[Cz-L] Karl Kluger

Hi all. Introduced myself a little while ago and thought I would share a
working translation of the last part of an article on Karl Kluger that
appeared in Die Stimme, a German paper published in Israel in 1958, on the
15th anniversary of his death. Karl was my grandfather Bernard Kluger's
older brother. I would be grateful for any Kluger info.

Roma Baran
NYC

....Karl Kluger stopped serving as editor-in-chief of the Tagblatt in late
June of 1914, at the start of World War One, when Czernowitz was occupied by
czarist troops. During the war, he was sent by the Viennese foreign ministry
on a special mission to Stockholm and Copenhagen.
In 1919 he was made director of the Joint Action for rebuilding the Jewish
settlements destroyed in the Bukovina. His efforts in this regard earned him
the respect of both the affected families and the Joint head office. In
subsequent years until the northern Bukovina was occupied by the Soviets, he
served as the president of the restoration organization set up by the Joint,
and with the strong support of the Joint¹s General Inspector
[Generalinspektor] for Romania at that time, Mosche Ussoskin, who was the
director of Keren HaYesod in Jerusalem when this article in Die Stimme was
written, he succeeded in rendering this restoration organization useful for
large numbers of Bukovina Jews.
He was the president of the ³Orient-Loge Bnei Brith² in Czernowitz ³for a
number of years², active in its broad range of social/humanitarian
activities. In the years leading up to World War Two, he wrote frequently
for the Czernowitzer Morgenblatt. During this period his novella [or volume
of novellas ­ unclear] The Eleventh Commandment was published, from which
the part entitled Mykola is published in this issue of Die Stimme.
           He ³belonged to² the Romanian Senate under the Maniu government.
There was no important Jewish question he did not work toward solving.
           In the years of ³severe anti-Jewish persecution and the greatest
Jewish disaster (1941-43)², he and a group of friends put their lives at
risk in attempts to ³ameliorate the fate of their people². His political
experience and acuity proved very valuable here.
He had a winning manner, as the following episode demonstrates. When
Czernowitz was under Soviet control (as of 1940), he made the acquaintance
of the Jewish writer Hofstein (who had died under mysterious circumstances
before this Die Stimme article was written) on a short visit by the latter
to Czernowitz. Hofstein was a holder of the Lenin Order, and before leaving
Czernowitz he wrote a few lines recommending that the Soviet authorities
provide special protection to Klüger although he well knew that Klüger
shared no part of a communist world view.
In the dark days of World War Two, Klüger told the author of the article
once that he ³now had an income again², namely that when sent by his wife to
purchase items he told her that the prices were 20% lower than they actually
were, which made her happy and he pocketed the difference [except this
doesn¹t make sense; it¹s either dark humor or there¹s something I¹m
missing]. ³I¹m not doing bad!², he said.
He died on 19 December 1943 in Bucharest, where his daughter Sylvia had been
living for several years. The letter he wrote [to the author] with a shaking
hand from his sick bed in Bucharest contained hints of a plan to save the
rest of the Jews of Czernowitz. He didn¹t want to believe that death was
imminent. He was a major figures in a significant era in the history of the
Bukovinian Jewish community.
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Received on 2009-07-20 16:56:35