The Half Cousins

Sharing the news about the remarkable appearance of fragments of the gravestone of Johanna FALK geb. KALISCHER (1845-1929) had the effect of bringing new cousins to my attention.  But, they are not descended from Johanna; they are descendants of Emanuel FALK (1832-1906) and his first wife, his niece, Ernestine FALK geb. BERLINER (1838-1865).  Ernestine’s mother Zerline BERLINER geb. FALK (ca.1813-1867) was an older sister of Emanuel.

For equal air time, here is a photograph of Ernestine’s gravestone, also in the Lohestrasse Jewish cemetery in Breslau:

Ernestine died in connection with the birth of her fifth child, a daughter who died on her second day and three days before Ernestine.

The family of Emanuel FALK’s second marriage to my great grandmother Johanna FALK geb. KALISCHER was always well-known to me.  They were the families of my father’s aunts and uncles.  But, the “Stammbaum der Familie Falk” (Breslau 1937) also had information on the children of Emanuel FALK’s first marriage to Ernestine FALK geb. BERLINER.  There was almost no family memory of the fate of those half-great-aunts and uncles, and half-cousins.

Emanuel and Ernestine had three children who lived to adulthood, Sara FALK who married Berthold SALZ and had 4 children, and Loebel FALK and Louis FALK, who lived long and short, respectively, did not marry, and had no children.  Other than reading the names in the Falk Stammbaum, and seeing the now-lost gravestones for Loebel and Louis in the graves of the “Familie Emanuel Falk“, the only other note about this part of the family was from my aunt Eva WULKAN geb. FALK (1911-2005).   When she was young, she knew of her half-uncle Loebel, living in an old age home in Breslau.  Being interested in family and liking to do good deeds, Eva went to visit Loebel.  According to Eva, he had no interest in her or her visit.  Not a promising legacy to build on.

Sara and Berthold SALZ had three daughters Else, Rosa and Gertrud, and a son Jacob Fritz.  Else had married Wilhelm RISCH and had sons Kurt (b.1904) and Erich (b.1907).  Rosa had married Albert HIRSCH and had the children Walter (b.1909), Hans (b.1914) and Erna (b.1916).  Gertrud did not marry.  Jacob Fritz had married Meta Tana WAGNER and had a son Heinz Michael (b.1916).  That was where the information ended.

[After writing the above about Kurt and Erich, I checked again in the online database of the Deutsche Gedenkbuch and this time finally found some specific information:  they were both deported from Breslau on 13 April 1942 to the Izbica Ghetto along with their parents.  There was still no death information, but I now assume that they all died in that Ghetto in 1942.  Before, I had the non-specific information from Pages of Testimony from their cousin Walter HIRSCH that they had been deported and killed.  From what I have read, it is impossible to learn who died in Izbica of disease or from the brutality of the guards, and who was deported to Belzec, Sobibor or Majdanek…]

My early-internet searches failed to come up with any new information about the SALZ, HIRSCH or RISCH families.

In October 2000, having similarly gotten stuck in my search for another part of the FALK family, my third cousin Martin WOLFSOHN (b.1890) and his wife and daughter, I had turned to the Search Bureau for Missing Relatives.  Soon, I had received information about Martin and his wife, and the suggestion to check with Chevra Kadischa in Haifa to get the address for their daughter.  That worked, and a couple weeks later I was in contact with Shoshana and her husband.


It turned out that Shoshana had her father’s copy of the Falk Stammbaum.  But, it also turned out that it was not the same version my family had.  Her copy was from 1938; ours is from 1937.  Her copy was handwritten; ours is typed and bound.  Her copy had a “Kapitel 267”; ours stopped at 266.  And the new Kapitel 267 happened to be the page for Walter HIRSCH’s family, which consisted of him and his wife Felicia GORSKI, and the important clue that they had made Aliyah in 1938 and were living in Jerusalem.  (I am not sure how I came to learn about Kapitel 267 and its contents; Shoshana must have happened to mention that her Stammbaum had 267 chapters, allowing me to notice the discrepancy from our copy.)

In mid December 2000, with the knowledge that Walther HIRSCH was living in Jerusalem in 1938, I immediately contacted the Search Bureau in Israel to ask about the HIRSCH family.  The Search Bureau seems to have been a one-woman show.  The always-helpful Batya responded very quickly with great information:  Walter HIRSCH and his wife had come to Israel and died some decades ago; and Hans HIRSCH and his wife came to Israel in 1949 and had a daughter RIta.  Batya gave me Rita’s address and phone number in Israel.

The next day, I called Rita and was able to confirm that she was my half second cousin once removed.  The unknown family of Emanuel FALK and his first wife were no longer unknown.  From Rita, I learned about her family’s escape from Nazi Germany to Shanghai, and about her family, her brother and the family of her aunt Erna who emigrated to Colombia, but then returned to Germany — to East Germany (DDR).

Still, I did not learn anything more about the family of Else RISCH geb. SALZ or about the family of her brother Jacob Fritz SALZ.  That did not happen until July 2005, when I stumbled across a death notice for Jacob Fritz SALZ in the German-Jewish weekly paper “Aufbau“.  He had died in London in 1950.  The notice mentioned his son Heinz Michael SALZ (b.1916) and a grandson Anthony SALZ.  I was able to find an e-mail address for the right Anthony SALZ in England, and heard back from him the next day.  His father had died only a few weeks before.  I learned a little about the SALZ family, but Anthony was very busy and I did not get more details.  (I came close to meeting Anthony a couple years later when a work assignment took me to the same building that housed the law firm where he worked.  But, by the time I was there, he had moved to a different firm.)


That is were things stood with the SALZ line until this week.  I sent a note to all the branches of the “Familie Emanuel Falk” with information about the newly found gravestone fragments.  I sent a copy to Anthony as well.  I did not hear back from him, but the next morning, I did receive a note from his sister Joanna.  I did not know he had a sister.

Now, we are catching up on a few generations of family history.