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Georg Gassenheimer, born on 18 August 1874, was the seventh and Rudolf, born on 27 July 1880, the tenth child of the family of Samuel Gassenheimer (1837 to 1892) and Charlotte “Lotte” Stein (1840 to 1889). Both were born in Themar. When the brothers Georg and Rudolf were 15 and 9 years old, their mother died, age 49 years. Their father remarried Betty Frankson (1857 to 1935), who was 20 years his junior. But it was the brothers’ older sisters, xx-year old Minna and xx-year old Elise, rather than their stepmother, who raised Georg and Rudolf (and their brother Siegmund, b. ) Three years after the death of their mother, on 1892, their father Samuel also died at the age of 55, leaving Georg and Rudolf orphans at the ages of 18 and 12.
Sometime in the late 1880s or early 1890s, the family of Emanuel and Babette (née Strauss) Schwab moved from the village of Berkach to Themar. (Emanuel’s aunt, Marianne Sachs (née Friedmann) already lived in Themar, having moved from Berkach in 1880 with her husband Simon Sachs, also from Berkach). Emanuel and Babette had two daughters, Selma, b. 24 June 1880 and Thekla b. 03 May 1884.
In Themar, the two Schwab sisters met the Gassenheimer brothers. Georg and Rudolf continued their father’s trade in agricultural machinery and, like three other brothers, moved from Themar to other towns. Only one brother (Ernst, born in 1870) remained in Themar. Bernhardt Gassenheimer, born in 865, had already emigrated to the USA as a young man. The brothers in Germany developed a kind of branch structure: Ernst in Themar, Julius in Nuremberg, Georg in Halle/Saale, Josef in Plauen, Rudolf in Görlitz and Siegmund in Dresden. The siblings presumably also traded in the machines among themselves.
Selma and Lonni Thekla Schwab were born in the village of Berkach: Selma on 24 June 1880 and Thekla on 03 May 1884. They were the daughters of Emanuel and xxx Schwab. The Schwab family moved from Berkach to Themar in and the two girls grew up in the 1890s knowing the large family of Samuel & Lotte (née Stein) Gassenheimer. The two families shared clientele (farmers) and were active in the livestock trade (Schwab) and the agricultural machinery trade (Gassenheimer). The sisters married the brothers Georg and Rudolph (Rudolf) Gassenheimer from Themar near Hildburghausen / Thuringia. The daughters of Emanuel Schwab, the older brother of Max and Hermann Schwab, also died in Auschwitz. the cousins of Fritz, Kurt, Ilse Bella, Selma (Jenny) and Julius,
maintained his family contacts in Germany, which lasted beyond his death.
When the brothers Georg and Rudolf were 15 and 9 years old, their mother died. She was 49 years old. Their father remarried Betty Frankson (1857 to 1935), who was 20 years his junior. Three years after their mother, their father also died at the age of 55, leaving Georg and Rudolf orphans at the ages of 18 and 12. The shared experience of their mother’s early death probably connected the Gassenheimer brothers with their sisters Selma and Thekla Schwab, who were 21 and 17 years old when their mother died.
Georg and Rudolf continued their father’s trade in agricultural machinery and, like three other brothers, moved from Themar to other towns. Only one brother (Ernst, born in 1870) remained in Themar. Bernhardt Gassenheimer, born in 865, had already emigrated to the USA as a young man. The brothers in Germany developed a kind of branch structure: Ernst in Themar, Julius in Nuremberg, Georg in Halle/Saale, Josef in Plauen, Rudolf in Görlitz and Siegmund in Dresden. The siblings presumably also traded in the machines among themselves.
After their marriage, two of the three sisters initially lived in Dessau, Halberstadt (see chapter 2.1.) and moved to Halle/Saale during the First World War: Emma Marcus (formerly Dessau) and Elise Ney (formerly Halberstadt), where the third sister Minna Frankenberg already lived. Their husbands Simon Marcus and Nathan Frankenberg also traded in agricultural machinery in Halle/Saale.
The elderly couple Georg and Selma Gassenheimer married on April 19, 1901 in Themar. On their wedding day, Selma’s uncle Hermann Schwab also celebrated his 38th birthday. Six months after the wedding, Selma’s mother, Babette Schwab (née Strauß), died in Themar at the age of 43 on October 31, 1901 (see chapter 2.2.1.). Shortly after their marriage, the couple lived in Halle/Saale: Königstraße 28 from 1903 and Landwehrstraße 19 from 1904. Georg was a businessman and founded the Georg Gassenheimer company in 1904. His wife became an authorized signatory. In the 1909 address book, Georg advertised his “specialty: world seperators, Nachtigall milk centrifuges, manufacture of hand chopping machines”.
Daughter Ruth Gassenheimer was born on November 4, 1904. Selma’s cousin of the same name, Selma (Jenny) Schwab, felt a close bond with Ruth. Before their wedding in 1910, Jenny lived in the same street as the young Gassenheimer family. In the meantime, Selma’s father, the widower Emanuel Schwab, was also living in Halle/Saale as a traveler and merchant, from 1907 at Thomasiusstrasse 7, from 1908 at Prinzenstrasse 6, and from 1918 at Germarstrasse 5 (see Chapters 2.2. and 2.2.3.). Emanuel was best man at his niece Jenny’s wedding in 1910. 20 years later, Jenny, now divorced and childless, bequeathed Ruth her pearl necklace in her will (see Chapter 4.2.).
In 1910, Georg gave up the first company and founded the second company “Terno-Maschinen-GmbH” with two other businessmen, whose purpose was to trade in and repair agricultural machinery and equipment. He took over the management as the largest shareholder and called himself director.
Before the First World War, the second company was regarded as a specialist for modern separators (devices for separating liquid manure) and butter churns as well as for engines in agriculture and industry and had a branch in Vienna (see chapter 2.1.3.). Nevertheless, bankruptcy proceedings were initiated as early as 1912. During this time, Selma contributed to the family income with a small business. In May 1914, Georg founded a third company, “Maschinenindustrie für Landwirtschaft”, this time with only himself and his wife Selma as partners. As a partner, Selma brought in machines worth 13,500 marks: 94 milk centrifuges for manual and power operation and the associated 49 underframes and turning devices as well as 19 dairy machines (butter machines). However, the local court refused to enter this company in the commercial register, as the company name would only simulate a factory that did not actually exist. In August 1914 (beginning of the First World War), the district court overturned the decision of the local court.
During the First World War, the war-related labor shortage had a detrimental effect on the business of the second and third companies. In 1917, the second company went bankrupt again. Competitors and creditors were irritated by the existence of two companies with the same trading purpose and the fact that only one company was considered insolvent. In addition, the name also triggered another legal dispute, in which Georg was represented by the lawyer and notary Dr. Julius Fackenheim, Große Steinstraße 12 in Halle/Saale, whose law firm also worked for the Schwab brothers’ cattle business (see chapters 2.2.3. and 4.4.).
In 1916, the family of the eldest Gassenheimer sister Emma moved from Dessau to Halle/Saale to Kirchnerstaße 21. In Dessau, the Marcus family had run a cloth and bucksin store (en gros and en detail). Bucksin is a “beaded woolen fabric”. It is more elastic and less shiny than cloth due to the strong twist of the yarn and was used as clothing for men, especially for very durable legwear, and was also used in the automotive industry. Emma and Simon Marcus had three sons, Paul, Siegfried and Erich.
In 1917, the Gassenheimer sister Elise Ney moved with her four-year-old son Hans from Halberstadt to Halle/Saale, where they first lived at Reilstraße 16 and from the following year at Maybachstraße 2. The Ney family had been running a trading business in Halberstadt (see Chapter 2.1.) since 1876 (known as “Fell- und Talghandlung” from 1895) at Bakenstraße 22. The merchant Max Ney lived in Plantagenstraße in 1909.4 The only son from Max and Elise Ney’s marriage, Hans, was born in Halberstadt in 1913. Elise was 37 years old when he was born. Hans later worked as a driver and welder.
After the First World War, Georg Gassenheimer described himself in the address book as a factory owner residing at Halberstädter Straße 1. In 1922, he renamed the third company “Torpedo Maschinenfabrik GmbH”, which specialized in stone mills, grist mills and circular saws, potato and oat crushers and was based at Barbarastraße 2 in 1924. The company got into financial difficulties “as a result of the economic circumstances arising from the war” (inflation and lack of cash among customers, see Chapter 3.2).
In the 1925 composition proceedings, 142 creditors were identified by the local court (the largest creditor was a bank), around half of which were recognized. The company was temporarily placed under business supervision and bankruptcy was averted. The district court made inquiries as part of the proceedings and established that Georg was a “diligent businessman who could not be proven to have acted dishonestly”. The entrepreneurs questioned stated that it was a “small, insignificant” company with good goods, payment difficulties and “Jewish business practices”.
In 1925, Georg finally founded his fourth company “Georg Gassenheimer”, which traded in motor vehicle supplies, tools and machinery for agriculture and industry. The second company was deleted from the commercial register in 1926 and the third company in 1927. In 1926, Georg’s uncle, Selig Gassenheimer (see above), died in the USA at the age of 77.
In November 1925, on the occasion of the funeral of Simon Marcus (1861 to 1925 and husband of the eldest Gassenheimer sister Emma), the Gassenheimer siblings met in Halle/Saale. All nine siblings living in Germany came together and they recorded this in a joint photo. Seven years later, in November 1932, Emma Marcus died at the age of 69.
In April 1933, the boycott call “Germans don’t buy from Jews!” was also directed against Georg Gassenheimer’s company. The company was now based at Wettiner Straße 37 (now Karl-Liebknecht-Straße). The Gassenheimer family had already been living in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Sybelstraße 68, since March 1933. Georg registered his fourth company in Berlin-Charlottenburg in June 1933, with headquarters at Giesebrechtstraße 18 and later Waitzstraße 7. In Berlin, he worked as a factory representative for agricultural machinery, agricultural equipment, handcarts, decimal bridges and trolleys. He probably also traded in bicycles and sewing machines and related spare parts. In May 1937, Georg was registered on an Osnabrück Secret State Police (Gestapo) file card as a “Sicherheitsdienst-Fahnung” (security service wanted person) and his place of residence was given as Berlin-Adlershof. In the years 1936 to 1938, the Gestapo security service was frequently involved in the surveillance of Jewish emigrants.
At the end of April 1938, Hans Ney (see above), the nephew of Georg and Selma Gassenheimer, was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp at the age of 24 as an “Aso” prisoner with the number 89 (see “Aso” chapter 4.2.). One month later, he was released to Halberstadt. During the census in May 1939, he was registered in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg and moved to Munich just one month later, where he was able to work at Jewish institutions (apprentices’ home and hospital). In April 1942, he was deported from Munich to the Piaski ghetto near Lublin with transport number 50. [Siehe https://www.geni.com/people/Anneliese-Treumann/5569913661360137721?through=6000000028279518119 und https://stadt.muenchen.de/dam/jcr:08059801-ce06-45eb-adbf-2ddbaebe363c/TreumannAnneliese_Erinnerungszeichen_it.pdf]
Georg probably learned of Hans Ney’s deportation to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In May 1938, at the age of 64, he fled alone from Germany to Rudolf and Thekla in Reichenberg / Sudeten Germany (today Liberec in northern Bohemia / Czech Republic) and lived at Schillerstrasse 22. From there, in September 1938, he issued his wife Selma with a “general power of attorney” for himself and his fourth company. Selma had remained in Berlin with her daughter and in May 1939 (census, see Chapter 3.4.) was living in Berlin-Charlottenburg, Waitzstraße 2. At the end of May 1939, the fourth company was deleted from the commercial register. Seven months later, at the end of November 1939, Selma fled to her husband at the age of 59.
Selma presumably also waited in Berlin until her still unmarried 34-year-old daughter Ruth fled from Hamburg to New York alone by ship in April 1939. Four years earlier, in February 1935, she had lived in Prague for two months. Ruth was 30 years old at the time and worked as a nurse for Walter Petschek in Prague-Bubenec.
Once in New York, Ruth’s destination was the home of her US-born sponsor Leo Gassenheimer (1885 to 1956) in Montgomery, Alabama. Leo was a son of Selig Gassenheimer and thus a cousin of Ruth’s father Georg Gassenheimer. She lived at 6W Cloverdale Ridge Avenue with Leo’s sisters Florence (1880 to 1953) and Alma (1882 to 1963), who were both almost 60 years old at the time. Florence had been widowed since 1911 and Alma had to cope with the early death of a daughter. Ruth applied for US citizenship just five months after her arrival in October 1939. In 1940, Ruth was listed in the Montgomery directory as a saleswoman for the jewelry store Klein & Sohn Inc. The store sold jewelry, gemstones, silver and glassware as well as cameras and photo accessories.
In 1940, Ruth applied for entry to Brazil in New Orleans, Louisiana, stating that she was single. Presumably in Rio de Janeiro, she met her husband Herbert Friedmann, who was of Austrian origin and probably born in Brazil. [Ruth stayed in Montgomery for over a year and lived with Leo’s sisters, Florence Moog and Selma Gassenheimer, but her final destination was Rio de Janeiro, where she intended to marry Herbert Josef Friedmann, a man she had met when they were both studying at the University of Vienna. In July 1940, Ruth left the United States and sailed from New Orleans to Rio de Jainero. On September 19, she and Herbert were married. https://judeninthemar.org/de/die-familie-von-samuel-gassenheimer-1802-1854/]
He was a bank employee and played the cello. After Herbert retired, the couple lived in Teresopolis, a town around 90 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro in the Serra dos Órgãos (Organ Pipe Mountains, a national park) at an altitude of 870 meters. The couple presumably loved the mountains and enjoyed spending their vacations in Switzerland. Ruth (who called herself Lotte in Brazil) was interested in theater and practiced jiu-jitsu intensively in her free time. She never returned to Germany, but kept in touch with the families of her cousins in Halle, the sons of Emma Gassenheimer, who lived in the USA and Uruguay. Today, the children of the Gassenheimer cousins have no recollection of ever discussing Germany or the persecution during these contacts.
Ruth died just five months before her 90th birthday on June 17, 1994. Her husband died a few years after the turn of the millennium.
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The younger couple Rudolf and Thekla (Tekla) Gassenheimer married on November 12, 1908 in Halle/Saale. They announced their engagement in the Berliner Tageblatt in August 1908. Before the marriage, Thekla lived with her married sister Selma in Halle/Saale, Landwehrstraße 19, while Rudolf already lived in Görlitz/Lower Silesia (Upper Lusatia). After their marriage, the couple lived in Görlitz, first at Sechsstädteplatz 1 and between 1911 and 1932 at Wilhelmplatz 9a. Rudolf was a businessman and owner of the company Separatoren-Industrie (agricultural machinery). A sales office for agricultural and dairy machinery was located at Rochlitzer Straße 12. The marriage presumably remained childless. Shortly after the National Socialists came to power, from April 1933 to September 1938, Rudolf and Thekla lived in Reichenberg / Sudeten Germany (today Liberec in North Bohemia / Czech Republic).
In May 1938, his brother and brother-in-law Georg had fled to Reichenbach to join Rudolf and Thekla. At the beginning of September 1938, Fritz Schwab also fled from Leipzig to Prague with his youngest daughter Liliane, who was 9 years old at the time (see Chapter 4.1.).
At the end of September 1938, the Sudeten German territory of Czechoslovakia was awarded to the German Reich in the Munich Agreement. At the same time, the diplomat George F. Kennan (1904 to 2005) took up his post in the architecturally beautiful residence of the US ambassador in Prague’s Lesser Town, the Schönborn Palace, and reported:
“Prague was darkened, a state of emergency declared. … I was in … Wenceslas Square when (the provisions of the Munich Agreement) were announced over loudspeakers, and one of my first impressions of Prague was the sight of hundreds of people weeping unrestrainedly as the independence that their country had enjoyed for only twenty years was thus laid to rest.”
Shortly afterwards, at the beginning of October 1938, the German Wehrmacht occupied the areas of Czechoslovakia bordering Germany and the former Austria. When Czechoslovakia was mobilized, Rudolf and Thekla Gassenheimer in Reichenberg had “voluntarily made their car available” to the military administration. On the day the Munich Agreement became public (September 30, 1938), they fled to Bad Bielohrad (today Lázně Bělohrad / Czech Republic) at the foot of the Giant Mountains.
Ten days later, in October 1938, Rudolf and Thekla (then aged 58 and 54) arrived in Prague. It is not known whether they knew that Thekla’s cousin Fritz Schwab and his daughter were also in Prague at the same time.
In November 1938, Rudolf and Thekla’s residence permit for the Czechoslovak Republic was revoked from the end of July 1939. With the help of a lawyer, they lodged an appeal with the Ministry of the Interior in Prague in January 1939 and referred to their efforts to emigrate overseas with the help of Hicem (a Jewish aid organization). Beforehand, they also applied for an immigration visa at the American Consulate General in Prague. They also wrote:
“We see no reason which justifies deportation. We live quietly and have no conflicts, take no one’s space and we live from our own means … which we have saved up and are not dependent on anyone.”
While Fritz Schwab continued his escape to Switzerland with his daughter Liliane after four months in early December 1938, arriving in Geneva in early January and meeting his brother Kurt there in March 1939, the Gassenheimer couple remained in Czechoslovakia.
In mid-March 1939, the “remaining” Czechoslovak Republic and Prague were occupied by the German Wehrmacht. At the same time, the American embassy was officially abandoned. The diplomat George F. Kennan remained there alone for another six months on the orders of the State Department and wrote report after report about the state of “waiting”:
While Fritz Schwab continued his escape to Switzerland with his daughter Liliane after four months in early December 1938, arriving in Geneva in early January and meeting his brother Kurt there in March 1939, the Gassenheimer couple remained in Czechoslovakia.
In mid-March 1939, the “remaining” Czechoslovak Republic and Prague were occupied by the German Wehrmacht. At the same time, the American embassy was officially abandoned. The diplomat George F. Kennan remained there alone for another six months on the orders of the State Department and wrote report after report about the state of “waiting”:
“The industrial enterprises have plenty to do to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the empire for their products. But all other spheres of human activity seem to be afflicted by a strange lethargy that almost resembles paralysis. Everything holds its breath. No one shows initiative, no one plans for the future. Cultural life and the entertainment industry continue to run mechanically and without enthusiasm. People prefer to sit … in beer gardens … or parks … and wait with enforced patience for the occurrence of an event that none of them could describe, but which they all know must come and that it will intervene in all their lives. …”
Finally, after almost three years in Prague, on June 20, 1942, the couple were deported together to the Theresienstadt collection and transit camp.
Just two weeks before their deportation to Theresienstadt, Reinhard Heydrich died in Prague on June 4, 1942 as a result of an assassination attempt carried out by Czech resistance fighters. SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (born 1904 in Halle/Saale, see chapters 4.2. and 4.5.) had meanwhile risen to become head of the Reich Main Security Office (an authority with 3,000 employees), commissioner for the implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jews” and deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich was regarded as an exceptionally “gifted organizer”. He saw himself as a “man of action” rather than a “visionary” like Adolf Hitler and his superior Heinrich Himmler.
Three months later, in mid-September 1942, the Gassenheimer sisters, the single Elise Ney (born 1876) and Minna Frankenberg (born 1872) and her husband Nathan Frankenberg (born 1863 and see Chapter 4.2.) were also deported from Halle/Saale to Theresienstadt. Elise Ney lived with her sister Minna Frankenberg at Kurfürstenstraße 74 from 1938, presumably after her son Hans had moved to Berlin. Elise and the Frankenberg couple last lived together in the Jewish retirement home at the Jewish cemetery in Boelckestraße (now Dessauer Straße). It can only be assumed that Elise was informed about the deportation of her only son Hans from Munich to the Piaski transit ghetto near Lublin in April 1942. At the time of their deportation, Elise was 66 years old, Minna 70 years old and Nathan 79 years old. In Theresienstadt, the deportees from Halle kept in contact with each other. However, it is not known whether the Gassenheimer sisters met their brothers Georg and Rudolf in the camp.
At the beginning of October, the Gassenheimer sister Elise Ney died of pneumonia and heart failure at the age of 66. On October 26, 1942, four months after their arrival in Theresienstadt, Selma and Georg (Jiri) were deported on to Auschwitz. Their transport comprised 1,834 people. 62-year-old Selma and 68-year-old Georg had numbers 208 and 209. Only 33 people from their transport survived the concentration camp. Elise’s divorced husband Max Ney arrived in Theresienstadt from Halberstadt / Magdeburg in mid-November 1942. At the beginning of December 1942, Nathan Frankenberg, the husband of the Gassenheimer sister Minna, died in Theresienstadt at the age of 79 from pleurisy and pneumonia, and in October 1943 Max Ney, the divorced husband of the Gassenheimer sister Elise, died at the age of 70.
Two years after the deportation of Selma and Georg, on October 23, 1944, 60-year-old Thekla and 64-year-old Rudolf were also deported to Auschwitz together with 1,712 other people. They were given the numbers 1,496 and 1,497. 210 people from this transport survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was liberated three months later on January 27, 1945 by Soviet troops from the Ukrainian Front.
Minna Frankenberg survived in Theresienstadt. The 73-year-old returned to Halle/Saale in 1945, where she died in 1961 at the age of 89. It is not known whether she was acquainted with Margarethe Schwab (see Chapter 4.2.) there. In addition to her husband (see above), she had lost her son Siegfried (1895 to 1944) and her daughter-in-law Hertha (1909 to 1944). The young people had emigrated to the Czechoslovak Republic in July 1936 and settled in Podiebrad (today Poděbrady in Central Bohemia / Czech Republic). Siegfried was deported from Kolin (20 kilometers from Poděbrady) to Theresienstadt in June 1942. He arrived in Theresienstadt at the same time as his parents from Halle/Saale and it is unknown whether he also met them there. His wife Hertha was deported from Prague to Theresienstadt in December 1942. Siegfried and Hertha were deported to Auschwitz in September and October 1944.