An Old Address Book

I discovered an old address book of my father’s after Mom died, so never had a chance to ask her if she knew how to interpret some of the entries.  On the other hand, it is SO rich in mysteries and information that I thought I needed to include it, and see what we can learn from it.

I’ve provided a scan of the address book as PDF in the new “Documents” section on the right hand side of this page, so I think you should be able to blow up the pages, if you would like to.  This post is an annotated version, with the individual scanned pages, and some comments/interpretations by me as to what they might contain….

I will warn you all in advance that this post is going to be long, and likely confusing.  This address book appears to be my father’s address book shortly after he came to the US (August, 1938).  It includes US addresses and some European addresses.  The European addresses seem to be war-time or just post-war.  My guess is that Daddy had a separate address book that contained the addresses of friends and relatives when he left Germany, but unfortunately we don’t seem to have that one.

Just as background, Moshe Lieb Hochbaum, my father’s grandfather, had two wives and 8 children. This same Moshe Lieb Hochbaum was also my mother’s great-grandfather, so for you Brauners, this is also part of your history. My count is that these 8 children had 41 children between them, so Daddy had a total of 40 siblings and first cousins. That’s a lot of mishpokhe.  Of those, the eight cousins who were Mom’s aunts and uncles were all in America by 1922, Daddy and Henry and Sam came over in 1938, and Rose Schaufeld and her family came over in 1939.  Some of the others (like Regina and her cousin Golda) went to Palestine and other places, but the vast majority of the cousins were in still in Europe when the war broke out, and most of them died in the camps.

The Yad Vashem memorial site in Israel has an online database of “pages of testimony,” where people can put the information they know about people who perished in the camps, and I have been (slowly) going through that to add that information to my family tree.  Of the eight children of Moshe Lieb, the five or six  who were still alive at the start of the war all died in the camps.  (Daddy’s father and Mom’s grandmother had both died earlier, which may have been a factor in the two families being willing to emigrate.)  Many of the next generation also were killed in the camps.  Some miraculously survived.  These include “the two Reginas” (Regina Rappaport and Regina Singer), Duftsha Schoenberg, Lena Mandelbaum and Morris Barber, and perhaps others.  Of the next generation, the only survivors I know of are Charlie and Tamar Landau (Bertl Hochbaum), a lovely lady who lives in Israel.  I may be missing others.

With that introduction, here we go:

“Dago” (pronounced  DAH-go) was Daddy’s nickname in Europe and to a lesser extent here also.  My mother never called him Dago, but many of the relatives and his two business partners (also named David) did.  The address listed here is in Washington Heights, and may be the first address he had in the US.

This is page 2.  There's a column labeled “Geburstag,”  which means  “Birthday,” and in fact, this little book has some information about birth dates and occasionally about birth places.

The first entry, Rosi Brauner, is our grandmother, Rose, along with her address on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.   Note the second entry, which is for Mom, with her name misspelled.  26/11 1912 is her birthday in European format (November 26, 1912 in ours), and the penciled in address of 971 Madison Avenue is the address of the Carlyle Hotel, where Mom had her store.

There are entries for Fred Bihari (probably both home and work), who was Aunt Minnie’s husband. (Aunt Minnie was my mother’s aunt, and one of the Schorr sisters.) And there’s an entry for Uncle Sol.  I don’t know who Edna Bochner is.

And, of course, all the telephone numbers are in the old, pre-area code format, with two letters for the location and the other five for the number.  (Our Bayside phone number was BA 9-7363, for example.)

One of the fascinating things about this little book is the combination of European and American entries.  The first entry on this page, I think is for Lily (Leonie) Grun, who was living in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, and was instrumental in getting Charlie to the States, as we have discussed in previous posts.

Next is Henry Goldberg, who along with his wife Anjou, was instrumental in helping Daddy and his brothers come to the States.  I don’t know what their relationship was, but note that Henry is also living in Washington Heights. 

Julius Goldberg is Aunt Selma’s father (Aunt Selma was my Uncle Sam’s wife).  I think Aunt Selma’s uncle was from Chrzanow. 

Tina Green was a cousin of Charlie’s on his father’s side.  I vaguely remember her from Charlie and Alice’s wedding when she was sitting at the same table with me and Regina and Esme.  Regina was plying Esme with champagne.

I have no idea who Elias Grubner was, but there are Grubners on our family tree.  One was my mother’s paternal great-grandmother (according to Debbie Weston’s family tree). 

Sam Goldblatt was my mother’s Aunt Esther Schorr’s huband.  He was a butcher, and I think the second address says “Paramount Meat.” 

There are a couple more addresses and phone numbers for Tina Green, including one at the Hotel Plaza (on 161 St?).  I’m not sure what that’s about.  Alice may be able to help.

The next three lines are information about David Grun (Charlie’s father), Marta (his mother) and Charlie (Chaim Hirsch).  David seems to have been born on the 27^th of October, 1900, and (I’m guessing) his full name was David Samuel Grun.  I thought he was born in Tescen, Czechoslovakia, but this seems to say he was born in Biala.  I think the second column was their address in Prague, probably after they moved from Beuthen.  I have no idea why the 1904 date for Marta’s birth was changed to 1905.  The last column seems to say, Marta geb. (born) Shoenberg.  There is also a “Registernnummer”  (registration number seems to be the translation).  I don’t know what that is about or who it was for. It may have been a registration number in Germany.  More questions than answers…….

Lazar (Eliezer) Hochbaum was a half-uncle of my father’s, and the grandfather of Tamar Landau in Israel.  He died in Auschwitz.

This page also has the birthdays of Daddy’s sister Erna (Ester), her husband Henry, and son, Chaim Hirsch, all of whom died in the Holocaust. [Chet, note the spelling of Hirsch.  I’m not sure which I should be using!]

My guess is that the address on the bottom is a forwarding address, but I don’t know where that is.  Notice that it is also X’ed out. 

And on this page, also is Regina’s address in Israel, which I can’t read, and her birth date.  I think the address may be Kibbutz Shamir (see my last post).

On this page we have Uncle Henry’s address in the army, in Mom’s handwriting, and then an address in Brooklyn, Sam’s address in the Bronx, and two Bergen-Belsen addresses, which is enough to make you stop breathing if you haven’t already. 

Berta Hochbaum (Tamar Landau) was Daddy’s first-cousin once removed and was indeed in Bergen-Belsen.  She survived the war as a teenager and moved to Palestine, where she and her husband (also a survivor) were active in the resistance to the British.  He, I believe, became an economic minister in the Israeli government.  They live in Jerusalem.  Her parents both died in concentration camps.

Sigfried Hochbaum was also a first-cousin once removed, and also seems to have survived the war and moved to Israel, but I don’t know anything about him.  His parents perished in Auschwitz.

The David Hochbaum here is Duftsha Schoenberg, and Regina Hochbaum is his sister, Regina Rappaport.

According to my family tree, Berek Hochbaum was a half-cousin of Daddy’s, Gusta his wife, and Monek their son.  I don’t know anything else about them, except that seems to be a USSR address (?) 

And, I assume that the phone numbers on the bottom are NYC numbers for Gina and Sam.

Binem Sonnenshein was the husband of an aunt of Daddy’s, and I think was Regina Singer’s father.  He and his wife and Regina Singer’s husband all died in the camps. Regina survived and lived with Regina and Lutsi Rappaport (both also survivors) for many years.

I don’t know anything about the next two entries, but notice that one of them is for Santiago, Chile.  Refugees were going wherever they could get in, and it was very tough to get in anywhere.  Daddy and his brothers wound up here, but if that hadn’t worked they were looking at Argentina and Australia.  Some of Charlie’s father’s family wound up in Australia; others in Shanghai.

Leonie Schwartz and Isidor Schwarz are Charlie’s aunt Lily Green and her husband.

I don’t know anything about Josef Gruen, who I assume was somehow related to Charlie’s father.

Totally overwhelmed? I’ll try something a little simpler next time………

Regina in Palestine

When we last left Regina, she was on her way from Beuthen, Germany, via Trieste, to Palestine.  It was January 1, 1938.  She was 22 years old. The rest of her family is still in Beuthen, Germany.  Her photo album is full of pictures of her friends from Beuthen, the way a college yearbook might be, saying things like "remember me." 
This is my first pass at trying to fill in Gina's years in Palestine, from 1938 until 1945. Gina used to tell lots of stories about her years in Palestine, but even back then they all got garbled in my head, so this may be a little incoherent (to say nothing of inaccurate).  

To start this chapter, and help you get oriented, here's a geography lesson on our Israeli connections.  The map and notes are from Aliza Link, a second cousin.  Aliza is my age, and lives with her husband Dan in a suburb of Jerusalem.

[To fill in some names that might not be familiar to you:  Golda Hochbaum Mendel, Aliza's mother,  was a cousin of Daddy's.  Tamar Landau (aka Berta Hochbaum) I hope to write about again soon.  She is a first cousin once-removed of Daddy's, and was a young camp survivor, as was her husband Simcha. Shlomo Hochbaum you have already heard about.  He was our war hero cousin who singlehandedly stopped the Syrian tanks in 1948.]



In any case, Regina was in an agricultural school in Nahalal, a moshav, or agricultural community that was one of the earliest in Palestine.  Moshe Dayan's family lived there and he had gone to the same school (before Regina got there).  Regina's background was not exactly agricultural, however, and the story she always told was that they told her to milk a cow and she fainted dead away.

So they seem to have put her to work peeling and slicing vegetables and cleaning pots (Gina was a superb dishwasher later in her life....this may be where it comes from.)  She said, "I cried bitterly from the onions."

Golda Meir visited the school once.  She left a lasting impression on Regina, because she was a chain smoker.  (Gina was, too.)

In the beginning, money was not an issue.  Gina's schooling was paid for, and her clothes were paid for.  Her cousin Golda, however, "was in the worst kibbutz I had ever seen.  Torn shoes, and Arabs shooting from all sides.  So whatever I had I gave her."  My notes say that Golda was living in a tent.  We'll have to see what Aliza says about this.

We have lots of pictures of Gina with friends in Palestine. Here are a couple of them. Perhaps one day I'll scan them and add them, just to give you all a sense of her very social nature, but they are mostly people we don't know (or at least I don't), so I'll leave that for another day. 

Pretty soon the war was on, and Gina decided she was too old to stay in school.  And she had no interest in agriculture - "I couldn't kill a worm.  Couldn't stand the blood."  Marta sent her 10 Marks every month, and so did Dave and Erna.  She used to travel a lot among her German friends and spend the money...."I was a welcome guest."

She seems to have moved from Nahalal to a kibbutz, where she spent nine months.  I think this may be Kibbutz Shamir, in its early days, near Haifa.  (It has since moved close to the Golan Heights and become very prosperous.)  There is an address in my father's old address book which I THINK says Kibbutz Shamir, with a Haifa PO Box address. 

They opened up a brick factory, and Gina worked there cutting bricks. She was the only woman in the factory and very proud of that. "I was tops in every field.  Wasn't afraid of anything."  We have a great picture:

I'm not sure how long that lasted.  Gina said, "I wanted to be a nurse in the worst way.  I went to Jerusalem, but they chose someone else."

I'm not sure what the year is, but Regina is now in Jerusalem with no money.  Getting work is very difficult, because of the influx of refugees. "Hundreds and hundreds of refugees, and absolutely no way to get work."

She stayed with her friend Leah, seen later in the picture below in the flower shop she and her husband later owned (in Jerusalem?).



But Leah had lost her job and they only had two pounds saved.  Gina borrowed clothes from her and went to work for six weeks for a farmer whose wife was sick.  She took care of his kid and cooked and picked strawberries until the wife got better.  Gina says she sent Golda a half a pound, and gave Leah back her clothes.

When that job ended, Gina wound up working two jobs.  She cleaned at Pension Ascher, run by someone she knew (Esther Borgia (sp?)), for four hours a day and worked for a Dr. Auerbach who was a professor somewhere for four hours a day.

I'm not sure how long that lasted either, but Gina's connections seemed to have helped her, and she wound up living in the apartment of a doctor who had gone into the army, taking care of his furniture and his books.  That seems to have lasted two years, until the Arab who owned the house was released from jail and took back his house, and Gina had to leave.  

I think the rest of Gina's years in Palestine were more of the same.  Scrounging out a living, but being generous (possibly over-generous) to her friends. My mother used to complain that while Regina was in Palestine and my parents had very little money, Regina used to beg my father to send money, and then, when he did, she bought umbrellas to give to her friends.

Regina was always very social.  Here's a quote for you:  "Boys were afraid to bring me home.  I said, if you are afraid to bring me home, how are you going to marry me?" 

She never did get married.  My father said she was too fussy.  (This was said as a lesson to me.)  She always did have a warm spot for Israel and her friends.  Leah and her husband used to come visit her for weeks in NY, sleeping in her bed while Gina slept on the sofa, and Gina took frequent trips back to Israel to visit. 

Regina emigrated to the US in 1945.  The war was over, and what remained of her immediate family was here.  She got typhoid fever on the ship over, and was taken off the ship to recover in a hospital in Spain.  She always complained that she had thick, wavy hair until she got sick.  She sailed from Bilbao in September 1945, arriving in Philadelphia on October 6th.

Here's the ship manifest:

And here is a picture taken upon her arrival:

L to R:  Daddy, Aunt Hilda, Regina, Uncle Sam and Aunt Selma