The year was 1970. One morning that summer, I was exiting, quite unexpectedly, the railway station in Hamburg, Germany. It was the last place I wanted to be. I had misread the train schedule, leading me to believe I could make the journey from Stockholm to Vienna uninterrupted. How could I spend those hours in Hamburg until the next train arrived? What really troubled me was Nazis—the ghosts of Nazis hung over me like a cloud. How would I react if I encountered real, living Nazis? The thought that there might be Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, living in Hamburg, never entered my mind.

“You do know that we took over almost all of Europe!” Karl declared triumphantly.

Actually, my short stay in Hamburg was pleasant. People there were like people anywhere else, and no Nazis confronted me. The city was clean and modern, except for a towering church in the near distance, which was a charred reminder of the catastrophe of the 1940s.

It was the train ride to Vienna that reawakened my concerns. A large, burly German, dressed in alpinists’ gear, entered my compartment. Wehrmacht? SS? Or, if he were a few years younger, perhaps Hitler Youth. Yet, he was an amiable fellow, eager to engage me in conversation. He spoke about his home city of München; he was enthusiastic about my love of Lowenbrau beer, which was brewed there. Together, we planned activities for my next few days in Vienna. Yet, his commanding tone made me feel uneasy: “When in Wien, you will…”

What happened next, on the train ride to Rome, was more memorable than my entire stay in Vienna. I was cast together with a middle-aged Austrian businessman and his pretty 20-ish daughter. He and I seemingly became fast friends. Karl spoke to me about a wide range of subjects. He bought me bratwurst; I treated him to a beer. Then it happened! “You do know that we took over almost all of Europe!” Karl declared triumphantly. “We? Austrians?” I searched my memory of history. I replied, “The Holy Roman Empire? The Habsburgs?” My supposed friend fired at me a glance of amusement mixed with contempt. “You are a Jew, aren’t you?” I believed that I had found my dreaded Nazi. As if to dispel any doubts, he turned to a young Japanese couple and stated proudly and patronizingly, “The Japanese are the Germans of the Orient!”

A year and a half later, I met the exquisite Rhea Isenberg, who eventually became my wife. Rhea mentioned, with some pride, that her father’s father’s family was German. “Not really,” I explained. “They were Jews who lived in Germany.” According to my thinking, “authentic” Germans were Christians or, to use the odious (and erroneous) term, “Aryans.” Jews were a separate, very distinct, nationality. Rhea was not convinced, so we settled on the label “German Jews.”

Thirty Years Later

The issue resurfaced after 30 years, once I had gained my genealogy wings. At the New York City branch of the U.S. National Archives, I acquired from microfilm a copy of Rhea’s grandfather Rudolph Isenberg’s 1907 passenger manifest. The details were a revelation to me. “Nationality: German; Country: Germany; Last Permanent Residence: Hamburg; Place of Birth: Hamburg, Germany.” This man’s identity was totally German. My own Russian Jewish grandparents were listed on their manifests as “Hebrew.” Rudolph’s manifest carried not the slightest whiff of his Jewishness. In addition, I learned the Isenbergs had originated in Hamburg. Memories filled with excitement and apprehension of my time in that city flooded back into my consciousness.

Rhea knew almost nothing about her Isenberg grandfather, Rudolph. The fact that she was named for him, in Hebrew, Ruven(a), states the obvious: she never did meet him. No photographs of Rudolph exist. Some family stories were mistaken or misunderstood.

For example, the notion that he was employed as a merchant marine was, to some extent, disproved by the manifest entry for occupation: “merchant.” Rhea’s father, Joseph, rarely discussed his own father, so little of Rudolph’s story was known. Joe Isenberg’s relationship with Rudolph is a mystery, but Rhea recalls his great animosity toward Germans, no doubt developed during the Hitler years. How personal in nature was Joseph’s hostility? Rhea had no awareness of any Isenbergs living in Germany who might have been murdered by the Nazis. Unfortunately, her father died while she was young, thereby taking with him any secrets about the Isenberg family.

Records of Rudolph Isenberg

I obtained Rudolph Isenberg’s vital records from New York City’s Municipal Archives; they began to reveal his family’s history. Two 1917 marriage certificates (always search twice!), one civil and the other religious, confirm that Rudolph was a merchant. He was in the carpet business. Documents I acquired later on paint a broader picture. His World War I draft registration card describes him as a carpet layer. A 1924 Manhattan telephone directory lists his linoleum establishment on First Avenue. I was initially confused by the 1920 and 1930 federal census entries that he was proprietor of an “oil cloth” business. I looked up the term in a dictionary, finding linoleum contains linseed oil, among other ingredients, on a burlap or canvas backing. Rhea’s grandfather was Rudolph the flooring merchant.

Another look at the marriage certificates informs us that Rudolph Isenberg of Hamburg, Germany (already old news), was marrying Bertha Aponyi of Hust, Hungary (a town neither of us ever heard about, but worthy of further investigation). The real eye-openers on these documents, as well as his 1934 death certificate, are the names of Rudolph’s parents: Herman Isenberg and Sophie Wasserman. The excitement grew inside me as I imagined an earlier generation of Isenbergs—Rhea’s great-grandparents. Nevertheless, Herman and Sophie’s lives seemed so shrouded in the mists of a time long ago and a country beyond my comprehension. How could I possibly learn anything about them and their families?

Breakthrough

In February 2007, a genealogical “miracle” occurred! The Old World suddenly reunited with the New World, and the mists of time lifted. I responded to a JewishGen posting by a Dr. Renate Bielefeld of Mannheim, Germany. Renate is a woman of immense knowledge and talent. She holds several advanced degrees, including neurolinguistics and human resources and management. She was a university professor in Germany and the U.S.; Renate networks with some of Germany’s finest researchers and authors, such as Dr. Astrid Louven (“The Jews of Wandsbek”).

Renate is keenly interested in memorializing the Isenbergs. This is the essential connection: Renate’s closest relatives had intimate ties with Ferdinand Isenberg, son of Herman and Sophie of Hamburg. Ferdinand was Rudolph’s eldest brother and Rhea’s great uncle! Renate explains:

When my grandma came to Hamburg in 1910, she had left back her underwear and nightwear shop….Her aunt recommended her to Ferdinand Isenberg’s shops in Hamburg. Ferdinand was a relative of her husband Ludwig. To my father, in the course of years, Ferdinand became something like a mentor for opera and operetta and Ferdinand encouraged my very young aunt to develop her outstanding talent for fashion. So they both worked more and more for Ferdinand’s exclusive lines, my father told me, and so does my cousin Lieselotte.

When Renate used to walk past the site of one of Ferdinand’s shops in Wandsbek, a suburb of Hamburg, she rhapsodized over how her love of culture and fashion design was influenced by Ferdinand, a man she never knew, yet meant so much to her family.

Ferdinand Isenberg lived a life of grandeur that ended in sudden tragedy. He was a highly respected merchant, on a far greater scale than his brother Rudolph in America. Ferdinand owned Corsetthaus Gazelle, the most far-reaching chain store in all of Germany. Sales of his elegant ladies wear designs enriched him. Ferdinand was a pillar of the Jewish community, with his contributions to the Jüdische Gemeinde, as well as a patron of the arts.

Ferdinand’s success attracted the attention of the Nazis. He was arrested and detained in Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel Prison. There, he hanged himself on February 18 (Rhea’s birthday!), 1939. Renate sent me a copy of Ferdinand’s death certificate, a Hamburg newspaper article heralding his demise, and a photograph showing his memorial plaque. (Renate sponsored this Stolperstein project to educate Germans about Ferdinand’s life and death.) Already, the Nazis had “Aryanized” the Gazelle shops, thereby seizing and selling them for a pittance to Aryan Germans.

Another Isenberg brother, Emil, worked as a bookbinder and bookseller. Emil Isenberg was 12 years younger than Ferdinand and 5 years younger than Rudolph. At the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I obtained a copy of the German “minority census,” dated May 17, 1938. On a page for the city of Hamburg are listed Emil, his wife Emma, and (probably) their daughter Role.

Yad Vashem’s database of Shoah victims’ names includes several pages of information about Emil. There was no mistaking that he was the man I was seeking—son of Herman Isenberg and Sophie Wasserman, married to Emma, resident of Hamburg. Ironically, he was detained in Fuhlsbüttel Prison about three years after his brother Ferdinand. Far worse, Emil was deported to Auschwitz where he died on January 22, 1943.

Seeking to learn more about Emil’s death, I turned to the German Gedenkbuch from which some of Yad Vashem’s data was derived. More than 50 Isenbergs were listed. Emil’s name was listed near Ferdinand’s, but Emma’s and Role’s names were absent. Could they have survived? An inquiry to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum went unanswered. The U.S. National Archives rec­ords cover only those concentration camps liberated by American forces, not Auschwitz, which was liberated by the Soviets. The Polish State Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau replied that most of its “records were burned”; the Germans had made a last-ditch attempt to cover up their crimes.

A prompt response from the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, brought some information in the form of an abstract of the actual documents. Emil Isenberg’s “offence: racial disgrace; cause of death: cardiac weakness with intestinal catarrh.” I believe this means his crime was being a Jew, and his death was due to hard forced labor and miserable living conditions.

But what about Herman and Sophie? Renate mailed me two precious documents that Astrid Louven had retrieved from the Staatsarchiv Hamburg. One is a roster of Isenbergs who were members of the Jüdische Gemeinde (Jewish community). Herman’s listing includes “9 Kinder”—9 children. The other document, a tax record for his business, gives the name of each son and daughter. Next to Rudolph is the word “America.” Astrid (along with Ursula Pietsch) quotes in her most recent book, “Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Wandsbek mit den Walddörfern” (Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Wandsbek with the forest villages), from a note Herman wrote during World War I, in which he discusses his “four sons in the field.” The Isenberg boys had fought for their country, which turned so savagely against them two decades later.

Herman Isenberg was a merchant, a tradition followed by Ferdinand, Emil, and Rudolph. He operated a lotteriegeschaft (lottery business). Renate explained lottery concessions were often lucrative businesses. Licenses were granted by local noblemen, often influenced by powerful court Jews, until 1918. Herman’s name appears in the 1908 Hamburg city directory. His occupation, lottery ticket seller, is listed there along with his residence at 34 Rutschbahn. The neighborhood, called Grindel, was in central Hamburg. Jews like Herman Isenberg gradually moved into Grindel in the late 19th century; previously, Jews were forbidden to live in Hamburg.

Then Renate dropped a bombshell, noting that Herman

and Sophie were married in the United States, in New York City. I can’t imagine why they came from Germany just to get married here. I found Sophie’s name on an 1869 passenger manifest and Herman’s on one from 1872. ItalianGen.org’s marriage index revealed the certificate number. At the Municipal Archives, I obtained a copy of the oldest and most ornate marriage certificate I had ever seen, dated October 27, 1872. I learned the names of Herman’s and Sophie’s parents, who were Rhea’s great-great-grandparents. Herman was born in Hannover (town of Bremke) and Sophie’s birthplace was Würtemberg (town of Michelbach). The newlyweds returned to Germany soon afterward. I could not help thinking that, by making this decision, they had unwittingly doomed their future generations to destruction. As far as we know, Rudolph’s line of Isenbergs are the only descendants of Herman and Sophie surviving today.

I wrote to the Staatsarchiv Hamburg to acquire a copy of Rudolph’s birth certificate. Their letter explained that the facility houses only community records. Renate steered me to Bezirksamt Hamburg-Mitte, which is the repository of vital records for central Hamburg, including Rudolph’s home. Renate warned that 80–90 percent of its records had been destroyed in the World War II firebombing of Hamburg (I remembered that burned-out church I had seen.). Against the odds, I received Rudolph’s April 1, 1882, birth certificate. Written in Gothic print, with its hard-to-decipher script, it was, nevertheless, unmistakably the official birth record of Rhea’s grandfather.

Rhea is a talented musician, and she asked if I could discover if and how she might be related to the famed lyricist, Lorenz Hart. His mother, Frieda, was an Isenberg who immigrated to America in the 1880s. She grew up in Wandsbek, just a few miles from central Hamburg where Rhea’s Isenbergs lived. Two clues suggested a possible relationship. Joseph Isenberg recounted to Rhea how he used to sit in on composing sessions of his “cousin” Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Also, on Rudolph and Bertha’s civil marriage certificate, a witness signed his name as “Paul Isenberg.” Paul Isenberg was Lorenz Hart’s uncle. I have anecdotal evidence and circumstantial documentary evidence, but no proof, beyond a shadow of doubt, of a common ancestry. Rhea believes she shares a musical gene with Lorenz Hart. I am still trying to prove this is so.

Meeting Renate

In summer 2008, our family went on a cruise of the eastern Mediterranean. My virtual friend Renate became an actual friend when we met her and her husband, Rainer, on the Greek island of Corfu. Aboard their yacht, we became acquainted and exchanged gifts. I gave her a disc containing Rhea’s heavenly voice singing the aria “Vissi D’Arte” and the book Common Ground. Renate rewarded me with Astrid’s Stolperstein book and recently acquired Isenberg documents. Renate and Rainer conducted us on a walking tour of Corfu. We discussed, of course, family history. This was the high point of our vacation.

Would I ever return to Hamburg? The answer is a definite—maybe. Most Nazis are dead. The few remaining Shoah survivors and their children, like Renate, struggle to keep the memories of the victims alive. Perhaps curiosity will draw us back to the Isenbergs’ ancestral home. Renate has informed me whosoever has one grandfather born in Hamburg is, herself, a Gebürtiger Hamburger (native-born Hamburger). Rhea and her sister, Louise, are official citizens of Hamburg! I turn to Rhea and call her, endearingly, “my little Hamburger.” Rhea is not amused.

Jeffrey Arkin, a retired history teacher in the New York City public schools, dabbles in family history. He gives genealogy talks at senior centers and synagogues. Jeff lives in Fresh Meadows, New York.