An 80+ year family mystery is gradually solved.

None of my grand parents were alive by the time I was born. That has driven me more to want to know more about my family history. From my parents, I knew the birthplaces of my two grandmothers and paternal grandfather.  Tragically, I knew that my two grandmothers were murdered in Auschwitz. My paternal grandfather died anonymously fighting for the Austro-Hungarian Army in the one of the unknown battlefields of Europe in WW 1. My maternal grandfather’s birthplace and place of death were both mysteries.

My mother had an extraordinary memory but she knew little about her parents’ past because they were both orphaned at an early age. She knew her mother Leie’s birthplace, Oswiecim, Poland, but as far as her father Salomon’s birthplace, all she knew was that it was a town that sounded like Janov and it was in Poland. When I tried to find that town in Poland, there were about 6 towns or cities that included Janov in their names. My mother also didn’t know what happened after her father left Germany for Italy before WW 2 started.

About three months ago, I finally decided to commit to researching what happened to him.  Then, out of the clear blue, I got a very surprising email. The subject heading of:  Your grandfather Leopold (his German name) Elter caught my attention instantly. Nobody on earth other than my relatives knew that I had a connection to this person. I quickly scanned the end of the email to determine who sent this and found it signed by Nils Steffen – Public History – University of Heidelberg. The email is below:

Dear Mr. Polak,


This is my third attempt to get in contact with you. Before I tried it via HHRC and Facebook, but I was not successful. Maybe this time? That would be great!

Currently I'm working at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. I am preparing a teaching project with the students at the History Department named "Fled, unwanted, deported - 'undesirable aliens' in Weimar Republic". At our regional archives I found the case file of Salomon Leopold Elter (* 10/10/1885). If my research is correct, he was the father of Henriette (Henni) Sara Elter (*07/21/1920, Mannheim) – your mother.

The ambition of this project is to reconstruct the ‚system’ of German thinking on migrants (particularly Jews from Eastern Europe, because this was the biggest group) in the time of the first democratic period in Germany (1920s). Furthermore we try to research individual biographies of those people who came to Germany and had to leave again by expulsion. Together with my students I do some research in the regional archives. In cooperation with a theater company in Heidelberg we will try to let those found archival files ‚speak’ on the stage. So our goal is a scenic reading for the public in October together with a companion volume to publish some sources and case files.

I don’t know if you follow the news from Europe/Germany about the fled people from Syria. Many refugees came to Germany and their arrival arouses fears of „foreign domination“ in some parts of the society.  Even a new right-wing party, the AFD (alternative for Germany) was founded and is grewing fast with populist phrases about some Muslim danger, closing borders, and expulsion. I don’t have to tell you with your family history, that there are many similarities with the pre-Nazi era in Germany. The examination of the past on the stage may help to scrutinize and question the actual situation.

To cut that long story short, I want to ask you, if you are interested in those (very few) documents on the expulsion of your grandfather? I could send them to you. Furthermore I’d like to ask if you have some more information (or documents, photos) on your grandfather and his family situation in Mannheim. I already found the short memory report of your mother and the interview of your uncle Simon for the Shoah Foundation from 1996. And a few days ago we found out, that in Karlsruhe there many files of your family's claims on reparation after 1945.

Sending best regards across the ocean

Nils Steffen


_____ 

Nils Steffen, M.A. 
Akademischer Mitarbeiter 
Angewandte Geschichte – Public History 

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg 
Historisches Seminar 
Grabengasse 3-5 
D-69117 Heidelberg 



You’re probably wondering how Nils found me. The Internet! During his research he uncovered documents that also involved my mother. He simply Googled my mother’s name and he was directed to a memorial story written about my mother in the retirement home (The Atrium in Portland, ME) newsletter where she lived until she died last year at the age of 94. There was a relatively easy connection from that story to me.

I was stunned and what followed was an extraordinary trove of documents about my grandparents and mother, some of them powerfully emotional that finally unlocked most of the mysteries of my grandfather Salomon’s past.

The most basic history I learned was that my grandfather was born in Chrzanov, (pronounced Janov), Poland in 1885. As soon as I found out this information I checked www.ancestry.com and within two clicks I found my grandparents’ wedding certificate from 1911 in Worms, Germany. (It had obviously been there all this time but I never searched). This was extremely significant because Chrzanov is only about 10 miles from my grandmother’s birthplace of Oswiecim. Evidently they had met in Poland and immigrated together to Germany. I don’t know why they left Poland but I can assume that it was for economic and safety reasons.  I’ll provide more details about that story in my next post.

The documents confirmed some of my mother’s oral history that my grandfather left Germany for Italy in the mid 1930’s. He wound up in a series of concentration camps in Italy when WW 2 started.  For unique cultural reasons, the Italians were fundamentally not as anti-Semitic as other European countries like France, Poland, and certainly Germany. Mussolini, while aligned with Hitler, was not interested in murdering his Italian Jewish citizens, some of who had been in Italy 2000 years. He was pressured to arrest and incarcerate them in concentration camps.  These were not death camps, but many in these camps were eventually sent to the death camps including Auschwitz.

So far the documentation available indicates that my grandfather Salomon was shot and killed somewhere near Macerata, Italy towards the end of the war. Macerata, Italy is near the Adriatic ports that would have been the best place to get out of Italy by sea. My mother’s oral history is that her father had been trying unsuccessfully to go by ship from Italy to Palestine.  I hope to be able to find out more details now that I have clear reference points.

The most powerful document allowed me to actually  “hear” my grandmother Leie’s voice and inner strength.  My pregnant grandmother Leie, caring for 4 children had the chutzpah to directly advocate for her husband. It’s likely that she only spoke Yiddish, and not German. Nils told me that this was extremely unusual and that typically only lawyers would do this kind of advocacy at the State Ministry. This amazing letter is found at the link below. You may need to paste the address in your browser.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bODT_guGE1zxIMwl-OT-OCZPVKXxbN-4BKhIzlK1eJw/edit?usp=sharing   

If you can't access this document through Google Docs, let me know and I'll email it to you.         

Some of the details of this document again corroborated my mother’s oral history.  This 1921 document was a transcribed powerfully emotional testimony that my grandmother Leie provided to the minister of the State of Baden. My grandfather had innocently (as my mother remembered) followed a communist demonstration during the Mannheim riots of 1918-9. This was during a particularly tumultuous period after Germany lost WW 1 and there was a power struggle including from communists.

My grandfather was arrested and imprisoned for 5 months and evidently suffered some kind of emotional breakdown that my grandmother referenced.  Although they were planning to deport him, apparently her emotional appeal was successful and my grandfather was not deported at that time.

For reasons still unknown to our family, he did leave his family and went to Italy during the mid 1930’s. My mother did tell me in her oral history that he then tried coming back to Germany to visit his family, although he did it illegally and was caught by the authorities and warned that if he returned (even with his family in Germany) he would be imprisoned. That was the last time my mother and her family saw him.

I visited Mannheim Germany (my mother’s birthplace) in 1970 on a backpacking trip but felt extremely uncomfortable there at the time. There were still too many living Nazis who had willingly directed and participated in the Genocide of my family members and millions of other Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses and political enemies.

I was intensely interested in how Germany had changed in 46 years; in my mother’s hometown of Mannheim; my grandparents’ history and their immigrant story, that I decided to attend one of the presentations of the play at the University of Heidelberg on Sunday, October 16 with my wife Emily and my brother Raymond.  

The next post will highlight our recent trip to Germany and the docu-drama play at the University of Heidelberg focusing on my grandparents’ story.