[Cz-L] My family story

I recently joined the group and here is a short story about my family.
Please forgive my English. My main language is Spanish.

My father was Berthold (Benjumen) Heiss and my mother Rosa Schmidt.
Both were born in 1906 and grew up in a small town near Czernowitz,
called Vascauti. My grand father was Jacob Schmidt, a brother of the
famous singer Joseph Schmidt.
Since my parents where very good students at the elementary school in
Vascauti, they where sent to the gymnasium in Czernowitz, where they
stayed at the house of some relatives.
There my father, Berthold, had a very good performance at the
gymnasium, and decided to continue studying medicine at the University
of Berlin, with the help of the family, where my mother went to join
him.
To make some money, my father worked at the cantine and my mother
teached privately mathematics to younger students.
My father again was a very good student at the medicine school, and
told me that once the Dean (a very distant authority) called him to
his office and told him that he had to enforce soon the “Numerus
clausus”. That meant that he had to maintain only up to a certain
percentage of Jews among the students. He advised my father to leave
Berlin, because he saw that things will become worse for the Jews, and
told him that the Dean of the Prague University was his friend, and
offered to write a letter for him, to be accepted there.
My father finished his medicine studies in Prague and went back to
Czernovitz, where he worked as a doctor for several years, probably
between 1930 to 1938.
In 1938, thanks to a corrupt consul that sold visas for US$ 100, he
travelled from Geneva (Italy) to Chile, where I lived all my life.
In 1939 he brought my mother and my brother (born in 1938 in
Czernovitz) to Chile. They made the trip in the last vessel before all
commercial maritime transport had to stop, because the risk of German
submarines that where sinking passenger vessels.
In spite of having studied in the best European Universities existing
a that time, the chilean laws requested my father to study again three
years to allow him to work as a doctor. Since my father had no means
to sustain himself as a student, he took a credit for colonization
purposes, from the State Bank, that allowed him to get established in
a very little populated zone, far south.
So he went to the island of Chiloe, some 1.000 km south of the capital
city, Santiago, probably willing to be as far as possible from any
civilization, where jews where being exterminated, and his sensation
probably was that german policies against jews where extending
increasingly all over the world.
He changed from being a physician to a farmer, and grew cows, milked
them and sold cheese during 4 years in Chiloe. When he improved his
economical situation, he went back to Santiago, where the Czernowiters
helped him to become a dealer in textile, which was a common practice
among jewish czernowiters. They went from house to house selling
peaces of cloth, giving credit that was collected back with weekly
payments, and therefore they where called Klopfer (in german, the one
who knocks the door).
When the war ended, I was born (1946). Later my father bought a
furniture store in Santiago, and slowly improved further his income,
so they were able to enjoy a good life (He used to say “Nur wehr in
wohlstand lebt, lebt angenehm”). They travelled as tourists to Europe,
Israel, USA, Japan. My mother went also to Czernowitz a couple of
times, to visit relatives and bring them gifts.
 My father died in 1978 and my mother in 1990. Most of their friends
in Santiago where Czernowitzers, and many of them came to Chile in the
same ship.
My brother also become a physician in Chile and moved to New York in
1974 where he lived until he passed away in 2006. His family (wife,
children) still live in New York.

Now a bit about myself: I studied engineering in Chile and lived here
all my life. I am now 64, and got married when I was 24 to another
engineer, Sally Bendersky (former ambassador of Chile in Israel, who
invited me to this group), whose mother, Clara Schachner curiously was
also from Czernowitz. We had two fantastic children, Claudia (living
in Santiago) and Jaime (living near Palo Alto, USA), both academics
with PhD’s (my jewish mother soul speaking!) and now I have three
marvelous grand sons. I later divorced, and got married 15 years ago
to a Sephardic woman, Irene Cassorla, so I miss some meals from my
mother. But I will cook some Czernowiter receipts I saw in the web
page!

With my brother we went (and took a lot of pictures) in 2003 to
Czernowitz and Vascauti, with an aunt who lives in Budapest. She
showed us the gymnasium where my father studied, in Czernowitz, and
the house of my grandparents in Vascauti.

Finally I want to add that it has been very moving to read about Czernowitz
[Jonny Heiss]
.

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Received on 2010-08-04 01:11:47