Provenance

Last night was Erev Pesach, the first evening of Passover. Jews all over the world sat down together and celebrated our Freedom from Slavery in Egypt. The Seder, as it is called is a long evening as we recount the Exodus.

But last night, I sat at the table and thought about three family members in particular.

My Grandmother, Gittel, after whom I am named

and two of her children, Berta

and Nissan

So why was I thinking about them?

It was on the same day that they were forcibly removed from their home and deported to the Warsaw Ghetto along with thousands of Magdeburg German Jews.

When a man called “Hermann Spier was appointed to the position of teacher at the re-opened ‘Judenschule,’ the religious community also benefited by virtue of his training and former position as a cantor. However, most importantly, as a highly competent and diligent individual, he became the community’s religious leader and a source of inspiration and moral courage.” (Dr Michael Abrams Sprod)

What is interesting here is that a man in Melbourne, Mr Freiberg many years ago approached my father to tell him that his sister Berta attended the same school as him. My father, at the time, was already on his escape route. He was somewhat sceptical about his sister being in that school.

I had to know after I found this out too.

Chasing down the photo almost 30 years after that conversation, I got the class photo from Michael Abrams Sprod:

See the man with the glasses, that’s their teacher, Herman Spier.

My parents are pictured looking to see if Berta was in the photo.

However she was not there that day for the Jewish Day School was an hour away by train. This photo was taken on an outing on a Sunday, so Berta would not have made the long journey.

You see Berta was expelled from attending her regular school, as was my father, for the crime of being Jewish.

In Berta’s last correspondence with her father, a letter that was returned to him , after the war, {after his deportation to Australia on the Dunera} we see Berta mentioning her new teacher, Herr Spier. Proof that Mr Freiberg was, in fact, correct that Berta was with him in school.

As I mentioned before, Herr Spier was a source of “inspiration and moral courage”.

It is a source of comfort to know that whilst being deported Erev Pesach, that Berta had her teacher with her too. Apparently he gave a Drosha, a speech, that night, when they would have been in the train station together, that was extremely inspirational. He spoke of their plight.

Michael told me it would have been a source of comfort to Berta - he may have made her felt at ease with the process she was undergoing - such was his nature.

Here we see that Herr Spier was on the same deportation transport as Bertha, her mother and brother:

Full Record Details for  Spier Hermann
Last Name: SPIER
First Name: HERMANN
First Name: I
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: 23/04/1885
Place of Birth:SCHRECKSBACH,KASSEL,HESSE-NASSAU,GERMANY
Citizenship: GERMANY
Marital Status: MARRIED
Permanent Place of Residence: MAGDEBURG,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Place during the war: MAGDEBURG,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Origin of Deportation: MAGDEBURG,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Related item: List of Jews from Magdeburg and the Magdeburg vicinity deported, 13-14/04/1942 and 13/07/1942
Type of material: List of persecuted persons

Source: List of Jews from Magdeburg and the Magdeburg vicinity deported, 13-14/04/1942 and 13/07/1942

Yad Vashem Archives

And her is Bertha’s:

Full Record Details for  Wilkenfeld Berta
Last Name            WILKENFELD
First Name            BERTA
First Name            S
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: 26/12/1928
Place of Birth: DESSAU,DESSAU,ANHALT,GERMANY
Citizenship: POLAND
Marital Status: CHILD
Permanent Place of Residence: AKEN ELBE,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Place during the war: AKEN ELBE,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Origin of Deportation: AKEN ELBE,MAGDEBURG,SAXONY PROVINCE,GERMANY
Date of deportation: 14/04/1942
Related item: List of Jews from Magdeburg and the Magdeburg vicinity deported, 13-14/04/1942 and 13/07/1942
Type of material: List of persecuted persons
Source: List of Jews from Magdeburg and the Magdeburg vicinity deported, 13-14/04/1942 and 13/07/1942

If you want you can go to this link and see an excerpt of a film of that deportation, including whilst they were in the train station, waiting to go to the Warsaw Ghetto.

It is chilling…

You see, Michael was researching Herr Spier, when he finally was able to attain this part of a list for me that I requested:

The original typed list of my family being deported,

I then showed him the letter, part of which is above, when he saw Herr Spiers name, we knew for sure that Berta was indeed at the Judenshule, Jewish School, just as Mr Freiberg had said she was. Mr Freiberg, managed to escape this transport by mere fate. He was asked to swap places on the transport in order that a family could remain together. He got off, not realising at the time that this very act of “kindness” saved his life.

That he was on the same transport as her was further evidence that the tragedy that began for them all that Erev Pesach, 69 years ago, was, as I said at the outset of this post, uppermost in my mind last night.

Thank you Google!

By googling a family members name I managed to come across a book with a partial history of some of my extended family.

I immediately ordered the book from Amazon but posting to Australia would mean a wait of a few weeks. So I rang the Holocaust museum here to see if they had it. They did!

I read as much as I could and then patiently waited for the books arrival.

It came a few days ago.

I wont go into the history here but will tell you an interesting “find” that occurred.

Susi, the author had an aunt Jenny who married a cousin of ours, Pinchos Fluss.

Jenny died in the Holocaust, that much I knew. The book was able to fill in some gaps for me about their life prior to WW2. Pinchos survived with some of his children. When asking my mother about them, she asked me if I recalled meeting Pinchos in England when I was very young, but I did not.

I was reading about where the family lived. I did not know the name of the area in Berlin.

About 10 minutes later I happened to be speaking to my cousin Robby Klein about arranging a meeting with his Uncle Bernard Goldman, a cousin of mine too. I decided to look at all the photos I scanned whilst interviewing Bernard about 6 months ago.

Robby’s grandfather Ami, Bernard’s brother, is present on the left of this photo in the families former fur shop in Dessau.

I always scan the back of the photos for the genealogical information - if there is any.

This is what is on the back of this photo:

Now it did peak my curiosity about the surname and first initial here. Since some of Goldman family and mine came from the same shtetl of Pysznica and part of my paternal family’s name is Fluss, I thought, now this is way too much of a coincidence.

Why a coincidence?

Because, in the book I was just reading a few moments before, Pinchos Fluss and his wife Jenny, lived in Charlottenburg.

The book didnt give the exact address.

So how was I going to determine if this was the same P. Fluss and why was his name and address labelled on this photo from Dessau?

At the same time that I was in the Museum voraciously looking for information in Susi’s book, I decided to photograph some vital information in this book.

It is a book made up of many volumes which lists the name, birth, maiden name, if necessary, former address’ of German Jews killed in The Holocaust.

Even though I knew what happened to Jenny, also know as Sheindel, somewhat fortuitously, I decided to photograph her entry in this book and the entries of her children that were murdered with her.

Reading in Susi’s book about Jenny’s place in Charlottenburg, then looking at the back of the photo whilst cropping the photos ready for Bernard to identify some people, then realising I had actually photographed Jenny is this book, I immediately went to my archive of photo’s.

and there it was, right before my eyes.

Same people, same family, same address.

How uncanny.

I google a family name

I find a book in England about some members of the family

I happened to speak to Robby to arrange a time to meet with Bernard who is the owner of the photo

I read the book and within a few minutes get distracted because I feel I must crop the scanned photos from Bernard - ready for a meeting with him

And then I find the label of the Fluss family living in Charlottenburg on the back of a photo of Robby’s grandfather which was taken in Dessau

I photograph the details of the demise of some of this family in another book weeks earlier

Then voila!

Merge all of these bits of information together to prove this link.

The mystery still remains…

Why is Pinchos Fluss’ label on the back of this photo?

My family, the Fluss’s and some of Robby and Bernard’s family come from the small Shtetl of Pysznica in Poland. I won’t go into how we are related. But did those Shtetl connections, once the families moved to Germany, remain? Maybe we will find out when Robby and I meet up with Bernard in a week or so.

I always find it fascinating that I can be sitting here in Sydney, get a book from London that tells the history of family from Poland and Germany then look in a book from Germany that is here in Sydney, get a photo originally from Dessau that has a label from Charlottenburg, scan it in Sydney and blend the Provenance of the photo together.

Now you know why I call this blog Provenance!

Here is a story of serendipity for you.

 
On friday I was at the Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney doing a tour of the old Jewish cemetery grounds with the President of the Jewish Burial Sociery. I am getting involved with their restoration project which entails restoring many of the oldest graves.

Amongst the 1000’s of graves in the old cemetery, a newly refurbished grave struck my eye as it looked out of place. New granite and styling stood out like a sore thumb amongst the old marble and stone graves.

I read the inscription, photographed it and was struck by the fact that the people had come from Zhager a very small town in Lithuania.

It was odd to see such an old grave from people from Lithuania, where some of  my family come from. As I am helping a family here research their family from Akmene and Zhager, I felt I had to eventually research who these people were.

{Cemetery in Akmene}

As I turned around to my right and behind me, I noticed 2 very old and beautiful white grave stones lying on the ground and soon realized these were the original stones from the grave I was just reading. I took more photo’s.

{Photo of Zhager Jewish Gen Shtetl Site}

Whilst the President was talking to the restorers they came to where I was standing. He said we will have to put those old stones way down the other end of the cemetery.

I went crazy and insisted they be placed on top of the newly refurbished grave as they are one and the same. The problem, they said, was that the granite was too thin to hold the heavier and extremely thicker old marble stones.

I said find a solution, they cannot be separated.

They finally came up with a solution to keep it all together.

{A typical house in Akmene: Photo: Yad Vashem}

I have never been on the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society site, but yesterday for some reason, something complelled me to.

After perusing the site I somehow found a link to a lady’s travel blog so I followed the link and landed up in the middle of the blog.  I had know idea where her family was from or to where she was travelling to in search of her family roots. But decided to look anyway.

Imagine my shock when I read she was in  Zhager and Akmene researching her family.

{Akmene Jewish Cemetery}

As I read on I was even more shocked to find that the grave I was fighting so hard to keep together  belonged to this lady’s grandparents. As with my art, the serendipity is following me in my genealogical searches. This is just one example of it. Whilst it does not relate to me or my family, YET, one never knows how helping her may help me, in the end.

I connected with her on Facebook and she requested the photos I had taken as she did not have images of the older grave stones.

It was a very rewarding 24 hours.