The Gottlieb Letters

Number Two

Graciously Provided by Marian Price

Transcribed by Jerry Zeisler

[please see the overview for background]

11/16/79

Dear Sandra,

In spite of the great length of the report I sent you earlier this month, there was much more I could have included on Gottlieb family background but I ran out of steam. Now I am ready to go on, on old and more recent Gottlieb family history, and something more than a brief mention of the family of  my mother, your great-grandmother, Minna (Wilhelmina) Sender Gottlieb.

First, a recollection of Reggie’s that I had forgotten about: On the afternoon on my father’s funeral in May 1921, all of the business places in Pleasanton closed out of respect for his memory. Moreover, the schools also closed. This double sign of respect was bestowed upon only one other person in her memory. Of course, I recall the funeral service very clearly. It was held in our home and was followed by a slow 25-mile drive to Ft. Scott for burial in the nearest Jewish cemetery. My mother, I remember, thought it very fortunate that the rabbi of the Jewish reformed temple in Kansas City, Mo agreed to officiate at both the Pleasanton and Ft. Scott services. Of course, only a small fraction of the 400 or so people who came to our home that afternoon could get into the house; the rest stood quietly on the lawn and listened to the rabbi’s impressive voice coming through the open windows and doors.

Next, how did the German Gottliebs fare during the Hitler period? Some made it out safely but others did not. Of my four grandparents, only my grandmother Gottlieb was still living when Hitler came to power in 1933. She died in 1934 before Hitler’s anti-Semitic campaign reached Bosen, and the relatives there wrote to my mother that “others” as well as their local Jewish friends came to her funeral service. Parenthetical comment about the longevity of my grandparent’s generation; Grandmother Gottlieb was 92 when she died, grandfather was 90. Grandmother Sender was 89, and grandfather was 70. Compare that with your own grandparents’ lifetimes.

My father’s only brother, Ferdinand, his wife, their younger son, Ernst, his wife and pre-school age son escaped into Holland, but after the fall of the low countries, Hitler’s Nazis took them away to concentration camps and they were never heard from again. Ferdinand’s daughter, Irma Gottlieb Hayum, her husband Carl (Charles) and their four-year-old daughter Nora had to leave their home in Luxembourg when the Nazis forced out the entire civilian population of border area at the beginning of World War II. Transportation and other help was provided for non-Jews but not for Jews, and the Hayums traveled by bus across France and Spain and into neutral Portugal. There they managed to get space on the deck of a trans-Atlantic freighter and reached New York in 1940, in late summer, I believe. Uncle Ferdinand’s older son, Leo, his wife Else and their small son, Gerd (now G. Eugene), escaped from Bosen and made it to Philadelphia with a lot of help from Eleonore, both financial and sponsorship.

The Gottliebs and other Jewish families living in the small villages led much the same kind of rural lives as their non-Jewish neighbors though the Gottliebs as well as most other Jewish families were traders as well as growers of products. The Gottliebs had been cattle traders for generations, apparently, and grew only enough feed crops to supply the relatively few cattle they usually had on hand at any one tome. Cattle trading was apparently largely in the hands of the Jewish families for many years.

With such a rural background, the urban life of New York and Philadelphia was not the their taste. Carl Hayum took a job in a cold storage plant, the only work he could get, but had to give it up after a few years when arthritis made it impossible for him to go on. He and Irma then bought a farm near Windsor, NY, 15 miles from Binghamton and Carl resumed cattle trading. He and Irma prospered there but Nora who was then 15 was unhappy at first. But she soon made new friends and as soon as she finished high school, married the son of another Jewish farm family in the area. There are many Jewish farm families in that area and it is surprising to drive along and see a big dairy barn with a sign "Louis Goldstein Dairy Cattle" painted on its roof.

Nora’s marriage to Werner Herz was a happy one but marked by tragedy. First, a few years after they were married - when their oldest son was still less that a year old, and Nora was pregnant with their second, Werner lost both arms below the elbows when a farm tractor turned over on him while he was alone in a field. He was unable to extricate himself and the tractor burned. Werner made a wonderful recovery and achieved great skill in the use of his artificial arms. He drove a car, and I have even seen him turn the pages of a magazine. He and Nora made up their minds that the accident need not interfere with their plan to have a large family, and they had a total of five, three sons and two daughters. Then Werner developed cancer and died about three years ago, leaving Nora with the two oldest in college and three more still to follow.

Three weeks later, Irma died after a second stroke. She had suffered the first a year earlier in Luxembourg where she a Carl were visiting his relatives. That trip, their only return visit to Europe, included a side trip to Bosen. Irma said she was “well-received” by old neighbors who had shunned her and her family in the Nazi period, but Nora felt that they emotional impact of the Bosen visit had been too much for her mother.

Leo and Else Gottlieb left the urban life of Philadelphia even sooner and are still living in Woodbine, NJ, where Leo is now retired from his career of raising chickens and selling eggs. Their son, G. Eugene, has a Ph. D. in electrical engineering from Temple U. in Philadelphia and works for RCA in New Brunswick, NJ. Reggie, Eleonore and I all visited Irma (but separately) at her big farmhouse, and Milton and I were in New Brunswick once for the Bar Mitzvah of one of Gene and Ruth Gottlieb’s boys. We also attended the Bar Mitzvah of one of the Herz boys at Windsor-Binghamton.

It is impossible of course to trace all the family ramifications through the years especially connections by marriage. I recall that when we were living in Waukegan, IL in the late 1930’s, two men came to our house and introduced themselves as cousins of my father. I had never even heard of them, and no longer remember their names, but they were sons of a younger sister of my grandmother Gottlieb and were so much younger than Julius that they were born after he left Bosen. The two were both butchers and were working in Chicago. Milton used to stop in to see one of them who was working in a shop near a law school where Milton taught two or three times a week, but that was forty years or so ago when we were living in Waukegan.

My father’s sister Fanny married a first cousin, Isador Levy, and they had six children, three boys and three girls. The boys all came to the US in the 1930’s, but the three daughters (one married) and the parents all were taken by the Nazis. My mother sponsored Josef, the youngest son, and he spent his first months with her in Pleasanton. Then he went to New York, prospered in women's wear, married, had two daughters,and retired in Florida. His two older brothers were both butchers. Solly lived in New York, Ferdy in Detroit, later Florida. Both were married but had no children.

Now finally, turning to the Sender family, I like to call my grandfather Sender - my mother’s father - the Great Pioneer. Simon Sender was born in Germany in 1830, so was just 18 at the time of the 1848 uprising which resulted in the flight to the US of many bright and talented Germans, Joseph Pulitzer for example.

Simon Sender was drafted onto the military service but found the idea of being required to shoot at his fellow man so distasteful that he resolved to flee to a country that did not have compulsory military service. So he came to the US in 1852 and settled in a small town in Missouri, Sweet Springs was the name, as I recall. He still felt the same when the Civil War started in 1861, went back to Germany, and married my grandmother, Bertha Herz, after his return.  They had six children but two died in infancy, an all-too-common record in the mid-19th century.  The four who grew up were my mother, her older sister Sophie, a younger sister Elma, and a brother, Rudolf.  After his compulsory military service, Rudolf came to the US and settled in Chicago.  He married Eugenie Schwarzschild, the daughter of a German Jewish family and they had a daughter Beatrice, who was a year younger than I.  Rudolf died in the early 1900s, at the age of 35.  Bea married an MD, Noah Fox, and they had a son Gene and a daughter Caryl.  Both were married and living in Chicago, when I last heard.  Noah died some years ago (also Aunt Eugenie) and Bea later married Sidney Stackler.  Reggie was in touch with Bea for many years but hasn't heard from her in a long time, she says.  When last heard from, she and Sid were living in the San Francisco Bay area.

My mother's older sister, Sophie, married a non-Jew, Ernst Blankenburg, a jeweler whom she met when both were working one summer in a resort town on the North Sea.  Even at that time, an intermarriage was so generally unacceptable that it seemed best to settle down in a place far distant from the Sender home town of Nahbollenbach (Bollen creek on the River Nahe) or Ernst Blankenburg's home city of Eisenach. So they settled in Kolberg on the Baltic Sea where they spent the rest of their days.  Onkel Ernst fought in WWI and received injuries to his feet which seriously bothered him for all the rest of his days.  They kept Tante Sophie's Jewish background carefully concealed and their only child,  Erna, was brought up in an unobservant Protestant household.  Erna married a Protestant, Kurt Wegner, and they had two daughters, Jutta and Anneliese.  Jutta, who is in her early 50s, married a widower school teacher a few years ago.  Her name is now Frau Jutta Morys., lives in Bad Homburg, and is the only one of our relatives still living in Germany.  Erna and Kurt hastily moved from Kolberg to Eisenach after investigations during the Nazi era disclosed her mother's Jewish origin.  Onkel Ernst died during WWII and Erna told me that her mother, Tante Sophie, committed suicide by taking poison when Soviet troops approached in 1945.  Kolberg was on the far NE coast of Germany, east of the Oder River, in the area incorporated into Poland after WWII.

Erna and Kurt left Eisenach ahead of the Soviets in 1945 and fled to Hannover in the British Zone.  There Anni, their younger daughter, met a handsome young British GI and eloped with him just before returning to England.  The marriage was not a happy one and they were divorced a few years later after two children had been born.  Her second marriage ended within a few years (one more child) when her husband developed cancer and died.   She is now married to a man named Johnson, an airline maintenance man, and lives in Sheffield.  They seem happy enough but have to struggle to make ends meet.  She works as a nurse and a language teacher.

My mother's younger sister, Tante Elma, married Isidore Lambert and they lived in his hometown of Thionville in Lorraine.  Thus, they were in the Alsace-Lorraine area which France lost in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, and regained after WWI.  In the German period, Thionville was called Didenhoffen and Lorraine was Lothringen.  So Onkel Isidore Lambert served in the German army in WWI and his two sons in the French army in WWI.  Their sister, Selma, died in 1930 at the age of 21.  After the fall of France to the Nazis, the younger son, Ernest Lambert and his sister Ruth went into the French underground, specializing in forged papers to enable French Jews to escape from concentration camps.  Ernest was captured by the Nazis in 1944 and executed by firing squad only days before US troops liberated that area.  His young pregnant wife managed to make her way to Israel, became an Israeli citizen, and gave birth to a daughter who, according to Ruth, is now married and has  children of her own.  Ruth told me that she was warned by a Catholic priest that she was under suspicion and was in great danger.  He helped her escape to Switzerland, and in gratitude, she became a Catholic.  In Switzerland she helped move refugee children to safe havens in other countries.  A few years later, for reasons I do not fully understand, she became a nun.  She is now retired from a long career as a social worker, for many years as a paid employee of the French govt. prison system, and is now living in a home for retired nuns near Lyon.  At the beginning of the Nazi breakthrough into Lorraine in 1940, her family and other civilians were evacuated to Toulouse.  Tante Elma died soon after--the upheaval was too much for her.  Onkel Isidore lived on for many years and Ruth's older brother died of cancer a few years ago.

When I was in Germany in 1930, a Bosen cousin (Ernst Gottlieb) drove me to Nahbollenbach on a Sunday afternoon.  There were no longer any Sender relatives there but we were able to visit the old home because it was the village inn, the Gasthaus am Bahnhof (inn at the railway station).  It was a charming old place and had been there long before the railroad, in the stagecoach days.  The owner's wife was very cordial, showed us all over the place from top to bottom.  By the time we left, word had spread that a Sender granddaughter was visiting from America, and a group of my mother's contemporaries had gathered to send greetings to my mother.  It was a heartwarming experience.

I had not intended to go on at such excessive length in this addendum but I thought you would be interested in knowing about the German, French, and English branches of the family and the Protestant and Catholic offshoots.

Now, the coast-to-coast distribution in the US of the descendants of the European families. Both Onkel George and Onkel Jakob (Jacob) first came to St. Louis, married German Jewish women they met there, and moved on to Kansas in 1869. Onkel George and Tante Tille Fuld Gottlieb, who arrived in Pleasanton the year it was founded, had two daughters, no sons and were glad to have the help of their young nephew in their dry goods and clothing store, as well as with the cattle trading Onkel George did for a few years. Some time in the mid 1890s they moved to Kansas City, apparently to give their daughters a chance to meet eligible young Jewish bachelors. The effort was successful, and the two girls married brothers - Julia to Sol Shane and Bertha to Ed Shane. Sol became badly afflicted with arthritis and they moved to Los Angeles. He died about 1917 when their only child, Herbert Gottlieb Shane was about six. Julia then sold insurance. Herbert still lives in LA and is a retired accountant. He and his wife Janice have a son Paul, also an accountant, and also living in LA. He and his wife, a nurse, have two small sons.

Bertha and Ed Shane, also had one child, a daughter Henrietta (Detta), just a year younger than I. Detta married Julian Kramer of Chicago and still lives in a suburb, Highland Park, IL. They had one son Harold but Reggie and I have been out of touch with Detta and don’t know anything current about Harold. Julian died some years ago.

At some time along the line, possibly when Onkel George was living in Kansas City, he sold my father a half-interest in the Pleasanton business. My father bought the other half after Onkel George’s death in 1907. When my father died in 1921 he also had two smaller branch stores in nearby towns.

Onkel Jakob and his wife Ida Daus Gottlieb had nine children, three daughters and six sons, but amazingly, they had only three grandchildren. One daughter died at 18 of typhoid fever and of the others, only one of the daughters and one of the sons ever married. The household included Tante Ida’s unmarried sister Emilie Daus, and the two women together sinfully over-indulged the six boys in all their individual whims, excessive fussiness that is, over food, starch in shirt collars, and other trivia. Both mother and aunt died within six weeks of one another in 1919 and the five boys still at home prevailed upon their unmarried sister Blanche to give up school-teaching and take over the household. So they went on living as before though with some teasing from Blanche.

Their sister Helen married Isadore Adler. They had two daughters, both of whom married St. Louis men. Ruth Adler Frohlichstein had three sons, twins Bob and Dick and Jack the youngest. We have no current report on the boys (their mother died about 1956) but the last we knew Jack was teaching high school math and had written a book on the subject.

Jean Adler Sigoloff and her husband Charles (Chick), a lawyer, have a son and daughter. Bob is a lawyer in New York City, Suzanne is a nurse, married and has two children, both adopted.

The cattle trading business in Ft. Scott did not support the Jakob Gottlieb family  very well when they were growing up and the household moved to Kansas City before the parents died. Herman, the oldest son, continued in the family business of cattle trading and worked all his years at the old Kansas City stockyards. The next ones started out as employees of the Shanes’ feather business (pillows, down comforters, feather beds, etc) but then established a women’s wholesale millinery.

Ira married Gladys Cohn of Wichita and they had a daughter, now Justine Gottlieb Kahn, but we know nothing further about her.

I mentioned my mother’s brother, Rudolf Sender, who came to Chicago and died young.  He kept the name Sender as it was in Germany. It is derived from “Alexander” just as “Sandra” comes from “Alexandra.” But my mother had two cousins who changed the name to Sanders when they came to the US. Daniel Sanders’ first wife died when their daughter Jessie was born. There were four sons from his later marriage, including Ira, at one time a rabbi in Little Rock, Ark., and Gus whom we all came to know as like when he and Ferd worked briefly on the Kansas City Star.

The other cousin, Albert Sanders and his wife Mary lived for some years in Butler, Mo., a small town not far from Pleasanton. Albert was a baker but found it hard to support his wife and their family of five in Butler. They moved to Shelbyville, Ky., near Louisville, where they found it easier to make a living.  My mother was fond of Mary Sanders and the two kept in touch for all their days.  One summer day in the 1940s when Milton and I had stopped off in Louisville to visit friends on our way back to Washington from a family reunion in St. Louis, we decided to stop in at Shelbyville.  It is about the size of Pleasanton, no street signs or house numbers and we had to ask the way at the drug store from which we telephoned.  "Which Sanders family?", we were asked.  I explained that the household consisted of a Leo, a widower, and his unmarried sister Sylvia.  We were directed to their home and found them very pleasant.  When we said we were surprised to find another Sanders family in the community, they explained the other family was not Jewish, not related, and that they had a "little fried chicken place," though that was in nearby Corbin, KY, I believe.  So Milton and I used to joke about our Kentucky cousin, Col. Sanders.

Selma