A Letter from England

In among Charlie's papers, I found this fascinating and mysterious letter from England, addressed to my father.  It is undated, but obviously was written not long after the war ended.

I'm hoping you can read this from this link to the original, typewritten on fragile yellowed airmail paper,  but just in case you can't, here's my re-typed copy:

Mrs. Hana Lefkovits

1, Smith Street,

WATFORD, Herts, England.

 

Dear Mr. Hochbaum,

I suppose that you have heard about me already, but unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure to meet you personally yet. David Gruen, your brother-in-law is the brother of my mother. Well to cut a very long story short I have heard from my aunt Leonie Gruen about the poor orphan Heinele and got immediately in touch with the Rev. Solomon Schoenfield who is trying to get the child over here to England.  I should be only to happy to have him here and do everything for him as it is not only my duty but I know the child well and love him too. You see there are not many of our relatives over in Czechoslovakia alive, we ourselves cannot trace my mother and brother up till today and for the few who were spared, we must do all in our power in order to help them heal their terrible wounds. It is really too tragic to think that we shall not see dear David and Martha and so many others again.

 

Please write to me Mr. Hochbaum, and tell me if it is at all advisable to get Heinele over here, what I mean to say is my husband is in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the British Army in Burma since 26 months, he is due back in England any time now -  when he gets back, we shall go back to Czechoslavakia in order to straighten out a few things and then we shall consider where we intend to finally settle down. Leonie writes and tells me that you are trying to get the child over to the U.S.A.--  which would of course be the best for him as the food rations are very severe here and I am really afraid that I should not be in a position to offer him everything he should have after the inhuman hardship he had to go through.  Do not misunderstand me. I should be only too happy to do everything, it is not the question of money, as my husband is a Doctor and my allowance would be enough for all the care the boy needs. I am only stating the facts to you as I am sure you will understand me. If it is easier to obtain the affidavit for Heinele from here than of course there is no question about it all and he shall come to me to stay for the time until everything is ready for him to go to you. Please do tell me all that so that I am informed about these things. The child as I am informed is in the Tatra [Mountains] at the moment and is recovering very well indeed, he seems to have put on a good deal of weight and Leonie writes, that he is really doing fine -- how happy I should be to be in a position to offer him a proper home and care which he needs so much.

 They say the poor thing has been in 6 Concentration Camps and has seen my mother and brother in Auschwitz, where his poor parents died. It is too horrible to think about the life and suffering Heinele had to go through and believe me - we have to see that he will grow up in the way David would wish him to.

I shall wait for your answer then Mr. Hochbaum and please let me know

what would be the best for Heinele and I shall be only too pleased to help him.

 

With best regards to you,

yours,

 (signed) Hana/Basker (?)/Lefkovitz

 

P. S.

I am writing to you only about everything as you, I am sure, understand

our position better than our people in Czechoslovakia, you see they imagine
that we have everything over here and do not know that we have so few houses, after having been bombed out several times. and the food is scarce, etc.  l have not a house myself but am staying in a furnished room and a kitchen until my husband comes back.  At the moment I am working in an office,  but should give up my job up immediately the child would come to England.   Please understand that financially there is no worry at all - there is only the accomodation and the food problem.

If you have seen Foyle's War (a PBS series about the home front in England during WWII, which I highly recommend), this letter absolutely captures the England it portrays, with its food rations and lack of housing. 

So just who was Hana Lefkovits?  I called Alice to find out.  And that turned out to be another story.....stay tuned....

Restitution (Part II)

Andrea sent me a comment on my last blog post (on Regina's restitution file):

Thanks, Fran, for this write-up. We, also, have the letters of restitution for my father. I gather he, Henry and your Dad got far less than Regina because they were the owners of businesses in America. Regina was considered an owner in Germany but suffered because she was only an employee here. - Andrea

I think Andrea is right.  As it turns out, I do have copies of the restitution checks sent to my father and Uncle Sam:

Sam's restitution check - $3,437.19

My father's restitution check - $996.44

You know the expression, bubkes?  And note that Sam's check was sent to Selma, after Sam died.

I asked my mother about this once.  Her view was that my father wanted nothing to do with the German government, and, besides, he hadn't saved any papers.  So it isn't clear what is going on here.  I don't know whether the restitution checks were need-based, and, if so, it is likely that Andrea is right -- that Sam and Henry and my father got a lot less money because they did, in fact, own their own businesses.  They all seem to have used the same lawyer, so that doesn't seem to have been the issue.

I thought you also might like to see some additional pictures we have of the business.  Here's a scan of the business card they used, which I think is incredibly cool:

And a photo of Sam and Erna. I'm assuming they were accepting a delivery..

And one of a very young Charlie (with a friend) in front of a sign of some sort...

Regina's Restitution File and the Business in Beuthen

In 1937, my father and his five siblings (and Marta and Erna's families) were all living in Beuthen, in Upper Silesia, Germany, and running the family fruit and vegetable wholesale business. 

My father and his two brothers, Sam and Henry, emigrated to the United States in August, 1938, and Regina left for Palestine in January, 1938.   Did they see the writing on the wall?  Or did something else motivate them to leave their family and community with no money for an unknown future?

The latter, it turns out.  

Beginning in the 1950's the West German government passed a series of laws providing restitution and compensation for Jews whose properties and livelihoods were confiscated in the Holocaust.

Regina's restitution file is about 2 inches thick. It consists of letters and copies of letters almost entirely in German between Regina and a lawyer named Dr. Erich Cohn, who was at different times based in New York, Zurich and Berlin.

Much of the file consists of Regina's handwritten copies of letters she sent to Dr. Cohn, which are going to be hard to decipher and translate, but one typewritten document provides insight as to what was going on, and gives us a good look at the state and nature of the family business in Beuthen and Gleiwitz, and what happened to it under the Nazis. 

The document is a statement that Regina was to have notarized and submit as part of her claim.  The following is my rough translation (thanks to Google) of most of this document:

I was born on 20 November 1915 in Chrzanowin Krakow / Poland. My father was called ChaimHirsch Hochbaum, my mother Fanny Hochbaum born Laufer.  They were both Jewish, Iam therefore a full Jew in the sense of theso-called Nuremberg Laws.

In 1930 I took over along with 5 other siblings of  our deceased parents a fruit, tropical fruits and vegetables wholesale business which dealt as a specialty with imports from Southand Eastern Europe. The headquarters of this businesswas in Bytom [Beuthen]  /Upper Silesia, company Chaim H. HochbaumBytom 0 / SRitterstrasse 7 The firm existed since 1896. I was involved to 1/6of the business. In 1934 we opened a branch in Gliwice [Gleiwitz]Silesia Mittelstrasse 12 We employed two drivers, two workers and two clerks. I worked together with the other siblings. In the years 1930 to 1935 the annual revenue estimate was  800000-1 Million RM. My own income was estimated to be 10,000 -. RM a year.Unfortunately, all of my documents, including tax returns, were destroyed. After 1935 the turnover has decreased slightly, and until 1937 it  was about 600,000 - RM year.. My earnings were about the same as before.

In December 1937, the Nazi authorities, at the initiative of the Upper Silesian Nazis forced us to sell the business to an Aryan. We sold the business in January 1938 to William Pyka for RM 6,000 -. 8000.- RM. The exact amount I cannot remember. The fee was determined by the Nazi authorities. This was for the business, associated vehicles, two trucks and a passenger car, as well as for the two business premises in Bytom and Gliwice, the business shelves, boxes and other furnishings.  A similar operation in Berlin at that time was sold for about 200,000 -. RM, bearing in mind that the import permit alone justified a high remuneration. We also paid to the tax office Bytom (Land Revenue Office Neisse) the Reich duty, the amount of which I cannot remember.  All my documents are destroyed. From Bytom I immigrated to Palestine from where I was placed in a school for girls. For my work I only got food --  no money, salary, or clothing. I was there until the end of 1941, I left school and got a job in 1942, I earned $ 120 - 1943, 150 - l944, 150 - 1945, 170 - In 1946, I emigrated to New York where my family maintained me until 1947. In the year 1948 my income was about $1400.  From 1949 to 1953 about $ 2,000 -. In 1954 and 1955, about  $2500 -.

For the above described process I call as witnesses

Johann Schaufelt

1164 Clinton Ave.
lrvington, New Jersey

and

Dawid Ulreich, 517 Fort Washington Ave.
New York, N.Y. .

I raise compensation claims because:

1)  Damage to property

As the business as mentioned had a value of approximately 200,000 RM, in the event of sale I would have been granted at least 1/6, or about 33,333 RM, but I only received 1000-1500 RM, so I suffered a loss of about 32000 RM, without even considering the goodwill of the business.

2)  Damage to ongoing livelihood

To this day, it was not possible for me to open my own business again, and therefore there has been significant damage suffered in my career advancement.

Sworn to before me this

……day of January 1957


A couple of notes:

1) The numbers in here were undoubtedly provided by my father.  Regina would have been 18 in 1933 and it was unlikely that she was involved in the dollars and cents part of the business. 

2) How much money are we talking about?  In this period, a dollar was worth approximately 2.48 Reichmarks, so annual revenue of 800,000 RM would be approximately $322,500, which sounds like a good business that was supporting not only the six siblings but Marta and Erna's families.  If they sold the business for 8000 RM (the high end) they got $3225. 

3) Regina did get her restitution payments.  Chet remembers Regina and my father arguing whether she should take the money as a single payment or as an ongoing pension.  She wound up (at my father's insistence), taking it as a pension, and it was what kept her financially solvent and independent.

4) Bytom and Gliwice are the Polish (and, therefore, current) names of Beuthen and Gleiwitz, which were part of Germany in the 1930's.

Morris' Suitcase

My grandfather on my father's side, Chaim Hirsch Hochbaum, was one of 8 children.  And all his siblings and half-siblings had children, so  my father had 34 first cousins that I know about. 

Among them were people you may or may not recognize -- the "two Reginas"  (Regina Rappaport and Regina Singer), Jerry Schaufeld's mother (Rose Schaufeld), Duftsha Schoenberg,  Aliza Link's mother (Golda Hochbaum Mendel), Tamar Landau's father (Pincus Hochbaum),  my mother's aunts and uncles (Ida, Minnie, Yetta, Max Schorr, etc.) and Lena Barber Mandelbaum and her brother Morris.

I re-connected with Paula Barber -- Morris' daughter -- at her mother's funeral in May.  Paula is a second cousin, but I hadn't seen her since we were kids.  When I introduced myself, these words tumbled out of her mouth:  "Your father is the reason my father got to America."   I hadn't heard this story, and I wanted to, so recently I sent her an email and she invited me to dinner with her and her husband,  Howard Buxbaum, at their home in Morristown.

I brought her some pictures of her father taken in Europe in 1947 and a copy of the ship manifest that showed him arriving in New York on Christmas Day, 1947.  The ship manifest (below) shows Morris' destination as 10 E. 198th Street, in the Bronx -- the apartment Mom and Dad and Esme and Charlie and I were all living in at that time.

Morris, born in 1925, was 15 years old when the war began, and 20 years old when it ended.  As you can see from this picture, taken in 1947, this was the good-looking branch of the family.  He and his sister, Lena, had been born in Beuthen, in Germany, where his parents. like my father's family,  were in the wholesale fruit business.  They had been deported to Poland in 1938 because their parents were Polish.  Morris and Lena and an older sister, Regina Barber, were in labor camps for most of the war, which probably helped them survive.  That, and the fact that they were young, resilient teenagers.  It also helped that they spoke German fluently. Their mother, Pesl Hochbaum, their father, and their two younger brothers were sent to Auschwitz and died there.     




Morris Barber - 1947

 



Lena Barber - 1947

I'll write more in a future post about the labor camps and Morris' and Lena's experiences during the war, but what I've been focused on lately is what happened AFTER the war?  The war ended in the spring of 1945, and Morris didn't come to the US until December, 1947.  Lena and her husband Joe Mandelbaum, came in March, 1950.  Where did they live during that time?  How did they survive?  How did they find each other?  And how did they find my father or vice versa?  Last week, I visited Lena and Joe Mandelbaum and learned something about this, and will have more to say in a future post.

While we were talking about all this at Paula's house, however, Paula’s husband disappeared from the kitchen and came back with the suitcase Morris had brought with him when he came to US. 

 

 

 

On one side are Morris' name (Morritc here, Morritz on the ship manifest, and Morris in the US) and "Epfenhausen" -- the name of the Displaced Persons' camp he was in.

 

 

 

On the other side, are my father's name (the German version) and our address in the Bronx.

 

 

 

 

I thought this was an amazing heirloom.

Morris and Shirley and their children (Paula and her older brother, Stanley) lived in Co-op City for much of their lives, and then retired to Delray Beach.  The EWR tags on the suitcase are from when Morris and his wife Shirley moved from Florida to an assisted living place in NJ.  Morris and Shirley have both since died. 

 

Here's a picture of Shirley from the 1949:

 

 

Morris didn't talk about his experiences in the war, and Paula was 12 before she realized that her grandparents had died in Auschwitz.  When Shindler’s List came out, Steven Spielberg started sponsoring testimonials from survivors, and Morris talked about his experiences.  Paula gave me a copy of her father’s testimonial.  By the time he gave the testimonial, Morris was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s, so the DVD is both full of information about his experiences -- which I'll also address in a future post -- and moving on a couple of different counts.

And here are a couple of footnotes to this post:

*  Morris made his living in the US as a tailor and “finisher” working on high end couture for Mollie Parnis (a well-known dress designer).  One of his claims to fame was that he made the dress that Pat Nixon wore when Nixon went to China!

*  Paula said, "Your father sponsored my father.  Brought him to this country and the first week he was here took him to a Yankee game."

I loved that last story, but it is probably not literally true, since Morris arrived in the US on Christmas day.....

Ship manifest