[Cz-L] Who knows Dr. Albert Twers?

Czernowitzers...

I'm coming back to the monumental and multilingual opus "Black Milk", thoroughly edited by Dr. Benjamin Grilj

http://ehpes.com/blog1/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Flyer_eng.jpg

and would like to state the following additional question: Who knows Dr. Albert Twers?

>From Florence Heymann's article "'Bottles in the Sea': Letters of Deported Jews in Moghilev (Transnistria), November-December 1941", out of "Local History, Transnational Memory in the Romanian Holocaust, edited by Valentina Glajar and Jeanine Teodorescu, p. 77, chapter IV, we learn as follows:

"[...] In several letters, a trustworthy person capable of transmitting mail was mentioned. His name, Twers, often cropped up: "Dr. Albert Twers is here. I must take advantage of the opportunity to forward to you some lines“ (Correspondence, 33). "The deliverer of this letter is an acquaintance of Radautz, the lawyer Twers“ (Correspondence, 40). "According to the information of the attorney Albert Twers, all the pensioners will return soon to their home“ (Correspondence, 94). "On the way to the lawyer Twers, I met him in the street“ (Correspondence, 107). In Jean Ancel’s book, Transnistria 1941-1942, there are two index entries for "Twers“. On pages 584-585, document number 315, dated January 3, 1942, comes from the administration that Dr. Albert Twers, lawyer, domiciled in Radauti, transported letters from Moghilev to families remaining in Czernowitz and Radauti. He was caught with 139 letters and notes from Jewish deportees intended for their parents in Romania, which violated the instruction prohibiting such correspondences. [24] His apartment was searched. The note signed by Emil Velciu, lieutenant colonel magistrate, reports:

'The lawyer Twers Albert, of German ethnic origin, works in the firm of import-export "Heinz Hellman“ from Bucharest, Calea Victoriei, 208. In this capacity, on 12 December 1941, he went with the director of the firm to Moghilev-Transnistria, to study the possibility of opening a branch in Transnistria. Many Jews of Moghilev asked him to take letters and to transmit them to people in Radauti or Cernauti ... The investigator could not establish if he received money for this service; it follows that this mode of correspondence, which is practiced in this area, contravenes thus the measures of the postal laws in force, the measures referring to the mandatory censorship of such correspondence.'

Now we can answer most questions we have asked in the beginning: why these letters were gathered in a file, where the replies were, and why all the messages dated from the same weeks-, but a mystery remains: What had pushed Albert Twers, a German, to put himself at risk and assist the deportees? Mercy? Philosemitism? Interest?

The second document, number 616, dated April 14, 1942, and published by Jean Ancel (2003, 709), answers this question. [25] Twers’s father-in-law, Naftali Alpern, was a Jew. Alpern had been deported from Czernowitz. Twers tried to obtain his release, explaining the journeys to Moghilev and Shargorod and his contacts with the Jewish community. It seems that he succeeded in his quest. Indeed, a telegram from Alexianu, the civil governor of Transnistria, instructed the prefect of Moghilev to release Naftali Alpern and his wife, at the request of Antonesu himself. The justification for the release was the fact that Alpern was a retired Romanian civil servant."

Back to you, dear fellow members and to the collective memory of our discussion group!

P.S. to Florence Heymann: Dear Folrence, would you agree on publishing your most interesting article on Ehpes too?

Edgar Hauster
Lent - The Netherlands
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Received on 2013-12-28 19:14:08