"Stammbaum der Familie Falk"

"Stammbaum der Familie Falk", Paul Dobrin (Breslau 1937)

A crucial element behind much of my genealogy research has been the "Stammbaum der Familie Falk", a small, black book of bound typed sheets (typed using carbon paper, it seems), one family group per page.  "Kapitel" after "Kapitel", starting with the family of R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK, the Dyhernfurther Rav, his third wife Sara NAUMBURG, and their 11 children (who lived to adulthood), the book outlines the whole FALK family as compiled by the Breslau genealogist Paul DOBRIN -- the whole family as of 1937.

The first knowledge of the Falk Stammbaum came to us before the "me part of us" was aware of family history beyond, perhaps, the fact that the family had lived in California before I came along.  Back then in the mid 1960s, my brother Don's interest in genealogy was budding and getting support from our aunt Eva WULKAN geb. FALK (1911-2005) in Chicago.  Eva knew that her second cousin Max LEVY (1893-1970) had a copy of the Falk Stammbaum, and in response to specific questions from Don, she would write to Max and convey the answers to Don.  The fate of Max LEVY's copy of the Falk Stammbaum is not known.

When our great uncle Siegfried FALK ("Onkel Siegfried") (1888-1969) died in Wellington, New Zealand, his widow Tante Lo sent oil portraits of Siegfried's parents Emanuel FALK (1832-1906) and Johanna KALISCHER (1845-1929) to my father, and I believe that Onkel Siegfriend's copy of the Falk Stammbaum arrived with the portraits.

I do not know what Don did with the Falk Stammbaum when it first came to our home, and to him as the family genealogist, but I remember paging through it, wondering what a "Kapitel" was, learning its organization system (which always seemed cumbersome), finding the page with my father, his sister and their parents, and noticing a few things:
* the Meyer - Wilhelm - Meyer- Wilhelm naming pattern that turned out to lead from R. Jacob Jehuda Loebel FALK's son to Wilhelm (Ze'ev) FALK (1923-1998) of Jerusalem;
* that the last child in Kapitel 1, Aidel FALK, with no birth date, could not be among the last children (births in the 1830s) because she had a son in 1827; and
* that my father was 43 when I was born, and his father was 44 when he was born, and his grandfather was 43 when his father was born, and his great grandfather was 64 when his grandfather was born.

If there are any loyal readers, I would refer them to the blog entry of 8 May 2011 which contains my history with the Stammbaum der Familie Falk.  One thing not included there is the story which my beloved cousin Prof. Dr. Ze'ev W. FALK told me on his first visit to us in Wayne, Pennsylvania about the origins of the Falk Stammbaum.  According to Ze'ev the Stammbaum was commissioned by the wealthy KROCH banking family as a means of keeping track of the whole FALK family, in order to send family members, annually, writings of the late R. Jacob Loebel KROCH (1815-1897), wife of Bertha FALK (1816-1904), daughter of the Dyhrenfurther Rav.

But another part of the story of the Falk Stammbaum is what became of all the copies which were distributed to family members back in 1937.  There was Max LEVY's copy - where is it now?  There was Onkel Siegfried's copy (now in Wayne, PA).  My recollection is that Ze'ev had the copy of his father Dr. Meyer FALK (1891-1972).

The first new copy I saw (I think) was in Brooklyn when I met R. Dovid BIRNBAUM in 1999.  He received his copy from his father Daniel BIRNBAUM who received it from cousin Gerhard GLUSKINOS who received it from his father Willi GLUSKINOS (1881-1965).  This was not a formal book version, but whole-punched pages with a metal binder, in a fitted cardboard box.  I believe it was a typed version.

The next copy was in Jerusalem with the KADMON family.  I believe that this is a handwritten copy with information from as late as 1938.  I assume that this was the copy of Martin WOLFSOHN (1890-1970).

I suspect that I am currently not remembering some of the other copies that have come to light in the last 16 years of research.

But the most recently learned of copy was (along with Don) the prompt for this blog entry.  Don told me today that when he met our cousin Ariel in Buenos Aires a couple weeks ago, Ariel said that he has his mother's copy of the Falk Stammbaum -- a black-bound typed copy like ours.  I assume that this was the copy of Hans Meyer KROCH (1887-1870).

(It is probably not significant that so many original holders of the Falk Stammbaum died in the short period from 1969 to 1972...  But even the not-noteworthy can be noted.)

There must be more copies out there yet to be seen.

Twenty years ago, on my Mac SE, I entered the whole content of the "Stammbaum der Familie Falk" into the then-current version of the Reunion (v 2.0 ?) genealogy software.  The significantly updated family tree is still maintained in the significantly updated Reunion program (v 9.0), just waiting for a slightly fuller sense of completion to publish it in some form on the internet.

Jaroslaw's and the JAROSLAWs - History of a Family and a Corporation

25 March 2012

In November 1996, thanks to Simon S. in Berlin, I learned about an entirely "new" branch of my family -- the SCHREIBER family descended from the sister of my great great grandmother Sara FALK geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1787-1851), Hinde SCHREIBER geb. NAUMBURG (ca.1784-ca.1818) and R. Benjamin SCHREIBER (1779-1839), rabbi in Schrimm and Grätz.   That tree included their son Meier SCHREIBER, married to Ernestine (Ester) MITTWOCH, who had a daughter Friederike (Frieda) who married David JAROSLAW and had the children Hedwig and Benno.

That is where things stood for over a decade.

In 2010, from a partial list of gravestones of the Lohestrasse (ul. Slezna) Jewish cemetery in Breslau, I learned that Friederike died on 18 August 1875, at the age of just 32.

And, that is where things stood until last week.

My last blog entry described learning that my grandmother Gertrud FALK geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943) had been put into forced labor for the firm Scherb & Schwer KG.   That led me to try to learn about the company that had taken advantage of my grandmother (and so many others) during the last year or two of her life, before she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered.

A website on the components used to make the Enigma machine ("Hellschreiber") included information on Scherb & Schwer as one of the component manufacturers.  The firm Scherb & Schwer was the "Arjan" successor company to the formerly Jewish-owned company Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmer-Waren Fabrik.

The history of Jaroslaw's can be traced, in a limited way, through Berliner Adressbücher entries:
1882          - no entry
1883-1891 - Inhaber C. Jaroslaw  [seems to be Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst]
1892-1897 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw 
1898-1903 - Inhaber D. Jaroslaw & Dr. B. Jaroslaw
1904          - Inhaber  [not given]                 (entries for David and Dr. Benno)
1905-1909 - Inhaber  [not given]                 (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1910          - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Clara; and a Bernhard)
1911-1912 - Inhaber  [not given]                 (entries for Ww. Clara and Dr. Benno)
1913-1925 - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Dr. Benno)
1926          - Inhaber Jaroslaw'sche Erben (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1927-1930 - Inhaber [not given]                 (entry for Ww. Else geb. Lobrina)
1931-1940 - Inhaber [not given]                 (no Jaroslaw family entries)
1941          - no entry  [see, Scherb & Schwer KG]

After Friederike died (1875), David JAROSLAW got remarried to Clara FÜRST.   It is not clear who formed Jaroslaw's since the earliest directory entries list Clara as the proprietor.  An entry in "Handelsblatt der Chemiker-Zeitung" by Georg Krause (Vol. 6) (Coethen 1882) mentions the company as being in Berlin, but with "Inhaber" Clara Jaroslaw, geb. Fürst being in Breslau.  The family seems to have moved to Berlin around 1883.  (The family was living in Breslau from at least 1870 when David JAROSLAW is listed:  Gold- u. Silberarb., Schwedn. Straße 45 I. -- they are not listed in the 1868 directory.)

The confirmation that the JAROSLAW family of Jaroslaw's was the same as the family of David JAROSLAW and Friederke SCHREIBER came from the "Vita" section at the end of Benno JAROSLAW's published dissertation, "Bestimmung der Löslichkeit von Jod in einigen organischen Flüssigkeiten" (1895) [Determination of the Solubility of Iodine in Organic Liquids]:

"Natus sum Benno Jaroslaw anno MDCCCLXXIII die VII. m. Mai Vratislaviae patre Davido, matre Frederica e gente Schreiber.  Quae cum praematura morte nobis erepta esset, pater Claram e gente Fuerst in matrimonium duxit, quam vivam magnopere veneror. Fidei addictus sum iudaicae. ..."

Another connecting and confirming clue, was the 1905 passenger list from a trip that Dr. Benno JAROSLAW took to the US.  He traveled from Dover, England to New York, NY on the S.S. Hamburg on 19 May 1905.  He is listed as a 32-year-old (b.ca.1873) single man, a "manufacturer" living in Friedenau near Berlin.

This ties in nicely with the information in the National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861-1941, with information on the death of David JAROSLAW:

"JAROSLAW David of "Friedenau" 60 Frege-strasse Berlin Germany died 19 November 1903 Administiration (with Will) (Limited) London 8 October to Leopold Van der Velde merchant the attorney of Clara Jaroslaw widow Effects  £1765 11s. 2d."

The Berliner Adressbücher entries further suggest that Benno was married to Else LUBRINA and that Benno died in 1925 or early 1926.

Based on British patent office records, the "Jaroslaw'sche Erben" seem to have included not just David's widow Clara and son Dr. Benno JAROSLAW, but also two other women.  This bibliographic data from one British patent, for example:

• Title:  "Method of Manufacturing Plastic Masses from Albuminous Substances, Like Casein" Patent No.: GB272947
  Assignees:  Schröder, Richard, Schröder, (née Jaroslaw), Meta, Jaroslaw, (née Labrinus), Else, and Levis, (née Jaroslaw), Sophie, (trading as Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmerwaren-Fabrik in Berlin). June 17, 1926

includes Meta SCHRÖDER geb. JAROSLAW and Sophie LEVIS geb. JAROSLAW.  Since Benno was single in 1905 (when he sailed to the US), and Meta and Sophie were married adults by 1926, I assume they were half-sisters of Benno; presumably, the daughters of David JAROSLAW and his second wife Clara geb. FÜRST.

So, far I have not uncovered what became of Benno's sisters and I do not know if he and Else had children.  There was a Sophie LEVIS (b.ca.1879) who sailed to England in 1934 on the S.S. Barrabool; her last permanent residence was given as Palestine.  But for now, the information on the JAROSLAW family that owned the company that later came to "employ" my grandmother, essentially ends with the expropriation of their business.

That was then. This is now.

 20 March 2012

Sometime in the 1990s, the German electronics company Siemens AG, or its US subsidiary Siemens Corporation, started to advertise using the slogan "That was then. This is now."   Hearing and seeing that slogan aggravated my aunt Eva Wulkan, geb. Falk (1911-2005) in Chicago because it reminded Eva of her mother's forced labor (Zwangsarbeit) in Berlin from 1941/1942 until her deportation to Auschwitz on 29 January 1943.  With its directive to think about Siemens' history, the slogan readily took Eva (and then me) back to the 1940s and Siemens' involvement in the Nazi war effort and its role in using Jewish forced labor.  Eva always said that her mother had been in forced labor for Siemens.

In May 2008, in Berlin, after visiting the deportation memorial at the Grunewald Station, I learned that Gertrud FALK, geb. RAPHAELSOHN (1886-ca.1943), my grandmother (mother of Eva and my father) was not deported from that location.  Rather, Transport 27 left from the Berlin-Moabit freight station under the Putitzbrücke.  (As I have since learned, Transport 27 arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 30 January 1943 at 10:58 am, after a 17½ hour journey.  Immediately upon arrival, 140 women and 140 men were separated and interned in the Camp, and 724 were murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau.  We still do not know which group our grandmother was in, though I tend to assume she was part of the latter set.)

When the S-Bahn loop trains pass the area of the Putitzbrücke, you can see the huge "Siemensstadt" a bit further to the north.  This seemed to fit the family narrative with Gertrud in forced labor for Siemens and then deported from a location not far the Siemens factories.  That was then.

The first seed of doubt about the Siemens angle came a few years ago when I contacted Siemens to learn whether they had archival records regarding the people used for forced labor.  I learned they did have such records, but when they looked for information about Gertrud, her name did not appear in their records.  This was not conclusive, but it opened up the possibility that our family memory was not correct.

When my brother Don and I were in Berlin in late October 2011, we made great discoveries about Gertrud's mother, our great grandmother Ida RAPHAELSOHN, geb.  JACOBSOHN.  Learning where Ida was living when she died on 12 Feb 1939 - Duisburger Straße 8 (Wilmersdorf) (with her son Hugo and her youngest daughter Else), Don and I went by that address on the Saturday before our date with cousins Katja and Barbara in Berlin-Westend.  Fresh with our discoveries, we told Katja and Barbara all about it.  Katja mentioned that her archivist friend Sonja might be able to provide more details about our RAPHAELSOHN family members who had lived in Wilmersdorf.  I jotted down the names and last-known addresses of Hugo, Gertrud (FALK), Helene (JACOBY) and Else and left them with Katja.

Six weeks later, I received information from Sonja via Katja about Hugo, Helene and Else.  The new information included the fact that Helene and Else had been in forced labor for a company called Elektro Glimmer und Presswerke Scherb & Schwer KG in Weißensee.  The company manufactured capacitors and other 1940s electronic components. The plant at Lehderstraße 34/35 was just over 1 km west of the Weißensee cemetery.

There was no new information about Gertrud, since she had lived in Schöneberg, not in Wilmersdorf.  Nevertheless, I immediately wondered whether Gertrud had worked at the same place as her sisters.  There may have been something reassuring about the possibility that she was with, or relatively near, her sisters during this increasingly difficult period of forced labor.

Sonja was kind enough (among all her kindnesses) to forward my inquiry about Gertrud to her colleague Hannelore (another kind soul) who works with the Stolpersteine project in Berlin-Schöneberg.   This led to the easy decision to request a Stolperstein to be prepared and laid in the sidewalk outside Motzstraße 47, Gertrud's last address before she was deported.  And that unleashed the formidable research energy, skill and determination of Hannelore in the service of uncovering details about Gertrud's life in Berlin.  Just yesterday (19 March 2012), Hannelore's research led to this note:

I had now access to the records of your grandmother Gertrud in the so-called Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv.  Among the files there is the so-called "Vermögenserklärung" (Declaration of Property) your grandmother filled in.  Now we have full evidence that your grandmother was forced to compulsory labour in the same company like her sister Helene as you already supposed. She writes in the column "Last employment": "Scherb & Schwer Weissensee at a wage of 16,-- RM a week".

This is now -- another puzzle piece found.  Siemens has culpability for its Nazi-era actions, but they are not directly implicated in crimes against my grandmother Gertrud.  That honor falls on Scherb & Schwer and its successors in interest, including Richard Jahre GmbH which acquired Scherb & Schwer in 1979.

*****

This trail could end here, but one thing always leads to another.   According to a website on the components used to make the Enigma machine ("Hellschreiber"), Scherb & Schwer was one of the contributing companies (even if "the prime manufacturer of the Hellschreiber was Siemens-Halske").  The firm Scherb & Schwer was the "Arjan" successor company to the formerly Jewish-owned company Jaroslaw's Erste Glimmer-Waren Fabrik.  Based on Berliner Adressbücher entries, Jaroslaws was founded by Dr. Benno JAROSLAW (b.ca.1873) before the First World War.

A new question:  Was this Dr. Benno JAROSLAW the same person as Benno JAROSLAW, son of David JAROSLAW and Friederike SCHREIBER (1842-1875)?  Friederike was a second cousin of Gertrud's husband Dr.med. Hermann FALK (1875-1932), my grandfather.

 1940 Berliner Adressbuch

1941 Berliner Adressbuch