Sealed train in Bilbao July 11, 1940

Walter is right. There definitely were sealed trains. Here is a newspaper report involving a sealed refugee train in Bilbao just 12 days before our travelers went through. Could ours have taken a circuitous route through Bilbao, possibly accounting for the four days of transit?

UNIFORMED NAZIS SEEN IN SPANISH TOWN
LISBON, July 11-Refugees who went aboard the U.S. liner Manhattan, after arriving in a sealed train from Bilbao, declared that they saw uniformed Germans at Bilbao, where many posters referring to Gibraltar were displayed in hotels. The populace, they said, was uneasy about the possibility of future European developments involving Spain. A propaganda campaign has been launched de manding part of French Morocco.

Also, get this! The exiled "Black Front" Nazi Otto Strasser not only escaped from Perpignon to Lisbon on a sealed train, he also did it based on a Curacao tourist visa obtained from the Netherlands consulate in Toulouse. That tidbit comes from a recent book, The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe, by Ronald Weber, 2011. I've downloaded a Kindle copy and expect to find much good material to come.

Also, just a shout out here to Aristedes de Sousa Mendes, the so-called Portuguese Schindler, whose amazing story I have just read in detail. He was the courageous Portuguese consul in the French Atlantic port city of Bordeaux who in the six weeks immediately preceding Elly getting her passport in Toulouse was defying his own government by giving out visas on humanitarian grounds.

I think Walter may have alluded to our women having been in Bordeaux. If so, they must have missed out on getting help from Mendes, and went on to Toulouse from there. On the surface, Portugal's consul in Toulouse goes more by the book. But maybe the Curacao connection with the Netherlands embassy was kind of a wink, wink, nod, nod.

One question. The Netherlands and neighboring low countries have been overrun by the German blitzkrieg two months earlier. How is it that its consulate in a southern French city is still issuing visas to refugees fleeing the Nazis?

Lani found Hermann's grave October 2007

Lani and Bill and I were so fortunate to have a chance to visit Berlin. It was the Toussaint break from International School of Paris. Dan had given us the plot number of Hermann Ringel's grave in the giant Jewish cemetery in east Berlin. The only guard there did not speak English, and gave us only a rudimentary map. We walked hours through beautiful overgrown, winding paths of twisted trees and fallen leaves, trying to decipher the logic to the location of the plots, with Lani mostly leading the way. I had practically given up when Lani shouted, "I found it".

Posting this now, with the awareness that we all may become German citizens, feels remarkable, and strangely comforting. Ogi held onto her photo of this grave through her escape and the rest of the years of her life. I love that we have the same photo.

Here are the numbers for U.S.-Germany migration—771 in 2010

Joanne found this interesting link about German migration from an Israeli perspective.  http://www.forward.com/articles/154277/jews-stream-back-to-germany/?p=all#ixzz1rgjfm6YQ

Especially worth noting are the first hard numbers I have seen about American Jews taking German citizenship.

German government figures show that 3,663 Americans acquired German citizenship between 2003 and 2010, most of them Jews, according to the German Consulate in New York. And the trend has been accelerating: In 2003 there were 232 Americans who became Germans; in 2010 there were 771.

Why is This Night Different From All Other Nights?

I am happy to be posting, finally, starting with these wonderful photos I found, while looking on this computer for the famous photo of Lani at Hermann’s grave in Berlin in 2007 (which Lani or I will post next.) I love this documentation of Dan & Walt in NYC in summer of 2005, showing just how hard at work my journalist brothers have been tracing our roots and Helga’s journey.

This was a great exhibit, "Starting Over: The Expeience of German Jews in America" that coincided with our family reunion on Long Island, a few months after Helga’s death, with Sandy, Mel, Marsha.

It is just so striking to me that Dan’s brilliant inquiry, fact-finding, mapping and documentation has been produced in one short week and has happened during the Passover season. As we gathered for our alternative Seder via Skype last Friday, I did say something muddled about how cool it is that we, on this Pesach, are coming out of our 'narrows' -- the reference for Mitzrayim (Egypt). What I was referring to was the realization we had last week - that we are eligible to become German citizens, and thus EU citizens, which truly opens us, and our children, to new possibilities. We can choose to leave our ‘narrows’.

What I forgot to say on Friday, is that mom’s escape from her ‘narrows’, her oppression, quite amazingly, ended in NY during Pesach 1941, 71 years ago. Dan’s accounting today reminds me that mom attended a Seder on Ellis Island before they shipped off again to their next port, Havana, in May. I can hear her telling me just how much that Seder meant to her, but now as I read these accounts from the NY Times, it all becomes so much more meaningful.

So like Walter, I feel the power of the Sheh heh cheh yanu -- the prayer that applies to us right now in this time and this place of our lives as we consider our heroines’ escape and as we ponder our potential participation in a new culture/ society:

Baruch ata ‘’ Eloheynu ru-ach ha-olam

Sheh-heh-cheh-yanu v-ki-y’manu v-higi-anu la-z’man ha-zeh

We bless the Source of life and strength, majesty of the universe,

that we are alive, and that we thrive, and that we have arrived at this very moment.

The other remarkable fact about time and place, or wonderful karma, is that Bill & I happen to be ticketed to fly to Lisbon in July. This wasn’t deliberate. It was one of a few European cities that we could fly into using United Frequent Flyer miles this summer. We are heading to a lovely seaside vacation with Hans & Carrie in Brittany, and are just now planning our route, Portugal through Spain to France. As Dan has documented on this cool map, I will be taking Elly & Helga’s route in reverse. Thank you, Dan, for giving me all this, and making my visit to Lisbon so much richer.

Walter and I are pretty sure we need you at the International Jewish Geneology conference in Paris July 15, so I hope to see you on the continent!

NYT December 12, 1940: Lisbon's Refugees Now Put at 8,000

And here is a very detailed report from the famous James 'Scotty' Reston about the refugee situation in Lisbon. Among other interesting tidbits are these:

The Portuguese Government first controlled the movement of refugees from France to Portugal by making sure that all those applying for visas actually had transportation to the United States or some other country and they also checked to make sure that the people sincerely intended to go to the countries for which they had visas.

The government has consistently extended their visas to allow them to remain here until new homes can be found. Salazar has even cooperated in establishing schools for refugee children 

The Netherland and Belgian governments are also helping by allowing refugees to go to the Netherland Indies and the Belgian Congo.

Lots more great information in the full report.

NYT July 23, 1940: Portugal Holding Delicate Position

This report from the New York Times covers the situation in Portugal the very week our travelers arrive in Lisbon.

Mapping our heroines' movements

Here's my crude attempt to create a map showing Elly's and Helga's movements from May 1940 in Nice to April 1, 1941 in Lisbon.

Toulouse to Miami — deciphering the visa stamps in Elly's passport

Speaking with Walter earlier about Elly's travel documents, I said I would take a close look at the many visa stamps and hand notations in her Polish passport, and thus see if we could reconstruct her journey with Helga to America. I've done that now and will do my best to summarize it.

First, here's the first page of the passport in full and then a close up on the photos of Elly and Helga. I'll put in a few photo details of visa stamps on subsequent pages as we go along.

Elly's Polish passport

The first point to make is that these documents cover only the last 11 months of their journey. The passport is issued to Elly in Toulouse, France, on July 5, 1940, and she will use it until May 23, 1941, when she and Helga enter Miami as legal immigrants.

Mother and daughter

We see in detail what happens in those 11 months, but I wish we knew as much about their activities and movements in the previous 20 months since their escape from Germany.

So we start in Toulouse. Why Elly receives a passport from the Republic of Poland at first seems mysterious, but we are given a clue. Among her papers is a French translation made in Nice on May 28, 1940 of a 1906 document establishing Hermann Ringel's original domicile in Polish Galicia. We don't know why Hermann needed that document when he was 18 years old, but it appears Elly is using that documentation in 1940 to establish her credentials for the passport.

Netherlands visa

Her name, birth date and birth place on the passport are accurate, although the notation about Katowice is puzzling. As it says, her birthplace is Elbing, in present day Poland, so it is ironic that she seems to need to her deceased husband's domicile record to obtain Polish documents.

But got them she did. The passport covers Elly and her daughter Helga. It is good for one year, until July 5, 1941. It is signed by Elly below the ID photos of mother and daughter.


Now we are going to turn the page and follow along carefully the dates and places.

Portugal visa

On July 11, the Consulate of the Netherlands in Toulouse grants a tourist visa for travel to the Caribbean island of Curacao. The same day, the consulate of the Republic of Portugal in Toulouse approves a transit visa to pass through Portugal for the purpose of travel to Curacao.

It appears that on the next day, July 12, Elly traveled several hours by train to the nearby city of Perpignan to obtain a transit visit from the consulate of Spain allowing them to pass through Spain on the way to Portugal.

Back in Toulouse on July 16, she prepares for the next phase of her journey, buying train passages for the several legs of the journey. We have the receipt for the first leg to Perpignon that records how much baggage she is bringing--a total of eight pieces at a weight of 206 kg.

French-Spanish border crossing

They travel to Perpignon on July 19, where it appears they stay for four days at the Hotel Moderne. On July 23, they pay 10 francs for a French exit visa. The next morning, they depart Perpignon and receive an exit stamp at the French border crossing at Le Perthus.

On the Spanish side of the border at La Junquera, there is an entrance stamp from the Spanish Direccion General de Seguridad. There is also an annotation mentioning transit to Portugal and something about Barcelona.

The next two stamps are on July 28 at the Spanish exit port of Valencia de Alcantara and the Portuguese entry port Biera Marvao. There they are stamped out by the Spanish DGS and in by Portugal's PDVE security service.

Every two weeks

The four days between entering Spain in La Junquera and leaving it in Valencia de Alcantara is unaccounted for. I believe the notation about Barcelana means they changed trains there. I wonder if they also stayed there a day or two since it doesn't seem that it would take four days to cross Spain by rail. The route would be Barcelona through Madrid to Lisbon, obviously a heavily served rail route. I know Walter has written about a sealed train, but this doesn't quite square with that.

So they arrive in Lisbon at the end of July. The transit visa is good for only two months, it seems, since they must get approved by the PVDE for a further extension every two weeks, as indeed they do 14 more times until the following April 2.

Ecuador's immigration visa

Presumably, if their purpose had been to book and make passage to Curacao that could have happened sooner, but the PVDE continued to authorize two week extensions.

The other stamps from the months in Lisbon are for various travel visas to South American countries and eventually the United States.

On October 4, there is a stamp by Costa Rica for an entrance visa. On October 29, the consulate of Venezuela issues another entrance visa. For whatever reason, these visas don't seem to be good enough, maybe because they are for visitation but not immigration.

New York transit visa with bond notation

Then on February 27, there is a visa with the hand notation "Immigrante" from the consulate of Ecuador in Lisbon. There are additional Spanish annotations that I have not yet translated.

Anyway, this seems to be the needed credential because now things start moving quickly. On March 3, the Polish embassy in Lisbon extends the Polish passport for another year, to July 5, 1942.

On March 31, they obtain a transit visa from the United States consul in Lisbon, and also pay for their exist visa from Portugal.  

Cuban transit visa

The next day, April 1, they are stamped out as "embarked" by the PVDE. Three weeks later, April 23, they are admitted at Ellis Island by United States immigration. They are in transit to Ecuador. The visa is good until May 10.

We know from other sources how Helga stays behind at immigration while Elly goes to New York and manages to find an American Ringel to claim  a family relationship. There must have been a notarized letter about that, but unfortunately we don't have that documentation.

Legal immigration to U.S.

What we do know is that on May 7, the Cuban consul in New York issued a travel visa to Elly. Then two weeks later, they are in Havana, where Elly has kept a souvenir postcard. On May 21, a clerk for U.S. Consul George R. Hukill issues immigration visas for Elly Wohlgemuth Ringel and Helga Fanny Ringel.

Two days later, on May 23, 1941, they enter the United States through the port of Miami, stamped in as full legal immigrants by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Their flight from Nazi oppression is finally over and their new life in America has begun.

Looking for Isaak Wohlgemuth in West Prussia

I recounted in the previous post how I discovered that we have been using the wrong name for our great-grandfather on our mother's mother's side. Also, in the post before that I mentioned the probability that our Wohlgemuth family must have come from West Prussia instead of the East Prussian areas I had favored earlier.

So with Isaak's correct name, as well as exact birth and death dates from the headstone, I hopefully dove into the various Jewish genealogy resources that could be helpful, particularly the JRI-Poland and the German SIG and databases, as well as into Ancestry.com, which sometimes has sources that JewishGen.org does not.

So first the bad news. There is no magic hit that says this is our Isaac. Lots of Wohlgemuths all over Poland and Germany, plenty of Isaac Wohlgemuths, but none that matches up the right dates and likely places. I would have thought we'd at least turn up the burial information we already have, since the Weissensee Cemetery is well documented. I wonder why it's records are not in JewishGen's JOWBR online burial registry.

So while we can't yet locate our Isaak, a cluster of Wohlgemuth hits shows up in a resource called the West Prussian 1812 Citizenship Database. Here's a list of the 10 citations, with their surname, given name (original and new) and town (Prussian name and Polish name).

WOHLGEMUTH    Lewin Marcus Lewin     Preuss. Friedland  Paslek    
WOHLGEMUTH    Moses Lewin Moses Lewin     Landeck Ladek Zdroj
WOHLGEMUTH    Moses Salomon Moses     Preuss. Stargardt Stargard Gdanski 
WOHLGEMUTH    Herz Moses Herz     Preuss. Stargardt Stargard Gdanski    
WOHLGEMUTH    Salomon Moses Salomon     Preuss. Stargardt Stargard Gdanski    
WOHLGEMUTH    Israel Ephraim Israel Ephraim     Flatow Zlotow   
WOHLGEMUTH    Jacob Abraham Jacob     Behrendt Koscierzyna    
WOHLGEMUTH    Moses Salomon Moses Salomon     Jastrow Jastrowiec    
WOHLGEMUTH    Meyer Joseph Meyer Joseph     Tuchel Tuchola   
WOHLGEMUTH    Wittwe Marcus Rose Wittwe Wilhemine     Christburg Dzierzgon

To get an quick idea of the geography, I used the Polish town name to locate them on a map in relation to Elbing and Danzig, the cities where we can locate our family members 80 years later. Here's the map with labels for the Prussian city names.  There is one outlier for the town of Landeck that doesn't fall in this region, but every other Wohlgemuth on the list is more or less within spitting distance of Elbing and Danzig.

Okay, so what is this list? Here is the description of it on JewishGen.org:

'This database is an extract of 2,382 records from the General-Verzeichniss saemtlicher in dem Departement der koenigl. Regierung von Westpreussen vorhandenen Juden welchen das Staatsbuerger-Recht ertheilt worden. ["General Register of all Jews residing in the Royal Governmental Province of West Prussia to whom Citizenship was granted"], Marienwerder, gedruckt in der Koenigl. Westpreuss. Hofbuchdrukkerey. [Marienwerder, printed in the Royal Westprussian Court Press], (1812).

In the foreword to the register there are "instructions to be observed in regard to the process of Citizens as opposed to the foreign Jews". Among others: "A further instruction is to be observed by the police authorities in relation to the Jews arriving from foreign lands as set out in the edict of 11 March 1812 regarding the citizen’s rights in relation to the Jews in the Prussian states".

The edict covered all Jews in West Prussia who were able to earn their keep. It differentiated - and excluded - those Jews who entered the province illegally, and lived off official and unofficial charity. In future they were to be deported summarily.

 Next the description defines the various columns of data that are presented, beginning with "Surname: - Newly opted family name taken by the new Jewish citizen"

Thus, we are seeing the outlines of the story finally taking shape, and how it is directly relevant to the questions we are raising today about German citizenship. For our ancestors in Pomerania, one requirement for obtaining Prussian citizenship was that they had to conform to the new convention of adopting formal surnames. Before then, these Jews on the list were called by their Hebrew name with a patronymic reference to their father. Solomon ben Moses. Jacob ben Abraham.

But now in 1812, thousands of Jewish workers and merchants and their families had to drop the patronymic and adopt a new surname. For whatever reason, it is evident that the name Wohlgemuth is assigned or chosen in a statistically significant number of cases, especially in this vicinity of Pomerania to the south and west of the port city Danzig.

Why Wohlgemuth? It means "cheerful" or "good-natured," possibly with a hint of "benevolent" or "charitable." We know that it was also a name that was also in use by non-Jews, and that today there are many lines of Jewish and gentile Wohlgemuth families.

I'm going to hazard a guess that it was more or less on a list of acceptable names that people could choose for a surname. Perhaps if you didn't pick a name based on your occupation or your town, you might choose to style yourself as a good-natured Jew, a Wohlgemuth.

And now I'll hazard a bigger guess, that one of the Wohlgemuths on the 1812 list, particularly one of those from the towns closest to Elbing, is a grandfather or great-grandfather of our Isaak Wohlgemuth, born in 1865 in one of those same towns but who later lived and prospered in Koenigsberg and Berlin.

Isaak is the source of our citizenship claim, at least on the Wohlgemuth side (we also have the Ringels). And now we have a pretty good idea, or at least a good theory, about how his forebearer and thus our family originally acquired those citizenship rights.

One final caveat and then I will end this overlong post. I don't know how Prussian and Polish citizenship was recognized under German law, either in the past or as it applies today. Here are Wikipedia excerpts that describe the complicated geopolitical history of the region.

Most of Royal Prussia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1772 First Partition of Poland, and became the Province of West Prussia the following year, with the exception of Warmia, which became part of the Province of East Prussia. The Polish administrative and legal code was replaced by the Prussian system

Further Polish areas were annexed in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, including cities of Danzig (Gdańsk) and Toruń (Thorn). 

From 1807–13 during the Napoleonic Wars, southern parts of West Prussia were incorporated in the Duchy of Warsaw.

In 1815 the province, again annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. From 1824-1878 West Prussia was combined with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, after which they were reestablished as separate provinces.

The region became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the unification of Germany. It underwent German measures aimed at Germanisation of conquered Polish territories.

After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, most of West Prussia was granted to the Second Polish Republic (the Polish Corridor) or the Free City of Danzig, while small parts in the west and east of the former province remained in Weimar Germany.

The region was included in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia within Nazi Germany during World War II and settled with 130,000 German colonists,[10] while between 120,000 to 170,000 Poles and Jews were ethnically cleansed by the Germans.

All of the areas occupied by Nazis were restored to Poland according to the post-war Potsdam Agreement in 1945, along with further neighbouring areas of former Nazi Germany. The vast majority of the remaining German population of the region which had not fled before was subsequently expelled westward.

In 1949, the refugees established the non-profit Landsmannschaft Westpreußen to represent West Prussians in the Federal Republic of Germany.

I know that this has been a lot to absorb in one sitting, but it represents a signifcant step forward in our understanding of this branch of our family, which accounts for one-eighth of our genetic material and cultural background.

German Again - An American Jew reclaims the citizenship her family lost under the Nazis

It is taking longer than expected to post the next Wohlgemuth installment. In the meantime, enjoy this recent article from Slate about the process and implications of asserting German citizenship.

German Again - An American Jew reclaims the citizenship her family lost under the Nazis

One rainy morning in December, I handed a guard my bag and stepped through a metal detector into the impeccably clean office of the German consulate in Los Angeles. I was soon gestured forward to the counter, where I handed over a copy of my birth certificate, passport, and my mother’s certification of naturalization. The clerk looked over the paperwork and thanked me. Three months later, I received notice that my application had been granted. And just like that, without ever having set foot in Germany, I became a German citizen.

Continue

Family video powwow and new Wohlgemuth developments

Last night, Joanne organized a wonderful sort-of seder for the three of us by Skype, or I should say four since Tanya was with Walter in Montclair while Joanne was with me in my dining room in Piedmont. She had decided a few days ago to call off her planned full seder, and instead instigated an family video powwow over wine and matzoh to discuss the recent developments regarding the citizenship question.

We learned much on that score and as the evening developed shared even more surprises. I will leave it at that for now and encourage both Walter and Joanne to post their thoughts. Meanwhile, this post is on a related tangent and grows out of last night's meeting.

I was sharing the various birth and death records that I have in my collection for members of my mother's family, the very documents that will substantiate our claims (if we proceed with them) to birthright German citizenship. Most importantly, I showed our mother's birth certificate showing her October 1924 birth to German parents in a Berlin hospital. I also showed the 1888 birth and 1938 death certificate for her father Hermann Ringel, and the 1921 death certificate of Hermann's mother Feigla Ringel nee Kaufler.

And there were more items among the collection. My own original 1952 birth certificate was in a file drawer. By now, people's eyes were glazing over and we didn't look closely at the items in the drawer with items about Elly Ringel, Hermann's wife, Helga's mother, the grandmother we knew as Ogi.

Later after the call, Jo and I looked at those items, including her amazing refugee travel documents and  photos in a worn leather pouch that she carried with her on long journey to America. All this was familiar to us from our earlier discovery of this material. The photos included headstones from the Weissensee Cemetery in Berlin for Hermann Ringel and for two Wohlgemuth family members, Isaak and Rose. Here they are (sorry for the quality, these are quick iPad snaps while my scanner is out of commission).

Joanne who had been in Berlin and visited Hermann's grave several years ago, looked hard at the photo and said that it looks just as it does now. Then she said that at the time she wondered who had arranged for the headstone, since under ordinary Jewish custom that would not have been placed until his first jahrzeit, anniversary of his death. From our mom we knew that Elly and Helga fled Berlin three months after Hermann's death.

And now Joanne is realizing that the photo she is holding was taken in 1938 between the time of Hermann's death and Elly's flight from Germany. So now she has the answer to her earlier question, that under the emergency circumstances of the time ordinary religious customs were sidestepped.

Then we turned our attention to Elly's death certificate, issued October 4, 1981 in Santa Clara County, California. When I looked at this document that I had studied several years earlier (it was the source of our knowledge of Elly's mother's name, Betty Katz) I suddenly realized that I have been mistaken for the last years of my research about Elly's father's name.

It is not, as I have written in this blog and posted in my family tree, and as Walter transcribed Helga's account in his family narrative, it is not Julius Wohlgemuth. It is Isaac Wohlgemuth. It says it right there on Elly's death certificate. And that's why she is carries headstone photos for Isaak and Rose Wohlgemuth, but nothing for Julius.

Doh. Earlier in this adventure, Walter described his Alex Haley moment of discovery. Well, this must be our Homer Simpson moment. A stupid mistake.

For years, I have been looking for Julius Wohlgemuth, constantly stumbling over several other worthies by that name, including a well known biochemist who worked in Berlin and published an important text in 1913. It was the name Julius that led me to my hypothesis that our Wohlgemuths might have come from the town of Angerberg in East Prussia (now Wegorzewo in Poland).

I haven't yet spoken with Walter since realizing our error, but we'll have to reconstruct where we went wrong. There is another Julius on our father's side in our story. And I was finding these tidbits on Juliuses in the records. At this point, I'm thinking Elly's father Isaac, spelled Isaak on the gravestone, had just one sibling, Rose, and there is no Julius at all.

So now I've started looking for Isaac and have some preliminary things to report in the next post.

Aunt Hilda's German citizenship was revoked under the 1935 Nuremberg Laws

Since I have some momentum today and I just mentioned Aunt Hilda's citizenship annulment, here it is:

 

Here's what it means: Index of Jews Whose German Nationality was Annulled by Nazi Regime, 1935-1944

This is a collection of individual index cards of Jews who had their German nationality annulled by the Nazis. The records were created when German citizenship was revoked because of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws of 1935. The laws spelled out exactly who was considered Jewish and who was allowed German citizenship and its accompanying rights. The Nuremberg Laws also prevented Jews from marrying those of German descent.

These records were filmed from index cards at the Berlin Document Center in 1959. The records have some suffix names added, Israel for men and Sara for women, which were used to readily identify Jews. The records include information on:
Name
Birth Date
Birthplace
Occupation
Last address

This is definitely our Hilda, since it shows her surname as Peiser and her maiden name as Wohlgemuth. Also, her last known residence  in Germany is at an address in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

When I showed this to Walter a few months ago, he said that Hilda and her husband had already left Germany by 1935 and were living in Amsterdam (I need to confirm that he said this). That would explain why her name shows up in this annulment. 

 Importantly, this also provides an exact birth date and location for Hilda. If she was born in Danzig in 1906, and Elly was previously born in the nearby city Elbing, that suggests we need to look for their father Julius's origin in that area of West Prussia/Pomerania more than the East Prussian towns I had been considering before. 

Also, we have said the family was from Koenigsberg before moving to Berlin when Elly was of marriageable age, but they wouldn't have arrived there until after the 1906 date of Hilda's birth in Danzig. So quite a bit to chew on there.

Germany and restored citizenship

Joanne and Walter have been talking for some time about the possibility of Helga's descendants having the option of obtaining dual German citizenship based on Helga's status as a displaced former citizen. I have regarded that possibility with skepticism, but prompted by my latest health insurance woes my two siblings have gone to the trouble of learning the German law.

Walter spoke with an official at the German consulate in New York and found that all the relevant information is here. The applicable law reads: "Former German citizens who between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial, or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall on application have their citizenship restored."

The information page continues with the following explanation:

Between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945 there were basically two laws pertaining to the loss of German citizenship. With the 'Law on the Revocation of Naturalizations and the Deprivation of the German Citizenship' of July 14, 1933, some persons were deprived of their German citizenship individually. Their names were listed in the Reich Law Gazette ('Reichsgesetzblatt') and with the publication of the particular Reichsgesetzblatt they lost their German citizenship.

The main group of former German citizens, however, lost their citizenship with the 'Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich' of November 25, 1941. This stipulated that Jews living outside Germany could not be German citizens. This mainly affected Jews who had left Germany in the years before or shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.

I recently came across a listing of our Aunt Hilda, Elly's sister, having her citizenship revoked by name, but the second paragraph is the one that would apply to Elly Ringel and her daughter Helga. Walter writes that the official told him that if we have the proper documentation (and we do), then we could become citizens of Germany and of Europe within a year of filing the application.

What that means for any of us Rubys remains to be fully considered, but it is certainly interesting to understand that acquiring European citizenship (presumably without renouncing U.S. citizenship) is a realistic option for any of Helga's children and grandchildren.

What year is this photo?

I just came across this photo in my files, and have sent it on to Toby Bell and his mom Jody Foster, who is at center with Toby's dad Rob Bell. I got a chance to connect with Toby about his technology interests when he, Jody and Jody's husband Bruce Cain visited in Piedmont last week. He didn't mention any interest in Pirates baseball, but he has the right pedigree for it.

I think this is from a Pirates vs. SF Giants game at Candlestick in around 1990. Who can figure out the year?

Selma Ruby census for 1940

Access to images of the 1940 census enumerations has just been made available though Ancestry and probably other sources. So far, the records are not searchable by name, but the actual enumeration sheets are browsable by population center.

So, I went to Long Beach in Nassau County NY and found six enumeration districts listed. Using Google Maps, I was able to figure that District 30-207 would include the section of West Walnut St. where the Ruby family resided. Clicking that link leads to 79 pages of image files, but I was lucky to find 138 West Walnut on just the third page. It is below.

 There's nothing very surprising here but interesting nonetheless. The enumeration date is April 3, 1940. Selma, age 40, is the head of household. The other household members are Stanley, son, 15, and Ruth Ratner, sister, 35. Selma is widowed, Stan and Ruth are single. Stan is an active student who has completed his third year of high school. (Is that right, or is he currently in his third year?) Selma and Ruth both finished four years of high school. All three were born in New York. All three have lived in the same home since 1935.

Selma and Stan are not in the work force because one is a homemaker and one a student. Ruth was employed full time as a stenographer for a book printing company and earned $1248 per year. Selma is the owner of the home at this address, and the home is valued at $15,000, which is the highest valued home on the page. Selma was not selected to be asked supplementary questions.

 Zach, as our resident census expert, do you see anything else that I may be missing? How does the 1940 enumeration form differ from the 2010 census you worked on? It seems surprising to me that they get income and home value/rent payment information for every citizen. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first year that used supplemental questions. It appears they are asked of everyone who falls on the 2nd or 6th line of an enumeration sheet, or five percent of all the names on a sheet.

 Click the image to enlarge. Our family members appear on lines 37-39.  

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My signed copy of Living the American Dream

Before we delve into the contents of the book, here are scans of the front cover of the Henry Kimelman memoir and of the author's autographed inscription. The bookseller’s listing had noted that the book had been autographed for a former ambassador, yet the script mentions only Hannah and Phil, so I wondered how they knew it was to a former ambassador.

A quick search on Hannah Phil ambassador immediately answered the question. From Wikipedia:

Philip Mayer Kaiser (July 12, 1913 – May 24, 2007) was a United States diplomat. On June 16, 1939, Philip Kaiser married Hannah Greeley. Kaiser served in the United States Department of Labor as Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs, during the administration of President Harry S. Truman. He was a special assistant to Governor Averill Harriman of New York from 1955 to 1959. Later during the administration of President John Kennedy, Kaiser was ambassador to Senegal and Mauritania. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he persuaded the President of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, to deny the Soviet Union landing rights to refuel its planes. Finally, during the administration of Jimmy Carter, Philip Kaiser served as ambassador to Hungary. While ambassador to Hungary, Philip Kaiser was instrumental in the return of the Crown of St. Stephen to the Hungarian government from the United States in 1978. [4] After serving as ambassador to Austria, Philip Kaiser retired from government service in 1981.

It is not hard to imagine that when Philip Kaiser passes away in 2007, eight years after receiving a copy of his friend Henry Kimelman’s memoir, that his book collection would return to circulation and this volume would end up at a Maryland bookseller who is listed at Amazon.com.

Finally, here's the dedication page of Henry's book, honoring his wife, three children and six grandchildren. The John and Susan mentioned here were two of the family members who contacted me.

Contact with members of the Kessler family

Last month, I was contacted by several members of the Kimelman and Fishman families, grandchildren of the Sidney Kessler I have written about in this blog. They had discovered my posts about Kessler and wondered about the reasons for my interest in their grandfather. After explaining Walter Ruby’s connection to Kessler at the American Spirits company in the 1930s, I think that their concerns were mostly alleviated.

Grandson Bob Fishman helped me correct several errors in my narrative, taking time during his busiest month of the year as the executive director of NCAA March Madness coverage for CBS Sports. As a result, I have corrected Kessler’s birth and death dates in place in the previous posts.

Another correction deserves specific mention. Fishman questioned my information that baseball star Jackie Robinson was present at the opening of the Virgin Isle Hotel in December 1950. He noted that as a lifelong Dodgers fan, it was not possible that his grandfather would not have told him that if it were true.

When I went back to my source document, this December 10, 1950 article in the New York Times business pages (click to enlarge), I see where I made the mistake. Note that the last two paragraphs of the long article about the hotel opening are unrelated and concern other Virgin Islands tourism news, including an separate item about Jackie Robinson playing the first round at a new golf course.

So Bob is absolutely right and the family’s Dodger bonafides are intact. He noted in his email that though Robinson was not part of the opening, several years later, another baseball great, Hank Aaron, visited St. Thomas as guests of the Kesslers.

The other family members I was in touch with are John Kimelman and Susan Edwards, both children of Henry and Charlotte Kimelman. Charlotte, still living, is Sidney Kessler’s daughter. (Her sister Louise, also still living, is Bob Fishman’s mother. A third sister, Audrey, born after 1930, was previously unknown to me but now fills out the family tree.

One thing I learned from John Kimelman was that his father Henry had in 1999 published a memoir of his life in business and public service. In fact, Henry’s was the second autobiography in the family, as his grandfather Berl Kimelman had in the 1920s set down the details of his life in the old country (eastern Galicia). Henry later had that manuscript translated and published in a limited run.

Checking Amazon, I found that used copies of Living the American Dream: The Life and Times of Henry L. Kimelman were available. I ordered a copy, autographed by the author, from a bookshop in Maryland. It arrived in pristine condition with a plastic cover over the dust jacket. I have now had the time to carefully read Henry’s amazing book. While it provides little new information about Sidney’s activities before Henry marries into the family in 1943, it has much to tell us about Sidney’s later life that helps to illuminate our quest.

I will present what I learned from the book in the next several posts.

Illustrated Wohlgemuth history

You may remember Eli Wohlgemuth, one of the fellow travelers we have met during our genealogical journey into our parents' roots. Eli checked in by email the other day to update us on his progress with his labor of love, an exhaustive history of the family of Yeshayah Wohlgemuth, the famous rabbi of Memel.

"I will soon be ready to publish my book, 'And that you shall relate into your son's ears and your son's son's......' This unique timeline, history on the Wohlgemuth family and much more will be a three volume book, 2400 pages, with color illustrations," he writes.

Eli wonders if some of the readers of this blog might be interested in purchasing a copy. I warned him that our overall readership is low, but there are a few Wohlgemuth researchers among them. Rather than publish Eli's email address, you can contact me and I will pass along your information to Eli.

I have not seen Eli's manuscript as yet, but I am not expecting it to yield a breakthrough, because I believe it is focused on the children of Rabbi Wohlgemuth and their descendants, while my mother's family's Wohlgemuth branch may come through a sibling or cousin relationship. I will be especially interested in any biographical details about Yeshaya's boyhood and family relationships from the time before he settled in Memel.

Other Wohlgemuth researchers who are directly descended from the rabbi can expect a treasure trove of information.

Revised interpretation of American Spirits

I was wrong about several things in the preceding posts. I said that Kessler owned American Distillery but that's wrong. American was a long standing distillery in Pekin IL that had been doing business as American Commercial Alcohol Corporation during Prohibition.

As it prepared to enter the new spirits industry when Repeal went into effect, it would need a New York sales and marketing agent to bring its whiskey brands to the market. This was similar to how other fledgling liquor companies like Seagram's and Schenley were organized, matching up refurbished distilleries in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois with smart, mainly Jewish, businessmen inventing a new industry.

American Distillery had brought in a seasoned executive Russell Brown as president. I believe it was his strategy to create a subsidiary called American Spirits. The first president of American Spirits was Joseph H. Kraus. Peter Siskind was vice president of sales. Walter Ruby is referred to as advertising manager in one article but that may have been descriptive of his role but not his actual title.

Now a new liquor company needed a full range of liquor products. They produced their own bourbon and rye whiskey, but they needed import deals for Scotch and Irish whiskey, wines and liquors from around Europe, and rum from the West Indies.

In two 1937 articles from the NY Times business pages we see the company rolling out new strategies for their line of Scotch whiskeys and Puerto Rican rum. For the Scotch deal, they are distributing existing brands of whiskey, but for their rum play they worked with a new supplier and decided to establish a new brand.

That was Sidney Kessler and Carioca. He had taken over a rum making plant in Catano, outside of San Juan, just down the road from the main Bacardi distillery, and there he established his new Compania Ron Carioca. Doing so must have required some substantial resources, so I wonder if American Distilling didn't back the project and own a piece of it from the start.

Walter appears in that July 31, 1937 article. The Carioca Cooler is one of three drink concoctions that the company will be promoting. As far as I know, we don't have a date for when Walter left the company, whether it was shortly after the campaign launch or later that year or next. The date of his death is July 23, 1939.

The next several years show rapid growth in sales for American Spirits, especially the rum business, where it has had a hit with its new rum drink, the Carioca Zombie. The partnership between Kessler and American had gone so well that now it made sense to actually tie the knot, or at least that was what Peter Siskind thinks. The ambitious salesman engineers a deal for American to acquire Carioca for a 50 percent interest in the combined company, with the 50 percent to be split between Kessler and himself.

Peter Siskind becomes president of American Spirits on February 20, 1941 (see the NY Times clipping above). The business continues to grow, though shortages loom as the government puts all distilleries on producing industrial alcohol for the war effort. Kessler begins dreaming about his hotel and thinks it's time to cash in.

The buyer is Schenley, one of the big four liquor companies, for a rumored $4 million. Schenley continues to sell Carioca alongside other rum brands. American goes back to its knitting as a distiller for a time, though it makes a belated unsuccessful attempt to take over Schenley in the 1970s. Eventually, Schenley will be acquired by Guinness, the U.K. beverage giant.

We know that Kessler's million went into the Virgin Isle, and it paid off handsomely when after a decade of running the hotel he sold Hilton the long term license to operate it.

I haven't tried to track down Peter Siskind yet. He may have made out the best of all, having earned his cut by putting the deal together and by running the company successfully.

That's my current reconstruction of events. I'm sure I still have some things wrong, but this is getting closer.

Lots more on Sidney Kessler

Note: I have been in touch with members of the Kimelman and Fishman families about my writings about Sidney Kessler in this post and others on the blog. I hope to post new information that they care to share. This post has been edited since its original to reflect corrected information on Sidney Kessler's birth and death dates.

Well, I turned up all kinds of interesting information about Sidney Kessler. I'll do my best to summarize it here without posting full details on every point.

He was born June 20, 1897 to Polish immigrant parents in New York. I don't find him in early census years, but I do have his have his 1917 WWI draft registration. His mother's name is Yetta. His employer is L.K. Liggett, the drug store, at an address on Broadway in Manhattan.

In 1930, he is in the census at 645 Ocean Ave. in Brooklyn with his wife Frances and daughters Charlotte, age 8, and Louise, 5. His occupation is pharmacist. (Hmm. This is our supposed bootlegger?)

The next records are all from Ancestry's passenger lists database—ship and air manifests documenting more than 30 arrivals in New York from San Juan, Puerto Rico between the years 1936 and 1954. Usually he is traveling alone and carries one or two bags. On several trips he is accompanied by his wife, and on two by Peter Siskind.

The dates of the trips cluster like this: 10 trips between 1936 and 1940; 7 trips between 1944 and 1948; a flurry of 14 trips between February 1950 and April 1952 and then a final trip in September 1954. The trips are by steamship until 1944, after which they are air flights on Pan Am or Eastern Airlines.

Each record includes the passenger's local address. For the early trips, Sidney's home address is the same Ocean Avenue apartment from 1930. In the mid-'40s, he began using 101 Central Park West as his local address. This turns out also to have been the home address of his daughter Charlotte and her husband Henry Kimelman, of whom more later. For the last handful of trips, Sidney is using different hotels for his New York address.

While rich in new detail, this information generally fits what we already knew. Kessler was traveling regularly to Puerto Rico in the second half of the 1930s, presumably establishing distillery operations, arranging product shipment, dealing with officialdom and more. The frequency of his visits falls off during the war years and until the time of the sale of the company in 1946.

I don't know when Kessler first begins spending time during his trips not in Puerto Rico but in nearby St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. San Juan was the gateway city to the eastern Caribbean, so even later when he was shuttling to St. Thomas, he continued to travel through San Juan on the way to New York. I imagine he had come to know the Virgin Islands during his earlier trips and was intrigued with its potential for tourism and development.

After the sale of the liquor business, he decided to go all out for his dream and put together plans to build a grand resort hotel, one of the island's first, near the capital city Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. The investors in the project are Kessler, his two sons-in-law Henry Kimelman and Eliot Fishman, and a fourth man Benjamin Bayles. Plans are laid during the trips in 1947 and '48.

Construction begins in 1949 and Kessler is on scene to oversee things throughout 1950, when the hotel opens in mid December. Baseball star Jackie Robinson is on hand for the opening. Then Sidney continues to travel to New York throughout the next year as he moves his family and wraps up business on the mainland. After 1951, he lives in St. Thomas full time.

Before I leave the subject of passenger lists, I want to note there are no visits to the islands prior to the time of his association with American Spirits. He had not done any business involving Puerto Rican rum before 1935, at least none that required travel to Puerto Rico. My point is that so far we see no evidence of his involvement in the liquor business, either legally or not, before then. It doesn't mean he wasn't a bootlegger, not a mild mannered pharmacist, but we don't see it yet.

There is lots of other interesting stuff, however. Most of it has nothing to do with Walter Ruby, but now that we're getting to know Kessler, we might as well flesh him out.

• On January 5, 1930, Joseph Weber, a 31-year-old broker living at at 75 Lenox Road, Brooklyn, poisoned himself after brooding over losses said to have amounted to approximately $100,000 in the stock market. Before he became unconscious, he telephoned to his friend, Sidney Kessler, 645 Ocean Avenue, informing him that he was "very ill" and attempted to administer an antidote to himself. When Kessler arrived, he found his friend in a coma and Weber died at Kings County Hospital.

• In 1943, there was controversy in Congress over Roosevelt Administration policy in Puerto Rico, where there had been some unrest. The Bell subcommittee of the Committee on Insular Affairs conducted hearings on political, economic and social conditions in the U.S. owned commonwealth.

The following exchange from the hearing is between Cong. Fred Crawford (R-Mich) and a witness named Lee D. Miller:

Mr. MILLER: So then I went to see Mr. Bash and Mr. Bash said he was going to see if there was some way he could stop Carioca Rum.

Mr. CRAWFORD. Who is Carioca Rum?

Mr. MILLER. Carioca Rum is a domestic corporation which is wholly owned by the...

Mr. CRAWFORD. Can you give us the names of any individuals connected with them?

Mr. MILLER. The name of Sidney Kessler, the individual who originated the whole deal. You ought to get Moe Goldman up here. He will tell you.

Mr. CRAWFORD. ...I have spoken to Mr. Moe Goldman, who admits that he was the agent, also admitting that he has not the financial background to swing this deal himself. This was said in front of a witness. The shipment of 10000 empty barrels were filled with this residue grain mixture by the "J. Younge Grain Co.," at Peoria, Ill., and the whole scheme was undoubtedly concocted by one Sidney Kessler of Rum...

Intriguing to be sure. To learn more we'd need to get a full copy of the multi-volume committee hearings.

• The Virgin Isle Hotel was a considerable success as Kessler's vision of a Virgin Islands tourism boom came true. On April 18, 1957, just one month after his winning streak on the game show Twenty One had come to an end, Charles Van Doren married Geraldine Ann Bernstein at the Virgin Isle Hotel, and the couple honeymooned there for a week. The bride, a former secretary Van Doren had hired to respond to his fan mail, was a niece of hotel owner Sidney Kessler.

• A Sidney Kessler was involved in a scandal involving an ambassadorial appointment in the Kennedy administration. However, I just now realized that this was a different Sidney Kessler.

* However, we do get into politics next through Kessler son-in-law Henry Kimelman. Kimelman gained wealth via multiple business interests in the Virgin Islands, where he served as the first commissioner of commerce. He became involved in politics in the '60s, served as chief of staff in Stewart Udall's Interior Department, and became a close confidante to Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

McGovern was visiting with Kimelman on St. Thomas in December 1969 when news broke of Sen. Edward Kennedy's accident in Chappaquiddick, and it was Kimelman who convinced McGovern that this gave the senator an opening to run for president. Kimelman became the campaign finance chairman and chief fundraiser.

Kimelman's name was on President Richard Nixon's enemies list.

On February 29, 1972, Sidney Kessler was listed among significant contributors to the McGovern campaign. Kessler contributed $1000. Kimelman kicked in $24,000 and a colleague in his West Indies Corporation added $10,000. McGovern lost.

Henry Kimelman served in the Carter admistration as ambassador to Haiti during the regime of dictator Baby Doc Duvalier.

• Sidney Kessler died in St. Thomas at the age of 94 on July 7, 1991. Henry Kimelman passed away in 2009, leaving wife Charlotte Kimelman, three children and seven grandchildren.