It Started with Becoming 50 –

In search for the Lost Grave Marcus P.F.N Kellermann Jerusalem August 2004 There comes a time in a person’s life when one needs to stop and re-examine where one is going and where one comes from. For me, this time coincided with becoming 50 in August of 2003 and a year or so before this. My life had gone through rather clear-cut periods of development, through childhood, youth, young adulthood and middle age. Each period represented some passage and some achievement, often symbolized with an addition or a change of name. Thus, I had been “Peter” when growing up in Sweden, had taken the name “Felix” in psychodrama, and had become “Natan” when moving to Israel. All these were now well-integrated parts of my personality that I felt were completed. But there was still another name that I had been given as a child, that I had not yet used – Marcus, the name of my great grandfather. I felt that this was the name to be used for the final part of my life, in old age, and I was curious in finding out what this meant and what might lie ahead of me now. In this search for some perspective in life and some future direction, I thought that it might help to revisit the past and reconnect with the “old” Marcus, perhaps by visiting his grave. I would get answers to questions like, “What is life after 50 all about?” “Where do we come from and where do we go from here?” The problem was that I knew very little about this ancient Marcus Kellermann and nothing about where he was buried. This was how my search for the lost grave of Marcus started. Since my father and grandparents had been living in Vienna before escaping to Sweden in 1938, my search started in Vienna, in their old house on Czerninggassse. I entered the house, went up the stairs and looked at the apartment no. 14 where they had lived and where my father had been born. The studio in which my father had started his career as a tailor was still there. This house in Vienna, Austria represents a significant part of our old Kellermann history. I grew up with their deep affection for everything Viennese, mixed with stories about how they were driven out and how they had succeeded to escape. I felt how the homey Viennese Gemutlichkeit still reverberated in my blood; the phrases Guten Morgen, Guten Abend, Auf Wiedersehen, Gruss Gott and Servus, made me immediately feel at home. In retrospect, my grandparents had remained so very Austrian also when living in Sweden. This is not strange if one considers that they had lived in Vienna for such a long time, served under Kaiser Franz Josef and been proud citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The name “Kellermann, or Kellerman,” means literally “cellar Man” in German. Kellermann could be an occupational name, assumed by an innkeeper or wine merchant. According to the Museum of Jewish Diaspora in Israel, as a Jewish name, it could also derive from the Greek for “beautiful name”, Kalonymos, a proper name that Jews may have taken as an equivalent of the Hebrew “Shem Tov” (Good Name). 1 A distinguished bearer of the Jewish name Kellermann was the Bavarian-born Rabbi of the Berlin community, Benzion Kellerman (1869-1923). Kellerman is recorded as a Jewish family name in 20th - Century Australia with M.H Kellerman O.B.E. of New South Wales. It was also a common Jewish name among families in Austria and Germany. Other well-known persons with the name Kellermann, which are probably unrelated to us, include the following: Kellermann, François Christophe: 1735-1820, marshal of France, b. Strasbourg. He served in the Seven Years War and won renown in the French Revolutionary Wars when he and General Dumouriez stopped the Prussians at Valmy (1792). In the Reign of Terror, he was accused of treason and imprisoned (1793- 94), but was not convicted. Napoleon made him senator (1799) and duke of Valmy (1808). Rallying (1814) to Louis XVIII, Kellermann was raised to the peerage. Bernhard Kellermann, (1879 – 1951) from Germany, Potsdam was a Journalist and writer best known for his novel Der Tunnel (1913). Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world's most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a child psychologist to sixteen consecutive best-selling novels of suspense, including The Butcher's Theater, and thirteen previous Alex Delaware novels, translated into many languages. Lives with his wife Faye and children in the US. Annette Kellerman is given credit for starting what we now know as synchronized swimming, back in the early 1900s. Her claim to fame is that she is also the creator of the once infamous one-piece bathing suit. As the film depicts, Kellerman did become a champion for less-restrictive clothing, and even created more scandal with skinny-dipping scenes in her film Neptune's Daughter (1914). Actresses Barbara Kellerman (played in “The Chronicles Of Narnia”) and Sally Kellerman, (played in “Woman of the Night”) can also be mentioned. My search continued in the old and new Jewish cemeteries in Vienna. This huge place is overwhelming, indicating the enormous size of the Jewish community before the 2nd World War. A man who had computerized the register of those buried in this cemetery helped me, but except for the parents of my grandmother, we found none of my Kellermann ancestors buried here. I was surprised and perplexed. Then I remembered that someone had scribbled the name “Skalka next to Trencin” on a small paper napkin many years ago, and told me that “the family came from there.” Neither my father, nor my grandfather had ever told me anything about this place, and I had no idea of where it was. But it was at least a trace. I looked in maps and in the internet and found the following information about these places: 2 Trencin Skalka The town of Trencin is located at the foot of the Strazovske vrchy hills in the valley of the Váh River. The Romans founded the town at the beginning of the second millennium. An amazing fortified castle, erected in 1111, overlooks the city and its tower is one of the symbols of the city and a Catholic Parish Church of the Virgin Mary is built on the way to the castle, above the old town. In its Peace Square, there is a monument of the plague epidemics from 1713, as well as a museum, a Church and a monastery. Another monument of those who were killed by the Nazis in World War II was erected in the middle of the forest; the stone carving depicts a man with hands tied behind his back and his head being forced under water at gunpoint. Not far from the central square is a large, round and very beautiful 19th synagogue, which is now empty of chairs and used as a Buddhist temple, open for all. There are no overt Jewish signs left on its outer walls, except a small sign in Slovak that this was once a Jewish place of worship. It is as if these were taken away during the long period of anti- Semitism in Slovakia. When visiting this amazing old synagogue, I felt that it screamed out loneliness, neglect and desertion: “Why did you leave me here all alone with these Gentiles to do with me what they want?” But there was nobody there to listen, except a handful of Jews who sometimes gather in a small adjacent hall, were there is a large memorial sign for all those who perished in the Holocaust (see below). 3 The first Jews came to Trencin already in the Middle Ages, playing an important role in commerce. But after the battle of Mohacs (1526), Jews were prohibited from settling in the town and were moving to neighboring villages. In 1760, an organized Jewish community was established and, according to the tax roster of 1787, there were 82 heads of families in the city of Trencin and 660 more in the county. The large beautiful synagogue was built on a central location in the middle of the old town of Trencin in 1913 and replaced the first synagogue and the German-language Jewish School was founded in 1857. All this helped the Jewish community of Trencin to grow rapidly and after WW-I it continued to gain importance in Czechoslovakia. There is a large, fenced in cemetery in Trencin with hundreds of graves still standing in their original locations. A Jewish man is building a register of the names of the graves and has the keys to the gate. In 1940, there were about 2,500 Jews living in Trencin. Most of them were deported to concentration camps in 1942 and 1944, never to return. Only 300-400 survivors returned from the camps or from forests where they had been in hiding after the war. Most of these Jews did not stay in Trencin, but subsequently emigrated to Israel or other countries or moved to larger cities. After the Soviet invasion in 1968, most of the few who had remained left for the West and, in 1971 there were only a few Jewish families left in Trencin. Skalka The little village of Skalka nad Váhom (differently written as Skala, Szkala, Skalska Nova Ves) is located north of Trencin on the right bank of the Váh river and almost directly under the new highway. The first written account of the village is from the year 1113.

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