The Gottlieb Letters

5 Nov 1979

Dear Sandra,

Reggie and I enjoyed our conversation with you yesterday evening and both of us are glad to know that you are interested in learning more about your family background for your school project. Since our talk, some additional thoughts have occurred to me and I am adding them now. They are probably too late to help you with your school project; if so, perhaps there will be a next time. At least you will have the information for your own enjoyment.

First of all, we did not talk about the first name of the Gottlieb forebear who was my grandfather (your great-great-grandfather.) His first name was Salmon, more commonly spelled “Solomon.” The Solomon spelling must have been used by some in the United States in that period; the Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln was Salmon P. Chase.

The Gottlieb family had been living in the little village of Bosen for some generations (I don’t know how many) even at the time of Salmon Gottlieb. Nor do I know where they came from. A Gottlieb cousin of mine (and therefore of your grandmother) who grew up in the old family home in Bosen, Irma Gottlieb Hayum, and her family managed to get out of Germany ahead of Hitler, and she spent the rest of her days on a farm near Windsor, New York. She told me that the family were Sephardic Jews who escaped from Spain during the Inquisition. The Gottliebs may indeed have been a part of the mass movement of Jews in that period from the Mediterranean area to Germany and other countries of Northern Europe.

I don’t recall my father’s ever commenting on the country of the family’s origin but he did tell this story of the circumstances: In their earlier home the family was making the necessary annual preparation for Passover, including the detailed cleaning to assure the removal of every crumb of leavened bread. In the process, they opened the door of their oven which, as was common at the time, was built into the outside of the chimney flue, and could be opened only from the outside. In the oven they found the body of a child. They then knew immediately that someone was trying to trap them with the defamatory charge widespread at the time, that Jews used the blood of a Christian child in their Seder service. So the family built a large fire in the oven to destroy the planted evidence, hastily gathered up the belongings they could carry with them and fled to the faraway, obscure village of Bosen. In commemoration of that event, it had become traditional in my father’s family to build a big fire in the oven on Passover eve, and this we did in Pleasanton as long as he lived.

In Bosen, the family was commonly referred to as the household of Faiwel, the given name of the original settler. At that time, Jews did ont use surnames but were known by the given names only. Faiwel was pronounced FIVE-L. When I was in Germany in 1930, my grandmother Gottlieb was still living and I visited her in the old home in Bosen. She was, of course, your great-great-grandmother. Her maiden name was Sibilla Lion.  I met her unmarried sister, Fanny, but did not meet her brother Wilhelm and know nothing about him. Fanny was a peddler; she walked from door to door and village to village with her backpack of sewing notions - needles, thread, buttons, hooks and eyes, trimmings, etc.

Now, how did the Gottlieb family live in Bosen? Very simply, I assure you. The family business, passed from father to son for generations, was that of cattle trading. The family raised enough feed crops for the relatively few cattle they had on hand at any one time. And for both security and convenience they kept their cattle closely at hand. The entire village of Bosen was made up of closely spaced houses that were owned and occupied by the families who owned and tilled the small patches of land nearby. In Bosen and in other villages, the families and their farm animals lived under the same roof. That was still the case when I was in Bosen in 1930. The Gottlieb home was in a two-story stucco-on-stone building laid out on a center-hall plan. From the front door, a tile-floored hallway led straight back to the tiled kitchen. Just inside the front door, a door on the left opened into the living room, and a door on the right opened into the stable. The only toilet in the house was in the stable portion, sharp left. A stairway led from the tiled hall to the bedrooms upstairs.

That home was a replacement for the one in which my father grew-up as did his father, his uncles and probably several generations before them. That building had the same general floor plan but the dwelling was only one story. The stable part was taller because of the hay-mow above it.

The family of my mother, Minna (Wilhemina) Sender was more worldly as she put it. Their home town, Nahbollenbach-bei-Oberstein, was on the main road between Paris and Frankfurt-am-Main, and Grandfather Sender (your great-great-grandfather) owned the village inn, the Gasthaus am Bahnhoff (inn at the railway station). He also had a grocery there, limited to staples like coffee, tea, rice, sugar, etc. I never saw him; he died before my mother’s only return visit to Germany from April to September 1904, the year I became four years old in November.

But I do remember Grandfather Gottlieb and his brothers Uncle George and Uncle Jacob. They were all very kindly and gentle, as were my father, your great-grandmother Bodovitz, your father. And of course, your mother and you.

I’m glad you are interested. If you have any more questions, please ask now.

Love to all,

Selma