As a child, when I asked older members of my family about earlier generations I was given little information. This depressed me, being a first generation Swede. Others in my school seemed to have roots centuries back in time. The Historical Museum in Stockholm could stage an exhibition ‘10,000 years in Sweden’ but it seemed I came from nowhere. So I started searching. I was delighted to find that a directly ascending ancestor of mine had settled in Denmark in 1801. While not Sweden, it seemed preferable to the rest of the European continent, even if relations between Sweden and Denmark had been hostile enough at times.
The nazi era and World War II did stimulate my Jewish identity, but it was not until my retirement in 1983 that I had the time and opportunity to devote as much energy as I liked to my search. Aside from satisfying my own curiosity about my family’s past, I wanted to give my children and grandchildren information on our background, and, perhaps, a sense of appreciation of the odds against their own coming into this world, as well as the importance of not wasting the gift of life, denied so often to untold others.
The work can be roughly divided into five parts. The first, Nation Without a Country, begins with an eyewitness account of the First Crusade, in Chapter 1. A gentleman kind enough to look over my manuscript was puzzled by the first sentence of that chapter, which begins with “The Christian Church”. He felt it was an unusual start for the history of a Jewish family. Perhaps so, but it was deliberate. The attitude and policies of the Church largely decided the existential condition of Jews of Europe, certainly from the First Crusade through, although to a significantly lesser degree, the beginning of the Era of Enlightenment, and even later. The Dark Ages (Chapter 2) were indeed dark for Jews in particular. The areas where most of Ruth’s (my wife) and my own ancestors lived – Bohemia, which is the present-day Czech Republic, and the Rhineland – were afflicted by the murder, rape, pillage, forced conversions and torture indulged in by Crusaders on their holy mission to liberate Jerusalem from the Moslems, setting an example for others to follow.
Chapter 3 (Marriage: love, money and survival) deals with what is sometimes the most important event in one’s life. It discusses marriage customs among German Jewry in general, with examples taken from our families. Given the importance of marriage to the individual concerned, it is a harsh picture from bygone times. Marriage can be problematic enough, but when one tries to imagine what the situation was for the Jewish individual, abused by a malevolent society, intent on keeping down the number of Jews while extracting as much money as possible from them, it is a bleak picture indeed.
The second part (Bohemia, Chapters 4-7) provides information on living conditions of Jews in an area where five of our eight grandparents lived or were born. Chapter 5 deals with the so-called emancipation of Jews in Europe, i.e., the portion of Europe under the control of France in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is included in this part because of its impact also on Jews in Bohemia. Moreover, it is included to provide a balanced perspective. Specialists or others interested in this period of history will be familiar with the contents of this chapter but, in general, people have too favorable a view of the background and mechanics of this phase of Jewish history (in my opinion, at least).
The third part (Hamburg, Chapters 8-11) is devoted to an area where an ancestor of mine settled during the early 17th century, when Rabbi Samuel ben Jehuda Altona became one of the founders of the Altona Jewish congregation.
The fourth part (Family Roots, Chapters 12-15) is family specific. Chapter 12 (Unproven connections: Rabbis, Court Jews and others) describes briefly people who might be directly or collaterally part of my family tree, although no supporting evidence has yet been found. Chapter 13 (Oppenheim name and migrations) discusses family names, as well as possible stops by different generations as they were driven from place to place across the continent of Europe. Chapter 14 (Family facts, fragments and legends) contains 12 minibiographies starting with Salomon ben Moses Oppenheim (1765-1819) and ending with myself, Ernst Oppenheim (b. 1922). In between there are biographies devoted to Ruth’s and my parents. The biography of a younger brother of my father – Rudolph Oppenheim (1885-1945) tries to trace the steps taken by the Hamburg nazi deportation bureaucrats, in executing the ‘final solution’ decreed by Hitler. Now, over 50 years later, it is still ghastly to consider how a man, who had been crippled during World War I while serving Germany, was treated together with his wife Hedwig. They ended up in a gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz.
Chapter 14 also contains two segments that pertain to the Danish phase of my family’s past. One is a translation into English of a short story by Henrik Pontoppidan, Nobel prize winner in literature in 1917 together with his compatriot P. M. Gjellerup. It seems, to me at least, that even the translation into English shows what an outstanding writer Henrik Pontoppidan was. As explained in the introductory note to that part of the text, the main character was a cousin once removed of my father’s. She was the daughter of the one-time rabbi of the Jewish congregation of Randers, Denmark, where my great-grandfather was born. The second Danish segment describes the unusual life of a relative by marriage. Wulff Joseph Wulff is descended from Abraham Kantor, a person mentioned in the 17th century memoirs of Glückel von Hameln (Hamburg). Wulff Joseph Wulff founded a family on the Gold Coast of Africa, present day Ghana. His descendants live mainly in Ghana, but there are other descendants of his also in England and the United States. They are quite numerous, far more than the ones descended from Salomon Moses Oppenheim who came to Randers in 1801 with his future brother-in-law Gerson Chajim Bückeburg/Heinemann.
Chapter 15 provides a lineal ‘who-is-who’, listing directly ascending ancestors of Ruth and myself, together with details of their families where these are known.
The fifth part (World War II, Chapters 16-19), starts with a description of Kristallnacht in Innsbruck, which occurred November 9th, 1938, one year before World War II formally broke out. From a Jewish point of view, this could be considered the effective declaration of war, that subsequently escalated into World War II. Chapter 16 describes the experiences of those members of my wife’s family who were victims of this event in Innsbruck. To this day the Innsbruck region remains distinctly more judophobic than the average of the rest of Austria, which nota bene, may be judophobic enough.
Chapter 17 records the recollections in general of members of our family, and recollections in particular of the nazi era. During the interviews some surprises crop up. Thus the nazi occupation chief of Holland – subsequently hanged for war crimes – a certain Seyss-Inquart, while gauleiter in Vienna, did arrange for a Jewish former business colleague of his to get back the apartment taken from him (Trude Oakfield interview). Also, there is a reference to the murder of members of the military tribunal who sentenced the assassins of Dollfuss (Hilde and Hans Pasch interview). In the same interview, Hans Pasch states that it was possible to buy visas to enter England for 10 guineas per visum. Another little known or even unknown glimpse of the German occupation of France comes to light in the interview with Edith Lesh. She relates how the Hapsburg organization in Paris saved her from deportation from France, and likely death, when she was on her way to report to the Velodrom d’hiver, as instructed by the French police authorities, in their round up of Jews for the nazis, to send them to death camps. The interviews with Hans Pasch and William Oakfield both deal in part with the infamous ‘Dunera transport’ of Jewish refugees from England to Australia. It seems conditions on board the Dunera were perceived differently by Hans and William. Hans was very bitter, while William seems to have accepted transportation and camp conditions with more equanimity.
Chapter 18 (Shoa) concerns the holocaust, ending with the recollections of Trude Roubichek of her experiences in a number of concentration camps and work camps, as well as her post-war life in communist Czechoslovakia. Trude is a first cousin of my wife Ruth; they share maternal grandparents. Chapter 19 (In Memoriam) is a list of Shoa victims who are closely related to Ruth or to me by blood or marriage.
Interspersed throughout the book are passages translated from other languages. Where these are brief, the text is indented; where longer, the text overlays a grey screen. These devices are intended to distinguish my writing from the works of others.
My ancestor search began in 1945 when I visited the then librarian of the Jewish congregation in Copenhagen, the late Joseph Fisher, who was very helpful, as was his successor in later years, the late Julius Margolinski. I owe a great debt to the late Dr Günther Marwedel of the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden of the University of Hamburg, and equally so to Mr. Jürgen Sielemann of the ‘Staatsarchiv’ of the City of Hamburg, whose patience with me has been above and beyond the call of duty.
As to the east European lines of my family, also some of the German lines, I should like to acknowledge and record my gratitude to Rabbi Meir Wunder of the Institute for the Commemoration of Galician Jewry in Jerusalem, as well as Mr Paul Jacoby, also of Jerusalem, whose collections of Jewish genealogical information is truly magnificent. Also, the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has given valuable support to me.
That leaves out a number of private individuals with whom I have exchanged information – many of them, like myself, afflicted with an irresistible urge to seek information on their roots. Among them are descendants of ancestors of mine, or ‘cousins’, such as Mr Julius Hirsch of Hackensack, New Jersey; Mr Thomas High (and his spouse Nancy) of San Francisco; Mr Erik Oppenhejm of Copenhagen, Denmark; besides the late Rabbi Malcolm Stern, the Grand Old Man of American-Jewish genealogy.
Last and foremost I have to single out the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, whose staff have had such patience with me, especially Dr Diane Spielman. The background material and correspondence generated during the preparation of this text are being deposited with this institute.
There have been others, of course, too many to mention, but in conclusion I want to thank my wife Ruth for her support, help, tolerance and understanding, as well as my daughter J. Valerie Neal for goading me into completing this work, and being a superb editor of the manuscript, asking so many relevant questions.
Ernst Oppenheim, New York, December 1999