Israel

March 15, 2012

Hidden in Belgium

From emails by Edna Southard to Victoria Hess — Oct. 2010

My grandmother was Erna Pintus and my grandfather was Hugo Hirschland who died of his WW I war wounds. Left with three small children, she stayed in close touch with the Hirschland in-laws. She married Arnold Alexander who had a department store in Essen that was destroyed during Kristallnacht. They spent the war in hiding in Belgium, but Arnold was captured and died on the way to Auschwitz. My grandmother survived in hiding and came to the US in 1948. Continue Reading

March 15, 2012

Escape to Palestine

Contributed by Victoria Hess,
compiled from emails by Sarah Hirschland — October  2010

Sarah Hirschland’s first letter to me said “congratulations, you have found the only Hirschlands in Israel.” Through Facebook, I connected with Sarah and a couple of her daughters, and was thrilled to find that some of our family had made it to Israel, though at the time it was still Palestine.

Sarah noted that she was only a Hirschland by marriage, but she and Werner (Zeev) Hirschland had several children together, and her husband had several from his first marriage. To see the family tree, go to Geni.com and search for Sarah. Continue Reading

February 20, 2012

The Hacketts

Last updated 12/2010

The Tree:  Salomon Herz Hirschland (one of the three original brothers )  >> Simon Hirschland >> Isaac Hirschland >> Agathe Hirschland Grunebaum (and Ernst) >> Charlotte Grunebaum (and Fred) >> Thomas Hackett

The Hacketts are apart of the family that ended up in England with a name change, but they didn’t come directly from Germany, Instead, they went to the United States first, before following a job to London.

Thomas Hackett offers this tale:

Born in Berlin in 1899, Friedrich Hachenburg was an engineer and patent attorney who had been forced by the Nuremberg laws in 1933/34 to give up his profession and his partnership in the Berlin patent attorney firm. He was offered a job in a firm designing and building heavy machinery for the steel industry (it still exists today) based in Düsseldorf managed (and largely owned) by the Czech-German-Jewish businessmen. My mother, Lotte or Charlotte, – a Grunebaum and thus through her mother, Agathe, a Hirschland – met my father, either through friends or her parents who lived in Düsseldorf and in due course they became engaged. During that period, life became more difficult and they decided to emigrate, initially to the USA, where they married in December 1937. Continue Reading