The JACOBSOHN Search

Berlin 1939 / Berlin 2011

2 November 2011

Having inherited a great RAPHAELSOHN family tree from the work of Dr. Richard (Dick) PLOTZ, I had not worked much on my father's mother's family history.   From time to time, I would notice that the family of the mother of my grandmother Gertrud FALK geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943) was almost unknown.   My great grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN, geb. JACOBSOHN was just a name and date, with no information about what she was like, or where she was from, or who her parents were.

I noticed this deficiency again last year when I happened to stumble upon some new information about Ida's husband's RAPHAELSOHN family.  That inspired me to write to the city archives in Allenstein, West Prussia, now Olzstyn, Poland on 18 Oct 2010.   I wrote to request a copy of Ida's death certificate, since I assumed she was living in Allenstein when she died on 12 Feb 1939.  On 6 Feb 2011,  I received a reply from the Olsztyn archive that told me that they did not have the German records from 1939, but that they should be in the archive of Berlin Standesamt I.   I immediately wrote to Standesamt I, but did not receive a reply (as of October 2011).

When Don's and my trip to Berlin and Silesia was getting close, I remembered my search for Ida's death certificate and I asked my cousin Inge in Berlin if she could confirm that Standesamt I was the right place to find Allenstein records from 1939.  She was able to confirm that, but she also learned that it can take 1-2 years to receive a reply to a written inquiry.  On the other hand, if you visit the office, you can leave with the results right away (more or less).  Unfortunately, since the office is only open on Mondays and Tuesdays, we had to decide whether to sacrifice some of our research time at the Centrum Judaicum for this cause.

We decided to do that.   As Inge recommended, we arrived early and got Nr. 4 from the pile of number cards on the table in the waiting area.  After about 30 minutes, we told the clerk what we wanted and filled out a form to request Ida's death certificate.   Two and a half hours later, the result was in.  A very nice man told us that they had not been able to find anything related to Ida RAPHAELSOHN, geb. JACOBSOHN.  They assured us that they looked on dates before and after the date we had given them.  We walked back to the Gesundbrunnen S-Bahn station to work our way back to Oranienburgerstrasse and the start of our research at the Centrum Judaicum.

That failure was very disappointing.  On the way to the Centrum Judaicum, I started to wonder whether Ida had moved to Berlin by the late 1930s, where her son Hugo and daughters Helene and Else were living by that time, and where their sister / my grandmother Gertrud also moved in 1940 (from Breslau).   I thought about asking the archivist at the Centrum Judaicum, but I did not want to be distracted from our research goal of finding (and copying) many, many Todesanziegen, Claassenstrasse Grabinschriften and Heiratsanzeigen.   For two and half days, we did that work, finding most of what we were looking for (and then some).

On Thursday afternoon, about 3:45, we called the archivist to let her know that we had finished our last set of copying -- they then needed to be stamped and counted, so that we could pay for the 1660 or so copies.   Moments later, after a brief discussion with Don "should we ask, or not, at that late date", I called again and said I had a question about how to find out if someone had died in Berlin in 1939.   The archivist returned and pulled a binder out from the same cabinet where we had been getting paper to re-stock the printers.  It contained a copy of the burial cards from the Weissensee Friedhof in Berlin, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe.  After being shown how to use the microfiche function on the machine we have used for 8 years to review microfilms, I quickly found Ida's burial card.

We again needed help to make a useable print of the burial card.  When that was done, the archivist noted that with the number from the burial card, she could check another set of materials for more information.  She did that, and we got copies of another document that gave Ida's birth place -- Liebstadt, Ostpreußen.  By now, it must have been 4 pm - closing time for researchers at the archive.   Still, I made a quick look in the catalogue of the Centrum Judaicum, looking to see what files they have related to the East Prussia town of Liebstadt (now called Miłakowo).   There were two, each related to a JACOBSOHN family.  The first one specifically mentioned that it contained a Stammbaum, a family tree.  I took photographs of the catalogue entries and thought we might have to wait until the next trip to see what they held.   Another call to the archivist (the researchers are in a room down the hall and on the other side of a locked door from the archivists and the archives), and she was willing to pull the microfilm with those two Liebstadt files.

Then came our great discovery -- a handwritten JACOBSOHN Stammbaum from 1893.   We quickly saw Ida JACOBSOHN at the bottom of the tree with her husband Louis RAPHAELSOHN, confirming we had the right JACOBSOHN family -- our family -- and the three of their children born already by 1893 (Else was only born in 1894).   We were amazed by our discovery.  We looked at the pages quickly, but our main goal was to get photocopies made before our time ran out.   We got it done.  We saw names (Widder / Victor, Moses, Caspar), but we did not have time to get the full picture of our new family line.

After paying our huge photocopy bill (over €500), we worked our way back to Charlottenburg.  We only had a couple hours before meeting a bunch of wonderful IMMERWAHR family cousins at Maximiians restaurant.  In that time, we had a chance to start to digest our new family tree -- new names and new places:

The next couple days were still busy with going places and meeting people in Berlin, but it was hard to make room for those experiences due to the continuing excitement from our unexpected discovery about the only part of the family tree that previously ended at the generation of a great grandparent - our little known great grandmother Ida.

Friday was going to be spent with cousins at the lectures and lunch and dinner related to the 100th anniversary of the Fritz Haber Institut (formerly, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut).  We planned to be there at 9:30, in Dahlem in southern Berlin.   The Weissensee Friedhof is in northern Berlin.   But we had to try to find Ida's gravestone.

The cemetery opens at 7:30 am, and we got there in the early morning darkness.  We took a first stab at finding Feld B-VII, Reihe 8, Grab 100147, but we could only guess from which side to start counting the rows.  As it would turn out, we were only one or two rows off.   We went to the office and the always helpful Herr Pohl provide us with a plan of Feld B-VII and instructions where to start counting to find row 8 and the 20th grave, no. 100147 -- and he told us there was a gravestone that had been placed in 1941.  We still missed it.  But after some "re-orientating", we worked our way back down row 8 to a space that first appeared to represent 5 missing graves fairly close together.  The middle one should have been no. 100147, but it was just a low mound of ivy.  Poking around at one corner, I found the edge of a stone, but no inscription.  I then poked around the middle of the stone, and also found no inscription.  Don started pulling the ivy off the grave.  Then, with one of Cookie's unused poop bags on my hand as a glove (a bag i had been carrying around in my pocket through Poland and Germany), I started to remove the earth under the ivy from the middle of the gravestone.  There, an inscription started to be visible.  While Don made a video using his iPod Touch, I cleaned off the gravestone.  We had found the grave of our great grandmother which had almost certainly not been seen by anyone in the family for close to 70 years.  (And we got to "the Fritz" only a few minutes late.)

The Sunday before all this, we had finally made a visit to Auschwitz, where all four of Ida's children were murdered.
On Tuesday, on the way to the Gesundbrunnen station, we passed through the Westhafen S-Bahn station, under the Putlitzbrücke, where Gertrud and Helene and Else were put on a train to Auschwitz (part of Transport 27).
The next Sunday, we flew home from Berlin to London to Chicago to Philadelphia on Gertrud's 125th birthday, 30 Oct 2011.
This trip had become a memorial to our grandmother Gertrud FALK, geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943) and her mother Ida. 

Finding Renate

2 October 2011

At the start of 1999, my closest missing relative was Renate BACH, my mother's first cousin.  The last direct contact between my mother and Renate had been 65 years earlier, in early 1934.

Renate was born in Berlin in December 1933.   In early 1934, Renate's parents arranged to get out of Nazi Germany and emigrate to South Africa.  Due to health or age concerns, or both, Helmut and Lotte could not take their little baby with them on the journey to South Africa.

At least in part because my mother's father was a pediatrician and her mother had training as a nurse, the baby Renate came to live with my mother's family in Breslau for about 6 months.  My mother was about 11 when she temporarily had a little baby to help looking after.  At the end of that period, Renate was entrusted to someone traveling to South Africa and she made the passage to re-join her parents.

The only other things I knew were (i) that Renate's parents got divorced, (ii) that Helmut had died young from tuberculosis, and (iii) that Renate might have been living in Jerusalem.  I had no luck trying to finding Renate under her maiden name BACH.  A 1997 posting to the Jewish Genealogy online discussion group with that limited information did not lead to any result.

In 1998, from a cousin in Israel, I received a letter written by my great grandmother Rosa BACH, geb. PERL (1870-1955) in 1947.  It included mention of her (ex) daughter-in-law Lotte with the information that she lived in Johannesburg and had a women's clothes shop "Charlotte".   A 1998 posting to the Jewish Genealogy discussion group with that slightly expanded information again did not lead to any direct result, but (if I recall correctly), it caused me to get in contact with a professional genealogist / researcher in South Africa.

In the end, it cost me all of about $50, but I know I gave serious consideration to foregoing this approach because I had never paid anyone to do research for me.   It was certainly money well spent.  I got copies of three sets of legal papers with information on the 1935 divorce of Helmut and Lotte, the re-marriage of Lotte, and Lotte's second divorce.  From this material, most importantly, I learned that Renate had been adopted by her step-father and got the surname KANIUK.  That gave me a whole new avenue to search.

I could not find Renate KANIUK -- which would not have been her name if she had married.   So, the next day, I posted a third note to the Jewish Genealogy discussion group.  At the same time, I also looked for all of the KANIUK addresses I could find, and sent a postal letter to about 18 families.  The first reply was from a family that was not the one I was looking for.   The second reply, three weeks after getting the documents from South Africa, was a telephone call from Jerusalem -- from Renate!   One of my letters had reached her half-brother in England and he had passed it on to her.  The next day, my mother called her first cousin and re-established contact after 65 years.   We learned about her life and her family, including her 3 children -- new second cousins.

The following year, Renate came to the US and met us in Philadelphia and visited my mother in North Carolina.  My mother reciprocated with a trip to Israel.  In 2001, my brother and I also went to Israel and saw Renate.   On both sides, the re-connection was gratefully appreciated.  And the timing was fortuitous; Renate died in October 2003.  But, we are left with great memories and our new cousins.

Thirty Years to Find My Third Cousin Micheline

9 June 2011

(I hope MyHeritage.com and Family Tree Magazine will select me to win a family reunion with my long-lost French cousins.)

    My IMMERWAHR family tree always contained an interesting branch -- but one that seemed to peter out in the early 20th century.   The IMMERWAHRs originated in the small Prussian town of Kreuzburg in Upper Silesia (now Kluczbork, Poland).  By the 1830s, they were living in Breslau (now Wroclaw), the capital of Silesia, where David IMMERWAHR (1796-1861) became a successful merchant.  He and his wife Lina SILBERSTEIN (1811-1883) had 9 children.   The second youngest was my great grandmother Clara IMMERWAHR (1845-1914).  The youngest child was Mathilde Marie Ottilie IMMERWAHR (1847-1929).

    Considering that she came from a German Jewish family, the story of Mathilde was always very interesting and surprising -- because she married a non-Jewish Frenchman, who was a career soldier.  Col. André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and became a prisoner-of-war.   As a POW, he was garrisoned in Breslau.   Somehow, Mathilde and the Colonel met, and presumably fell in love.  They were married in 1873 on her uncle's estate, Malkwitz.

    Col. LAFFITTE-ROUZET and Mathilde settled in France.  They had 2 children, Charles and Gabrielle.  In about 1890, my grandfather traveled from eastern Germany to France to visit the LAFFITTE-ROUZET family when he was just a teenager.   Gabrielle was my grandfather's favorite cousin, and 30+ years later, he named his daughter (my mother) Gabrielle.

    From the family tree that I first saw in the 1970s, we knew that Charles followed in his father's footsteps and also rose to the rank of colonel in the French army.   We knew that Gabrielle married a CLERC (or CLERONE) -- first name not known -- and had three sons, one of whom had a son who was a dentist.   That was about it.   And that is where things stood.

    In 1998, I got in contact with another cousin from the IMMERWAHR family who still lived in Germany.  His father had been a colonel in the German army -- until 1936 when he was given the options of divorcing his wife (from the Jewish IMMERWAHR family) or ending his military career.  To his credit, he chose to retire.   Colonel DOHNE and the younger Colonel LAFITTE-ROUZET were in contact, and had met on a few occasions.   They cancelled their last planned meeting in the 1930s because of concern that their meeting would be misconstrued by the Germans, or the French, or both, as espionage.

    In 1999, I thought to write to the archives of the French army, "Service Historique de l’Armee de Terre."   I received files on both French colonels, including information on Col. André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET's time as a POW, and his marriage to Mathilde.   The file did not help me track down their descendants, but it did contain a clue that eventually led to new information -- that André Albert LAFFITTE-ROUZET died in Valence, France.

    In 2006, through the network of Jewish genealogy researchers, I saw a note from a man in Valence and thought to ask him how I could learn if there were LAFFITTE-ROUZET burials there.   He contacted the cemetery, and learned that my great great aunt and her husband were buried there.   I wrote to the cemetery and in mid 2007 received an e-mail with information about André Albert and Mathilde, about Charles and his wife, about Gabrielle and her husband, and about their three sons, all buried in the LAFFITTE-ROUZET family tomb in Valence.  The information brought my research up to 2002, when Gabrielle's grandson, the dentist Jacques CLERC died in Paris.   Learning Jacques' last address led me to believe that I would finally find a living member of this branch of my family.  I did, but unfortunately, the contact did not lead anywhere.

    In 2009, a different cousin in Germany sent me the 1970 death notice of Gabrielle's son Jean François CLERC.   I learned the name of Jean François' two grandsons and one granddaughter.  Within a day, thanks to the ubiquity of Facebook, I had found and "friended" my new third cousin once removed Marie-Astrid.  She got me up to date on my CLERC cousins, including her father's two first cousins, brother and sister, living in the south of France.

    The very next day, I received an e-mail with an amazing photograph.  My brand new cousin Maurice who sent me the photograph knew that the younger man on the right was his father André CLERC, but he did not know who the older man on the left was.

When I saw the photo, I immediately knew that the other man was my grandfather Walther FREUND!

    The photo from about 1920 captured a return visit of the French family to my grandfather's home in Breslau.  It is always rewarding to find a new cousin, or better yet, a whole new branch of the family.  But to receive a photograph of my own grandfather from some long-lost cousins, over 50 years after the death of my grandfather, and over 75 years since the family connection had been lost, was most remarkable.  It felt like I was matching my half of a 100-year-old photograph to the half preserved by lost, but loving, cousins from a different era.

    Since then, my mother and I have had a great correspondence with our new French cousins -- with lots of talk about trying to arrange to meet.   Cousin Micheline is now 89, and has failing eyesight.   She has urged me to come to meet her while she can still see me; something I truly hope to be able to do.   So far, it has not happened, but perhaps the MyHeritage.com contest will make it possible.

Discoveries - No. 1 in a Series - FEIGE / STENZEL

7 June 2011

One of the things I have wanted to do on this blog is to make a record of the discoveries and process of discovery that added new ancestors to the family tree.  Here is one from 18 months ago.

4 December 2009

On 4 December 2009, I received an e-mail from my cousin Jonathan PERL with the sad news that his mother Ann PERL, née MESIANO, had died the day before.  Looking at the family tree, I noticed Ernst PERL's middle name Salo in a way I had not before -- seeing the connection to Ernst's grandfather, my great great grandfather Salo (Seelig Salomon) PERL, who supposedly died in 1907, supposedly in Kattowitz -- just in time for Ernst to have gotten the name Salo in 1908 in memory of his grandfather.

From Salo PERL, my eye moved up the tree to his mother-in-law Mariane FRIEDENSTEIN, geb. FEIGE, my great great great grandmother who was just a name at the top of one line in the family tree.   A year earlier (29 September 2008), I had found an entry in the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) database full of question marks:

"FRIEDENSTEIN?, Mariane?", buried in the Kozilska Street Cemetery in Kattowitz; Reg. Page 48, Line 855, who died in "1904?"

Seeing this earlier note, which had contained too much uncertainty to act on, I did a simple internet search on: Mariane Friedenstein Katowice.  This time, the first hit had the heading "Katowice – Grobowiec Mariane Friedenstein".   When I clicked on the link, I was on a webpage of www.sztetl.org.pl -- the Virtual Shtetl website of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews -- looking at a beautiful photograph of the gravestone of my great great great grandmother Mariane FRIEDENSTEIN, geb. FEIGE, with her full birth date and death date, and in clear Hebrew, her name and the name of her father -- my newly discovered great great great great grandfather Aron FEIGE.  The photograph:

It was good timing.  The photograph was posted 5 months earlier.  The same search 6 month earlier would have just led to the same old uncertain information.

The JOWBR data turned out to have identifed the right person, but with the wrong death date.  The real death date of 6 March 1894 meant that my great aunt Marianne HERTHEL, geb, BACH (1896, Breslau - ca.1944, Auschwitz), was named after her great grandmother.

A little easy digging, mostly in the JRI-Poland database, led to information on Aron FEIGE's death, his father Jisheja(hu), his wife Rosel (Reisel) STENZEL, three other children, and their descendants (tying together some prevously unconnected FEIGEs).   So, overall, this led to:

great great great great grandfather Aron FEIGE (ca.1772-1849)
great great great great grandmother Rosel (Reisel) STENZEL (d.1845)
great great great great great grandfather Jisheja(hu) [FEIGE]

including a new family surname to ponder (STENZEL) and a new family town (Beuthen),

a new line of FEIGE cousins which happened to lead to Marion KRONER, geb. LEDERMANN (1913-2004), my mother's third cousin once removed, already in the family tree as the wife of my father's first cousin,

a possible new line of cousins descended from Rebecca FRIEDMANN, geb. STENZEL (b.ca.1795), who might have been Rosel's sister,

and another possible new great great great great great grandfather, if the Joseph STENZEL living in Brzezinka, Kreis Tost in 1812 turns out to be Rosel's father...

So, Jonathan's e-mail about Ann's death, led to considerations of the origins of Ernst's middle name Salo, which led to Salo PERL and then, just-because, to his mother-in-law Mariane FEIGE, and to an internet search which had great results because of the activity of people in Poland documenting the Jewish history of towns, including Kattowitz / Katowice.

Anne Elizabeth FEILER - in memoriam - 1960-2011

20 May 2011

     Today, I and other members of the family received the sad and shocking news that cousin Anne died after surgery on Tuesday.

     I hope the family will not object to my re-publishing their note here:

In Memory of Anne Elizabeth Feiler

With deep regret, we have sad news to pass along. On May 17, our aunt, sister and daughter Anne passed away after surgery.  Anne was a happy, active and very kind person, fun to be with, always ready to help and advise, or talk about dogs.  She will be missed very much by her family, her many friends, and her colleagues in Chicago, Denver, and the Boulder areas.

There will be a memorial service on Sunday, May 22, 2011 in Boulder, Colorado, from 12:30 until 1:30 PM.

   First Congregational Church  

1128 Pine Street

Boulder, Colorado 80302-4096

303-442-1787

There will be a gathering and light meal following the service at:

Hotel Boulderado 

  2115 13th Street

Boulder, Colorado 80302-4801

303-442-4344

In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to organizations that Anne supported.  Please mention Anne’s name so that her family can be notified of your kind gift. 

   Habitat for Humanity

Director of Development

2540 Frontier Ave., Suite 209

Boulder, Colorado 80301

Golden State Greyhound Adoption

http://www.goldengreyhounds.com/donations/index.htm

Please forward this message to anyone who would want to attend and remember our Anne.

Thank You,

The Feiler Family

FALK + OTWELL @ 25 Years + 1

19 May 2011

      One year ago, we celebrated our Silver Wedding Anniversary, all dressed up, with a tapas dinner at Amada Restaurant in Philadelphia.    We wore the silver tiara and pin that my great grandfather Wilhelm Salomon FREUND (1831-1915) gave his wife Clara geb. IMMERWAHR (1845-1914) on their 25th anniversary in 1892.

     A year later, we spent our 26th anniversary with me having hernia repair surgery, and Liz taking care of me.
     Now, the tiara and pin are back on the road, waiting for the next Silver Wedding Anniversary among the descendants of Wilhelm Salomon FREUND and Clara IMMERWAHR -- or a wedding or other appropriate occasion.

Visions of Grandmother in the Mountains of New Mexico (near the Sanctuario de Chimayo...)

17 May 2011
    A long-weekend, looking at photographs and papers of the GRAETZER family ended on the 83rd birthday of my second cousin Marianne YANCEY, geb. GRAETZER (1928-2005).  The papers she thought to keep gave us a great birthday present.

    On Friday night, my brother Don picked me up at the airport in Albuquerque.  He had driven that day from Austin, TX, a middle leg on his journey from Chapel Hill, NC back to Point Roberts, WA.  I had flown in from Philadelphia.  We were teaming up to descend on our cousin Margaret and her husband Gordon in Truchas, NM, about 2 hours north.
    After a wonderful breakfast meeting with a photographer and documentarian (eggs from her chickens), and a picnic lunch on the edge of the Santuario de Chimayo along a rushing stream, we arrived on Saturday afternoon at Tooley's Trees in Truchas.   We had come there to look at boxes and boxes of family papers and photographs which had passed from Marianne YANCEY to her son Will, and then to his sister Margaret, moving from New Mexico to Texas and back again -- after having traveled with Marianne's parents, and then Marianne, from Breslau to New York, and then to Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts, back to Ohio, and finally to New Mexico.
    Before going back to help Gordon with tree customers, Margaret set us up with the first box with two photo albums, one from the 1920s, the other from the 1950s.   The old one started around the time of her parent's marriage in 1927 and quickly moved on to their first child Marianne.  The occasion of Marianne's christening led to a family photo without the baby Marianne, but showing the new parents Günther GRAETZER and Klare, geb. MILCH, and her parents the Breslau banker Fritz MILCH and Lisbeth, geb. FREUND.  Some of the other faces were unfamiliar; presumably members of the GRAETZER family.  One man, who we thought might be Günther's father Max, could not be, since Max had died two years earlier.

    Then Don noticed that a man on the right side of the gathering was our grandfather Dr. Walther FREUND.   It took us a few more minutes, maybe even a second look at the photograph, before we realized that the woman on his right (our left) was our grandmother Ellinor, geb. BACH.

    This discovery was very exciting.  We have only ever seen 3 or 4 small images of our grandmother -- very small ones, or enlarged and fuzzy versions thereof.   Now, we had added a new image to the scarce gallery, and one of full length, at a happy gathering, and with her husband by her side.  (My mother pointed out that it is the only photo she has seen of her parents together.)
    I took a photo of the photo with my iPhone so that I could walk to the top of the tree farm where there was said to be cellphone reception so that I could e-mail a copy to my mother.   I had made a photo of the entire photograph, and a second one zooming in on her parents.   We told her it was coming, so she got it using her iPad.   Unfortunately, since we did not have regular e-mail access, we did not see her note for a couple days.   She enjoyed this new image of her parents at least as much as we did.
    Later, we ran across photographs of our mother with her brother and cousins when they visited the GRAETZER's "Rittergut" in Langenau outside of Breslau.  In one, she was playing in a sandbox (I did not see edging, so it might have been a sand "area").  In another, the children were playing on a huge hay pile -- photographic evidence to corroborate stories we had heard about from time to time.
    We also saw lots of interesting documents - birth, marriage and death certificates, emigration documents, property records - and learned more about the GRAETZER family, filling in some missing pieces of information, and learning new things that led to new questions to answer (e.g., the relationship of three FUCHSs who married three GRAETZER siblings).   It was a great weekend of fun and family and discovery in a most unexpected, and beautiful location.

The Search for Max BORINSKI - The "Begins" -- The births and development of ideas: Being begets Begins

Where to begin.   When I first saw the black cloth-bound "Stammbaum der Familie Falk" (Breslau 1937), prepared by the genealogist Paul DOBRIN (1886-1942, Theresienstadt), I do not think it immediately occurred to me that that work, ending as it did in pre-War Nazi Germany could be, or needed to be, updated.  But I was probably 10 years old, or a bit younger, when those thoughts did not occur.

Where to begin:  At some point, I ran across the striking family line of Meyer FALK who had a son Wilhelm FALK who had a son Meyer FALK who had a son Wilhelm FALK.   I enjoyed the pattern without appreciating the tradition of naming a child in memory of a deceased grandparent, and without appreciating that that meant that each of these grandsons could never have known their grandfather.

Where to begin:   At some point, probably in the 1980s, maybe only after my father Hans FALK died in 1985, the Falk Stammbaum seemed like a sad book.  I knew about all the descendants of the youngest son Emanuel FALK (1832-1906), my great grandfather --  who was now where, who had been murdered in the Shoah.  But the rest of the book, the other 10 branches of the FALK Family descended from Emanuel's 3 brothers and 7 sisters who lived to adulthood and created their own thriving clans by the 1930s, those parts I simply assumed had been killed.

Where to begin:   Eventually, by the early 1990s, I wanted to try to update the Falk Stammbaum.   By chance, through seeing an interview of Prof. Wilhelm Ze'ev FALK (1923-1998) on television in Chicago, my aunt Eva WULKAN, geb. FALK (1911-2005) had gotten the address of the very Wilhelm at the end of that chain of Meyers and Wilhelms.   He was interested in family history, but also very busy.  After some correspondence (by postal letter in those days), we arranged to meet when he came to New York.  I went armed with my family's copy the Falk Stammbaum.   Ze'ev and I paged through the book, and he would say, "This family is in Tel Aviv.  That family is in Petach Tiqva."   It was a revelation of sorts.   The Falk Stammbaum was not almost exclusively a book of the dead; it was a guide to the living.   When I wrote Ze'ev after our meeting to request addresses of the cousins he knew about, they were not forthcoming.   Not until early 1996.

Where to begin:  I think Ze'ev must have finally retired from some of his teaching duties at Hebrew University, because in 1996, he sent me addresses for cousins in Israel, and a few outside of Israel.  That was the impetus for the start of a massive letter writing campaign.  Using those addresses, new addresses received in response to the first and subsequent rounds of letters, and addresses found on a CD-compilation of US residents, I started findings hundreds of new members of the greater FALK family.   I tried to find the family of Max BORINSKI who was born in 1923 and could still (then and now) have been alive.

Where to begin:   Over time, the family tree springing forth from R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK (ca.1767-1838) and his third wife Sara NAUMBURG (ca.1787-1851) came to number about 5000, and almost every branch and twig of the family had been contacted and updated.  Some details remain (still) to be gathered, and the family keeps on growing at one end (and shrinking at the other), but there were only a few missing twigs or leaves, among them prominently, the BAREINSCHEKs and the BORINSKIs.

Where to begin:  The searching continued.   In 2004, I made contact with a British family descended, in part, from BORINSKIs of Upper Silesia.  Ultimately, the families turned out to be linked, but they did not know about Max BORINSKI, or his grandfather Max BORINSKI, the direct link to the rest of the clan.  (See, http://www.gen.scatteredmind.co.uk)

Where to begin:  In 2006, I created a website with the URLs www.familiymemory.org and www.mischpochologie.org.  I included my best guesses about the origins of the FALK family of Breslau, brief comments about the 11 branches of the family, and a short list of the inpenetrable search targets, Max BORINSKI, among them.

Where to begin:  In 2007, I visited the graves of Max LEVY (1893-1970) and Irma LEVY, geb. JONAS in the Neue Jüdischer Friedhof in Frankfurt am Main.  I left a card with my contact information.  Max LEVY was a half first cousin of Max' father Alfred BORINKSI.  I hoped an unknown member of Max BORINSKI's family might visit the grave and contact me.  Max LEVY had had one of the copies of the Falk Stammbaum.

Where to begin:  Last night, I checked the "spam filter" of my e-mail account and saw an e-mail from two days earlier with the subject line "Borinski Family".   I read it, found it very interesting, but did not know if it contained information about my cousin Max BORINSKI.   The e-mail from an Israeli member of the greater BORINSKI family, described a young Zwi BORINSKI who did not fit in her known BORINSKI family tree, but who was from Breslau, made aliyah in 1935 where he continued his schooling, joined the British Army in Palestine in 1941, became a member of Haganah, and died from cancer on 2 November 1948.   There was no mention of his birth date, the names of his parents, or how he came to be called "Zwi" in Palestine.   I wrote a quick acknowledgement, and went to sleep intrigued by the prospects.

Where to end:   This morning, after a more thoughtful acknowledgment of the information about Zwi, I tried doing some internet searches to see what I could learn.  Having no success, I wrote to a friend in Israel hoping he might find more information about Zwi BORINSKI.  In about 15 minutes I had an exciting reply.  He had information, but not from any fancy database.   With Yom haZikaron, Remembrance Day about to start, and having read about Zwi's involvement in the military, he went straight to the (Hebrew only) Yizkor website of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, where a search for Zwi BORINSKI brought the answers (www.izkor.gov.il/HalalView.aspx?id=90238), and even a grainy photograph of Sgt. Zwi (Max) BORINSKI (http://www.izkor.gov.il/HalalKorot.aspx?id=90238).  With birth date, birth place, parents' names, death date and grave location, this information confirmed what a kind stranger had suggested a few days before.

Where to end:  Having come of age during the Second World War, being in the military for all his adult life, and dying from an illness at the age of only 25, I currently assume that Max (Zwi) BORINSKI did not marry and did not have children.   He was the last prospect for descendants to continue this smallest branch of the FALK family.  He was an only child.  One of his uncles, Ernst, died in the First World War, and the other, Leo, married, but had no children.   His father and uncles had two "half" first cousins, Max LEVY mentioned above, who made aliyah in 1936, but returned to Germany after the War, and his sister Lina who worked at the Zionist organization in Breslau and was deported to Theresienstadt where she died in 1942.

Where to end:  Seeing the photograph of my young cousin whom I had been trying to find for over 15 years made the search and the outcome more powerful.   He was a name on a family tree.  He might just have become a name with a few more facts.  With the image, I feel a real connection -- even though I do not know the man at all.   That sense of connection is also enhanced as a result of the thoughtfulness and contributions of the people in Israel, England and the US who made this result possible.

Max BORINSKI - in memoriam - 1923-1948

Max Borinski
(1923, Breslau - 1948, Israel)

I plan to write more on this very soon, but in the mean time, here is a photograph and a make-shift memorial to one of the last "missing" members of the extended FALK family, my third cousin Max BORINSKI.  He was the last descendant of Tobias FALK who might have been the link to continued generations in that line.  Instead, he died of cancer in 1948 at the age of only 25.

He can now return to the memory of his family, us.

Six Degrees of Connection -- Spirals of Georg SIMMEL

1 May 2011 -- Yom haShoah - 27 Nisan 5771
    This week the genealogy research went in a few different directions.
    The main thrust was a result of Don seeing a book on Ray's bookshelf, "Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age" by the sociologist Duncan J. Watts.  In that book, Don found reference to Prof. Georg SIMMEL (1858, Berlin - 1918, Strasbourg), a "father of sociology" (not sure how many father's that field has...).   According to information on one website, Georg SIMMEL's studies" pioneered the concept of social structure, and he was a key precursor of social network analysis."  That is entirely apt to this work in general (mine, not his), and to the waves of connections flowing from even a superficial exploration of his life.
     Don quickly learned two things about Georg SIMMEL that created "connections" -- defined in our work as a link to someone already in the ever-expanding family tree.  A third connection appeared a bit later.  A fourth is only a connection precursor.

1)   The first link comes from the story of Georg SIMMEL's early life.  Georg was the youngest of seven children of Eduard SIMMEL and Flora BODSTEIN.  Eduard SIMMEL, who had a successful chocolate business in Berlin, died in 1874.  Although the family was apparently financially secure, Georg seems to have been taken under wing by Julius FRIEDLAENDER, a family friend who was owner of a Berlin music publishing house.
     This appears to be the same Julius FRIEDLAENDER whom I have been researching since February.  He was the owner of the music publisher C.F. Peters, a Leipzig based enterprise that he acquired in 1860.  Based on the following entry in Jacob JACOBSON's “Die Judenbürgerbücher der Stadt Berlin” (p. 443), Julius was the first cousin of my great great grandmother Lina IMMERWAHR, geb. SILBERSTEIN, who is gazing down at me from her portrait hanging over the fireplace.  The entry:
Nr. 2388 -  8.4.1845:    Friedländer, Julius Carl, Disponent - Buch- u. Musikalien-hdlr., Werderscher Markt 6, geb. Breslau 14.6.1820, Konz. 29.3.1845, 9 Rtl. 239 f. N.B.H., Inhaber eines Musikalien-Leih-Instituts, Fa. Stern & Co.
V.: Buchhdlr. = Marcus Friedlaender
(Angabe über Marcus Friedländer nach brieflicher Mitteilung von Dr. Brilling aus dem Geburtsregister der ehem. Synagogengem. Breslau.)

     If JACOBSON and BRILLING were correct in identifying the Julius FRIEDLAENDER in Berlin as the one born to Marcus FRIEDLAENDER (and Philippine SCHWEITZER), then it was our cousin who was a family friend of the SIMMELs, and who looked after Georg SIMMEL.  If some of the internet sources are correct, Georg's inheritance from Julius FRIEDLAENDER enabled him to pursue his academic career.
     (Some webpages that have dates 1813 to 1884 for this Julius FRIEDLAENDER seem to be confusing him with Eduard Julius Theodor FRIEDLAENDER, the son of Benoni FRIEDLAENDER (1773-1858), son of David FRIEDLAENDER (1750-1834) of Berlin -- unless the confusion is mine...  That other Julius FRIEDLAENDER may have been the numismaticist.)

2)   The second link comes from a later chapter in Georg SIMMEL's life.  In 1890, he married Gertrud KINEL.  However, there was a second important Gertrud -- the art historian Gertrud KANTOROWICZ (1876, Posen - 1945, Theresienstadt), with whom he had a daughter in 1904.  She was a first cousin of the historian Ernst Hartwig KANTOROWICZ (1895, Posen - 1963, Princeton) -- who found his way into the extended family tree since his father is descended from the KALIFARI family and his mother is descended from the HEPPNER family.

3)   The third link is that a scholar of Georg SIMMEL's was the philosopher Prof. Michael LANDMANN (1913, Basel - 1984, Haifa).  Not only does Michael LANDMANN happen to be a third cousin of my father (through the KALISCHER family), in Basel in the 1940s, he was a friend of my mother.  He told her she should marry someone Jewish, and said that if she did he would give her a coffee pot.   (She did, but since she did not report that news, she did not receive the coffee pot.)
     A recurring theme among these people is that they were members of the George-Kreis, a circle of historians, writers and other intellectuals attracted to the writings (and/or the person) of the poet Stefan GEORGE (1868, Bingen - 1933, Locarno).  This applies to Georg SIMMEL, his wife Gertrud KINEL, Gertrud KANTOROWICZ, her cousin Ernst KANTOROWICZ, and Edith LANDMANN, geb. KALISCHER (mother of Prof. Michael LANDMANN).   (Another member of the George-Kreis was Percy GOTHEIN, a possible distant cousin, and the subject of research in early April -- to be subject of a future blog about past research.)

4)   A possible fourth link related to Georg SIMMEL is still a work in progress.  Both his father and his mother were born in Breslau, with family roots in the Breslau Jewish community.  Eduard SIMMEL is said to have been born in Breslau, ca.1810 (although he does not appear in the available birth records).  Georg's mother Flora BODSTEIN was born in Breslau in 1818.  More work will be needed to see if there is a connection between Eduard's father or grandfather Isaac SIMMEL and the Isak Itzig SIMMEL whose son Israel Isser SIMMEL married in Breslau in 1797.   I have been in contact with one of Georg SIMMEL's grandsons in an attempt to explore this unanswered question.
     The exploration of these disparate connections seems very fitting as a tribute to Georg SIMMEL, and the field of social network analysis.

LEUBUSCHER - WACHSMANN (WAXMAN)

25 April 2011
     A rough blog posting.
     Unsendable e-mail correspondence from the weekend started to arrive today – to and from the niece of Walter Leubuscher’s wife whom I tried to reach on Friday (see Post No. 1).   She did have contact with Walter’s niece Jolante SONNTAG, who had no children and may have been unmarried, lived in Santa Monica, CA, and died probably died quite some time ago (b.ca.1914).
     I tried to find information on Jolante (Jola) using Ancestry.com and other sources with no success.
     Since her mother must be a LEUBUSCHER, I tried to find her in the California Death Index just using mother’s surname as the search criteria.   I still did not find her, but I did get two hits.  One was for a Rosalie WACHSMANN (1866-1949) who was born in Peiskretcham in Upper Silesia – she might even be in the tree already, or in a separate tree I might have made to keep record of unconnected LEUBUSCHERs.  (She is not in the tree (yet), but her mother Johanna PERL, geb. LEUBUSCHER is.
     When I checked for her in New York Passenger Lists, I found her arrival, with husband Otto, in 1940, sailing from Genoa.  She listed a son Fritz in Oppeln as her contact back in Germany, and she heading for a Franz WACHSMANN at an address in Hollywood.
     A search on Franz WACHSMANN quickly found that he was a successful Hollywood composer, under the name Franz WAXMAN, with Academy Awards, and involvement in lots of major movies.
     He was married twice, and had a son from his first marriage.  He also had several siblings:
   Paul (1895-1982)
   Elfriede (Frieda) (1896-1988)
   Fritz (1897-1945)
   Max (1898-1918)
   Dorothea (1902-1903)
   Ernst (1904-1966)
   Alfred (1905-1906)
and they could have some descendants.

NewMexicast Video III

The Rabbis WISE - an aside

     Two days ago, in part of the day's search that to the creation of this blog, I visited the website of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (www.tbeonline.org).  On the home page, there was reference to that evening's event, the "Isaac Mayer Wise Shabbat."  The rabbi I e-mailed about my LEUBUSCHER search was delivering the sermon.

     Seeing the name of Rabbi WISE reminded me that I had run into his family before.

     In April 2010, in the course of LATZ family research, I was surprised to notice that R. Jonah B. WISE (1881-1959) had presided over three LATZ family weddings in Scarsdale, NY in the 1940s.  I was surprised that such a prominent New York rabbi had some connection to this LATZ family.

      The first of those Scarsdale weddings was between Paula LATZ and Richard FRANK of Portland, Oregon.  I assumed the connection was based on the fact that R. Jonah WISE had been rabbi in Portland from 1910 to 1924 when he moved to the Central Synagogue in Manhattan.  In the much smaller Jewish community of Portland in the period, it was easy to imagine a connection forming between Rabbi WISE and members of his congregation.

     Until today, I did not recall noting the much more likely reason for the presence of the eminent Rabbi WISE at these weddlings.   He was married to Helen ROSENFELD of Portland.  A quick review of US Census records, showed that Helen was a sister of Ruth ROSENFELD who married Aaron Meier FRANK; they were the parents of the groom of Scarsdale marriage #1.  So, the first marriage was of his nephew Richard.  And #2 and #3 were to Richard's wife's sisters.

     R. Jonah B. WISE was a son of R. Isaac Mayer WISE (1819-1900), one of the founders of Reform Judaism in the US, and a founder of Hebrew Union College.  He was present at the 1867 dedication of Temple Beth El, then in Detroit, Michigan.

     The family of Paula LATZ is decended from Israel LATZ (b.1825), a family line that is not yet connected to the rest of the LATZ clan originating in Posen.

NewMexiCast Videos

     A few years ago, a wonderful family friend interviewed my mother to make a video record of her early life story.  She also interviewed me briefly about my genealogy research.  She then produced the three videos which are posted on her website (www.newmexicast.com) -- and viewable from the links in the three preceeding blog posts.

NewMexicast Video IV

NewMexicast Video II

Link to NewMexicast Video I

A Namslau Web: FRIEDLAENDER - LAQUER - SILBERSTEIN - LOMNITZ - FRIEDLAENDER

23 April 2011

     Today, the focus was FRIEDLAENDERs from Namslau.   The birth, marriage and death records in the LDS collection are not microfilms of original records.  They are a set of transcriptions made in 1937 from records in the archives in Breslau; presumably, they were prepared by the archivist Bernhard BRILLING.
     The original hope was to find an entry for the 1846 marriage of Heinrich FRIEDLAENDER and Philippine LAQUER to see if it would identify Heinrich's parents.  On the last page of marriage entries, it was there -- his parents were Saul Nathan FRIEDLAENDER and Caroline SILBERSTEIN.   As it turned out, an entry for their marriage was also in the same file.  They married in 1822. Saul was a son of Nathan FRIEDLAENDER; Caroline (b.ca.1803) was a daughter of Heinrich SILBERSTEIN.
     There are recurrent connections among SILBERSTEINs and the LAQUER family.  (1) Here, Philippine LAQUER's mother-in-law turns out to be Caroline (bat Heinrich) SILBERSTEIN.  (2) Philippine's father Loeser Joseph LAQUER was a son of Pauline SILBERSTEIN (ca.1764-1832).   (3)  Philippine's uncle Jakob Joseph LAQUER married Nanni ROSENBARTH, a daughter of Nachme SILBERSTEIN (1765-1833).  Nachme was my g-g-g-g-g aunt, a daughter of Chajim SILBERSTEIN of Brieg.   Hence, the interest in trying to determine whether Pauline was a sister of Nachme.  And now, the additional question: whether there is a connection between the SILBERSTEINs in Brieg and Heinrich SILBERSTEIN of Städtel, 30 km away.
     No answer, yet.


     Going back to Caroline SILBERSTEIN's father, it turns out this same Heinrich SILBERSTEIN of Städtel was probably also the father of Handel (Hulda) SILBERSTEIN whose second marriage in 1836 was to Isaac LOMNITZ.  Isaac was a son of Joachim LOMNITZ of Woitschachow (Kr. Rosenberg); presumably, this is the same person as Joachim Benjamin LOMNITZ, who was living in Bodschanowitz (Kr. Rosenberg) in 1812 -- a further assumption being that Woitschachow and Bodschanowitz are just different spellings of the same town (or crossroads).
     This family has been on my agenda for the last few months, since running across this notice posted in the January 7, 1944 issue of the Aufbau German refugees' newspaper:
 
When I found that notice, I enjoyed the fact that Alfred knew something of his family history and used his new US citizenship to memorialize his gg gf's 1812 Prussian citizenship  (though I note that Joachim Benjamin LOMNITZ was not living in Breslau back in 1812).  Contact with Alfred's son and a nephew has unfortunately not yet filled in the missing generations between Franz LOMNITZ and Joachim Benjamin LOMNITZ.
     The LOMNITZ family is also part of an ongoing search to help a man in Israel whose gg gm was Pauline (Blümel) LOMNITZ (b.ca.1825), daughter of "Johann" LOMNITZ (perhaps actually Joachim LOMNITZ).

     Pauline was married to a FRIEDLAENDER, so the circle is complete; or more aptly, the spiral continues to turn.