha Blumenfeld Fernich and most of her family, as we will see next.

Finding Meier Blumenfeld’s Children: The Benefits of Teamwork

Posted on April 22, 2022 by Amy

As I turn to Meier Blumenfeld, Giedel Blumenfeld’s youngest son to survive to adulthood, the first thing I want to do is thank my cousin Richard Bloomfield for all his help in finding the children of Meier Blumenfeld and researching their fates. This was a true example of teamwork in the best sense. Richard is fluent in German and was able to read documents and contact people in a way that I never could have. He is also an extraordinary researcher—thorough and reliable. Together we’ve solved some perplexing mysteries, but I give him the bulk of the credit in pulling this one together. I hope this post will inspire others to find those with whom they can collaborate on their research. Two heads are definitely better than one.

Meier Blumenfeld (labeled as Meier III on my tree) was born on November 2, 1879, in Kirchhain, Germany, to Giedel Blumenfeld and Gerson Blumenfeld.

Meier Blumenfeld III birth record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 4980, Year Range: 1879, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901

On April 5, 1905, Meier married Emma Oppenheim, in Hersfeld, Germany. Emma, the daughter of Aron Oppenheim and Hannchen Klebe, was born in Wehrda, Germany, on September 8, 1883. ¹

Marriage record Emma Oppenheim and Meier Blumenfeld III, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 907, Year Range: 1905, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

So far, so good. But finding Meier and Emma’s children was much more challenging.

According to numerous unsourced trees on Ancestry, Meier and Emma had only one child, a daughter Giedel Trudchen, born in Kirchhain on March 2, 1905, a month before Meier and Emma married. I was very skeptical of these trees at first since I could not find any records for this child; in addition, the date of birth seemed unlikely.

However, with substantial help from my cousin Richard Bloomfield, we have enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that a woman named Gertrud Blumenfeld was the daughter of Meier Blumenfeld and Emma Oppenheim. According to this marriage record, a Gertrud Blumenfeld was born on March 2, 1906 (eleven months AFTER Meier and Emma were married) in Gotha, Germany. Unfortunately, the marriage record does not name the parents of the bride and groom, and the birthplace of Gotha initially threw Richard and me as Meier was from Kirchhain and Emma was born in Wehrda and lived in Hersfeld at the time of their marriage.

Marriage of Gertrud Blumenfeld and Erwin Mayer, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 907, Year Range: 1927, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

But a closer look at the marriage record for Gertrud indicates that although she was living in Hersfeld when they married, she was born in Gotha.

And a closer look at Meier and Emma’s marriage record revealed that Meier was living in Gotha at the time of their marriage in 1905.

This, and more evidence described below, led me to conclude that Gertrud Blumenfeld, born in Gotha on March 2, 1906, was very likely the daughter of Meier and Emma.

Meier, Emma, Gertrud, and Erwin were deported on October 20, 1941, from Frankfurt to the Lodz ghetto in Poland, where Erwin was killed on December 3, 1942, Emma on January 10, 1943, and Meier on February 2, 1943. No date of death was given for Gertrud. The fact that Gertrud and Erwin were deported from the same place (and living on the same street in Frankfurt) and to the same destination as Meier and Emma on the same day further supported the conclusion that Gertrud Blumenfeld Mayer was their daughter.

So I am convinced that Meier and Emma did have a daughter Gertrud. But was she killed in the Holocaust? Yad Vashem says she was. But there are some Arolsen Archives documents that suggest otherwise.

This document dated October 2, 1950, says that Erwin’s wife “ausgewandert nach USA”—emigrated to the USA.

Arolsen Archives, Digital Archive; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Lists of Persecutees 2.1.1.1
Reference Code: 02010101 oS, Ancestry.com. Free Access: Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees, 1939-1947

And even more surprising, this one says she emigrated with “2 kinder”—two children.

Was Yad Vashem wrong? Had Gertrud survived? I did find two documents indicating that she had been in the Lodz concentration camp, but nothing about her surviving the war or coming to the US.² Had she had two children who immigrated with her to the US? So far I cannot find any evidence of Gertrud in the US or of two children.

But much to my surprise, Richard soon discovered that Meier and Emma had two more daughters after Gertrud, two daughters who did not appear on those Ancestry trees that show only one child, Gertrud, for Meier and Emma.

First, Richard found an Arolsen Archive document for a single woman named Ruth Blumenfeld, born August 17, 1920, who’d been residing at the same address as Meier and Emma in Frankfurt, 11.1 Beethovenstrasse. Emma would have been 37 when Ruth was born, so an older mother, but certainly not inconceivable (no pun intended). This document indicated that Ruth was in the US.

And then Richard located records showing a Bertha Blumenfeld who had immigrated to the US on March 4, 1940. The ship manifest reports that she was nineteen years old, born in Hersfeld, and a nurse. More revealing is that she listed her father Meier as the person in her prior residence and an uncle Herman Bloomfield as the person she was going to in the US. I wrote about Herman here, an older brother of Meier. This certainly corroborated the conclusion that Bertha was the daughter of Meier and Emma Blumenfeld.

Year: 1940; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 33, Ship or Roll Number: George Washington, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

This declaration of intention tied Ruth and Bertha together as one person and confirmed her birthdate and birthplace as August 17, 1920, in Hersfeld.

Ruth Blumenfeld 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 588) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 461501-462400), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Ruth Blumenfeld, as she was known in the US, married Leo Friedman on March 21, 1942. According to the New York, New York, Index to Marriage Licenses, 1908-1910, 1938-1940 on Ancestry, the transcription of their license lists Ruth’s parents as Meier and Emma Blumenfeld. Leo was born August 4, 1909, in Crailsheim, Germany, to Louis and Dina Friedman.³ I don’t know whether Ruth and Leo had children. They settled in Queens, New York; Leo died in November 1982,⁴ and Ruth in February 1984.⁵

Perhaps the 1950 census will reveal whether they had children. I tried searching on the archives.org site, but there were just too many entries and the artificial intelligence used to scan the names is too imprecise to be able to do a search on a common surname. So I have to wait until the census is better indexed on Ancestry or FamilySearch.

UPDATE! Now that the 1950 census is partially indexed on Ancestry, I was able to find Leo and Ruth and learned that in fact they did have two children born in the 1940s. Now to find them and learn more.

But Richard also found a reference on Geni to a third daughter of Meier and Emma Blumenfeld, a daughter named Hanna born between Gertrud and Bertha Ruth in 1910 in Hersfeld. But we could find no records or other sources for Hanna.

And then I located a website for the Stolpersteine laid in Hersfeld that opened up more avenues for research. Richard transcribed and translated the German text pertaining to the family of Meier (Max) and Emma Oppenheim Blumenfeld:

Max Meier Blumenfeld was born on 2 November 1879 in Kirchhain. About 1910 he took up residence on Dudenstreet, which at that time was the Kaiserstrasse. In house number 16, which belonged to his father-in-law Aron Oppenheim, he opened a shop for “raw products” [I assume “groceries”]. Later he expanded his assortment to include textiles and tobacco products. He was also active in the Jewish Congregation in Hersfeld and was its president for many years.

M. Blumenfeld was from a family that had lived in Kirchhain for generations at Brieselsstrasse 12. In the center of the city the Blumenfelds possessed a stately home which served his [Max] brother Gustav until the end of 1938 as dwelling and place of business ….

Emma Blumenfeld (born 9 September 1883) had lived with her husband and daughter Gertrud (born 2 March 1906) in Gotha before moving to Hersfeld. Emma née Oppenheim was born in Rhina on 9 September 1883, in the house at Oberland 14.

Max and Emma Blumenfeld left Bad Hersfeld on 19 December 1938, hoping to find some protection from the daily discrimination in the anonymity of the big city of Frankfurt. After having lived in the house at Beethovenstrasse 11 for just short of three years, they had to board the first train with deportees from Frankfurt on 20 October 1941 which carried over 1100 Jews to the Ghetto at Lodz. …

Emma’s date of death is recorded as 10 January 1943. The last sign of life from Max Blumenfeld is dated 2 February 1943. Blumenfeld’s daughter Gertrud and her husband Erwin Mayer also died in the Ghetto at Lodz. Daughter Hanna, born 1910, who had moved to Saarland in 1932, was murdered at Auschwitz. Only the youngest daughter Bertha Ruth, who had moved at a 16-year-old to Frankfurt, survived the Holocaust.

This passage confirmed that Meier, Emma, Gertrud, and Erwin had died in Lodz. It also confirmed that Bertha Ruth had survived, and it reported that there was a middle daughter Hanna who had been killed at Auschwitz after moving to Saarland, Germany, in 1932.

Richard then located a second site devoted to Stolpersteine installed in Hersfeld, and that one included this additional information about Hanna, the middle daughter of Meier and Emma:

Siegfried, the youngest child [of the family Levi] (born 1908…) moved 1932 with his wife Hanna née Blumenfeld (from Duden Street) to Merzig/Saar. Siegfried Levi had attended teachers’ college in Würzburg.

Now we knew that Hanna had married Siegfried Levi and moved with him to Merzig, Saarland, Germany, in 1932.

Although the Stolperstein biography indicated that Hanna Blumenfeld Levi had been killed at Auschwitz, there is no entry for a woman with that name listed at Yad Vashem. However, there is a listing for a Hannah Blumenfeld with the birth name Levi, and she was born in Hersfeld on July 18, 1910. Richard and I both feel that the married name and birth name was transposed in the listing and that this is in fact Hanna Blumenfeld Levi, the middle daughter of Meier and Emma Blumenfeld. According to Yad Vashem, she had lived in Luxembourg and France during the war and had been deported from Drancy, France, on September 7, 1942, to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

But then Richard and I were confused by a listing on Ancestry from the Jewish Holocaust Survivor List from the files of World Jewish Congress, 1918-1982 database that includes Hanna Levi, born in Hersfeld on July 18, 1910, and states that she had a visa for Cuba.⁶ After Richard consulted with the author of the Hersfeld Stolpersteine site, we concluded that although Hanna may have had a visa for Cuba, she never actually immigrated and was killed at Auschwitz. Her husband Siegfried, however, did survive and ended up immigrating to the US after the war.⁷

Thus, from starting with my doubts about whether Meier and Emma Blumenfeld had any children, I am now persuaded by the documents that Richard and I found that they had three daughters. The youngest, Bertha Ruth, escaped to the US. The middle child Hanna was killed at Auschwitz. And the oldest Gertrud was also most likely killed in the Holocaust. Why the Arolsen Archives document says she and two children escaped to the US remains an unanswered question. I hope that that document is correct, but all other evidence suggests otherwise.

GeorgDerReisende, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

On that sad note, I now have completed the saga of Giedel Blumenfeld, who died so young and left nine children behind. Two of those children left for America as young adults (Markus/Max and Sara/Sadie). The oldest child Moritz had died in 1932, but his children escaped to the US in time. Two of Giedel’s other daughters came to the United States in the 1930s (Bertha and Franziska) as did her son Hermann, his wife, and two of their sons. Hermann’s other two sons escaped to South Africa where they died as young men.

But three of Giedel’s nine children—Dorchen/Dorothea, Salli, and Meier—and almost all of their children were killed in the Holocaust.

Emma’s father Aron later married Franziska Blumenfeld, Meier III’s second cousin, after his first wife Hannchen Klebe died. Franziska Blumenfeld, Gender: weiblich, (Female), Age: 34, Birth Date: 3. Nov 1870 (3 Nov 1870), Marriage Date: 10. Okt 1905 (10 Oct 1905), Marriage Place: Marburg, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany)
Civil Registration Office: Marburg, Spouse: Aron Oppenheim Father: Meine Blumenfeld,
Mother: Sarchen Blumenfeld, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 5620, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930 ↩
Lodz, Name: Gertruda Mayer, [Gertruda Blumenfeld], Gender: F (Female)
Birth Date: 20 Mar 1906, Profession: Sekretaerin, Address: 97 Flat 2a Muhl Gasse
Residence: Lodz, Poland, Deportation Date: 20 Apr 1943, JewishGen.org Volunteers, comp. East Europe, Registers and Listings from Ten Jewish Ghettos, 1939-1942. Gertruda Mayer, Gender: weiblich (Female), Birth Date: 2 Mrz 1906 (2 Mar 1906)
Apartment Number: 68, Street Address: Hanseaten 4, Residence Place: Litzmannstadt, Polen (Poland), Occupation: Sekretär, Previous Address: Frankfurt, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Washington, DC; Poland, Lódz Ghetto Register Books, 1939-1944; Record Groups: RG-15.083M; File Name: rg-15_083m_0219-00000393, Ancestry.com. Poland, Łódź Ghetto Register Books, 1939-1944 (USHMM) ↩
Ruth Blumenfeld, Gender: Female, Race: White, Marriage Age: 21, Birth Date: Aug 1920, Birth Place: Germany, Marriage Date: 21 Mar 1942, Marriage Place: New York, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Residence Street Address: 564 W. 160 St.
Residence Place: New York, Manhattan, Occupation: Factory, Father: Meier Blumenfeld
Mother: Emma Blumenfeld, Spouse: Leo Friedman, Certificate Number: 5247
Current Marriage Number: 0, New York City Department of Records & Information Services; New York City, New York; New York City Marriage Licenses; Borough: Manhattan; Year: 1942, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Index to Marriage Licenses, 1908-1910, 1938-1940 ↩
Leo Friedman, Social Security Number: 064-12-5373, Birth Date: 4 Aug 1909
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 11375, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date: Nov 1982, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
Ruth Friedman, Social Security Number: 102-14-8791, Birth Date: 17 Aug 1920
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 11375, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date: Feb 1984, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
Hanna Levi, Birth Date: 1910-07-18, Birth Place: Hersfeld, Last Residence: Ettelorueck, Luxembourg, Comments: Passport reference: Allem. 474/40, Visa to: Cuba
Source: Luxembourg, immigrants to Americas via Bayonne, France, ca. 1945-1946 (Liste des Luxembourgeois a Bayonne, n.d.), Record Set, Page: D51.12,5, JewishGen. Jewish Holocaust Survivor List from the files of World Jewish Congress, 1918-1982 ↩
E.g., see Siegfried Levi, 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 ↩

Salli Blumenfeld and His Family: A Branch With No New Leaves

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Amy

Although the last few posts have had their sad stories—young children who died, a horrible accident taking the life of a young mother, a young man dying at 29 from a heart attack—I was at least spared the pain of writing about the murder of my relatives by the Nazis. Sadly, I now must return to such horrific stories as I turn to the two youngest sons of Giedel Blumenfeld and her husband Gerson Blumenfeld, Salli and Meier. First, I will tell the story of Salli Blumenfeld.

Salli Blumenfeld was born in Kirchhain on March 25, 1878.

Salli Blumenfeld birth record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 4979, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901

Salli married Fanni Wetterhahn on May 9, 1906, in Hersfeld, Germany. Fanni was born there on May 29, 1879, to Isaak Wetterhahn and Karoline Simon.

Salli Blumenfeld Fanni Wetterhahn marriage record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 907, Year Range: 1906, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Salli and Fanni had two children. Siegfried was born on July 25, 1907, in Kirchhain.¹ According to several trees and other secondary sources, a daughter Kathe Karoline was born to Salli and Fanni on November 4, 1910; I don’t have any record tying this child to Salli and Fanni, however. I do have one record showing that a woman named Kathe Karoline Blumenfeld was born in Kirchhain on November 4, 1910, but that record does not identify her parents.² For now I will assume she was the daughter of Salli and Fanni.

Salli and Fanni’s son Siegfried married Betti Reutlinger on February 24, 1935, in Frankfurt. Betti was born on May 28, 1908, in Frankfurt. Her parents were Julius Reutlinger and Sophie Weil.³

But then this story turns tragic. Salli and Fanni and their presumed daughter Kathe Karoline were all killed in the Holocaust. They were all deported from Kassel to Riga, Latvia, on December 9, 1941, and died sometime thereafter.

Only Salli and Fanni’s son Siegfried and his wife Betti escaped in time. They arrived in New York on October 21, 1938, with Betti’s mother Sophie Weil and sister Martha Weil.

Siegfried Blumenfeld ship manifest, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 59, Ship or Roll Number: Hansa, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

On his Declaration of Intention dated March 1, 1939, Siegfried reported that he was a factory hand. He and Betti were living in New York and had no children.⁴

In 1940, Siegfried and Betti were living with her mother Sophie and brother Walter in New York.⁵ Siegfried was working as a machine operator. His World War II draft registration lists his employer as Burros and Burros. By that time he had changed his surname to Bloomfield.

Siegfried Bloomfield, 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

Siegfried died at the age of 55 in June 1963;⁵ Betti outlived him by 34 years. She died March 4, 1997, at 88.⁶ I have not been able to find any record that Siegfried and Betti ever had children. If that is true, it appears that this is another branch of the family of Giedel Blumenfeld and her husband Gerson Blumenfeld that has no living descendants.

Next, the story of Giedel Blumenfeld’s youngest son to live to adulthood, Meier Blumenfeld.

Siegfried Bloomfield, [Siegfried Gerson Blumenfeld], Gender: Male, Declaration Age: 31, Record Type: Declaration, Birth Date: 25 Jul 1907, Birth Place: Kirchheim Germany, Arrival Date: 21 Oct 1938, Arrival Place: New York, New York, USA, Declaration Date: 1 Mar 1939, Declaration Place: New York Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Spouse: Betti, Declaration Number: 429824
Box Number: 295, 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, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
Käthe Blumenfeld, Gender: weiblich (Female), Nationality: Deutsche Julen, Residence Age: 28, Record Type: Residence, Birth Date: 4 Nov 1910, Birth Place: Kirchhain, Sojourn Start Date: 2 Sep 1939, Residence Place: Marburg Marburg an der Lahn, Sojourn End Date: 8 Dez 1941 (8 Dec 1941), Notes: Foreigners who were living in the location during the war – permanently or temporarily, Reference Number: 02010101 oS, Document ID: 70454281, Arolsen Archives, Digital Archive; Bad Arolsen, Germany; Lists of Persecutees 2.1.1.1, Ancestry.com. Free Access: Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees, 1939-1947 ↩
See Note 1. Betti Paula Bloomfield, [Betty Bloomfield] [Betti Paula Reutlinger], Gender: Female, Race: White, Birth Date: 28 May 1908, Birth Place: Frankfort, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date: 4 Mar 1997, Father: Julius Reutlinger, Mother:
Sophie Weil, SSN: 104124761, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
See Note 1. ↩
Siegrfried Bloomfield, Social Security Number: 066-14-7836, Birth Date: 25 Jul 1907, Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Death Date: Jun 1963, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩ ↩
Betti Paula Bloomfield, [Betty Bloomfield] [Betti Paula Reutlinger], Gender: Female, Race: White, Birth Date: 28 May 1908, Birth Place: Frankfort, Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date: 4 Mar 1997, Father: Julius Reutlinger, Mother:
Sophie Weil, SSN: 104124761, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩

Hermann Blumenfeld II and His Family: Leaving Germany in Time

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Amy

It was a bit of a relief, telling the stories of Max Bloomfield I and his sister Sadie Bloomfield, since both left Germany almost fifty years before the Nazis came to power. Even though both suffered tragic losses—Max lost two young daughters from terrible illnesses and Sadie lost a daughter to a horrible freak accident—I knew that they and their descendants would not be killed in the Holocaust.

Now I return to a sibling who stayed in Germany, but who managed to leave in the 1930s along with his family and escape from Nazi persecution. Hermann Blumenfeld II was the seventh child of Giedel Blumenfeld and Gerson Blumenfeld; he was born on March 26, 1876, in Kirchhain. He lost his mother Giedel when he was only seven years old.

On May 21, 1902, Hermann II married Rickchen Lomnitz in Bischhausen, Germany. She was born in Bischhausen on November 6, 1874, to Salomon Lomnitz and Esther Lorge.

Marriage record of Hermann Blumenfeld II and Rickchen Lomnitz, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 923; Laufende Nummer: 905, Year Range: 1902, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Hermann II and Rickchen had four sons. First, they had twins; Gustav and Siegwart were born on January 3, 1904, in Marburg, Germany.¹ Then came Max, born on December 23, 1905, in Marburg.²

Their fourth son was Julius Blumenfeld, born October 27, 1907, in Marburg. For a long time I was skeptical about the existence of this fourth son, who was listed on several family trees but with no sources.³ I am very grateful to Richard Bloomfield for tracking down the actual birth record for Julius.

Julius Blumenfeld birth record obtained by Richard Bloomfield from Marburg Archives

Before Richard obtained that birth record, the only actual record I could find for a Julius Blumenfeld born on that date was a record of prisoners held at Dachau concentration camp; that record indicates that a man with that name and birth date and place was imprisoned at Dachau on October 26, 1935, and released on July 25, 1936, but it does not indicate who his parents were.⁴

UPDATE! My gratitude to my cousin Richard Bloomfield who translated this text from the following book: Barbara Händler-Lachmann, Thomas Werther,
Vergessene Geschäfte – verlorene Geschichte, Jüdisches Wirtschaftsleben in Marburg und seine Vernichtung im Nationalsozialismus [Forgotten businesses – lost history: Jewish economic life in Marburg and its destruction under National Socialism]. It provides information about the life of this family before they were forced to escape from Nazi Germany and shows how successful they were until the Nazis destroyed their business and ultimately forced them out of Marburg:

Blumenfeld, Hermann

Café and Pastry Shop

Bahnhofstrasse 27

Opening and Development
In 1901, Hermann Blumenfeld moved from Kirchhain to Marburg. He moved to Wilhelmstrasse 8, where he opened a bakery and pastry shop on September 10, 1901. There is some uncertainty regarding subsequent developments, as address books and business registers contradict one another. On December 15, 1908, he also established a café and pastry shop at Bahnhofstrasse 27. At the same time, however, he had already moved to Kasernenstrasse 12 (today Gutenbergstrasse); a bakery and pastry shop is said to have existed there as well. According to the business register, however, a branch of the business at Bahnhofstrasse 27 was not registered and opened there until April 18, 1911. Shortly thereafter, Hermann Blumenfeld purchased the house at Kasernenstrasse 12, which also included a bakery. After selling this house in 1921, the Blumenfeld family moved to Bahnhofstrasse. During the 1920s, the branch on Kasernenstrasse was closed. Two of Hermann’s sons, Siegward and Max, also became pastry chefs and worked in their father’s business.

Aryanization/Liquidation
After 1933, the café became one of the few places where Marburg’s Jewish citizens could meet outside their homes. A Jewish eyewitness reported that at Blumenfeld’s, it was still possible to have coffee in the evenings. Its convenient location near the train station allowed the business to survive, at least to some extent, for quite some time. However, the sons soon emigrated, so that fewer people had to rely on the café’s income to make ends meet. Hermann Blumenfeld and his wife also began preparing for their own emigration starting in 1937. The assessment by the local NSDAP chapter, which was requested by the authorities for this purpose, describes Blumenfeld’s situation as follows: “Almost since 1933, they have come more into the spotlight … because their ‘café’ became the meeting place for all Jews, which, however, was merely a natural consequence of all other events. The Blumenfelds’ business was not specifically marked as a Jewish business, which resulted in many non-locals visiting it…. Attempts to change this situation were unsuccessful because legal provisions did not permit third parties to post signs with such content. The departure of the Blumenfelds is generally welcomed.” A campaign against the bakery is known to have taken place in 1937. Two signs bearing the inscription “Don’t Buy from Jews” were erected, likely by the district leadership of the NSDAP. The Blumenfeld family was forced to move out of their apartment in May 1938. They moved to Heusingerstrasse 1, where they remained until their departure for New York on June 2, 1938. This date is listed in the business register as the final date of closure for the pastry shop. On May 13, 1938, the Oberhessische Zeitung reported that the bakery had been taken over by master baker Hafner. “As of today, the previously Jewish bakery at 27 Bahnhofstrasse has passed into Aryan hands.”

Franziska Blumenfeld, Hermann’s unmarried sister, worked as a housekeeper; where, is not known. The sons attended the Oberrealschule in Marburg. Gustav became a commercial clerk. In the early 1930s, he had a “general agency for vacuum cleaner brushes” entered in the commercial register; however, this commercial agency was discontinued as early as 1932.

It is known that Siegward had begun an apprenticeship as a dental technician, but his occupation is always listed as “pastry chef” in the address book. He emigrated to South Africa in August 1936.

Max, also a pastry chef, had already moved to Vienna in October 1934. His subsequent fate is unknown.

Julius Blumenfeld became a merchant. He worked in Giessen starting in 1927, moved to Karlstadt/Main in 1929, but registered his return in the winter and, according to the registration card from the Residents’ Registration Office, was traveling as of June 2, 1933. From September 11, 1935, to July 25, 1936, he was imprisoned at the Kislau/Dachau concentration camp. Two weeks after his release, he emigrated to South Africa together with his brother Siegward.

Hermann, his wife Rickchen, and his sister Franziska emigrated to New York, USA, on June 2, 1938.

Sources: StAM, Collection 327/1, NSDAP, No. 5652. StAM, Kassel Regional Office, Collection 1, No. 3982, Vol. 16. StAM, Marburg Cadastral Register II, Building Registers 1910ff. Handwritten student roster of the Martin Luther School, compiled by Dr. Helmut Krause.

Hermann and Rickchen and their sons all escaped from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Max arrived in the US on July 6, 1936, listing his occupation as a merchant and his prior residence as Vienna.⁵ His brother Gustav arrived in the US next on October 1, 1937, listing his occupation as a baker and his prior residence as Marburg.⁶

Then their parents arrived the following year on June 3, 1938, Hermann II listing his occupation as a baker, same as his son Gustav. Traveling with them was Hermann’s younger sister Franziska, the youngest child of Giedel and Gerson Blumenfeld to survive to adulthood and their tenth child. Franziska was 55 and unmarried when she immigrated to the US with her brother Hermann and sister-in-law Rickchen.

Hermann Blumenfeld, ship manifest, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 91, Ship or Roll Number: Hansa, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

In 1940, Hermann, Rickchen, Gustav and Max were all living together along with Hermann’s sister Franziska in New York. Only Gustav and Max were employed, Gustav as a novelty salesman and Max as an office clerk for a garment company. They had all adopted the surname Bloomfield by then.

Hermann Blumenfeld and family, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02670; Page: 22B; Enumeration District: 31-1885, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

Max Bloomfield (II, since he had an uncle who also changed his surname from Blumenfeld to Bloomfield) married Fridl Waldmann Aal, a widow with one child, on September 13, 1941, in New York.⁷ Fridl was born on March 20, 1909, in Windheim, Germany, and was, like Max, a refugee from Nazi Germany, having arrived on July 6, 1938, with her young daughter.⁸

When he registered for the draft in 1942, Max was working for the Gibraltar Manufacturing Company.

Max Bloomfield II, 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

Max’s brother Gustav was self-employed when he registered for the draft, but I do not know what his occupation was; perhaps he’d returned to baking.

Gustav Bloomfield, 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

Meanwhile, Hermann II and Rickchen’s other sons, Gustav’s twin Siegwart and the youngest son Julius, had gone to South Africa instead of the United States. Finding out what happened to Julius took the assistance of the genealogy village, in particular, my cousin Richard Bloomfield and Tracing the Tribe member Michael Moritz.

Given that Hermann Blumenfeld II’s naturalization papers listed only three sons—Gustav, Siegwart, and Max—I assumed that Julius must have died before Hermann filed his declaration of intent in 1941 or perhaps even before Hermann and Rickchen immigrated in 1938. But I had no idea when or where Julius died or whether he’d ever left Germany.

Herman Blumenfeld, 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 610) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 481301-482200), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

I posted a question on Tracing the Tribe on Facebook. Not long after I posted my question, Michael Moritz again came through for me; he found that Julius had immigrated to South Africa, and then found Julius’ marriage record and death record. On December 8, 1937, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Julius married Charlotte Rosenfeld, who was 27 at that time and born in Germany.

Marriage of Julius Blumenfeld and Charlotte Rosenfeld, “South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1840-1973”, database, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:8BTM-6BN2 : 1 February 2021), Charlotte Rosenfeld in entry for Julius Blumenfeld, 1936.

Sadly, Julius died just five months later on May 10, 1937, in Johannesburg, South Africa, from sudden cardiac arrest. He was only 29, and I have little doubt that his experiences at Dachau contributed to his early death.

Julius Blumenfeld death certificate, “South Africa, Transvaal, Civil Death, 1869-1954,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9BY-V7P6-W?cc=2998108 : 15 September 2019), > image 1 of 1; Department of the Interior. Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Transvaal.

His brother Siegwart also died young. He died in South Africa on June 18,1945, when he was 41, from lymphosarcoma. According to his death certificate, he was single and I assume had no children.

Siegwart Blumenfeld death certificate, “South Africa, Transvaal, Civil Death, 1869-1954,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:WSSF-4NN2 : 29 October 2019), Siegwart Blumenfeld, 18 Jun 1945; citing Death, Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa, Department of the Interior. Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Transvaal.

Back in the US, Hermann Blumenfeld II died in New York on August 12, 1944; he was 68.⁹ His wife Rickchen died six years later on October 19, 1950; she was 75.¹⁰ Their son Gustav died on January 28, 1966, at the age of 62;¹¹ as far as I’ve been able to determine, Gustav never married or had children. Max Bloomfield II died in July 1981 at age 75.¹² I’ve not found any children from his marriage to Fridl Waldmann, who died at age 96 on September 23, 2005.¹³

I am hoping that perhaps I’ve missed something and that one of Hermann II and Rickchen’s sons had children and that there are living descendants since this is one of the few branches of Giedel Blumenfeld’s tree that managed to escape Germany in time. But at the moment I have no indication that Hermann Blumenfeld II has any living descendants.

UPDATE 5 30 2022

Good news! I received an email from a distant cousin by marriage who informed me that he had discovered that Max Bloomfield and Fridl Waldmann had a son born in the 1940s. I have now learned a bit about that son, my fifth cousin, who is living in California and has an adult daughter as well. So there are at least two living descendants of Hermann Blumenfeld II.

Gustav Bloomfield, Social Security Number: 130-03-0510, Birth Date: 3 Jan 1904
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10467, Bronx, Bronx, New York, USA, Death Date: Jan 1966, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014. On his naturalization application, Hermann reported that both Gustav and Siegwart were born on January 3, 1904. Hermann Blumenfeld, 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, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943. The declaration of intention is inserted in the post at a different point. ↩
Max Bloomfield, 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, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
Some of the trees listing Julius as the son of Hermann and Rickchen also attached sources showing a Julius Blumenfeld who came to the US, married a Rose Hymann in 1950, divorced her in 1971, and died in 1974. But there was nothing that linked that Julius to Hermann and RIckchen. In fact, those records don’t even include a birth date or place; the only commonality is the name Julius Blumenfeld. Obviously, as you will see, these trees are incorrect. ↩
Julius Blumenfeld, Birth Date: 27 Oct 1907, Birth Place: Marburg/Lahn, Arrival Date: 26 Oct 1935, Arrival Country: Germany, Prisoner Number: 8505, Arrival Notes: arrived 26 Oct 1935, Disposition Notes: released 25 Jul 1936, Description: prisoner
Page: 487/Sch., Original Notes (desc. / arr. / dis.): Sch./ zug. 26 Oct 1935/ entl. 25 Jul 1936, JewishGen volunteers, comp. Germany, Dachau Concentration Camp Records, 1945 ↩
Max Blumenfeld, ship manifest, Year: 1936; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 135, Ship or Roll Number: Europa, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Gustav Blumenfeld, ship manifest, Year: 1937; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 9; Page Number: 38, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Max Bloomfield, Gender: Male, Race: White, Marriage Age: 35, Birth Date: 23 Dec 1905, Birth Place: Germany, Marriage Affidavit Date: 9 Sep 1941, Marriage Date: 13 Sep 1941, Marriage Place: New York, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Residence Street Address: 564 W. 160 St., Residence Place: New York City
Occupation: Paymaster, Father: Hermann Bloomfield, Mother: Rickchen Bloomfield
Spouse: Fridl Aal, Certificate Number: 16130, Current Marriage Number: 0, Witness 1: A. Wertheim, Witness 2: H. Katzentend, New York City Department of Records & Information Services; New York City, New York; New York City Marriage Licenses; Borough: Manhattan; Year: 1941, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Index to Marriage Licenses, 1908-1910, 1938-1940 ↩
Fridl Waldmann Aal, 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, (Roll 548) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 426401-427400),
Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
Herman Blumenfeld, Age: 68, Birth Year: abt 1876, Death Date: 12 Aug 1944
Death Place: Manhattan, New York, USA, Certificate Number: 17482, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Extracted Death Index, 1862-1948 ↩
Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/204634106/rickchen-blumenfeld : accessed 12 March 2022), memorial page for Rickchen Blumenfeld (6 Nov 1874–19 Oct 1950), Find a Grave Memorial ID 204634106, citing King Solomon Memorial Park, Clifton, Passaic County, New Jersey, USA ; Maintained by danthecan (contributor 48474884) . ↩
Gustav Bloomfield, Social Security Number: 130-03-0510, Birth Date: 3 Jan 1904
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10467, Bronx, Bronx, New York, USA, Death Date: Jan 1966, 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/204626960/gustav-bloomfield : accessed 12 March 2022), memorial page for Gustav Bloomfield (3 Jan 1904–28 Jan 1966), Find a Grave Memorial ID 204626960, citing King Solomon Memorial Park, Clifton, Passaic County, New Jersey, USA ; Maintained by danthecan (contributor 48474884). ↩
Max Bloomfield, Social Security Number: 065-05-5748, Birth Date: 23 Dec 1905
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10033, New York, New York, New York, USA, Death Date: Jul 1981, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
Fridl Bloomfield, Social Security Number: 109-16-6128, Birth Date: 20 Mar 1909, Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10033, New York, New York, New York, Death Date: 23 Sep 2005, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩

Dorothea Blumenfeld Haas, Daughter of Giedel Blumenfeld Blumenfeld: A Family Destroyed

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Amy

As I turn to the tragic story of the fourth child of Giedel Blumenfeld and Gerson Blumenfeld, Dorothea Blumenfeld Haas, I only wish she, her sons, and her grandchildren had followed many of Dorothea’s siblings and her only daughter out of Germany before it was too late.

As we saw, Dorothea was born on December 26, 1869, in Kirchhain. She married Joseph Haas on August 12, 1898, in Kirchhain. He was born on October 3, 1863, to Wolf Haas and Johannette Schei in Grenzhausen, Germany.

Dorothea Blumenfeld and Joseph Haas marriage record, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 5026, Year Range: 1898,
Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Dorothea and Joseph Haas had three children. Walter Haas (presumably named for Joseph’s father Wolf) was born on August 23, 1899, in Hoehr Grenzhausen, Germany. Thank you to Aaron Knappstein for obtaining Walter’s birth record as well as many of the records included in this post.

Walter Haas birth record

His sister Gertha Giedel Haas (presumably named for Dorothea’s mother Giedel) was born in Hoehr Grenzhausen on November 5, 1901.

Gertha Haas birth record

And Gustav Haas was born on December 7, 1908, in Hoehr Grenzhausen.

Gustav Haas birth record from Grenzhausen

Walter Haas married Irma Weinberg on May 11, 1933. Walter’s occupation was a cattle dealer.

Marriage record of Walter Haas and Irma Weinberg

Irma was born on January 5, 1901, in Hartenfels, Germany, to Isaac Weinberg and Ida Gerson.

Irma Weinberg birth record

Walter and Irma had two children. Ilse was born in Grenzhausen on July 22, 1934.

Her brother Ingfried was born on February 5, 1937, in Grenzhausen.

Ingfried Haas birth record from Grenzhausen

Thank you to Aaron Knappstein for obtaining the birth records for Walter, Gertha, Gustav, Ilse and Ingfried Haas and for Irma Weinberg and the marriage record of Walter and Irma.

Tragically, almost every member of this family was murdered by the Nazis. Joseph Haas died January 2, 1932,¹ so was spared seeing what happened to his wife, children, and grandchildren. Dorothea,² her sons Gustav³ and Walter,⁴ and Walter’s wife Irma⁵ and their son Ingfried⁶ were all deported to the Minsk concentration camp in either November or December, 1941, and died there in 1942, according to their memorials on Yad Vashem. Little Ingfried was only four years old.

Walter Haas Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=5674520&ind=1

Irma Weinberg Haas Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1205033&ind=2

Ingfried Haas Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=5859525&ind=1

Walter and Irma’s daughter Ilse⁷ had been smuggled out of Germany to the Netherlands for safety before her family was sent to Minsk, but then Ilse was deported from the Netherlands to the Sobibor concentration camp on March 13, 1943, where she was murdered. She was only eight years old.

Ilse Haas Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=5674521&ind=1

The entry on FindAGrave for Ilse provides this biographical note:

Ilse was born on July 22, 1934 in Höhr, Germany. She later moved to the Netherlands as a German Jewish refugee. During the war, she lived at an orphanage for Jewish children in Den Haag, Netherlands. German authorities forcibly closed the orphanage in March 1943, sending most of the children and staff to Sobibor on March 10th, where they were murdered on March 13th. Ilse was one of the children killed. She was just 8 years old.

The Dokin website provided this photograph of Ilse:

Ilse Haas. Courtesy of Zina Bee on FindAGrave, located at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187427809/ilse-haas

The only member of this extended family who survived was Dorothea and Joseph’s daughter Gertha, who arrived in New York on December 2, 1939, from Frankfurt, where the Haas family had relocated at some point, whether willingly or not.⁸

The manifest reported that Gertha was going to her aunt, “J. Bloomfield,” at 1162 Grant Avenue in the Bronx.

Gertha Haas, ship manifest, Year: 1939; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 40, Ship or Roll Number: Rotterdam, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

I wasn’t sure who this could be. Using Stevemorse.org, I located on the 1940 census a Johanna Bloomfield, a 70 year-old widow born in Germany, living at the address listed on Gertha’s manifest. Searching my tree, I realized that she was Johanna Tannenbaum, the widow of Max Bloomfield, born Markus Blumenfeld, younger brother of Gertha’s mother Dorothea. Max and Johanna’s story will be told in my next blog post.

Johanna Bloomfield, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, Bronx, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02467; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 3-268C, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

Gertha sailed from Rotterdam, but listed her last residence as Frankfurt. Her ship left Rotterdam on November 22, 1939, almost two months after World War II started when it was very difficult to leave Germany. How was Gertha able to escape when her mother, brothers, and niece and nephew could not? I wish I knew her full story.

Gertha filed her Declaration of Intention to become a US citizen on March 29, 1940.

Gertha Haas, 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 583) Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, 1842-1959 (No 457001-457900), Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943

Almost three years after safely immigrating to the US, Gertha married Julius Hecht on October 10, 1942.⁹ Julius was also a refugee from Nazi Germany. He was born on June 23, 1890, in Limburg, Germany, to Abraham Hecht and Regina Stern. He arrived in the US even later than Gertha—on September 9, 1941— and had also been previously living in Frankfurt, but sailed from Spain.¹⁰ Julius was 52 and Gertha was 39 when they married, and they did not have children. Julius and Gertha both died in 1974 within two months of each other, Julius in May,¹¹ Gertha in July.¹² He was 83, and she was 71.

Sadly, there are no direct descendants of Dorothea Blumenfeld and Joseph Haas to tell their stories. Perhaps I will find a cousin who can tell me more about this family that was almost completely wiped out by the Nazis.

Joseph Haas, Birth Date: 3 Oct 1863, Death Date: 02 Jan 1932, Age at Death: 68
Burial Plot: 1, Burial Place: Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany, JewishGen, comp. JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). ↩
Dora Haas Blumenfeld entry at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11514166&ind=1 ↩
Gustav Haas entry at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11514218&ind=1 ↩
Walter Haas entry at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11514400&ind=1 ↩
Irma Weinberg Haas entry at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=11514250&ind=1 ↩
Ingfried Haas, entry at Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=5859525&ind=1 ↩
See entry at https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/98928585 ↩
Gertha Haas, ship manifest, Year: 1939; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 1; Page Number: 40, Ship or Roll Number: Rotterdam, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Gertha Haas, Gender: Female, Race: White, Marriage Age: 39, Birth Date: Nov 1902, Birth Place: Germany, Marriage Date: 10 Oct 1942, Marriage Place: New York, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Residence Street Address: 564 W. 160 St., Occupation: Operator, Father: Josepha Haas, Mother: Dora Haas, Spouse: Julius Hecht
Certificate Number: 19972, Current Marriage Number: 0, New York City Department of Records & Information Services; New York City, New York; New York City Marriage Licenses; Borough: Manhattan; Year: 1942, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, Index to Marriage Licenses, 1908-1910, 1938-1940 ↩
Julius Hecht, Gender: männlich (Male), Birth Date: 23. Jun 1890 (23 Jun 1890)
Birth Place: Limburg, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany), Civil Registration Office: Limburg, Mother: Regina Hecht, Father: Abraham Hecht, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 912; Laufende Nummer: 3277,
Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Births, 1851-1901. Julius Hecht, Gender: Male
Declaration Age: 51, Record Type: Declaration, Birth Date: 23 Jun 1890, Birth Place: Limburg Germany, Arrival Date: 9 Sep 1941, Arrival Place: New York, New York, USA
Declaration Date: 3 Mar 1942, Declaration Place: New York, Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Declaration Number: 515161, Box Number: 390, 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, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943 ↩
Julius Hecht, Social Security Number: 083-18-7875, Birth Date: 23 Jun 1890, Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10033, New York, New York, New York, USA, Death Date: May 1974, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Source Information
Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
Gerda Hecht, Social Security Number: 101-16-4049, Birth Date: 5 Nov 1902
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 10033, New York, New York, New York, USA, Death Date: Jul 1974, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩

A Family Decimated by the Nazis: The Children of Abraham Blumenfeld III

Posted on February 8, 2022 by Amy

I am really struggling with how to best tell the stories of the seven of the nine children and eleven grandchildren of Abraham Blumenfeld III who were still living when the Nazis came to power because their stories are just so devastatingly tragic. Of those seven remaining children, only one escaped in time. The other six were all killed in the Holocaust as were many of those eleven grandchildren.

Telling their stories one by one is important so that each name and each life is honored and remembered. But it is also important to see and feel the impact on the entire family, a family of nine siblings. Only one of those nine survived beyond 1945. All the others were killed by the Nazis, except for one (Hermann) who died of natural causes when he was 48 and one (Moritz) who was killed in battle in 1916, fighting for the very same country that would slaughter his siblings just a few decades later. In other words, almost an entire family was wiped out by the Nazis. Generations of Blumenfeld descendants never had a chance to be born because their ancestors were killed for being Jewish.

With that bigger picture in mind, let me tell the story of what happened to each of these descendants of Abraham Blumenfeld III and Friedericke Rothschild. This is a very sad and painful post, but each of these individuals deserves to have their story told.

Dina Blumenfeld and her husband Salomon Heldemuth were deported to Theriesenstadt on August 18, 1942, and then to the Treblinka death camp on September 23, 1942, where they were murdered. Dina was 71, Salomon was 76.

Salomon Heldenmuth Page of Testimony, Yad Vashem, at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1475415&ind=1

Fortunately, all three of Dina and Salomon’s children escaped and survived. Leopold had married Frieda Kneip on June 28, 1929, in Gelnhausen, Germany. Frieda was born in Gelnhausen on July 10, 1906, to Seligmann Kneip and Bella Mayer.¹

Marriage of Leopold Heldenmuth and Frieda Kneip, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 913; Signatur: 1173, Year Range: 1925, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Leopold (Leo or Leon in the US) and Frieda arrived in New York on June 25, 1936.² Interestingly, they are listed in the 1939 England and Wales Register, living with Leopold’s younger brother Siegfried in London.

Leopold and Siegfried Heldenmuth on 1939 England Wales Register, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: RG 101/246A, Enumeration District: AKDS, Ancestry.com. 1939 England and Wales Register

But on November 24, 1939, Frieda and Leopold returned to New York,³ and they are listed on the 1940 US census, living with Frieda’s mother and brother as well as Leopold’s brother Siegfried. Leon, as he is listed here, was working as a real estate broker, and Siegfried made artificial flowers.

Leopold and Siegfried Heldenmuth on 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02668; Page: 7B; Enumeration District: 31-1831, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census

Leopold and Siegfried’s sister Gertrude had married Moritz Lion on May 25, 1921, in Hohensolms, Germany. Moritz was born March 4, 1897, in Sankt-Goarhausen, Germany. Gertrude and Moritz arrived in New York on August 17, 1939.⁴

Marriage of Gertrud Heldenmuth and Moritz Lion, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Bestand: 911; Laufende Nummer: 4677, Year Range: 1921, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930

Leopold died on May 11, 1950, at the age of 54.⁵ His sister Gertrude, who lost her husband Moritz on October 13, 1963,⁶ died on July 23, 1969 at 71.⁷ Their brother Siegfried died on May 15, 1972; he was seventy.⁸ Frieda, Leopold’s widow, remarried and lived until she was 94; she died on January 20, 2001.⁹ Since none of Dina and Salomon’s children had children, there are no descendants.

Dina’s sister Auguste and her husband Menko Stern were also killed in the Holocaust. Menko had been sent to Buchenwald after Kristallnacht They were deported to Theriesenstadt on September 7, 1942 and then to Treblinka on September 29, 1942, and so died within just a few days of Dina and Salomon. Their son Max was taken to the Warsaw Ghetto on March 31, 1942, where he also was killed. I have no records for Julius Stern, but according to the article written about the Stolpersteine laid for his family, he escaped to Argentina in 1936, where he died in 1985.

Nanny Blumenfeld and Jakob Stern faced the same fates as their sister and brother, Auguste Blumenfeld and Menko Stern. They were both taken to Kassel, Germany, where on June 1, 1942, they were deported to the Sobibor death camp and killed there on June 3, 1942. Their son Arthur was taken to the Majdanek concentration camp, where he was killed on September 27, 1942. Only Manfred (known as Fritz) escaped in time; he fled to Palestine, according to the article written on the occasion of the installation of the Stolpersteine for his family. I have not, however, been able to find any record of his immigration to Palestine.

Nanny Blumenfeld Stern page of testimony, Yad Vashem, https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=421480&ind=1

Jakob Stern page of testimony, Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1659946&ind=2

Arthur Stern page of testimony, Yad Vashem, found at https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=530549&ind=1

Hugo Blumenfeld, the sixth sibling, never married or had children. He was deported from Frankfurt to Theriesenstadt on August 14, 1942, and then to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944, where he was killed. His sister, the seventh sibling, Bertha Blumenfeld, also single, also was deported to Theriesenstadt but from Koeln (Cologne) on June 15, 1942; she was then taken to Auschwitz where she was killed just four days before her brother Hugo on October 12, 1944.

UPDATE: Hugo Blumenfeld did indeed marry and have children. See my post here.

The baby of the family, Emma Blumenfeld Wetterhahn, and her husband Siegmund and their daughter Trude Ruth Friedericke Wetterhahn, the youngest grandchild, were also murdered by the Nazis. Emma and Siegmund were deported from Frankfurt on November 22, 1941, to Kaunas, Lithuania, and killed there three days later on November 25, 1941 during the Ninth Fort massacre during which the Nazis shot and killed almost 5,000 Jews. You can read more about this horrific slaughter of innocent people like Emma and Siegmund on the Yad Vashem site here.

Emma and Siegmund’s daughter Ruth Wetterhahn was living in Berlin when she was taken to Auschwitz on March 1, 1943, and killed there. She was seventeen years old.

Thus, six of the seven children of Abraham Blumenfeld III who were still living when Hitler came to power—Dina, Auguste, Nanny, Hugo, Bertha, and Emma—as well as their spouses and three of their children–-Max Stern, Arthur Stern, and Ruth Wetterhahn—were killed by the Nazis.

But unfortunately that does not end the death toll because at least three of the children of Hermann Blumenfeld III, who died in 1928, and Jeannette Stern, who died in 1915, were also killed by the Nazis. Julius Blumenfeld was deported from Kassel to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, on December 9, 1941, and was killed sometime thereafter. His sister Frieda Blumenfeld was deported from Kassel to the Riga ghetto at the same time and was deported from there to the Stutthof concentration camp on August 9, 1944, where she was later killed.

Hermann and Jeannette’s son Max (Meir) Blumenfeld was more fortunate. Although I do not have any information about how he escaped, he died in Rehovoth, Israel, on September 22, 2004, at the age of 91.¹⁰

In addition, Hermann Blumenfeld III’s second wife Ida Stern and their son Kurt Siegfried Blumenfeld were also murdered by the Nazis. Ida was deported from Kassel to Riga, Latvia, on December 9. 1941, along with her stepchildren Julius and Frieda. Kurt was deported from Wurzburg, Germany, to Krasnystaw,Lublin,Poland, on April 25, 1942, and killed sometime thereafter.

As for Alfred Blumenfeld, who appears on several Ancestry trees as the fourth child of Hermann and Jeannette, I have no records of his birth or his death (or anything else), so I don’t know whether he was also a victim of the Holocaust.

Only one of the seven children of Abraham Blumenfeld III who were still living in the Nazi era escaped Germany in time, and I only have minimal information about her. Katincka Blumenfeld Heymann, the third child, 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.

UPDATE: I have since learned that in fact Katincka and Samuel had four other children who were born before Frieda. See my update here.

Katincka Blumenfeld Heymann, Digital GS Number: 004542368
Ancestry.com. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965

Samuel Heymann, Digital GS Number: 004560417
Ancestry.com. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900-1965

Six of the seven living children and seven of the twelve living grandchildren of Abraham Blumenfeld III and Friedericke Rothschild were killed by the Nazis. Thirteen innocent lives snuffed out for no reason other than ugly, baseless hatred. And sadly, as far as I know, only three of the grandchildren who survived might have had children to carry on the names and the legacy of their parents and grandparents. Someday I hope I can find them if they exist, or perhaps they will find me.

Frieda Vanallen, Social Security Number: 090-14-8045, Birth Date: 10 Jul 1906
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 90212, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA, Death Date: 20 Jan 2001, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014. Saligmann Kneig, Gender: männlich (Male), Age: 27, Birth Date: 20. Jun 1876 (20 Jun 1876), Marriage Date: 19. Mai 1904 (19 May 1904), Marriage Place: Biblis, Hessen (Hesse), Deutschland (Germany), Civil Registration Office: Biblis, Spouse: Bella Maÿer, Reference Number: 854, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv; Wiesbaden, Deutschland; Signatur: 854, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Marriages, 1849-1930 ↩
Frieda Heldenmuth, Gender: Female, Ethnicity/ Nationality: German;Hebrew (German), Marital status: Married, Age: 29, Birth Date: abt 1907, Birth Place: Germany
Other Birth Place: Gelnhausen, Last Known Residence: Frankfurt, Germany
Place of Origin: Germany, Departure Port: Hamburg, Germany, Arrival Date: 25 Jun 1936, Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA, Year: 1936; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 11; Page Number: 129, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Frieda Heldinmoth, Gender: Female, Departure Age: 33, Birth Date: abt 1906
Departure Date: 24 Nov 1939, Departure Port: England, Ship Name: Britannic
Shipping Line: Cunard White Star Limited, Destination Port: New York, USA
The National Archives; Kew, Surrey, England; BT27 Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Outwards Passenger Lists; Reference Number: Series BT27-162316, Ancestry.com. UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 ↩
Gertrud Lion, Gender: Female, Ethnicity/ Nationality: Hebrew, Age: 42, Birth Date: abt 1897, Birth Place: Germany, Other Birth Place: Alfeukidan [sic], Departure Port: Le Havre, France, Arrival Date: 17 Aug 1939, Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA
Ship Name: Manhattan,Year: 1939; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 2; Page Number: 154, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Leo Heldenmuth, Birth Date: 6 Dec 1895, Birth Place: Federal Republic of Germany, Death Date: 11 May 1950, Claim Date: 16 Nov 1950, SSN: 104146398, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. ↩
Moritz Lion, Gender: Male, Birth Date: 4 Mar 1897, Death Date: 13 Oct 1963
Claim Date: 25 Oct 1963, SSN: 092121940, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 ↩
Gertrude Lion, Gender: Female, Age: 71, Birth Date: abt 1898, Residence Place: Murray Hill, New York, New York, USA, Death Date: 23 Jul 1969, Death Place: New York, USA, Certificate Number: 56308, New York State Department of Health; Albany, Ny, Usa; New York State Death Index, Ancestry.com. New York State, U.S., Death Index, 1957-1969 ↩
Fred Heldenmuth, Race: White, Marital Status: Never Married (Single), Birth Date: abt 1902, Residence: Bridgeport, Connecticut, Death Date: 15 May 1972, Death Place: Bridgeport, Connecticut, Age: 70 Years, State File #: 09057, Connecticut Department of Health. Connecticut Death Index, 1949-2012 ↩
Frieda Vanallen, Social Security Number: 090-14-8045, Birth Date: 10 Jul 1906
Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 90212, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA, Death Date: 20 Jan 2001, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014. ↩
Meir Max Blumenfeld, Name in Hebrew: מאיר מקס בלומנפלד, Hebrew Name: מאיר מקס, Birth Date: 1913, Death Date: 21 Sep 2004 / ו תשרי תשסה, Death Place: Kaplan Hospital, Rehovot /בי”ח קפלן, Age at Death: 91, Burial Date: 22 Sep 2004, Burial Plot: סא ד 29, Burial Place: Rehovot, Israel, Father Name: Herman /הרמן, Mother Name: Yenta /ינטה, JewishGen, comp. JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). ↩

The Fate of Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter and Her Children: Final Chapter

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Amy

As we saw, by the middle of 1940, all three of Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter’s daughters and their families were safely out of Germany. Toni and Gerda were in the US as were their children, and Betty and her family were in Palestine.

But what about their mother Caroline? Last we knew she, having lost her husband Simon in 1932, had been living in Marburg with Toni and her family after Toni’s husband Sally was driven out of his haberdashery business in Hersfeld by Nazi persecution. But Caroline was not with Toni and Sally when they left for America in 1940 nor was she with Gerda and her family when they left Germany in 1939. Nor was Caroline with her daughter Betty in Palestine.

Tragically, Caroline was still in Germany. At some point she moved to Frankfurt, and in 1942 she was taken to Theriesenstadt where she died on February 17, 1942. Her daughter Betty (here spelled Beti) filed this Page of Testimony with Yad Vashem:

Caroline Hoxter, Page of Testimony at Yad Vashem, filed by her daughter Beti Openheimer, found athttps://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1617046&ind=1

In her speech to middle school students in 2020, Caroline’s granddaughter Jane explained why Caroline had been unable to leave Germany with her family:¹

Before we left [Germany], my sister and I went to see our grandmother who was blind and could not come with us. Much later she was deported to Thereisenstadt concentration camp. She was then in her late 80s. We were informed that she died of natural causes. Can you imagine for someone that old to travel for three weeks in a cattle car? It is still very hard for me to think about that and accept it.

Jane rightfully questioned whether her grandmother’s death was in fact from “natural causes.” Subjecting an elderly and blind woman to the conditions she must have experienced on that cattle car and then at Theriesenstadt surely contributed to her death as much as if she’d been gassed or shot by the Nazis.

I am very grateful to Andre Guenther from Tracing the Tribe who located Caroline’s death certificate from Theriesenstadt; she died from “enteritis darmkatarrah” or what we might call gastroenteritis.

At no point during the Shoah Foundation interview with Arthur Goldschmidt,² did the interviewer ask about the fate of his grandmother Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter, and Arthur did not bring it up himself. I don’t know whether this was an oversight or whether he simply could not bring himself to speak about what happened to his grandmother. I imagine the family must have been devastated by what happened to her. Peter, Jane’s son, told me that his mother still gets emotional when she talks about her grandmother Caroline and what happened to her.

But Caroline was blessed that her three daughters and her grandchildren all escaped and survived the Holocaust.

Her daughter Toni died in New York on April 21, 1956,[^3] two years after her husband Sol, who died on May 13, 1954, in New York.³ Their daughter Miriam died on January 7, 1988, in Queens, New York,⁴ followed by her husband Rudolf on January 21, 1993, in Los Angeles.⁵ They were survived by their daughter and her family.

Their son Arthur Goldschmidt shared this photograph of his parents with the Shoah Foundation:

Toni Hoxter and Sally (Sol) Goldschmidt. Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections

Toni’s sister Betty/Beti lived the rest of her life in Israel and died on December 15, 1975, at the age of 86. She was predeceased by her husband Max, who died May 25, 1961, in Israel. They were survived by their daughter Lotte, who married Theo Kleeman in Israel and who died June 26, 1998, in Israel, and their son Shimon, who died August 14, 2012, in Haifa, Israel. Today they have grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Israel.⁶

The youngest sister Gerda died in New York on April 13 1974,⁷ two years after her husband Adolf, who died March 18, 1972.⁸ They were survived by their two daughters. Their daughter Alice Lore Goldschmidt married Richard Oster,⁹ with whom she had two children. Alice died on January 13, 2014.¹⁰

Their other daughter Jane Inge Goldschmidt married Ralph Keibel on August 11, 1950,¹¹. Peter shared with me his parents’ wedding photograph.

Jane and Ralph had two children, including my cousin Peter. Jane is still living and is 98 years old. Imagine—she gave that speech to the Vermont middle school group when she was almost 97 years old. Just remarkable.

As for Arthur Goldschmidt, whose interview helped me tell this story, after World War II he returned to New York City where he met and married his wife Ruth Herz. As he told the story, they met in January 1950, were engaged by April, and married in August 1950. Ruth was also a refugee from Germany. She was born on April 18, 1922, in Holzheim, Germany, to Eugen Isaak Herz and Lilli Weinberg.¹² Her father had died in 1932, and her mother was killed in the Holocaust.

According to her obituary, “Ruth left Germany at age 16 via the Kindertransport and spent nine years on the run, in hiding, in a displaced persons camp, and then came to the US where she was able to build a good life. She met her husband Arthur Goldschmidt on a blind date that blossomed into their beautiful marriage on August 27, 1950.”¹³ Ruth and Arthur had two children. It was clear from the video of the interview that they both still adored each other 45 years after their marriage began.

Arthur Goldschmidt and his wife Ruth during the Shoah Foundation interview. Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections

Arthur worked for many years at a dairy company on Long Island, so the skills he learned back in the 1930s from the Zionist organization that prepared him to work on a kibbutz in Palestine/Israel held him in good stead. He died on January 15, 2021, in New York; he was 96 years old.¹⁴

It was an honor to watch his interview the Shoah Foundation. He was amazingly matter-of-fact through almost the entire interview, answering questions calmly and saying that he and his family survived because they were able to get out early enough. He didn’t seem angry or resentful at all—until the very end when the interviewer asked him a simple and straightforward question about what he hoped the world had learned. He then broke down in tears, unable to speak, finally saying in essence that we must never forget and that we must never let it happen again.¹⁵

Today Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter has many living descendants in Israel and in the US. She may not have survived the Holocaust, but her daughters and their families did, and they and their descendants carry on her legacy.

I am deeply grateful to my cousin Peter Keibel for sharing so much of his information and his family photographs with me and especially for sharing his mother’s speech about her experiences before and during the Holocaust.

And this brings me to the end of not only Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter’s story and that of her children and grandchildren, but also to the end of the story of Abraham Blumenfeld IIA since Caroline was the youngest of his eight children. Now I will turn to Abraham’s younger siblings. First, his brother Isaak, the second child of my four-times great-uncle Moses Blumenfeld.

Jane Inge Goldschmidt Keibel, Speech to Hazen School, Hardwick, Vermont, 2020, shared by Peter Keibel. ↩
Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections ↩
Toni Goldschmidt, Age: 70, Birth Date: abt 1886, Death Date: 21 Apr 1956, Death Place: Queens, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number: 4251, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩
Sol Goldschmidt, Age: 72, Birth Date: abt 1882, Death Date: 13 May 1954, Death Place: Manhattan, New York, New York, USA, Certificate Number: 10469, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Death Index, 1949-1965 ↩
Miriam Lauter, Social Security Number: 112-05-7561, Birth Date: 23 Apr 1911, Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 11375, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA, Death Date: 7 Jan 1988, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
These dates came from Peter Keibel, Betty’s nephew. Email from Peter Keibel, November 17, 2021. I have no official records for them. ↩
Date is from her grandson, Peter Keibel, FamilyTree on Ancestry.com, found at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/52614823/person/372143503930/facts ↩
Date is from his grandson, Peter Keibel, FamilyTree on Ancestry.com, found at https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/52614823/person/372143503930/facts ↩
Alice L Goldsmith, Gender: Female, Marriage License Date: 18 Jul 1950, Marriage License Place: Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA, Spouse: Richard Oster, License Number: 18819, New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number: 27, Ancestry.com. New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018 ↩
Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/130447894/alice-oster : accessed 02 December 2021), memorial page for Alice Oster (unknown–13 Jan 2014), Find a Grave Memorial ID 130447894, citing Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens County, New York, USA ; Maintained by Mom (contributor 48202874) . ↩
From their son Peter Keibel, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/52614823/person/372143503829/facts ↩
Peter Keibel Ancestry Family Tree, https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/52614823/person/372145394061/facts; Ruth Goldschmidt
Age: 29, Birth Date: 18 Apr 1922, Issue Date: 12 Jun 1951, State: New York
Locality, Court: Eastern District of New York, District Court, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Index to Naturalization Petitions of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 1865-1957; Microfilm Serial: M1164; Microfilm Roll: 63, Ancestry.com. U.S., Naturalization Records Indexes, 1794-1995. The other information came from Arthur Goldsdchmidt’s Shoah Foundation interview. Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections ↩
“Goldschmidt, Ruth,” The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, 03 Jan 2021, Sun • Page A14 ↩
Arthur Goldschmidt, Social Security Number: 099-24-1370, Birth Date: 9 Aug 1913, Issue Year: Before 1951, Issue State: New York, Last Residence: 11415, Jamaica, Queens, New York, Death Date: 15 Jan 2010, Social Security Administration; Washington D.C., USA; Social Security Death Index, Master File, Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ↩
Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections ↩

My Cousins on the SS St Louis: The Shameful Conduct of the US Government

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Amy

We left off in my last post with the family of Gerda Hoxter and Adolph Goldschmidt about to board the SS St. Louis to go to Cuba and escape from Germany. As described on the US Holocaust Museum website:

On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially “stateless.”The majority of the Jewish passengers had applied for US visas, and had planned to stay in Cuba only until they could enter the United States.

Gerda’s daughter Jane provided this more personal account in her speech to middle school students in early 2020:¹

May 13, 1939, was a Saturday and the ship sailed in the afternoon. We stood at the railing of the ship to wave good-bye to relatives with a heavy heart. The possibility certainly existed that we were never going to see them again. One of the things we remember was that upon boarding the band was playing Strauss waltzes. In the captain’s daily log, he noted that the mood of the passengers was very solemn, but he was assured that good food and sea air for two weeks will lift the pain that was emanating from the passengers.

We settled into our new routine of shipboard life and day by day the moods lifted. My sister and I made friends with other young people on board. One of these people became my best friend. She lived in upstate NY with her husband who also was a passenger on the St. Louis.

Peter, Jane’s son, shared with me this remarkable photograph of his grandfather Adolf Goldschmidt boarding the St. Louis; he is the man on the far right in the light colored coat, holding a book:

Adolf Goldschmidt aboard the St. Louis. Courtesy of the family

Jane’s story continued:

After a two week voyage, we arrived in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. We were informed that we could not lay anchor at the pier because our credentials had to be checked. Even after they were checked, there were more excuses for not letting us land and disembark. A day before arrival in Cuba the Captain was informed that he cannot lay anchor at a pier, he had to stay in the middle of the harbor. We stayed in the harbor for one week.

We did not want to return to Germany, nothing was left there, no housing, no money – all the savings people had accumulated had to be left to the German government – so we would all be taken to a concentration camp, an impossible thought. We had people on board who were released from concentration camps under the condition never to return to Germany. These men considered mutiny or committing suicide. The captain was very diligent and did not want this to happen.

During that time one man slashed his wrist and jumped overboard. He was saved and taken to a hospital in Havana. His wife was not allowed to visit him, but after his recuperation he was returned to his wife.

Small boats came to the side of the St. Louis with relatives who lived in Cuba to shout encouragements to us. Meanwhile, organizations, Jewish and government, were at work to see what can be done to have us disembark. Also contact was made with almost every country to see if one of them would take us in.

The German propaganda had a field day. No one wanted Jews, Hitler was right in ridding his country of them.

The Captain tried everything to enable us to land. He even went so far and visited the President of Cuba to plead for us. Nothing helped.

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)

The Holocaust Museum article describes the purported reasons for Cuba’s refusal to admit the refugees—not just anti-Semitism, but economic conditions and anti-immigration sentiment.

So the refugees and others tried to find help in places besides Cuba. As Jane described it:²

From the ship, telegrams were sent to heads of states and Jewish organizations. The children pleaded by telegram with Mrs. Roosevelt for shelter, but no reply came from her or the President. After 10 days in limbo, the captain was told to leave Cuban waters. Very slowly the Captain steered the ship toward the US, toward Miami, hoping that the President would relent and let us land. There were 935 people on board who were seeking refuge. Instead the Coast Guard was on watch to see that no one jumped overboard and swam ashore. We went up the coast to New York and then the captain was informed to hurry home. He was such a decent man that he really did not want to take us back, but he had no alternative. In his log, he wrote that he would scuttle his ship on the English shore if no result was forthcoming, to prevent us returning to Germany. This action cost him his job.

The Holocaust Museum article also described the US indifference to the needs of the refugees:

Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.” US diplomats in Havana intervened once more with the Cuban government to admit the passengers on a “humanitarian” basis, but without success.

Having nowhere to disembark, the passengers on the St. Louis were forced to return to Europe, where Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France responded more humanely than the US or Cuba had to the needs of these refugees.

Jane described what happened next to her family and to others:³

Meanwhile, negotiations went on to find some country that had mercy on us. The passengers were becoming more desperate. Long face and worried looks were on everyone’s faces. We were close to the English Channel when we were informed that four countries were willing to take the passengers. Morris Troper of the European Joint Distribution Committee was responsible for securing that haven. The grateful passengers cabled him that their gratitude was as immense as the ocean on which they have been traveling. It was England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. You could have heard the biggest sigh when the news was broadcast. Again people made plans and their outlook was improving.

On June 17, we landed in Antwerp, Belgium, and disembarked to immediately go on to a freighter that was provided by the Germans for those who went to France and England.

Our captain really tried his best and risked his life and career for us. Many years later, the surviving passengers signed a petition to recommend him as a righteous gentile, which afforded him a place at the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Our family was sent to France, where my sister, I, and other children were taken in by an orphanage. Our parents and other adults were placed in Le Mans, a city west of Paris. Because no one had money, we were only allowed 10 German Marks (Approximately $80 today) to take out of Germany. We all lived on charity provided by Jewish organizations. During those six months my parents lived in Le Mans, they were supported by the HIAS, a Jewish relief organization that helps immigrants. They lived in a house that was shared with three other couples, one bedroom each, communal kitchen and living room.

When the War broke out, September 1, 1939, all the men were interned as foreigners and the women had to double up. My sister and I and all other children under 18 years were sent by train to OSE homes near Paris. The OSE is a Russian organization that is involved with the care of orphans. These homes were led by a Viennese educator and his wife, a physician. Personally, I enjoyed my stay there, although once the War broke out it got a little scary, especially when the air raid sirens sounded and we had to go to the shelters. The older children took care of the young ones.

But ultimately, after the Nazis took over France, Belgium, and the Netherlands in the spring of 1940, 254 of the over 900 passengers who had been on the St. Louis and had been forced back to Europe in May, 1939, were murdered by the Nazis.

Gerda and her family were among the lucky ones who were able to immigrate successfully to the US. They arrived in New York on January 8, 1940. I don’t know when this photograph of Gerda and Adolf was taken, but from their ages, I assume it was sometime during this era, either before or after they came to the US.

Adolf and Gerda (Hoxter) Goldschmidt. Courtesy of the family

This is one of the most shameful examples of the way the US acted during the 1930s and 1940s, knowing the dangers that Jews were facing in Nazi Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but cold-heartedly turning the other way, refusing to help those in need. I do wonder, however, whether we’ve learned our lesson. Money and jobs (not to mention xenophobia and prejudice) still seem to trump the needs of those who are suffering when it comes to US immigration policy.

Jane Inge Goldschmidt Keibel, Speech to Hazen School, Hardwick, Vermont, 2020, shared by Peter Keibel. ↩
Jane Inge Goldschmidt Keibel, Speech to Hazen School, Hardwick, Vermont, 2020, shared by Peter Keibel. ↩
Jane Inge Goldschmidt Keibel, Speech to Hazen School, Hardwick, Vermont, 2020, shared by Peter Keibel. ↩

The Children and Grandchildren of Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter: Leaving Germany

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Amy

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a good holiday season and are safe and healthy. I have been trying to relax and gain some perspective on 2021, a tough year, and prepare for 2022, a year I expect to be just as tough. But genealogy and family history always help me put things in perspective, so I am ready to return and find new meaning and new discoveries in the history of my family.

Let me refresh your memories of where I was back in December 2021. I have been writing about my Blumenfeld branch and more specifically the line that begins with my four-times great-uncle Moses Blumenfeld and goes from his son Abraham Blumenfeld IIA to Abraham’s daughter Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter. We saw that Caroline’s son Siegmund died fighting for Germany in World War I, that her husband Simon died in 1932, and that her daughter Toni Hoxter Goldschmidt and her family had all escaped from Nazi Germany by 1940.

But what about Caroline herself and her two other daughters, Betty and Gerda? What happened to them and their families?

Again I want to thank the Shoah Foundation for allowing me to have access to the interview done with Arthur Goldschmidt,¹ Toni’s son, so that I could learn more about the fate of his family, including that of his aunts Betty and Gerda. I am also deeply grateful to Peter Keibel, grandson of Gerda Hoxter Goldschmidt, for sharing the speech his mother Jane Inge Goldschmidt gave to a middle school in Vermont in early 2020 about her experiences during the Nazi era.

Like Arthur and Miriam, her nephew and niece, Betty Hoxter Oppenheimer and her husband Max and their two children Lotte and Franz Siegmund left Germany not long after Hitler’s rise to power. According to Arthur, Max Oppenheimer was a doctor, and once he was restricted by Nazi law from being able to practice medicine fully, he and his family left for England. But they must not have stayed there long because on November 26, 1934, they arrived in Palestine. Max was a physician, Lotte, their daughter, was an orthopedist, and their son, who became Shimon, was a carpenter. By 1938, they had all obtained citizenship to Palestine.²

Max and Betty (Hoxter) Oppenheimer, Palestinian citizenship cards found at the Israel State Archives, at https://www.archives.gov.il/en/

Lotte Oppenheimer, Palestine citizenship card, found at the Israel State Archives, at https://www.archives.gov.il/en/

The family of Gerda Hoxter Goldschmidt, the youngest child of Caroline Blumenfeld and Simon Hoxter, had a harder time escaping from Germany. Gerda’s daughter Inge Goldschmidt, who became Jane in the US and who is Peter Keibel’s mother, provided this description of her family’s life in Germany before and during the Nazi era in a speech she gave to a middle school in Vermont in early 2020:³

My father owned a department store in that town [Wuppertal]. My sister and I attended public schools. My father was well known because of the store and we were in comfortable circumstances. … In 1933 when Hitler came to power my father’s store was closed to make the population aware that the owner was Jewish and to discourage the people from doing business with a Jewish establishment. Some days later business resumed at a normal rate, but our lives changed. It seems that every year another law was passed that made our lives almost unbearable. We could not attend school any more or use public pools. Park benches were marked where we could sit. [The Nazis] burned books by Jewish authors and … destroyed Jewish businesses. On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht started, the synagogues, Jewish houses of worship were destroyed. Many Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

Our parents were well known and liked. Our father was tipped off by an official and was therefore able to leave town and avoid internment. The Gestapo did come to our house to look for him, but we were not molested, and our house was not ransacked. We did not know where he went. Occasionally he called, but those were very tense days for us. His safety was always on our minds. After his return, he was seriously looking to leave the country.

We had received a quota number from the US Embassy, but we were also aware that it was a very high number and there was no way we could leave before a year or two. So my father searched for a country that we could go to while waiting for our quota number. Of course, the store was closed and had to be sold to the Germans for a very minimal amount. He preferred to leave Europe as he did not think it was safe to stay there. America let only a designated number of people to immigrate into their country. My father purchased Visas ($250 for each person which in today’s dollars is $4,362) for Cuba and booked passage on the ocean liner, SS St. Louis that belonged to a German shipping company.

Thus, Gerda and her family were among those who sailed to Cuba on the ill-fated St. Louis in May 1939.

For those who don’t know the story of the St. Louis, it is one example of the shameful and tragic ways the US government failed to respond to the cries for help of those seeking to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Jane’s telling of the story will continue in my next post.

Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections ↩
The Palestine citizenship papers can be found at the Israel State Archives by searching for their names. Unfortunately, the site does not provide specific links to those results, but the site can be found at https://www.archives.gov.il/en/ ↩
Jane Inge Goldschmidt Keibel, Speech to Hazen School, Hardwick, Vermont, 2020, shared by Peter Keibel. ↩

Leaving Germany: The Family of Toni Hoxter Goldschmidt

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Amy

By 1930, the three daughters of Caroline Blumenfeld and Simon Hoxter were married, and each had two children. Their son Siegmund had been killed fighting for Germany in World War I, but their lives otherwise as middle-class German Jews must have seemed secure and comfortable. Here is a wonderful photograph of Caroline and Simon, shared by their great-grandson Peter:

Simon and Karoline (Blumenfeld) Hoxter. c. 1930 Courtesy of the family.

The next decade saw the family ripped apart and separated as each daughter and her family had to find a way to escape from Nazi Germany. But even before Hitler came to power, the family faced another loss. Simon Hoxter died in Marburg, Germany, on June 10, 1932, at the age of 79.

Simon Hoxter death record, Personenstandsregister Sterberegister; Bestand: 915; Laufende Nummer: 5739, Year Range: 1932, Ancestry.com. Hesse, Germany, Deaths, 1851-1958

Less than a year later, Hitler came to power, and soon thereafter members of the family began to look for ways to leave Germany. I am grateful to the Shoah Foundation for providing me with access to the interview given by Arthur Goldschmidt, Caroline and Simon’s grandson and the son of Toni Hoexter and Sally Goldschmidt, in which Arthur shared much of the story of how most of his relatives escaped from Germany. Much of the information in this post came from Arthur’s interview, except where noted.¹

Arthur and his sister Miriam were among the first to make plans to leave Germany. Arthur, who had been raised in the town of Hersfeld, described a relatively innocent childhood in that town. It was a town of about 12,000 people where most people worked as cattle dealers, but also as lawyers and doctors and merchants and other tradesmen. His father Sally owned a haberdashery store and did business with Jews and non-Jews in the town. Aside from some anti-Semitic taunting on occasion, Arthur experienced no sense of danger and no physical assaults. He went to school with and was friends with both Jewish and non-Jewish children. When he was sixteen, Arthur left school and left Hersfeld. He went to the city of Hamm in Westphalia about three hours from Hersfeld, where he trained in a department store to be a salesman. He was there for four years until Hitler came to power in 1933.

Here is a photograph of Hersfeld that Arthur shared with the Shoah Foundation. The building in the left background with the two little turrets is the house where Arthur and his family lived.

Arthur Goldschmidt. Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections

In October 1933, Arthur joined a cousin in Berlin where a Zionist organization was training young people to become farmers in preparation for immigration to Palestine. Arthur was there until June 1934, working for a farmer who happened to be a Nazi, but who, according to Arthur, was very kind to him and the other Jewish youth. (He did note that they were providing the farmer with free labor.) From there, Arthur was sent by the Zionist organization to Yugoslavia to continue his training until December 1935 when he received a certificate to go Palestine. He arrived in Palestine in January 1936.

Meanwhile, the rest of his immediate family was also experiencing relocation. His parents Sally Goldschmidt and Toni Hoxter relocated from Hersfeld to Marburg in 1933 after Sally’s haberdashery business began to fail as a result of Nazi persecution. He no longer could do business with non-Jewish residents, and many of the Jewish residents were leaving or planning to leave Germany. They decided to move in with Toni’s mother, Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter, who still owned her home in Marburg after the death of her husband Simon in 1932.

Their daughter Miriam left Marburg for New York, arriving on November 1, 1934. She listed her occupation on the ship manifest as a clerk and listing her cousin Rosalie Livingston as the person she was going to in the US.² On September 27, 1936, after settling in New York, she married Rudolf Lauter, who was also a refugee from Germany. Interestingly, Rudolf was born and had last lived in Hamm, Germany, the same city that Miriam’s brother Arthur had lived in from 1929 to 1933. Rudolf was born on April 27, 1906, the son of Isidore Lauter and Helene Schonberger.³

Thus, by 1936 Toni and Sally’s children Arthur and Miriam were safely out of Germany. Arthur was living on a kibbutz near Rehovoth in Palestine, working at the new port in Tel Aviv that had opened after the Arab-controlled port in Jaffa was closed to Jewish businesses. Miriam urged Arthur to come to the US, and in 1938 when she was able to provide an affidavit for her brother, he was able to do that. He arrived on May 31, 1938,⁴ and after a brief stay with Miriam and Rudolf, he got a job on a farm in upstate New York in the town of Windsor near Binghamton; he was living there with some paternal cousins in 1940.

But Toni Hoxter and Sally Goldschmidt, Arthur and Miriam’s parents, were still in Germany, living in Marburg. According to Arthur’s testimony, his father was taken to Buchenwald. Arthur didn’t know when or for how long, but he said the experience forever changed his father; my guess is that this was after Kristallnacht in November 1938 when thousands of Jewish men were rounded up and taken to Buchenwald. Sally had served for Germany in World War I, earning the Iron Cross. His brother and his brother-in-law Siegmund Hoxter, Toni’s brother, were both killed fighting for Germany in that war, and Sally could never forgive Germany for ignoring his service and those sacrifices just twenty years later, imprisoning him in a concentration camp and destroying his business and his family’s life.

By the spring of 1940, Arthur was able to provide an affidavit for his parents to leave Germany, and on April 29, 1940, Toni and Sally (soon to be known as Sol) arrived in New York.⁵ According to Arthur, that was the last or one of the last ships allowed to sail from Europe after the war broke out. At that time Arthur’s sister Miriam and her husband Rudolf and their daughter were living in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Rudolf was working as a butcher.⁶ Thus, Toni Hoxter Goldschmidt’s family was safely out of Germany by the spring of 1940.

What about Toni’s sisters Betty and Gerda and their families? And what about their mother Caroline? What happened to them? And what happened to Toni and Sol and their children Miriam and Arthur after arriving in the US? Those stories will be told next.

But not until early January 2022. I will be taking the next couple of weeks off from blogging.

Happy Holidays to All! I wish all my readers who celebrate a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to everyone! May 2022 bring us all good health and peace and progress on the many challenges facing us all, globally and personally.

The information in this post, except where otherwise noted, is from the Shoah Foundation interview with Arthur Goldschmidt. Arthur Goldschmidt, Interview 8542, Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation, November 10, 1995. Accessed 15 August 2021, from the archive of the University of California Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, found at https://sfi.usc.edu/what-we-do/collections ↩
Miriam Goldschmidt, Gender: Female, Ethnicity/ Nationality: Hebrew, Marital status: Single, Age: 23, Birth Date: abt 1911, Birth Place: Germany, Other Birth Place: Hersfeld, Last Known Residence: Frankfurt, Germany, Departure Port: Hamburg, Germany,Arrival Date: 1 Nov 1934, Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA, Final Destination: Chicago, Illinois, Years in US: Permanently, Citizenship Intention: Yes, Height: 5 Feet, 8 Inches, Hair Color: Blonde, Eye Color: Blue, Complexion: Fair, Money in Possession: 50 Person in Old Country: Sally Goldschmidt, Person in Old Country Relationship: Father Person in Old Country Residence: Marburg.gy, Person in US: Rosalie Livingston, Person in US Relationship: Cousin, Father: Sally Goldschmidt, Ship Name: Manhattan Year: 1934; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 12; Page Number: 32, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Naturalization papers for Rudolf Lauter and Miriam Goldschmidt, Court District: Southern District, New York, Description: (Roll 1332) Petition No. 383569 – Petition No. 383997, The National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; Petitions for Naturalization from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1897-1944; Series: M1972; Roll: 1332, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1882-1944. The naturalization papers filed for both Rudolf and Miriam indicate that they were married on September 27, 1936, but that Rudolf did not arrive in the US until December 24, 1936. I had no way to reconcile these two recorded assertions, but I then I found Rudolf on a passenger manifest arriving in New York on August 20, 1936. Given that there was just a month between his arrival and his marriage to Miriam, I believe they must have known each other in Germany before immigrating to the US. Since on that manifest Rudolf indicated he was intending to stay only four months, my hunch is that he then returned to Germany after they married and came back to the US permanently on December 24, 1936, as indicated on his naturalization papers. Rudolf Lauter, Marital status: Single,Age: 30, Birth Date: abt 1906, Birth Place: Germany, Other Birth Place: Hamm, Last Known Residence: Amsterdam, Hamburg??
Place of Origin: Germany, Departure Port: France, Arrival Date: 20 Aug 1936
Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA, Years in US: 4 Months, Citizenship Intention: No, Height: 5 Feet, 11 Inches, Hair Color: Brown, Eye Color: Brown, Complexion: Dark
Money in Possession: $200, Person in Old Country: Helene Lauter, Person in Old Country Relationship: Mother, Person in Old Country Residence: Germany
Person in US: George H Lauter, Mother: Helene Lauter, Ship Name: Washington
Year: 1936; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 3; Page Number: 108, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Arthur Goldschmidt, Gender: Male, Ethnicity/ Nationality: Hebrew, Marital status: Single, Age: 24, Birth Date: abt 1914, Birth Place: Germany, Other Birth Place: Hersfeld
Last Known Residence: Telaviv, Palastine, Place of Origin: Palastine, Departure Port: Cherbourg,France, Arrival Date: 31 May 1938, Arrival Port: New York, New York, USA
Final Destination: L. I., New York, Years in US: Permanently, Citizenship Intention: Yes
Height: 5 Feet, 9 Inches, Hair Color: Brown, Eye Color: Brown, Complexion: Fair
Money in Possession: 19.00, Person in Old Country: Sally Goldschmidt, Person in Old Country Relationship: Father, Person in Old Country Residence: Marburg. Person in US: Miriam Lauter, Person in US Relationship: Sister, Father: Sally Goldschmidt
Sibling: Miriam Lauter, Ship Name: Aquitania, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 18; Page Number: 103, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Sally and Toni (Hoxter) Goldschmidt ship manifest, Year: 1940; Arrival: New York, New York, USA; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Line: 9; Page Number: 85, Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 ↩
Lauter family, 1940 US census, Year: 1940; Census Place: Bridgeport, Fairfield, Connecticut; Roll: m-t0627-00532; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 9-92, Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census ↩

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

Tag Archives: The Holocaust

In Honor of Yom HaShoah and Yom HaAtzmaut: Hermann Blumenfeld and His Family

Finding Meier Blumenfeld’s Children: The Benefits of Teamwork

Salli Blumenfeld and His Family: A Branch With No New Leaves

Hermann Blumenfeld II and His Family: Leaving Germany in Time

Dorothea Blumenfeld Haas, Daughter of Giedel Blumenfeld Blumenfeld: A Family Destroyed

A Family Decimated by the Nazis: The Children of Abraham Blumenfeld III

The Fate of Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter and Her Children: Final Chapter

My Cousins on the SS St Louis: The Shameful Conduct of the US Government

The Children and Grandchildren of Caroline Blumenfeld Hoxter: Leaving Germany

Leaving Germany: The Family of Toni Hoxter Goldschmidt

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