On 7 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies in Reims, France, ending World War II and the Third Reich. On that day, Norman Miller, born Norbert Müller in 1924, a British army soldier, was in Hamburg, guarding a checkpoint between the American and British sectors in the city. The German army had just surrendered to the Allies to end the war in Europe. (The war continued on in the Pacific theatre until August 1945.) He was about to play a key role in the arrest of a perpetrator as Richard Sandomir relates in the obituary published in the New York Times on Norman’s death in 2024.
When a brown Opel, which had been driving erratically, was forced to stop at the checkpoint, one of the four men in the vehicle said that he had papers for Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to sign. Although a German policeman said the papers “looked all right,” Norman was asked for help.
When Norman looked at the paper, he realized that “we [had] a big Nazi fish here.” The big fish was Mr. Seyss-Inquart, whose name and face Norman recognized from newspapers. As the Reich commissioner of the German-occupied Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart had been responsible for deporting thousands of Dutch Jews to concentration camps. He had held a similar job in Poland, where he was known for policies that favored Jewish persecution.
Seyss-Inquart was arrested; the Allied military tribunal in Nuremberg convicted him of war crimes and he was hanged on Oct. 16, 1946.
*****
Norman Miller was the great-great-grandson of Salamon and Karoline (née Friedmann) Müller, one of the founding families of the Jewish community of Themar. Salamon and Karoline had 8 children all born in the village of Marisfeld, but only four reached adulthood: Dina (1844-1915), Mayer (1849-1907), Nathan (1851-1923) and Simon (1854-1911).
In the mid-1860s, Salomon and Karoline moved to Themar where they established the S. M. Müller department store in the Bahnhofstrasse close to the market place.
Mayer Müller remained in Themar, taking over the business when his father died in 1890. His siblings — Dina, Nathan, and Simon — lived, married, and formed families in places other than Themar. Dina married Moses Walther and moved to Hildburghausen; Nathan remained in Marisfeld, the village of his birth, and Simon moved to Meiningen. All four died in the first decades of the 1900s.
Before 1933, the Müller family was a family of migration inside Germany but not emigration out of Germany. And so the family continued to grow through marriage and family formation. When the Nazi regime began on 30 January 1933, at least 76 Müllers were living in Germany, most of them in the state of Thüringen, but with several families living in the states of Hesse and Bavaria.
Between 30 January 1933, when the Nazi regime began, and 1941, when the first deportations from Germany to ghettos in occupied Poland began, the nature of the Müller family changed. Seventy-four (74) Müllers experienced the first year of the Nazi regime, and most, if not all, started planning their escape. The first to leave was the family of Max Walther, b. 1904 in Hildburghausen, grandson of Dina Walther (née Müller). In 1934, Max left with his wife Karoline (née Greiner) and their two-year-old twins, Max and Siegmund, for Palestine. Max’s father and mother, Albert and Minna (née Linz) followed them.
Others followed but the choice of where to go depended on forces outside of their control such as immigration quotas or outright bans set by countries such as Argentina, the United States, England, etc. Very quickly, those Müllers who were able to find refuge found themselves strewn around the world: three in England, in European countries such as Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, and in far-flung lands such as Argentina, Shanghai, and Australia. Members of a given family found themselves in different places: as one example, the three children of Siegmund and Rosa Müller (1876-1932) found themselves in England (Margarete, b. 1905), Australia (Karola, b. 1908), and the United States (Martin, b. 1909). As another, the three sons of Max II and Clara Müller found themselves in the United States, (Herbert), Sweden (Meinhold), and Palestine (Willi).
*****
In October 1941, when voluntary emigration was prohibited, 49 Müllers were living in other countries. This number included two families living in the Netherlands who hoped that the country would retain its neutrality as it had in World War I. It also included three children born since 1933; and 15-year-old Norbert Müller, b. 1924, who left Germany for England in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport program, little knowing that he would return to Germany as a British soldier.
The last to leave was 64-year-old Recha Süssmann, née Walther, who left Berlin in a sealed train for Spain on 8 September 1941. On 18 October 1941, the first train left Berlin carrying over 1000 Jews east to Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Lodz.
*****
In the four years of deportation and murder, 32 descendants of Salamon and Karoline (née Friedmann) were deported to ghettos, concentration camps, and killing centres. Those still in Thuringia were deported on the two major transports from that state, the first on 10 May 1942 to Belzyce Ghetto, which included Clara and Max Müller II and six other Müllers, and the other on 19/20 September 1942 to Theresienstadt Ghetto, which included Frieda and Max Müller I. In February 1943, one of the families in the Netherlands — Käthe Wurms (née Nussbaum), her husband, and little daughter Altje — was transported from Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz and murdered on arrival. In the same year, 42-year-old Semi Müller, was murdered in a Euthanasia facility in Schmalkalden/south Thuringia in 1943. In August 1944, Rita (née Walther) Dressel lost the protection of marriage to a non-Jew, when Karl Dressel died; she and her two young children, Walter and Margot, were transported to Theresienstadt Ghetto. Likewise a widow of a non-Jew, Gertrud Heim (née Walther) was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt in January 1945.
*****
Yet on 7 May 1945, Rita, Walter and Margot Dressel were alive, as was Gertrud Heim, liberated by the Russian army in the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 8 May 1945. Rita, Walter and Gertrud returned to Germany: Gertrud let East Germany for West Germany in 1951; Walter moved to Greifswald in northeastern Germany. Margot moved to Israel where she married and raised a family.
Elsewhere in occupied Europe was the family of Sebald Müller, son of Simon Müller, who had managed to survive the war and Holocaust in the Netherlands. How we do not yet know: in 1939, Sebald was released from the Dachau concentration camp, where he had been imprisoned since Kristallnacht. He and his wife Hertha (née Heinemann), and their daughter Ursula, left Meiningen and moved to the Netherlands. Sebald was a chemist — is it possible that this expertise allowed the family to survive? Sebald only lived for some weeks after the end of the war, dying on 15 June 1945. Karoline and Ursula remained in the Netherlands; Hertha died in 1983 and Ursula in 1999.
The other 37 descendants were dispersed throughout the world. Searching for the lost was the highest priority, followed closely by locating one’s nearest & dearest wherever they might be.
PALESTINE: Eight Müllers had immigrated into Palestine before the November 1938 Kristallnacht/Reichspogromnacht. Six were from the family of Dina’s eldest child Albert Walther.
The other two in Palestine came as young, single men: Werner Müller, son of Hermann Müller (1878-1942) and Bella (née Meyburg) entered Palestine on 22 September 1935. Werner 25 years old. The other was 16-year-old Willi Müller, son of Max and Clara (née Nussbaum) Müller, who came as part of the Hachshara movement to assist German Jewish young people to leave Germany. Willi arrived in Palestine in 1938. In 1948, Werner lost his life in the Arab-Israeli war. Willi lived until 2013.
SWEDEN: Two great-grand-sons were in Sweden on 8 May 1945: Julius Müller and Meinhold Müller, both born in 1919, Julius the son of Leopold and Pauline (née Steindler) Müller, and Meinhold the son of Max and Clara (née Nussbaum) Müller. Both had come to Sweden via circuitous routes: Meinhold had left Themar in 1935 and travelled to Italy as part of a Hachshara group; in 1938, he had left Italy and immigrated into Sweden. Julius had left Themar and gone to Denmark. When the Nazis planned to round up the Jews in Denmark, Julius was taken to Sweden and was there when the war ended.
After the war, however, their paths diverged: Julius left Sweden. When the King of Denmark extended his welcome home to all the Jews who had left Denmark in 1943, Julius decided to accept — as his son tells us, “no one had ever invited him to live somewhere.” On 29 May 1945, Julius returned to Denmark. He married Lissa Anderson, and two of their sons have become part of the fabric of life in Themar since the 2000s.
Meinhold remained in Sweden and married Rebecka Liwerant, a survivor of ghettos and concentration camps, who was brought to Sweden by the Red Cross.
SPAIN: Recha Süssmann, née Walther, was alive on 8 May 1945, To date, traces of her post-war life have not been discovered.
ENGLAND: Margarethe Müller, daughter of Siegmund and Rosa (née Freudenberger) Müller, was living in England on 8 May 1945. She had been able to leave Germany and enter Britain. In the September 1939 Register of England and Wales, she was living at 19 Arkwright Road in Surrey England. On 15 May 1941, she married Lothar Friedmann, b. 1900, a fellow German Jewish refugee. Lothar had been imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp after the November 1938 Kristallnacht/Reichspogromnacht. He entered England before World War II started. Initially, he was declared exempt from internment when he met with the Enemy Aliens Tribunal on 16 November 1939. But when the German army conquered France in June 1940, Lothar was rounded up and interned in England until October 1940. Lothar changed his name to Lawrence Freeman; he and Margaret had a son, Stanley, and remained in England for the rest of their lives. Lawrence died in 1983; Margaret did not remarry and died in 2003.
Erich Neumann, the husband of Fränze Müller (b. 1910) was also in England. After his release 28 December 1938 from imprisonment in Dachau concentration centre after Kristallnacht/ Reichspogromnacht, Erich had managed to leave Germany in July 1939 and enter England through the sponsorship of the Kitchener Camp scheme. At the camp, his niece Fredel Fruhmnn tells us, “Erich worked as a waiter and as the Gabbai (supervisor) for the Orthodox services; he was involved with obtaining food for those who kept kosher.
When Kitchener camp was closed, Erich was interned on the Isle of Man, where he functioned as “house leader” for one of the houses where over 50 Orthodox men lived; he was instrumental in obtaining kosher food.
At the end of 1940, Erich left the Isle of Man and then lived in various places in England, where he served as teacher and as secretary at a number of schools and synagogues; in fact, his last job in England was as secretary of the Willesden Synagogue, London.” He was there when the war ended.
His wife Fraenze and two young sons Ludwig and Wolfgang had been unable to join him and had been murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. Erich left England for the United States on 12th June 1947 on the ship Marine Falcon. In New York City, he remarried and fathered two daughters.
ARGENTINA
SHANGAI
UNITED STATES
Eighteen (18) were in eastern United States on 8 May 1945. They had all come as family units. Sitta Amram, daughter of xxx, her husband Meinhardt, and their young son Manfred. Bella and Moritz Goldmeier and their young daughter Esther. Herbert and Flora (née Wolf) Müller who arrived in 1941 and had a daughter in 1943. Fritz Häusler, his wife Rosa (née Rapp) and their young child Gisela; Fritz’s stepbrother Erich and his wife Paula Frank also were able to enter the United States. Martin Müller, his wife Mary (née Kahn) and a very young son born in Nice, en route to the United States.
*****
And so we return to 21-year-old Norman Miller on guard in Hamburg on 7 May 1945. Discharged in 1947, Mr. Miller left England the next year for New York, and within a few days took a train to Toronto. He returned to New York in September 1949 and worked there for many years as a tool and die maker, mostly in the Bronx. In 1951, he married Ingeborg Sommer, who had left Germany with her family in 1938. She died in 1996. Retelling the story of the arrest of Syssi in an interview last year with WNBC-TV in New York. Norman reflected that he did not get a lot of satisfaction from the arrest. “I mean, I wasn’t overjoyed. It didn’t help bring my parents back, my family back.”
Richard Sandomir, “Norman Miller, German Refugee Who Helped Arrest a Top Nazi, Dies at 99,” New York Times, 05 April 2024