Re: [Cz-L] My father's story - how he escaped the Nazis

Hello Mike

I'm catching up with my reading of recent posts on the list. Your father's
story is hair-raising. Thanks very much for sharing it.

I think you must be the same Mike Fuhr I knew at university. If I'm right,
we both were at Surrey on the Human & Physical Science course 1970-3. I
remember our once having a conversation about our German-sounding surnames
(still rare in Britain) and realising that our forebears in both cases came
from Czernowitz. It was many years before I was able to look into the
background at all properly, but there are still gaps.

In my case, my grandfather, Moritz Siederer, was a fairly ordinary immigrant
to Britain in January 1908, though I think he may have been trying to avoid
military service for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He seems to have
voluntarily adopted the first name Israel, perhaps to identify himself as
Jewish to help make connections in London, a stark contrast to having the
name forced on you by the Nazis. His birth certificate was reissued in
Czernowitz in 1905 - he was born in 1886 - and a codicil was added in
December 1907, shortly before he left, under the new civil law authorising
Jewish marriages and retrospectively legitimising previously 'illegitimate'
births. In London, he rapidly met up with my grandmother, from an
Anglo-Dutch family, and the imminent arrival of my Aunt in late 1908 forced
them to get married. My father was born many years later in 1927 (another
'mistake' as the family humour tells it).

Two of my grandfather's brothers also left Czernowitz in the early 20th
century, one (Max) to New York - married in Czernowitz in 1913 to Ester
Nerlinger - and another brother, Ignatz, to the UK, where he and Grandad
were interned in the Isle of Man during World War 1. Ignatz returned after
the war to find the parents had died in the flu epidemic. The Czernowitz
group has found the mother's grave in the cemetery there.

A sister, Gusta, remained in Czernowitz into the Romanian era but escaped to
London during World War 2. I don't know the full story, but she's buried in
East Ham Jewish cemetery in London. Another sister, Pepi Goldenberg, went
somehow to Israel. The returning brother, Ignatz, and another younger one,
Koloman (Kubi) moved to Vienna, where I have found entries for them in the
telephone directories in 1937 and 1939 - pretty dangerous entries, I would
think. They had dramatic escapes of which I don't know the full story.
Ignatz came to London again, with his wife Irene.

Kubi escaped with his wife and daughter to Brussels, until the wife Stella
was taken overnight, and the daughter was hidden in an abbey and a brothel
(in indeterminate order). She was eventually rescued by the Red Cross and
came to London, where she still lives. Kubi escaped somehow to New York,
where he linked up with Max's family and died in 1955.

Nigel Siederer
Email: nigelsiederer_at_good-foundations.co.uk
 

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Received on 2010-08-10 09:22:44