RE: [Cz-L] My family story

Fascinating story, thanks for sharing it.
 
Although I don't see a connection your family, you reminded me that my family has a Chilean branch with which we lost touch decades ago. Perhaps you or another list member in Chile knows of the Burger or Berger family of Santiago with roots in Sadagora? The only more specific information I have is that an aunt said one of her cousins in this branch was called Don Jose.
 
Dale Prince
Kensington, Maryland, currently working in Erbil, Iraq.
Researching: Burger/Berger, Edelstein, From, and Focke families of Czernowitz and Sadagora.

> Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 02:23:31 -0400
> Subject: [Cz-L] My family story
> From: jonny.heiss_at_gmail.com
> To: Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
>
> 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 10:25:30