Max Schwartz & WW II Letters
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MAX SCHWARTZ & WW II LETTERS Schwartz, Weiss, & Blau Families Carroll Edward Schwartz & WW II Letter Writers 1 2 Table of Contents Introduction Page 5 Chapter 1 Zoltan’s Tale –An Immigrants Story Page 7 – Schwartz Family Tree Page 32 – Max Schwartz - Pictures & Documents Page 34 Chapter 2 Kimberley Osmer’s Family Research Page 51 Chapter 3 Stories from the Holocaust Page 55 Appendix A – Weiss Family Tree Page 63 Appendix B – WW II Letters (German & English) Page 67 Appendix C – Blau Family Tree Page 113 Appendix D – WW II Letters (Hungarian) Page 119 3 4 INTRODUCTION This book is one of two books. This is the story of my father, Max Schwartz, and his family’s fate during the Nazi Holocaust. The second book is about my mother, Myra Newman Schwartz, who grew up on a farm in Phelps NY and her family. Special thanks to Noel Doherty, (CEO of the Goodway Group of MA, INC), for providing many helpful suggestions and printing this book. 1. Chapter 1 is about my father, Max Schwartz, who came to America from Hungary in 1921 as a 14 year old boy with his mother and two younger siblings. 2. Chapter 2 is the family research of Kimberley Osmer (Robert Blau’s wife). 3. Chapter 3 – Contains the stories of my father’s relatives who stayed behind in Europe and their fate during World War II. 4. Appendix A is the Weiss Family Tree originally put together by Kim Osmer and modified by Ed Schwartz to incorporate information from letters. 5. Appendix B consists of translations of the letters from Germany mostly from Vienna from 1938-41 and after the war. 6. Appendix C is the Blau Family Tree again originally put together by Kim Osmer and modified by Ed Schwartz to incorporate information from letters. 7. Appendix D consists of translations of letters received from Hungary in 1945 & 1946 telling some of the story of the Hungarian Holocaust. Originally I intended to put the story of my father’s life on paper to serve as a memorial to him. However, I inherited many letters that were sent from Europe by Jewish relatives immediately before and after World War II that tell one family’s fate at the hands of the Third Reich. The letters were written in English, German and Hungarian. Many of the stories are chilling. So part of this story is derived from the translations of the letters that can be found in Appendices B and D. I exploited German-speaking friends and dredged up my college German. In particular Tom Einstein, Davida Tenenbaum and a work associate of my daughter, Jennifer, helped with the German translations. 5 The Hungarian was much trickier since there are far fewer native Hungarian speakers in my circle of acquaintances. My daughter, Jennifer, had a Hungarian coworker (Hannah Burger- born May 5, 1934 in Budapest) who survived the war in Budapest. When German Troops marched into Budapest in the Spring of 1944, she was an 10-year old girl with false Baptism papers. She generously translated all 40 pages of the Hungarian letters for me. The only compensation she would accept was a contribution to the Holocaust Museum in memory of her mother, Dora Eckstein, who perished in early 1945 in Budapest and her aunt, Ròzsi Eckstein, who perished in the fall of 1944 on a death march somewhere between Budapest and the Austrian border. I have relied on many sources for this story. Kimberley Osmer interviewed my father around 1990 and provided a lot of the information. She put together the Schwartz, Blau and Weiss family trees, and wrote down my father’s memories. I have added information about European relatives from the letters. I also relied on my memories of his stories. Some of my father’s documents are included at the end of Chapter 1. I am writing this primarily for those who come after me; my daughter Jennifer McClain and now her daughters Sabrina McClain & Natalie McClain. I also want to bear witness to the life of a very kind and generous man who was my father. I want also to bear witness to those who perished in the Holocaust, who have no voice of their own. When I think of my father I am reminded of a story that I once read in a book titled “The Last of the Just” in which the tale is told that God looked down upon the earth and was going to destroy it because man was evil but saw that there were ten just men left on earth. God decided that as long as there was one just man left on earth, He would spare mankind. Carroll Edward (Ed) Schwartz 20 Robin Hood Rd Arlington, MA 02474 (781) 646-1722 [email protected] December 2013 6 Chapter 1 - Zoltan’s Tale - An Immigrant’s Story My father, Max Schwartz (Zoltan), was born on February 3, 1907 in a small town of about 2,700 people. The town was called Frauenkirchen (“Church of our Lady”) in German and Boldogasszony in Hungarian. Frauenkirchen is in Burgenland, then a region in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Frauenkirchen is about 40 miles southeast of Vienna near the Austria-Hungarian border. Max was one of four children. Max had an older brother (Jeno) who died in 1913 at 8 years old. His sister, Margaret was born in Frauenkirchen in June 1908. His younger brother Alfred was born in Pozsony (a German speaking area also known as Bratislava, now in Slovakia) on January 15, 1910. 7 Max was the son of Samuel Schwartz and Risa Weiss. Samuel was born in 1876 in the town called Halmeu ( about 2,800 people in 1910 ). Samuel’s parents were Judah Schwartz and a wife who died before Max knew them. Halmeu is now in Romania on the Ukrainian border, close to the Hungarian border almost 300 miles east of Frauenkirchen. My father did not know why Samuel traveled so far from home to marry Risa Weiss in Frauenkirchen. Samuel worked making pastry cakes. He was also a dealer in saccharine, which was a low cost substitute for sugar discovered in 1878. In 1902, under pressure from the European beet sugar manufacturers, legislation was enacted in the Austrian and German Empires confining the sale of saccharine to pharmacies for disease (diabetes) and prohibiting its sale to healthy consumers. My father thinks that Samuel left Frauenkirchen and immigrated to America in 1913 because he was afraid of being arrested for dealing in the black market in saccharine. Max remembers the ‘gendarmes’ riding on horses, with feathers in their hats looking for black marketers. Samuel Schwartz, sailed on the “President Lincoln” from Hamburg, Germany and arrived at Ellis Island on March 14, 1913. On the ship’s manifest he is listed as being 37 years old and from Pressburg, Hungary. Pressburg is the German name of the city also known as Pozsony in Hungarian and Bratislava in Slovakian. Max’s mother, whose maiden name was Risa Weiss was born in 1877. Her family had lived in Frauenkirchen for many generations. Her father actually owned a farm and my father tells of riding in his farm wagon. In 1903 Sam married Risa, the older sister of the woman he really wanted to marry. They lived in a house with a hard-packed dirt-floor. My father remembers being told to get off the chamber pot because his sick brother needed to use it. Max remembered the start of World War I (he was 7 years old) when the town crier walked through the town beating a drum and announcing that all men in the reserves must report to their units. In 1914 when the reserves were called up the police came looking for his father, Samuel, who like all men was in the Hungarian reserves. By that time Samuel had already left for America in 1913. A camp was built near the town in 1914 for 15,000 Russian, Serbian and Italian POWs (prisoners of war). Max remembered visiting a large prisoner of war camp during the war with the Rabbi to help him with services for the Russian Jewish prisoners. When World War I ended the gates of the prison camp were simply opened and all the former prisoners of war had to figure out how to make their own way home. After the war he remembers people saying kill the Jews and the Jewish War Veterans with guns being prepared to fight if needed. People blamed the Jews for a Communist regime that briefly took power for a few months after the war and for the country’s economic problems. While in power, the Communist regime brutally suppressed all opposition. 8 Risa (Weiss) & Samuel Schwartz (1904) 9 Risa, Max, Margaret and Alfred Schwartz (Frauenkirchen) 10 My father immigrated to the United States in 1921 (Vienna exit visa dated May 20, 1921) at the age of 14 with his mother (Risa Weiss), younger brother, Alfred, and sister, Margaret, from the Port of Rotterdam. They arrived as passengers on the ship “Rijndam” on June 26, 1921. They are listed on the ship’s manifest as James Schwartz age 14, Margarete Schwartz age 12, Alador Schwartz age 10 and Risa Schwartz age 43. When Max (James) arrived he knew three languages; German, Hungarian and Hebrew. They arrived at Ellis Island where he was separated from his mother and younger siblings. In the men’s area of Ellis Island they told him that if he didn’t pass the physical, he would be sent back to Europe .