Czernowitzers...
Today I have the privilege to share with all of you Robert Burton's story (see below). From Bukovina via Ellis Island to Toronto, with side trips to Paris, Bucharest, Stockholm, but also to Cyprus, Palestine and even to Iran, what a thirilling family history! Thank you, dear Bob, and we are looking forward to reading more from you!
Edgar Hauster
________________________________________
From: Robert Burton <robert.burton_at_cobobholdings.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 19:22
To: Edgar Hauster (bconcept_at_hotmail.com)
Subject: FW: Robert Burton's Comment on "The Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz"
Dear Edgar,
Here is the additional story that I tried to send yesterday. Incidentally, there is another remarkable story in all of this. Ruth Lehr, my mother's cousin and daughter of Jacob (Cubziu) Lehr found herself in Stockholm during the war. There she met and married Selim Dangoor, an prosperous Iranian Jew also with a large family. They succeeded and prospered. Today, my "cousin, Valerie Beral, a renowned epidemiologist at Oxford, told me some years ago (with a chuckle) that they own half of Stockhom. I believe the family id all over the world. I am going to try to find a Dangoor contact, but perhaps someone on the List knows a Dangoor - maybe there is a Dangoor on the List.
Best Regards
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Burton
Sent: March-27-17 12:53 PM
To: Edgar Hauster (bconcept_at_hotmail.com)
Subject: FW: Robert Burton's Comment on "The Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz"
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Burton
Sent: March-27-17 12:34 PM
To: 'Edgar Hauster'; Czernowitz Discussion Group
Cc: Robert.burton_at_rogers.com
Subject: RE: Robert Burton's Comment on "The Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz"
Dear Mr. Hauster,
Thank you for your kind words. I am taking the liberty of fleshing out my posting. My family history fascinates me - it seems to reflect a golden age.
Noa Lehr was a direct descendant of Shevach and Dvora Lerner. I have been told that she is known to be a direct descendant of Rashi, and Rashi is known to be a direct descendant of King David.
As I wrote, Rachel/Regina Lehr married Max Kula. The Kula land ownership is documented back to an 1808 register of land ownership. In 1808, both landowners in Bucovina were Kulas, presumably brothers. The history of the time is that the Austrians drove the Turks/Ottomans out in the 1740s and issued the Edict of Toleration in 1761. Only 2 Jewish landowners were permitted in each province, so it seems probable that in 1808, the Kulas had owned their lands going well back into Ottoman times. Kula is a common Turkish name. The town of Kula is a renowned rug weaving center. This reinforces the probability. As for the ranch, I remember my mother telling me it was so large that, when her father went to inspect it, he was gone from sun up to sunset - on horseback of course. Also, the peasants dressed their hair with butter; after a few months it went rancid and they smelled so bad that one could not go near them. It was also the custom for the peasants to take the ranchowner's name - a holdover, I suppose, from a more feudal time.
My mother, Suzanne - Soska - married Friedrich Budabin (Susan and Frederick Burton after a name change in Montreal in 1939. I have the 1935 Marriage Certificate and extract from the Judenrat Register, and the Notarial "acte"). Friedrich's father, Bernard/Berthold, had been the representative to the Province of Bukovina from the Imperial Court of Austro-Hungary. After World War I he remained a prominent figure in legal circles. Friedrich's mother, Mina (Wilhelmina) was a partner with the Lermer Brothers in a cotton weaving mill, which was to be the family's salvation - I'll explain later.
Around the time they were married, the sense of dread of a rising Nazi scourge developed, and the "smell" was in the air. Fred and Susan applied for an entrepreneur's visa to Canada, and it was granted. This was at the time that Jewish immigration to Canada was all but closed. But Friedrich Budabin was an entrepreneur, and could start a business and create JOBS. As well, as a cotton weaving owner in Czernowitz, the Budabins used the London banks to finance and bank for cotton imports. They were well known and regarded, particularly by Barclay's, and the Managing Director was prevailed upon to write a solid reference: that probably assured a visa. They sailed on the Staatendam, and landed at Ellis Island on August 22, 1939. They were detained for a few days and on August 27, crossed into Canada at Lacolle, Quebec. On September 3 they were in Toronto, and my father wrote his mother on the 4th, "So, yesterday they declared war ..." [two weeks after they reached American soil] But, he wrote, he had spoken to a policeman, and was told it wasn't at all likely that they would be interned ... He also wrote that Quebec was so xenophobic that even a Frenchman would feel shunned. He went on to found a woolens weaving business, and was one of the two weavers in Canada serving the civilian population. He had to settle for the most damaged yarn - the stuff carried in the bilges of the ships from Australia. I remember him telling me that he only felt they had run far enough when Rommel was defeated at El Alamein in 1943, and the tide of the war turned.
In the meantime, Mina and Berthold had written in October 1939 - after the war had started - that they were renting a car and would be going to the countryside for a picnic on the weekend. Edward had gone to Paris and the Sorbonne. He told me that he was taken by science, because the only place in the soapworks that did not smell foul was the lab where the perfumes were made to scent the household soaps. There he married Lilly, who was a nurse. He joined the Air Force, and was stationed at Orly. He also told me that Lilly had gotten him a false baptismal certificate, but when things got hot in Occupied France, he got on his bicycle and rode to Vichy France, and when it got hot in Vichy France, he got on his bike and rode to Occupied France. At the end, he and Lilly were at a stone house on the Nazi side of a bridge with the Americans on the other. They lit out, zig zagging as they ran across the bridge in a hail of gunfire, and got to the American lines. They came to Toronto in 1948. He had to intern for a year, which he did in St. Catherines, a small city not too far from Toronto. They bought their first home on Roehampton, a classic Ontario style, where she took up art - beautiful enamelware, and they became prominent in French circles, entertaining the French Consul and other dignitaries. She was an amazing cook - to this day I remember her roast duck !
Fina had married Licu Katz, and moved to Bucharest where he lived. Her Fall 1939 letter to my mother was "happy happy" - they were going to buy new furniture. When they had to run, they made it overland to Palestine, where their two children were born. Rachel-Regina also made it to Palestine via Cyprus, where - as I wrote before - she lost her husband, Max. My parents brought them all out to Canada.
Mina and Max made it to Cyprus - they had also been on the same ship with Regina and Max. They flew to Beirut in 1943 and by land to Palestine, from where my father brought them to Canada around 1948. Berthold would die from a broken hip a year or so later. (Their partners, the Lermer brothers could not get exit visas - they didn't take out Romanian citizenship after the First War. No one ever heard about them afterward.) I have a letter from Max on Cyprus in 1943. He tells and how he showed up at his business one day, only to be told that the owner was a Mr. Balceanu, how they were so lucky they were able to get work permits - exemptions from "transportation", although they were called to the round-up places a few times. He told how they had been able to avoid the Nazi "sweeps", he guessed because, when Fred went to Budapest on business, he told the officers at the Austria-Hungary bordercrossing that his family were baptists, and that was the direction that the sweeps came from. He also wrote how he went into the water off Constantinople.
My parents prospered in Canada - they had become citizens in 1944. When the textile business was overrun by imports - mostly from Japan - the government would not protect it, and my father turned to his little sideline, syndicating mortgages, and he prospered again, buying a few apartment buildings in the next years. This was at a time when Canada - as well as the United States - was exploding with pent up expansion that had been so stifled by the Depression and the War.
I will end my story here, but I do hope to add to it from time to time. While "it is hard to be a Jew", we all have to remember "What a wonderful world, oh yeah". And we have to reemember all the world's inhabitants who can't say that.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: Edgar Hauster [mailto:bconcept_at_hotmail.com]
Sent: March-27-17 5:17 AM
To: Czernowitz Discussion Group
Cc: Robert.burton_at_rogers.com
Subject: Robert Burton's Comment on "The Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz"
Czernowitzers...
Generally, before I'm going to publish a new posting at our Ehpes Blog, I'm checking the blog for spam. This morning I had to check 363 comments and to trash out of them as many as 362. But one comment from Robert Burton from Canada was anything but spam and I'm happy that I didn't trash it accidentally. It is a wonderful contribution to our posting on "The Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz"
http://ehpes.com/blog1/?p=2643
which I'd like to share with all of you:
"Noa Lehr was my great grandfather. He owned the soap works and tannery. I understand he donated/paid for the building of the Jewish Hospital. His daughter, Rachel - Regina - married Max Kula who owned a very large estate - cattle ranch. His cattle were the raw materials for the soapworks and tannery. Noa died in 1937. Max died in Cyprus in 1943 - he had gone into the water when the Vitoriul broke up in Constantinople harbour, and eventually. He and Regina finally got visas to go to Cyprus, where life was hard. After her passed away, Regina was able to reach Palestine - 1944. In 1951 she left and joined her daughter - my mother - in Toronto Canada. She was joined by her other daughter Fina and her family very shortly after. Earlie her son Edward, who had gone to France and become a doctor, came to Toronto with his wife Jeanne - Lilly- and he qualified to practice medicine in Toronto. Lilly was French, and had carried the seal of the Free French Government in Exile in Occupied France.
Regina died following a stroke in 1964. Edward died in 1973, Susan in 1996 and Fina some years later (her husband, Licu, had died a few years after they had come to Canada. After Edward died, Lilly returned to France and died about 10 or 15 years ago.
We trace our lines back many generations. It is amazing how the Jews of Bukovina have succeeded and prospered in every corner of the world. The world has changed mightily, but the memories and examples from the past, like Noa Lehr, still guide and teach us. O, what a wondrous world !!"
The donation of 100,000 Lei mentioned by "Der Tag", September 28, 1933 edition, p. 3,
https://www.amazon.de/clouddrive/share/uauVBUzrw8IrBwtSevhMHXrIIsgcdiCen9TCRMUKRzS?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy
was considerable, keeping in mind that the price of a newspaper such as "Der Tag" was f. i. 2 Lei in 1933. Thank you very much for your comment, dear Roger!
Edgar Hauster
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Received on 2017-03-29 01:49:09