Within the last two years, AVOTAYNU has published two articles about families being reunited after many years of separation because of the Holocaust (“Finding a Holocaust Survivor after 63 Years,” by Howard Margol [Winter 2005] and “A Family Reunited after a Separation of 65 Years” by Merle Kastner [Winter 2006]). This is the story of another family reunited after far too many years.

In November 2004, just hours after the Yad Vashem Shoah Victims Names Database was activated, Henry Stern of Opelika, Alabama, found his cousin, Fred Hertz of Durham, North Carolina. Hertz and Stern had last seen each other in 1937, just before then five-year-old Stern left Osnabrück, Germany, for America. Incredibly, today they live less than 500 miles from each other.

On June 16, 1937, Henry Stern left Osnabrück, Germany, with his mother, father, sister, maternal grandmother and great-uncle, sailing on the last ship sanctioned to allow Jews to leave Germany until after the war. Henry’s family traveled via New York to Opelika, Alabama, to join his uncle, Julius Solomon Hagedorn, who owned one of the leading department stores there. A few days before leaving Germany, Henry was photographed on a family farm in Westerbeck with his paternal grandmother, his sister, two aunts, an uncle and several cousins. The farm in Westerbeck was used to teach Jewish boys destined for Palestine how to farm. For more than 50 years, Henry Stern had tried to learn what had happened to the people in that photograph. He assumed that everyone had perished in the Holocaust except for his sister and himself.

In 1990, a friend brought Henry Stern some information about his paternal family. Richard Zalik, a professor of mathematics at Auburn University in Alabama, was going to Osnabrück, and Stern asked Zalik to look for any archival information about the Stern family while he was in Germany. The professor brought back two pages from the book, Stationen auf dem weg nach Auschwitz: Entrechtung, vertreibung, vernichtung: Juden in Osnabrück (1900–1945) (Stations on the way to Auschwitz: Deprivation, displacement, destruction: Jews in Osnabrück), by Peter Junk and Martina Sellmeyer.

Sadly, Henry learned that three of the relatives in the photograph (his grandmother, Ida Stern, and her two daughters—his aunt Friedel Stern, and his aunt Berthel Stern) had perished at the hands of the Nazis. Henry learned that his grandmother had been born in Coesfeld, Germany, in 1869, and that her maiden name was Hertz. In December 1941, his grandmother was reported to be at the Judenhaus at Kommaderie Street 11. She was deported to Theresienstadt in July 1942, and from there was sent to the concentration camp in Minsk, where she was reported missing. Henry learned that his Aunt Friedel was born in 1896 in Ostercappeln and that she was deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, where she was murdered. His Aunt Berthel was born in 1905 in Osnabrück and also was deported to Stutthof. Henry’s uncle, Leo Stern, born in Ostercappeln in 1893, died in 1938. No cause of death was listed.

In 1999, Henry sent a Page of Testimony to Yad Vashem, based on the information provided in the book. More than five years passed before Henry learned the fate of the other five relatives in the 1937 photograph.

Family Found

On November 21, 2004, the day the Yad Vashem database was activated, Stern decided to research his grandmother’s name. To his amazement, he found a Page of Testimony for Ida Stern completed in 1994 by Fred Hertz of Durham, North Carolina. He looked up the telephone number and called Hertz, asking how he was related to Ida Hertz Stern. Hertz told him that she was his aunt, his father’s sister.

Henry Stern faxed Fred the photograph taken in Germany in 1937 just before Henry; Henry’s sister, Lora; and his parents immigrated to the United States. Henry wanted to know if Fred recognized anyone in the photograph. I witnessed the next part of this amazing reunion. I am married to Fred Hertz’s daughter, Dorit, and we were visiting North Carolina from California for Thanksgiving. When the fax arrived, Fred called Henry back and asked him if he was sitting down. He then said, “Henry, I am in that picture.” In fact, then-16-year-old Fred is standing right behind 5-year-old Henry.

In January 2005, Henry, his sister Lora, who lives in Atlanta, and their families flew to Durham to visit the Hertz family. Reporters from WCNC-TV of Charlotte, North Carolina, who filmed the joyous and tearful reunion, met them. A year later, WCNC-TV won a regional Emmy Award and a 2006 National Gabriel Award from the Catholic Broadcasters Association for their coverage of the reunion. The Catholic Academy for Communications Arts Professionals sponsors the Gabriel Awards designed to honor works of excellence in broadcasting that serve viewers and listeners through the positive, creative treatment of concerns to humankind. Their website states that a Gabriel-worthy program “affirms the dignity of human values such as community, creativity, tolerance, justice, compassion and the dedication to excellence.” Several local TV stations and newspapers also covered the reunion, and the story appeared in Together, the newsletter of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. The Sterns and Hertzes have been in regular contact since their reunion, attending several family celebrations in Durham and making numerous visits to Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina.

Hertz Family History

The Hertz family had lived in Coesfeld, Germany, for hundreds of years. After Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), however, they made hurried plans to escape the Nazi terror. Dr. Richard Appel, Fred Hertz’s first cousin, and a physician who had treated the Maharaja of India when he was in Germany, had settled in Madras, India, to become the personal physician of the Maharaja. Dr. Appel arranged for visas to India for Fred and his parents. Three weeks before Kristallnacht, Fred’s brother, Gerd, went to Palestine, one of 800 Jewish youths enrolled in a Zionist program. Fred’s parents, Albert Hertz and Paula Hildesheimer Hertz, obtained transit visas to Palestine, intending to visit Gerd en route to India. Fred’s parents managed to board the last train out of Germany before the Nazis closed the border, arriving in Rome on August 29, 1939. Before leaving Italy, they left a transit visa and an airplane ticket for Fred in Rome. At that time, Fred was a student in Holland. Fred’s parents flew to Haifa, arriving two hours after England declared war on Germany after the latter’s invasion of Poland. By December 1941, all the Jews remaining in Coesfeld had been rounded up and deported to Riga, en route to Auschwitz.

Upon arriving in Palestine, Albert and Paula Hertz were detained by the British as “enemies,” and their visas for Palestine and India were cancelled. British authorities were prepared to deport them back to Germany, but family members in Palestine intervened and were able to persuade the British that the Hertzes would never become a burden to the British.

With the outbreak of World War II, the visa that Richard Appel had arranged for Fred was cancelled. It was impossible to travel to Rome to pick up the immigration papers and airplane ticket that Fred’s parents had left behind for him. Travel through Germany was not possible; England was blockaded by the German navy, and the borders of Belgium and France were closed to Fred because he was a German national. Fred’s parents managed to obtain a student visa for him to study at the Technion in Haifa; it was processed in The Hague in November 1939.

On November 15, 1939, Fred was notified that a trans-

port of Jewish youth was being organized and that he should be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. On November 25, Fred, along with nine other students, met a man and a woman at the Amsterdam train station who told them to board as one group. The woman, Truus Wijsmuller-Meyer, a Dutch Christian social worker, had been organizing Kindertransports for some time. Wijsmuller-Meyer boarded the train with ten students and helped present the appropriate papers at the Belgian and French borders. In Paris, they changed trains for Marseilles, where they were taken to a youth hostel. There, it was decided that Fred should separate from the group and travel to Rome, since he had an airplane ticket waiting for him there. Fred was also asked to take a seven-year-old girl named Erica with him. Her parents had sailed to Shanghai several months earlier, and she was going to be taken to Trieste. Fred and Erica boarded a train the next day for Genoa.

At the Italian border, French authorities could not understand how they could travel to Italy with German passports. After six hours of waiting, they were allowed to cross the border, but had to wait 24 hours for the next train. Once on the Italian side of the border in Ventimiglia, there were more delays as Italian authorities had to check with Rome for instructions. Fred and Erica finally made it to the hotel in Genoa, albeit two days late. Arrangements were made for Erica to stay with a family in Trieste for three months while waiting for a boat to China. Fred went on to Rome, where he picked up his plane ticket. A few days later, he flew to Athens, and then to Haifa. Wijsmuller-Meyer has been credited with rescuing thousands of Jewish children. In her book, Geen tijd voor tranen (No time for tears) (Amsterdam: Van Kampen & Zoon, 1964), she described Fred as “the intelligent 16-year-old boy who travelled with a 7-year-old girl from France to Italy.”

On December 23, 1941, Fred’s parents, Albert and Paula Hertz, sent a telegram to Ida Hertz Stern from Palestine to Germany via the International Red Cross. They wrote:

My dears, we would love to hear if you are well. We are fine. Liselotte has a little boy. Regards to Claire, Salli. Where are they?

Albert and Paula Hertz

Ida replied six months later. It was the last time anyone heard from Ida Stern.

Am healthy. Alone. Children gone since December. Claire too. Sally. Have two rooms in Bertel’s apartment. How is Berta? Congrats to grandson.

Love, Ida Sara Stern

20 June 1942

According to Fred, the middle name Sara was a compulsory addition for any Jewish woman in Nazi Germany. Jewish men had to add the middle name “Israel,” unless they had a “Jewish-sounding name.”

Fred Hertz and Henry Stern

Fred Hertz and Henry Stern expanded each other’s family trees by hundreds of new family members. Fred Hertz had identified more than 650 family members, but had not included Henry Stern, because he did not remember him. Henry Stern had identified more than 400 family members, but was not aware of Fred Hertz.

Henry Stern graduated from Auburn University and worked in the clothing business. He is the former executive director of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce and served as a member of the Opelika Industrial Commission. Henry has lectured throughout the State of Alabama on the Holocaust and serves as a member of the Governor of Alabama’s Holocaust Commission. At a 2002 Yom HaShoah program, Henry implored citizens of Lee County “to overcome intolerance and indifference through learning and remembrance.”

Fred Hertz fought in the Haganah and the Israeli army during the War of Independence. Afterwards, he worked as a radio and electrical engineer in Haifa. He moved to New York City in 1956 with his wife, son and daughter, reuniting with his brother, Gerd, and his family who had immigrated to the United States two years earlier. In New York, Fred worked as a dental equipment technician until retiring to North Carolina in 1990. In 1988, the mayor of Coesfeld, Germany, invited Fred and his wife, Ingrid, back to the city. In 2002, Fred Hertz published the Hertz family history and memoirs entitled 446 Jahre und 10 Tage (446 years and 10 days). Fred was interviewed by the Shoah Project and spoke numerous times about his escape from Nazi Germany. Sadly, Fred died on October 31, 2007.

Teven Laxer is a member and former vice-president for programming of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento. He is also a member of the Public Records Access Monitoring Committee of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies.

Avotaynu 2007; 23(4):22-24
DOI: 10.17228/AVOT20070422
Copyright © 2008 Avotaynu, Inc.