The Gottlieb Letters

Number Five

Graciously Provided by Marian Price

Transcribed by Jerry Zeisler

[please see the overview for background]

10 Mar 1980

Dear Marian and Bob,

My mother's father died at 76 of asthma (probably emphysema, I think) in 1902.  He died in Nahbollenbach and that is probably where he was born in 1826.  Simon Sender operated the Gasthaus am Bahnhof or inn at the railway station.  I call it the village inn.  The RR was the main line between Paris and Frankfurt.  Before the days of the RR, it was a stop on the old post road and was always livelier than nearby Bosen where the Gottliebs lived.

Simon's wife was Bertha Herz who was born in 1835, probably in Soetern, a village about halfway between Bosen and Nahbollenbach.  The reason I guess Soetern is that my parents met when my mother was 12 and my father was 13 and both attended a private Hebrew school in Soetern that was operated by my mother's uncle.  My mother's family were not so excessively religious as to send a daughter away to Hebrew school except for the family and hometown connection.

The Gasthaus was sold after Simon Sender died.  Tante Elma, the youngest of the three daughters was not yet married and she and my grandmother were living in a different house when we visited Nahbollenbach in 1904.  About 1905, Tante Elma married Isidore Lambert, Ruth's father.  He was from Didenhoffen in Lothringen (German for Lorraine) and they went there to live.  His family had lived in Lorraine before 1871 and so were French before the area became German when the French lost the 1870-71 war. I don't know just when Grandmother Sender went there to live but it was before the beginning of WWI.  Then the town became Thionville, Lorraine.  Grandmother Sender died in Thionville in 1924 at the age of 89 and is buried there in France.  Grandfather Sender rests in peace in Germany.

Love,

Mother

P.S.  In the clear light of next day, I realize that I failed to give equal time to the Gottlieb side of the family.  The Gottlieb family had lived in Bosen since 1770 according to Cousin Leo Gottlieb, who was born and raised there.  The first Gottlieb in Bosen was apparently Faiwel and the family was still referred to as Faiwel's when I was in Bosen in 1930.  My grandfather Salmon Gottlieb was born there in 1832 and died there in 1926 at the age of 94. His wife was Sibilla Lion who was probably from Soetern, which was the main center of Jewish activity in the area.  In addition to the Hebrew school, it had a synagogue, of course, and also a Jewish cemetery.  Grandmother Gottlieb was born in 1845 and died in Bosen in 1934 at the age of 89.  In 1930, I attended a service (Sat. a.m.) at the little synagogue in Bosen, where women were isolated in the balcony, and realized that my father could never have felt at home in the Reform Temple in Kansas City which his relatives and all other German Jews attended.  As far as I know, Lions who came to the US changed the name to Lyon or Lyons or Leon.