The Gottlieb Letters

Number Four

Graciously Provided by Marian Price

Transcribed by Jerry Zeisler

[please see the overview for background]

10 Jan 1980

Dear Sandra,

Now here is a family tale to gladden the heart of your high school teacher who said that with such material she would not have added a minus to your A grade.

The story concerns the last days of Grandmother Gottlieb (your great-great-grandmother) who was nearly 89 when she died in February 1934. She was 85 and nearly blind when I visited Bosen in 1930 but her mind was clear as a bell and she was able to make her way unaided around the village. Numerous old friends of my father came to call while I was in Bosen, and were served the customary thimble-sized drink of “Schnapps.” Then in the last day or two of my visit, Grossmutter took me from house to house to return every call. We made only brief stops but unfailingly, the ceremonial drink was offered. (A former colleague of Italian parentage tells me that he encountered the same custom when he visited his father’s old hometown.)

Now for the story which was told to me by Irma Gottlieb Hayum, who died in Binghamton, New York in March 1976. In her final illness, Grandmother Gottlieb was lovingly cared for by the family home in Bosen by Tante Selma, wife of Onkel Ferdinand Gottlieb and their daughter Irma. To their great distress, grandmother Gottlieb became disoriented, thought she had been taken to a hospital far away, and addressed Irma and her mother as “nurse.” Onkel Ferdinand and Cousin Leo who lived at home, could not convince her that she was still in her own bed in her own house. But when the younger son, Ernst, who worked elsewhere as a salesman, drove home for a weekend, Grandmother appealed to him. Instead of trying to assure her that she had no problem, Ernst agreed to help. “Grandmother”, he said, “After your nap I'll take you home. Now go to sleep.” She did, and while she napped, Ernst rounded up several old friends and stationed them at her bedside. Then when she awoke, he said, “I decided not to wait; I took you home while you were napping, and look who has already come to see you - Herr & Frau Keller, Frau Schmidt and so on.” End of problem, end of story.

Love,

Selma

P.S. Grandmother Gottlieb was well thought of in Bosen, and so were the rest of the Gottliebs, I am sure. After Grandmother’s death in February 1934, during the Hitler era, Tante Selma wrote to my mother that not only unsere Leute but others too came to the funeral.

But a few years later, as Hitler demanded the “final solution" for the Jews and whipped the non-Jewish population into a frenzy, Ernst Gottlieb, his wife and small son fled into Holland, probably in the late 1930s. They were later joined by his parents, Onkel Ferdinand and Tante Selma. But after the German takeover in 1940, the extermination program spread to the occupied countries too, and all five Gottliebs died in concentration camps in 1943, according to the enclosed family tree. It was done by Elsa Gottlieb, wife of my cousin Leo Gottlieb. I want to give her as much information as I can about the US line. Can you give me the data on your parents, yourself, Kathy & Stephen and on Phil, Dodie, Jim, John & Laurie? I would appreciate it.

Finally, a small correction on something I wrote earlier. Two children of my Grandmother Sender died in infancy, not four.

Selma