The Fates of the Others
Finkelstein Family
The pre-war Finkelstein family included my great-grandparents, Heinrich and Sara Finkelstein. They originally lived in Kraków, but fled to Berlin on the eve of WWI. They had four children, Isabella, Max, Teofila (my maternal grandmother), and Lucia. Max married Stefi, who was German, and they settled in Berlin. All three daughters married men from Kraków; Isa and Lucia married two Wexner brothers, and my grandmother Teofila married Izydor Goldberger.
My great-grandfather, Heinrich, lived to meet my sister Michelle when she was born in 1948. He died the following year at age 87. My great-grandmother, Sara, also died at age 87, a few months after I was born in 1955.
My great-uncle Max and great-aunt Stefi left Berlin in 1938 and lived in Washington Heights until their 80s. They then retired to Florida. Both lived well into their nineties. The late 1980s letter Max sent to me chronicling the California clan and stories of other relatives is very precious to me.
My mother's cousin Vera, daughter of Max and Stefi, became a graphic artist and married George Deutsch, a costume designer for Broadway shows. Dream Girls was his last assignment and I saw it in previews while I was a graduate student in Boston. I addressed Vera and George as "aunt" and "uncle." When I was about ten or eleven I painted with Vera in her studio. I remember her fabulous set of magic markers and her stylish raw silk outfits, fashioned by George. Vera died in 2018 at age 94. If not for the war, it seems, longevity runs on that side of my family.
My grandmother Teofila's younger sister, my great-aunt Lucia, her husband Sholek, and their daughter Franca survived the Warsaw ghetto and eventually arrived in Washington Heights to join their brother, Max, and their grandparents Sara and Heinrich. Lucia died of brain cancer in 1968.
Isa, the oldest Finkelstein sister, was in the Kraków ghetto and did not survive. Ivy discovered a document published in a British opera magazine that listed Isa as a pianist and singer for opera productions in the ghetto. It included names and dates of the performances, therefore we think it was generated from the programs themselves. Isa's son, Leon, went to Palestine, possibly in 1939, to study engineering. Isa had corresponded in early 1939 with Fillmore Marks about adopting Leon and bringing him to America, just as Uncle I. F. had wanted to adopt my mother, but as in her case, nothing came of the idea. In Palestine, Leon joined the Jewish Brigade, returned victorious to Kraków, and liberated his sister, Rena. She settled in Palestine. Leon had two daughters, Michaela Orr, who became a judge, and Tamar Galon, who runs a travel agency. Rena married and had two sons, Oudi and Yoavi Bental.
Goldberger Family
The Goldberger immediate family included my grandfather Izydor's four siblings: Arthur, Cecilia, Irene, and Augusta, known as Gusta. They were born in Wadowice and grew up in Nowy Sacz. Both towns were south of Kraków.
All of Izydor's siblings survived. Aunt Gusta and Olga returned to Kraków where Uncle Wilek Mandel joined them. They lived with Arthur, his wife Lotka, and son Marcel, who returned from Uzbekistan. Arthur and Lotka had managed to trade goods on the black market, but were barely able to feed themselves and their year-old baby. To prevent Marcel from starving, they surrendered him to a Soviet orphanage. His parents visited him weekly.
Eventually the Mandels immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. Olga became a linguist and married a well-known sabra journalist, Amnon Kapeliuk. Today Olga is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has two daughters, Yael, a psychologist and Daphna, a lawyer.
Marcel and Lotka arrived in New York in 1949 under the German Jewish quota and were sponsored by Lotka's brother Helmut, who had a five and dime store in the Bronx. I'm unclear as to why Uncle Arthur was not able to emigrate with them; he died in Paris of a heart attack on December 11, 1950, while awaiting his visa. Marcel often babysat us and was a strong presence when we were growing up. He took us ice-skating at the rink near the site of the old World's Fair and stayed on the third floor of our house during the summer. He became an obstetrician and gynecologist and practiced for many years in Mahopac, New York. He married twice and has two daughters, Andrea and Erica, by his first wife, Gail. Andrea is a physical therapist and Erica is a physician. Marcel has two sons, Victor and Alexander, by his second wife, Pia. Victor manages a hardware store. Alex is a programmer and designer with a master's in human computer interaction and works in gamification. I speak regularly with Marcel, benefiting from his perspective and wisdom about everything from writing and the arts to the stock market and health and aging.
Trammer Family
My great-grandmother on my grandfather Izydor's side was a Trammer and had many siblings. According to my mother, they were all brilliant. One brother, Jerzy Trammer, was a lawyer who contributed to the Polish code of law. The oldest brother, Dr. Alfred Trammer, married a German governess named Elfryda, who was protestant. Their daughter was my mother's half-Jewish cousin, Guschinka, who worked for the Polish resistance (AK) and helped my mother and other relatives get false papers.
After the war, Guschinka married her fiancé, Marian Puzio, whose work with the AK was discovered and was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. He died not long after their daughter, Barbara (Basia), was born in 1948. Guschinka was the relative my mother wanted so much to visit during the summer of 1961. Ivy, then seven, accompanied my mother and remembers riding a bicycle on the cobble stone streets of Kraków. She also recalls the shocking poverty in Poland, particularly the peeling paint in their apartment.
When Ed, my husband, and I visited Kraków in 2016, we met Basia, who married and divorced a German named Müller, and has a daughter living in Germany. Basia kindly shared photos, awards and medals honoring her mother and grandmother, Elfryda, a German former governess who married my great-great uncle Dr. Alfred Trammer of Tarnów, as righteous Christians. They are listed among the righteous in Yad Vashem. Basia later sent me Guschinka's manuscript of family memories.
Fränkel/Frenkel Family
My father's older brother, my Uncle Sydney, worked for Westinghouse in Milan and was transferred to the United States in the fall of 1939. Uncle Sydney married Bea Friedberger, whose family was from Vienna. Their children are my cousins Anita Michaela and Peter Milek. Anita became a journalist and producer for Pacifica Radio in Berkeley and later practiced as a therapist in Los Angeles. Peter is a rock musician and played electric and acoustic lead guitar with Country Joe and the Fish. He also was the frontman for his own Oakland-based band for a while and continues to compose songs. Sydney lived until the age of 93.
Lifschütz Family
This clan was my paternal grandmother's family. My great-great-uncle Maksymillian Lifschütz, the oil magnate and Hotel Continental owner, died in Merano, in the Italian Alps, in 1939. His widow and daughters fled to Mexico, but I neither know when they arrived nor whether they and my father knew of one another's whereabouts. They remained in Mexico, but eventually one daughter married an American. My great-great-uncle Simon stayed in Vienna and, as the landlord of many residential buildings, was forced by the Nazis to fork over his income from apartment rentals. Eventually he was deported to a concentration camp, but I have found no trace of him.
In 1945, the Hotel Continental was destroyed when retreating Nazis bombed the city's bridges during the Battle for Vienna. Max's widow returned to Vienna after the war and struck a deal with the company that insured the hotel and was compensated for the property. The insurance company, UNIQA, now owns the land on which stands a new hotel, Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom.
My Father's Friends
My father's medical school classmate, Dr. Menachem (Munio) Distenfeld, arrived in New York in 1947 and lived three blocks away from us. After the Anschluss, the Distenfelds were sent to a concentration camp, but the Nazis needed medical personnel to fight a typhus epidemic afflicting their staff. Dr. Distenfeld was ordered to treat them and allowed to leave the camp to do so. After treating a patient in his home, Dr. Distenfeld fled through the back door to the surrounding forest and somehow arranged to meet Amalia there. Ukrainian partisans picked them up and would have killed them but for their need for a doctor. The Distenfelds survived by roaming the forests with these guerrillas. Dr. Distenfeld died suddenly in 1966 of a massive heart attack at age 52 while swimming in the pool at Forest Hills Jewish Center. My father was devastated and it took a long time for him to accept this loss. My mother and Mrs. Distenfeld were friendly. Mrs. Distenfeld called on Saturday nights after the Sabbath to offer some wisdom and solace to my mother when, like her, my mother was widowed at a young age.
Dr. Robert Root died in New York in 1954 at age 47. I know he and his wife Betty had a daughter because her parents sent mine a picture holiday greeting card in the early 1950s.
My Mother's Friends
My mother's childhood friend Anula Dawidowicz and her parents suddenly fled Lwów for Russia, Persia, and then Lebanon. Anula graduated from American University in Beirut, married a Canadian, and had two children. I do not know how my mother and Anula found each other, but they met several times after the war. Anula gave me the postcard and letter that my mother sent her from Tarnopol and Zlochów.
Dr. Robert Feldman, the Czech who shared a room with my maternal grandparents in Lwów and told my mother of her parents' fates, also settled in Forest Hills. How he survived after he and my grandfather jumped from the train I do not know. He walked with a limp and was in excruciating pain for the rest of his life.
The Nabels, the couple from Kraków that vouched for my mother's identity, arrived here in late 1949 and settled in East Hartford, Connecticut. Krysia became a hairdresser and had her own beauty salon in their house off the kitchen. Edek, who had been a lawyer in Poland, developed a precision tool and die business, which was housed in an attached building. Their first baby, William, a Broadway performer, appeared in such hits as 42nd Street as Lumiere and other roles, Beauty and the Beast, and Sweeney Todd. He has written and produced several musicals, including Lying to Spielberg and Take Me America. His brother, Gary, is a medical doctor and researcher with expertise in virology and vaccines. Formerly Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President at Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, he recently co-founded ModeX Therapeutics and is President and CEO. When we were little, we visited the Nabels every summer and they visited us in the fall. I considered the Nabels my aunt and uncle and their sons my brotherly cousins.
Staszek, whose full name was Leonard Merin, also emigrated and lived not far from the Nabels. He and his brothers were clothing manufacturers in West Hartford and sold camel hair and gray ladies overcoats to the finest stores, including Lord and Taylor and Bonwit Teller. I remember visiting their factory and New York showroom to see their new fall lines. My mother raved about their designs and the hand of the cloth. Staszek and his wife had a daughter and two sons. One son is a doctor and the other is the former President and Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
The Rabbis
Dr. Israel Leib Wolfsberg of Lwów
Because my mother saved the marriage certificate of my father's marriage to Rose, I know Rabbi Israel Wolfsberg married them in February 1939. His actions during the German occupation answer the oft posed and ill-informed question about Jewish resistance. Consider the dilemma Dr. Wolfsberg faced with other rabbis of Lwów, and rabbis throughout other large cities where Jews were confined to ghettos. In Lwów, during early March 1942, the Germans ordered the head of the Judenrat Welfare Department to provide the addresses of all Jews receiving social assistance benefits from the Judenrat. We now know that this was how the Germans ferreted out for extermination those incapable of work. By this time, there were rumors that Jews on transports were not sent to labor camps but to their deaths.
The rabbis who staffed Lwów's Judenrat Religious Affairs department decided that they had to respond and convened a formal meeting of all Lwów's rabbis. Chaired by Dr. Wolfsberg, the rabbis debated for two days the sources in Halakha (rabbinical law) on similar issues. No precept in Jewish law, however, dealt systematically with such a tragic, unprecedented issue. The rabbis were bewildered by rumors that a growing proportion of Jewish Lwówians leaned toward meeting the Germans' demands, that is, that the Jews surrender some of their own in order to save the rest. Some rabbis argued that to do so would be an act of mercy, because if left to the Germans, they would unleash a brutally driven lust for blood. This brief session, as described by one of them, Rabbi David Kahana in his memoir, was "redolent of depression and gloom" and "a sense of onerous responsibility (that) rested on the rabbis' shoulders."
Ultimately, the rabbis rejected the idea of sacrificing the few to save the masses and sent a delegation to convey their decision to the chairman of the Judenrat, Dr. Henryk Landsberg. When Rabbis Wolfsberg, Altar, Chamaydes and Kahana met with Landsberg, he was pale and tired, and his face showed indications of a terrible internal struggle. Wrote Kahana:
"This supremely self-controlled man was now visibly apprehensive and absent-minded. We got straight to the point at this grim moment, and stated that Jewish law and ethics require him to seek other ways than accepting the Germans' demand. If our enemy comes and says, 'If you don't deliver one of your number and let us kill him, we'll kill you all,' it is better for all to die than to hand one Jew to the enemy. This is the verdict of rabbinical law (italics added).' Landsberg was severely offended by these remarks and erupted in anger: 'You gentlemen must think we are still in the prewar era and that you are speaking to the chairman of the religious council. We are living in totally different times and our community administration is no longer a religious body, but the Gestapo's executive tool, and anyone who opposes the Gestapo…' The chairman did not finish the sentence. We understood his trend of thought: He had no desire to run afoul of the Gestapo and risk his life."
I have not been able to discover how, where or when Rabbi Wolfsberg died.
Dr. Israel David Taglicht, Chief Rabbi of Austria
Dr. Israel David Taglicht was the rabbi of the Leopoldstadt Tempel, Vienna's largest synagogue. He had been forced to scrub the sidewalks and to stand in front of the Hotel Continental Café bearing the placard saying, "I am a Jew." After the Anschluss, he was held in a concentration camp. With the help of foreign pressure, however, he escaped to England. In 1943 he died at age 81 in Cambridge. His synagogue, which had been inaugurated in 1858 on Templegasse, was set on fire at six in the morning of November 10, 1938, on Kristallnacht. SS units and civilians vandalized the synagogue and formed a human chain around it to prevent the fire brigade from attempting to extinguish the blaze. The ruins of the synagogue were cleared in 1941 and the ground flattened in 1951. Today the site remains empty save for four of the building's original Moorish Revival style columns
Gerhard Grunow, Head of the Gestapo in Tarnów
According to the authors of deathcamps.org, many members of the SS, SD and auxiliary forces responsible for the extermination of Tarnów's Jews died before investigations were launched in the 1960s. Three former members of the Sicherheitspolizei-Außenstelle (Security Police - Field Office) were charged with crimes in Tarnów. Gerhard Grunow, Abteilung Gestapo der Sicherheitspolizeiaussendienststelle, Tarnów, was included among others accused of crimes of mass destruction, but his proceedings were discontinued. No reason why was given. According to Jan Grabowski, author of Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder I German-Occupied Poland, Grunow was tried, sentenced to death and executed in Poland.
Miscellanea
As for the checkered sweater that my mother designed and which the German woman knitted, the wool was of such fine quality and so warm, that I wore it during my college and graduate school years in snowy New England.
I wish I could inform Karl May and James Fenimore Cooper that their books helped save at least one life and thank them. The same goes for Heinz Liepmann, author of Murder Made in Germany, who settled in Switzerland after the war and with his wife opened a literary agency that represented authors well into the 1960s. Certainly my mother's story proves that books save lives.