Seattle Blog Launch & Lenin Statue Gets a Journalist Fired

BIG NEWS.

I have a new blog to share some of the fun things I have learned about Seattle and my family as I have been working on my new book.

The new blog is titled: “so you want to write a family history.” 

Today’s post on this Holocaust blog is a bridge between the two. Hope you enjoy.

To subscribe to the new Seattle blog, click here and scroll down, add your email and hit “subscribe.” 

The blogging begins now!   

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FIRED FROM THE SEATTLE TIMES – BECAUSE OF VLADIMIR LENIN?

Yes.

This past summer, journalist David Josef Volodzk, a grandson of a Holocaust survivor, was fired from his new job at the Seattle Times for writing about Freemont’s statute of Valdimir Lenin.

Freemont is known as Seattle’s counterculture, funky neighborhood, sandwiched between the University of Washington and Ballard. My spouse, Shlomo and I sometimes bike through Freemont and stop for coffee. We often meander over to visit the seven-ton, 16-foot statute of Vladimir Lenin, on the corner of Evanston Avenue north and north 34th street.

David Volodzk’s first article in the Seattle Times was a letter to the residents of Freemont about the statue of Lenin. He commented that they dress him up in “a tutu for Pride Month, a Halloween get-up, a Christmas star. I guess they think it’s cute. Currently his hands are painted red and his chest is marked with blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.” (Seattle Times, July 7, 2023).

Volodzk continues to point out that Lenin was responsible for “secret police raids, gulags, mass torture, extrajudicial killings and public executions. When peasants in Tambov protested the government seizure of grain without compensation, Lenin had 15,000 of them shot and another 50,000 thrown into camps. He applied the same “liberation” methods in cities and districts across Russia. Not to mention the genocidal killing or deportation of up to half a million Cossacks and execution of millions of prosperous peasants and their families.” (Id.)

He suggests that perhaps the residents of Freemont shouldn’t be dressing him up and making him a neighborhood mascot.

After publication, David received hundreds of positive responses and some negative comments from angry Freemont residents.  

But then his misstep occurred:

He wrote on Twitter/X that, “Hitler has become the great symbol of evil in history books, he too was less evil than Lenin because Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself didn’t believe were harmful in any way.” (See Volodzko, David, “My Family was Hunted by Nazis. But I was Fired for ‘Defending Hitler,” The Free Press, July 30,2023).

Well, the Seattle Times wasn’t too happy and David publish a “correction:”

“In terms of death and destruction, the Nazis were more evil,” and “Hitler was more evil in terms of how many he killed.” (Id.)

Four days later he deleted this thread, but the damage was done.  David was labeled as a “defender” of Hitler and was called a Nazi.  He was told to kill himself. 

He was fired from the Seattle Times because of his continued engagement on-line and because of his “poor judgement.”

He wrote a subsequent “apology” that his “comparison of Lenin to Hitler was not only pointless but potentially dangerous: white supremacists could conceivably user my words to minimize Hitler’s atrocities – at a time when Pew research shows most Americans are clueless about the Holocaust, and the number of antisemetic attacks is rising. The thought of neo-Nazis weaponizing anything I said makes me sick.” (Id.)

David was left unemployed.

What is the right answer in this crazy world of Holocaust denial, Neo Nazi white supremacists, and on-line name calling and bullying? Minimizing Hitler’s evil cannot be tolerated, but neither should we minimize the horrors Lenin wrought. 

To my readers, everything about this article confirms that we live during a chaotic, challenging time.  I hope that you join me on my new journey into Seattle’s history and the stories that emerge from my family research.

Click here to reach my new Seattle blog and subscribe by scrolling down, putting in your email and hit “subscribe.”      

My father Irwin Treiger – center – with family and Mariner Moose – at his 70th birthday when he threw out the first pitch at a Mariner’s game (2004).

ESTHER GOLDBERG – 25TH YARTZHEIT – THIS SHABBES

Left: Esther Goldberg, with Sam and Fay in DP camp; Right: Esther and Sam – Maimi Beach, Florida.

This coming Shabbes, Friday night Nov. 10 and Saturday Nov. 11 we commemorate Esther Goldberg’s 25th Yahrzeit.

If you live in Seattle, please join us at Minyan Ohr Chadash for a Kiddush after services in her memory.   

Before Kiddush, a visiting scholar, Rabbi Ysoscher Katz, the head of Talmud at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, NY, will speak about the Torah Portion of the Week and the situation in Israel. 

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It hasn’t been that long since Esther emerged from a pit, where she, together with Sam and Chaim, managed to survive for a year.

It hasn’t been that long since Eshter, Sam and baby Fay were chased out of Ostrow, when after the war, the Poles wanted to kill them and take their possessions.

It hasn’t been that long since Esther’s first husband, Moishe, was murdered by a Polish man in the woods.  Murdered for a kilo of sugar as a reward for a dead Jew.   

It hasn’t been that long since Esther’s mother, father and four siblings were shot one by one into a pit outside of Slonim.

It hasn’t been that long since all the Jewish patients in the Slonim hospital, which Esther had left just two days before, were shot to death in their beds.

It hasn’t been that long since Esther’s family home in Stoczek was burnt to the ground by the Nazis as they conquered western Poland.

It hasn’t been that long.

What have we learned?

During this painful and challenging time, I choose to focus on the positive lessons I learned from Esther.

I learned that the human spirit is strong and resilient.  After all, she looked evil and hatred in the eye and survived. 

I learned that life can be fun and full of laughter, even if you experience sadness each and every day.

I learned that singing can chase away sadness and bring people closer.

I learned that pride in our families is central. 

I learned that food is crucial for survival and making delicious food may seem easy when you watch Esther, but it’s not.

I learned to be grateful each and every day.

Please keep Esther’s memory alive – tell her story and be strengthened by it.   We must learn from the horrors of the past as we attempt to navigate the horrors of the present.     

Photo: Esther, Sam and their three children, Fay, Ray Molly and Shlomo.

ALERT: JEW FIGURINES IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION

Poland’s Jew Figurines are in danger. We must mobilize. Buy now before it’s too late.

These Jew figurines are lucky charms – “especially for your money,” Polish salesmen explain. Why would anyone want to get rid of these figurines – it would just reduce our luck and we need all the luck we can get. The most lucky ones, if you are trying to decide which to buy, are the Jews holding the bag of coins.

In Poland, lucky owners of these Jews turn them upside down on Saturday – the Jewish Sabbath – for more good luck. Some Poles have portraits of Jews sitting at tables counting gold coins. The owners of these lucky charms turn them around on the Jewish Sabbath.

The Times of Israel reported that a Krakow city Alderman is trying to rid the city of these lucky charms.

These “figurines [are] antisemetic,” he stated, “and it’s time to realize it.”

The Alderman’s statement didn’t come out of the blue. A group of Polish Jews have been running a campaign to rid the city of these lucky charms. There is now a dangerous proposal before the city council – to strip all Krakow shop owners, who continue to sell the Jew figurines, of their permit, thus shutting them down. This is quite a proposal and has wide ranging effect since every second or third tourist shop sells these figurines. They are wildly popular.

But don’t worry, there is hope. If Krakow bans them, we can still buy them in Warsaw or other big cities.

I’m sure glad I bought my lucky charm Jews before they become scarce. Surely the price on the black market will rise. Check ebay soon. My three Jews stand proudly in my living room, just above a set of Babylonian Talmud.

I have previously written about these small figurines and the distorted view of Jews in Poland on this blog.

1940 Bucharest – The Countess’s View of Life from a Hotel Lobby

Romania, a place I had barely thought about, is now on my bucket list of countries to visit.   When I go, I must stay at the Athene Palace Hotel.   This is the perch upon which the Countess settled for eight months.   With her freshly printed American passport, her media credentials from Newsweek, her irresistible charm, and her “listening soul” she was ready to uncover the inner workings of Bucharest politics. 

The Countess arrived in Bucharest on June 14, 1940, the day that the German army entered France. “Her room on the first floor of the Athene Palace,” writes Ernest Latham, Jr. in the introduction of the 2019 edition, “was a front row seat for a crucial sequence in Romanian, Balkan and European history.” (Athene Palace 7-8)

“When I came to the Athene Palace on that hot June afternoon in 1940,” the Countess wrote, “I was an American who had felt and still did feel against my will, that Hitler might not only win the war but could win the peace and organize Europe if he did. When I left Athene Palace on an icy morning at the end of January 1941, I was convinced that under no circumstances could Hitler win the peace or organize Europe.” (Athene Palace 57)    

Athene Palace Hotel Lobby (Wikipedia)

Though the Countess spilled ink about the Jewish community of Romania, her primary concern was not the “Jewish question.”   In Athene Palace, the Countess shared her view of the big picture – with Romanian history in the rear-view mirror and the unknown post-war Europe out the front windshield. She sat on the precipice of history, waiting to see what Germany would do and how the Romanian people and other Europeans would respond. 

Romania was of strategic importance to Germany as it sits at “the crossroads of southeastern Europe, the country bestrides a major artery of empire, the Danube.” (Athene Palace 39) It is a country rich in natural resources.  Its oil and agricultural surpluses were high on Hitler’s shopping list.    By the time France fell to Germany in June of 1940, western Europe had been swallowed by Germany.  Hitler’s next stop was the Soviet Union or the Balkans.  It was in June of 1941 that Germany ripped up its friendship pact with the Soviet Union and attacked.  Romania was a stepping-stone to the Soviet Union. 

There were people from all over the world in 1940 Bucharest, including plenty of Nazis.  After the fall of France, the Nazis insisted that the war would be over in three months.  “To the Romanians,” wrote the Countess, “there was nothing in the performance of the German armies so far which did not justify this belief. France was gone. There was on the Continent no army left to take up the battle.  Talk in the cafes said Britain would surely capitulate or, if she would not capitulate, she would be bombed off the map and invaded.” (Athene Palace 159-60)

Taking a look in that rear view mirror, the Countess saw the fall of France as a “climax to twenty years of failure of the promises of democracy to handle unemployment, inflation, deflations, labor unrest, party egoism, and what not.” She goes on to analyze why Hitler seemed to be “walking into” every country in Europe.  “Europe,” she wrote, “tired of herself and doubtful of the principles she had been living by, felt almost relieved to have everything settled – not satisfactorily but in such a way that it absolved her of all responsibility.  Freud talks somewhere about man’s subconscious longing to get away from light and back to the stuffy warmth and safety of the womb. The European man’s surrender to Hitler seemed to be the translation of this longing for the mother womb.  Hitler, Europe felt, was a smart guy- disagreeable but smart. He had gone far in making his country strong. Why not try his way? That’s how Europe felt in this summer of 1940.” (Athene Palace 160)

As the Countess described Western Europe, I couldn’t help but hear an echo of Donald Trump’s 2016 America.   “What really made for surrender to Hitler,” argued the Countess, “was people’s distrust of freedom because of the weaknesses in its wake and people’s fedupness with their ruling class; and the ruling class’ fed-upness with itself.” (Id.)

Back to Romania – I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that Romania had a king.  His name was King Carol, and he dumped his queen for a Jewish mistress named Lupescu.  It seems the Romanian people were terribly antisemitic and never forgave Carol for this.  The Countess felt that Lupescu “would probably have got by if she had been the natural daughter of an orthodox Catholic streetwalker but being of Jewish extraction was too much for her to overcome. The Romanian people felt humiliated that their King had dropped his Queen for a Jewess.  And now they were blaming her for the misfortune which had befallen the country – and they blamed the entire Jewish race for Lupescu.” (Athene Palace 165)  

King Carol II (Wikipedia)

 According to the Countess, the Romanian antisemitism was the “old-fashioned kind” – religious, not racial – and under this antisemitism it was well known that “the Jewish middlemen had built up a devilish system to enslave the peasant.” (Id.)  After King Carol fired the British as an ally and appointed a pro-German premier, laws excluding Jews from “the press, theater, and the management of big business” were enacted. (Athene Palace 162)   Next came laws declaring “who was a Jew and who was not.” (Id.)

The Nazis had an idea for a new world order.  This new world was one without Jews, but it was also one where other inferior peoples were subservient to the Aryan race.  The Countess came to a deeper understanding of Germany’s intentions as she overheard a conversation on a train between two SS officers.  

It was a fancy Pullman car and there were SS officer together with a “dark-haired Romanian lady with a dark-haired little boy.”  

“If that’s not a Jewish mama with her little Moritz, I’ll be hanged,” the SS man said to his colleague. 

‘He’s Romanian,’ the other SS-man corrected him.  ‘His father saw him off – an officer.’

‘A Romanian is he?’ said the first.  ‘Just wait until we are masters here, then Romanian boys will travel in cattle trains and not in Pullmans.’”

“So this, I thought,” the Countess wrote about this overheard encounter, “was the new European Order.   It was nothing of the sort – it was a German order. . . clearly this new order benefited only Germans. The same SS-men who were gentle baby-kissers with little Germans from Bessarabia, were savages with a Romanian or a Jewish boy.  It was an order in which only the Germans partake of mercy and salvation, and almost everyone else is condemned to everlasting doom. Yet, I knew one could never organize Europe on ‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.” (Athene Palace 333)

After her train ride, the Countess summed up her view of the new Nazi world order that appeared to be unfolding across Europe.  “The Nazi order,” she wrote, “rested on the trinity of race, nation, and state. . ..   Their church was the Party hierarchy; the Gestapo was their Holy Inquisition; the French revolution was their original sin; Dachau was their purgatory for the sinners against the trinity of nation, state, and race. Heretics were everyone who was neither Nordic nor German.”  (Athene Palace 334)

This Jewish girl of Staadecker stock from Mannheim, Germany, watched Hitler rise to power and here a year into the war and she was able to grasp ahold of the stark reality that confronted Europe.  Ernest Latham, Jr., the expert on the Countess, told me that her analysis of Romania and Europe in the Athene Palace is one of the best he’s ever read. 

Countess Rosie Waldeck (Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.)

After the war, the Countess went back to Europe and wrote one more non-fiction book titled Between the Acts.  She lived in New York City until she died in 1981.  The timing of her death hit me as I realized that the Countess and I lived in the same city for two years; I arrived in New York for college in 1979.   Had I only known about her then, what interesting conversations we could have had. 

I am amazed and grateful that I “stumbled” into my cousin Rosie and my life is richer for “knowing” her.  Thank you, Seattle Jewish Transcript, for recording the social life of the Victor Staadecker family and for writing about the Countess’ visit to Seattle 82 years ago. 

So, was she or wasn’t she?  

After 300 pages of intelligence gathering, the FBI concluded that she was not a Nazi spy.  But no one really knows for sure.

The Countess – Tried as a Spy in Berlin

Before the United States worried that the Countess was a Nazi Spy, she was accused of being a spy for France and the Soviet Union. These accusations were brought by jealous, spiteful family members. But, let’s not rush . . .

Rosie Goldschmidt was precocious.  She read voraciously and, as a teenager, had an unusual relationship with her teacher, whom she called Michael.  They had secret meetings at museums and parks. This went on until their secret meetings were discovered and the teacher was sent a’packin.  “Michael,” Rosie wrote, “had made me at home in the world; the intellectual interests that he had instilled were lasting and so were the friends I made through him.” (Prelude 70).   Of these early days, Rosie noted in her memoir: “’How is it that you are so sure of yourself, my dear?’ my only girlfriend used to say in those days.   I really don’t ever remember having felt unsure of myself, but it was a sort of ‘drawing-room sureness.’ The nicest thing that was said to me in this period of my life was that I had a ‘listening soul.’” (Id.)

Graduating high school in 1917, Rosie attended University in Munich but found it lacking and transferred to the University of Heidelberg where she put herself on fast forward and graduated with a PhD in Sociology – summa cum laude in 1920.

In the years after World War I and the signing of the Versailles Treaty, Germany experienced hyper-inflation.  It was in Berlin, working for a banking house that Rosie watched her clients “get rid of their hourly depreciating marks” and saw how “[p]eople bought anything that was supposed to represent ‘real value’ with scarcely any investigation.  They reckoned as ‘real values,’ besides houses, carpets, antiques, and the trousseaux bought ahead for daughters hardly born or thought of, the shares in various industries.”  (Id.)  She also described how the Versailles Treaty was “for every German . . . a thorn in the flesh.”  (Prelude 115) It was, in part, Germans’ hatred of the Versailles Treaty and post-war inflation that allowed Hitler to rise to power in the 1930’s.

Rosie’s interest in older men continued and soon after arriving in Berlin, she married a Jewish gynecologist, Dr. Ernst Graefenberg, who was seventeen years her senior.  Their marriage lasted for “1,090 days,” as Rosie recalled.  After divorcing the good Doctor, Rosie moved to Paris and began her career as a journalist.

Leopold Ullstein, Founder of Ullstein Press (wikipedia)

But things got more interesting when she moved back to Berlin and began to work for the Ullstein press, a Jewish-owned publishing conglomerate – think a Jewish Rupert Murdock – they owned a book publishing business, but also newspapers, and magazines.  They controlled four daily papers in Berlin alone with a circulation of 800,000; four weeklies with a circulation of 1,000,000 and ten monthlies. The company was founded in 1877 by Leopold Ullstein. The company sent Rosie to Geneva to cover the League of Nations.  There in Geneva is where Rosie met “Kobra —  Karl Ritter, who became a Nazi diplomat and operative.  After the war, in 1947, Ritter was arrested, sentenced to crimes against humanity for being complicit in the deportation of Danish, French and Hungarian Jews to the death camps and for war crimes. He was sentenced in 1949 to four years imprisonment which, with time-served, allowed for his release on May 15, 1949, at age 65.” (Prelude 18)     

 Rosie, however, wrote that Kobra was the “love of her life” and she would do anything to keep the relationship going.  In a novel-worthy plot twist, in November of 1929, Rosie married Franz Ullstein, head of the Ullstein publishing company.  Rosie’s mother disapproved and told her daughter that Franz, at 63, was even too old for her.  Rosie agreed to Franz’s marriage proposal because she somehow believed that marrying Franz would allow her relationship with the budding Nazi, Ritter, to continue and flourish.  She convinced herself that as Frau Franz Ullstein she would command a position of power in Berlin that would captivate and entertain Kobra. 

This marriage didn’t sit well with the rest of the Ullstein family.  To them Rosie was a “blond hussy” – “gold digger” – waiting for the aged rich husband to kick and inherit it all.  These family members used their vast media network to slander Rosie and accused her of being a spy for the Soviet Union and for France.  What was it about Rosie that continually led to the label of “spy?” The “Ullstein Affair” as it was known, was a huge scandal and was in all the papers for months.  Also, her not so secret affair with Kobra became public and was fodder for the tabloids.  She and Franz divorced, which made Rosie rich.  At the end of a year and a half long trial in Berlin, the judge declared that Rosie was NOT a spy for France or the Soviet Union and the Ullsteins had to apologize.

This embarrassment to the Ullstein family occurred just a few years before the Nazis came to power and “aryanized” the Ullstein company. A November 2, 1933 headline The New York Time read:

NAZIS SWALLOW UP ULLSTEIN PRESS, LARGEST IN REICH; Family Will Lose Control of the Concern It Founded in 1877 in Transaction Today.

The Ullstein family was forced to cede control of the company to the Reich and were left with a non-voting, minority share of the company. Franz was allowed to stay on as a director, but the rest of the family was out. The value of the company, according to the Times article was 60 million marks ($1,714,000 – today – approx. $32 million). In 1941 Franz made it to the United States and lived in New York until his death on November 12, 1945. He died in a car accident on Columbus and 79th. Queary whether the Countess and Franz ever visited during the four years they both lived in New York city? I don’t know.

The Countess’s first memoir, Prelude to the Past, ends in 1930, before the Nazi’s rise to power, with the triumph of the trial, the divorce from Franz and the devastating news that Kobra – the love of her life – broke off the relationship.  It seems, however, that there was a reunion on the Hindenburg flight in 1936.  Maybe Kobra’s interest was renewed with Rosie’s new impressive title – Countess.

The Countess – Passport Photo Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

In the next and final Countess episode, I will share the Countess’ experience as a journalist in Bucharest, Romania in 1940 and we shall continue the quest to uncover her persona as a spy.

The Countess Revealed – Rosie Goldschmidt

Rosie Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

Countess Rosie Waldeck began life on August 24, 1898, as Rosie Goldschmidt, daughter of Johanna (Staadecker) Goldschmidt and Max Goldschmidt, a well-respected Jewish banker in Mannheim.  Her only sibling, Ella, was born 1903. 

Rosie’s 1934 memoir provides a glimpse into the affluent, assimilated, Jewish life in Mannheim at the turn of the 20th century. The city of Mannheim, according to Rosie, was a place of opportunity for Jews and Christians alike.  “The Mannheim aristocrats were not, in general, anti-Semitic,” Rosie writes, “and in the eighties had intermarried with such Jews as were rich, and at least as patrician as themselves. . .   The Mannheim Jews are completely assimilated, and distinguished from their Christian fellow-citizens chiefly by their great interest in things of the mind and of art. Their wealth was every bit as brand-new, as nineteenth century, as that of the Christian citizens.” (Prelude 32) 

Though her father was one of the leaders of the Mannheim Jewish community, her family was, like most other Mannheim Jews, secular.  “Very few, ‘ate kosher,’” Rosie explained, “[t]hey attended the synagogue only on the great festivals.  And they cheerfully allowed their children to become free-thinkers or Protestants.   But even those who remained Jews from tradition, superstition, and a kind of snobbery, had nothing Jewish in their aspect or speech. They were Mannheimers.” (Prelude 33)

Max Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

The Countess writes of her deep love for her father and how his death in 1926 was crushing.  Max Goldschmidt was a bespectacled banker who was happy to be a big fish in the small pond of Mannheim and had no interest in expanding into the banking world of larger cities, such as Berlin.  When Grandfather Goldschmidt died, Max took his seat as head of the Jewish congregation in Mannheim.  Though Max knew little about Judaism, he was a committed Jew and told his daughter that “though we might have Christians as our friends, we must never think of marrying one.” (Prelude 41)

When they attended the Synagogue on the two “great feast-days,” her father, “stood in his place of honor among the men below, and mother and we two girls sat above in the gallery, on the chairs which had belonged to the women of our family for generations. . . . We children [read] the service in translation, but always a little ahead or behind, because one kept losing one’s place those Hebrew books, which begin where other books finish; after the service, the somewhat disconcerting ‘Happy New Year’ – for really it was absurd to be exchanging New Year greetings in September, when the rest of the world (and we ourselves as well) had had them on the first of January.” (Id.)

 Her mother Johanna “was a singularly beautiful woman with magnificent dark eyes and a very lovely complexion.  At thirty she already had a white lock in her black hair, right above her forehead.”  (Prelude 36)   She was an athletic woman who loved to play tennis and other sports.  Rosie described her as “witty, intelligent, and has a fastidious taste in all personal and practical things. She is always exquisitely dressed, and understands more about the inside of a house than most interior decorators.”  (Id.)  But, she had “an impatient and violent temper when she was young.” (Prelude 37) Rosie had a deep regard and love for her mother, but clearly, she favored her father. 

Johanna (Staaadecker) Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

In the Goldschmidt home, Christmas, not Chanukah was celebrated in December.   But Rosie complained that she would rather have celebrated Chanukah because it would have been a more authentic celebration.  Their family’s celebration of Christmas “left out the Christmas tree with candles and silver tinsel, which spoiled the whole thing for me . . . I used to feel on Christmas Eve that we were all embarrassed and awkward – and was always glad when it was over, and I could take refuge in my own room with my new books.” (Prelude 42)

I learned that my great-grandfather Victor Staadecker lived with the Countess’s grandfather, Abraham Staadecker, during his high school years in Mannheim.  Before I knew of the Countess, I discovered that Uncle Abraham was an attorney and a Talmud scholar.  This would have been dayenu – enough – for this information created a strong kinship toward this Mannheim attorney with whom I shared a love of the law and of Jewish texts.  But his granddaughter, Rosie, filled in more details.  

Abraham Staadecker died in 1910, when Rosie was twelve.  But she explained that anything that she learned about Judaism, she learned from her grandfather.  He told her stories from the “Old Testament” and the history of the Jewish people.  She described going to his house each Saturday for a meal.  “Grandfather” Rosie wrote, “used to say a short Hebrew grace before meal, and put on a little cap while he was saying it.  I did not understand it, but knew that I must fold my hands for it.  The whole thing only took a few seconds, and then came the meal, with everything I liked best to eat – and always the same: vermicelli soup, chicken with green vegetables, and an apple-compote with lots of raisins in it.” (Prelude 35)   Rosie described her grandfather as “radiant with vitality, intelligence, and goodness.  He was a big, heavily built man, with fiery eyes under bushy white eyebrows.”  (Id.) At first, he pursued rabbinical studies, but then “changed horses” and studied law. 

As a girl, her grandfather told her that she must “always be faithful to Judaism even if it were not easy.” This was bewildering to a privileged daughter of an assimilated German banker.  “I did not then understand what could make it difficult,” Rosie wrote, “but I dimly divined that Judaism is not only a religion like the Protestant or Catholic, but has a special condition of its own.  But as I was only twelve when my grandfather died, I forgot about all this.” (Id. 35)

She did indeed “forget about all this;” as an adult, living in the United States, Rosie converted to Catholicism.

My Cousin the Countess – Nazi spy?

Photo: Countess Rosie Waldeck – from Photo Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

Was she a Nazi spy or was she not? 

The FBI and the CIA wanted to know whether Countess Rosie Waldeck was a Nazi spy?  A 300-page file was amassed with evidence and counter evidence. 

The Countess, a brilliant, enigmatic, Jewish woman, obtained a PhD in sociology from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 22, married three times, was the subject of a scandalous court case in Berlin, and moved to the United States in 1931.  Why, the U.S. intelligence organizations wondered, would a German Jew return to Nazi Germany in 1936 and fly on the zeppelin Hindenburg’s maiden voyage across the Atlantic in March of that same year with high-ranking Nazis?  Further, her affair with Karl Ritter, who became a Nazi diplomat, raised quite a few eyebrows.  Coincidentally, Ritter was also on the Hindenburg’s maiden voyage.[1]  

Zeppelin Hindenburg (photo: airship.net)

For me, this all started innocently enough with a simple search: “Staadecker” in the computer archives of the Seattle Jewish Transcript. Here is one of the hundreds of entries I found:

“Distinguished Guest Seattle Visitor,” the headline read on January 13, 1939.  “A visitor with a glamorous history, Countess Rose Waldeck,” the Transcript’s Social page noted, “formerly of Berlin Germany and now of New York City was in the city last week. Countess Waldeck is a niece of Mr. Victor Staadecker and a sister of Miss Ella Staadecker.  The title lady is the author of “Prelude to Life” an autobiography, and is associated with Dorothy Thompson, eminent writer, on her work on the refugee situation.”

My interest was aroused: who, is this Countess and how is she related to my great-grandfather, Victor Staadecker?   However, my attention was diverted as I had other more pressing research matters on my list and the Countess got relegated to the back page.  But ultimately, the Countess drew me back as I sorted through the ten Staadecker children born in Merchingen, Germany and various Staadecker relatives that lived in Mannheim.  I struggled to place the Countess on our family tree. 

What I found is that she is indeed related – she was my great-grandfather Victor’s first cousin, once removed.  The Countess’s mother, Johanna (Staadecker) Goldschmidt was first cousin to Victor; their fathers were brothers.  Johanna lived in Mannheim and Victor lived 60 miles away in the smaller town of Merchingen.  But when it came time for Victor to attend Gymnasium, he went to Mannheim and lived with Johanna’s family.  Perhaps he went to school in Mannheim because it was a better school or perhaps because there were just too many kids in the house and his stepmother wanted one less to care for.  It was, in 1885, after high school, that Victor emigrated to America at the age of 17. 

Great-Grandfather, Victor Staadecker

Re-reading an interview given by my Uncle William Staadecker to the Jewish Archive Project in 1981, I noticed that he mentioned the Countess as attending his father, Victor’s 70th birthday party.  “At that party,” Uncle William states, “was the Countess Walldeck [sic] who was a cousin of my fathers.  She was German and had to leave because of Hitler.  She was a very wealthy and charming lady.  Of course, she didn’t have any money now. . .. She’s now a very old lady.”[2]  Ella and their mother Johanna did indeed come to America to escape Nazi Germany.  It appears that Victor was the one who sponsored them and helped them settle in Seattle, along with other members of the Staadecker family.  Sadly, it seems Johanna had a hard time with the adjustment.  She died by suicide in 1940 at the age of 61.  It’s possible that the Countess’s visit to Seattle in January of 1939 was the last time she saw her mother. 

So, how did Rosie Goldschmidt, a Jewish girl from Mannheim, become a Countess?  Well, after two failed marriages, sometime between 1935 and 1939, she married a Hungarian Count.  I was told by Ernest Latham, Jr, the world expert on the Countess, that it was a marriage of convenience – the Count did her a favor.  As a German Jew, the Nuremberg Laws stripped her of her citizenship, and she didn’t become a naturalized American citizen until 1939.  Marrying the Count gave her Hungarian citizenship and, crucially, a passport. 

 The Countess was an author and a journalist.  I read both of her early memoirs: Prelude to the Past: An Autobiography of a Woman, published in 1934 and Athene Palace, about her year in Romania as an American journalist, published in 1942.  These books have been re-issued in the past few years with an introduction written by the expert – Ernest Latham, Jr.  By contacting the publishing company, I was able to connect with Mr. Latham and I have learned so much about the Countess that I feel I know her.  Well, not really, but I can say that I wish I had known her. 

Over the next few blog posts, I will introduce you properly to the Countess and will share a bit of Jewish life in Mannheim, as well her insights into the early years of World War II and Hitler’s rise to power as she saw it from her vantage point, especially during her year in Romania.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

[1] Here is a list of all passengers on the Hindenburg’s first flight with bios of them – both Ritter (age 52) and Waldeck (age 37) are listed. 

[2] Interview with William Staadecker, Jewish Archive Project, November 6, 1981. The Countess died the same year Uncle William gave his interview – 1981.  She was 83 years old.

Yom Hashoah- Make it Personal

Photo: Memorial Lights in Barracks at Majdanek

It’s been 76 years since the end of World War II.  As I reflect on this, I am a bit shocked to realize that I was born only 16 years after the War.   Maybe turning 60 makes the number 76 look not so far away.   Today I have the opportunity, as we commemorate Yom Hashoah, to look back to 16 years before my birth, when the war ended. 

 My generation grew up in the immediate shadow of the Holocaust – the survivors were in our communities, some of them with numbers tattooed on their arms.  Even if they didn’t speak of the horrors and the loss, we knew they had survived the Shoah.  In Jewish Day School they showed us the footage of the camps being liberated with the piles of dead bodies and the emaciated, skeletal human figures wandering, reaching out their hands to the soldiers for food, for help.  The number six million was thrown around everywhere.   Six million murdered – our sisters and brothers – killed because they had a Jewish grandparent.

 Still, it wasn’t until I joined the Goldberg family and heard the deeply personal stories of my in-laws, Sam and Esther Goldberg, that I internalized the depth of loss and suffering that took place. “Six million” numbs the mind and is impossible to visualize – it becomes a mantra, like “never again” and these mantras become meaningless over time. 

Learning what happened to Sam and Esther put the horror into a frame that my mind could process.  As I heard how Esther survived the Slonim massacre because she was in the hospital recovering from typhus, but her parents – Bracha and Shloime Zalman Wisznia, and her siblings – Yisroel Yoseph, Yitzchak, Shaina, and Shimon, were shot into a pit just out of town – I could felt pain deep in my soul – this is horror I can touch.  I too have parents and siblings – I can attempt to imagine what I might feel like if one day, as I am recovering from illness, I discover that my parents and two brothers were all murdered in a horrific antisemetic shooting – family gone in an instant. This doesn’t feel like an impossibility after Pittsburgh and Poway.

Photo: Museum-Chamber of the Holocaust – memorial stone for Jews murdered at Slonim

Sam described how in 1941 as a Soviet soldier he was captured by the Germans.  He was a prisoner of war, exhausted and starving.  He wanted to give up and end it all as he heard – “all Jews step forward” – he knew that meant a bullet to his head.  It was only because of his friend, who he called “the Kafkazer,” who put a cube of sugar on his tongue, that he didn’t step forward and take the bullet.  Somehow the sugar cube revived Sam and gave him the will to survive, to live one more day.  When I heard this story from Sam, I could feel his exhaustion and his hunger and appreciate how another human being intervened and gave him hope and strength.  I wonder if it was the care and concern of the Kafkazer more than it was the sugar cube itself that kept Sam alive.  What a lesson we can learn about how to support one another when we see a friend in need. 

Now that I am a Bubbi, I wonder what the Shoah will mean to my three grandchildren.  They were born 74/75 years after the War.   How will they relate to the number “Six Million?” How will they relate to the fact that their great-grandparents survived?  What will they say to their grandchildren?  I don’t know, but I will do my best to connect them to their history and to the preciousness of life and what it means to be a friend.

It’s incumbent on each of us to humanize the “Six Million.”  Make it personal.  Maybe it’s something you read, maybe it’s someone you know or knew, maybe it’s a movie you saw.  Take a piece of it and internalize it.   As the generation of survivors leaves us, we will be bereft. It becomes our responsibility to tell what happened to the next generation. If we make it personal, make it come from our kishkes, it will have a lasting impact. 

I hope on this Yom Hashoah, we each have the opportunity to reflect on our lives and how we can help to create a world where hate and bigotry find no resting place.   

         Making it Personal – Our family recording Hashem He’elita

Sam Goldberg’s Personal Exodus

Photo: Cover – G-d Dwells with his People

It was at the Passover Seder that Sam Goldberg told his personal Exodus story.  He sat at the head of the table, often sharing the space with another Holocaust survivor, Willie Erlich, who survived as a partisan.  They allowed their memories to flood their brains and spill out onto the table with the matzo crumbs and the wine stains.  The traumatic events recalled were felt viscerally, physically, as if they just happened. 

This is part of the goal of each Seder participant, to feel as if we too were slaves and were freed.  To feel the terror and the hope.  Sam and Willie had it a bit easier than the rest of us, as they had personal memories stored in their cells. The rest of us had to learn through the Haggadah and their telling.  As they spoke, we felt their terror, their sweat, their tears, their hope.   

Sam’s slavery at Treblinka began in June of 1942 and ended in August of 1943 – 13 long months.  At Treblinka, a place of death and torture, Sam survived, day by day, minute by minute.  He was one of only 65 to survive a place where 870,000 were murdered.  His brushes with death were not infrequent.  One that he often shared at the Seder is when he was nearly hung for beating a Kapo over the head with a board.  The Kapo, you see, wanted to send Sam to the gas chamber, in order to give his job at the laundry to some of his relatives coming off the train from Warsaw.  The Nazi officer was ready to hang him, because hitting a Kapo was a capital offense at Treblinka.  But the women who worked with Sam in the laundry stood up for him and told the truth of what they saw and said, “if you kill Shmulke, you will have to kill us all.”

Sam’s freedom came in the form of an uprising, which he helped to plan and execute.  He had grenades and a gun, and he did his best to kill some Ukrainian guards on his way out of the camp.  They were still up in the watchtowers, shooting down machine gun fire as the Jews were running through the hole blasted in the barbed wire fence.  The goal was to get out beyond the camp – to the forest to hide, to survive.

Sam’s Exodus story – his road to freedom – miraculously followed the Biblical narrative.  He left his place of slavery with his pockets filled with gold and gems, just as the Hebrews received gold and other valuables on their way out of Egypt.  Sam had been burying the valuables he found in the clothing of the victims and dug them up before the uprising began. 

Photo of Bug River, by Grzegorz Maleszewski June 2016

Running for his life, Sam encountered a body of water – not the Sea of Reeds, which was the newly freed Hebrew slaves only hope of escape – but the Bug River.  Like the Hebrews who saw the Egyptian army chasing after them, Sam saw the Nazis and Ukrainians hunting the escaped slaves.  The Bug river did not split for Sam granting him dry land to walk across as in the Biblical story.  Sam had to jump into the river, even though he didn’t know how to swim.  He believed it was his best hope to avoid recapture.  Like the Biblical miracle, Sam survived his encounter with the water and kept running.

Once saved from the water’s grip, Sam didn’t have time to sing and dance, as the Hebrews did.  He had to keep running and find a place to hide.

This he did, after running another 10 miles or so.  He met Esther, my mother-in-law, in the woods where she had been hiding for a year.  Esther took Sam to her “angel” – Helena Stys – and begged her to allow them to hide in her barn.   They hid together for another year, mostly in a pit in the forest that they dug.

Three months after they were liberated by the Soviet army, they were married in Esther’s hometown of Stoczek.  Perhaps this was the moment they sang as the Hebrews of old did after the crossing of the sea.  Sam’s first cousin, Shaya, may his memory be blessed, confirmed that though there were only about ten people at their wedding, there was plenty of drinking, smoking, singing and dancing and it was indeed joyous.

Sam and Esther Goldberg – Miami, Fl

May we strive at our upcoming Seder to feel the terror, the pain, the hope, the joy and the song of the Hebrew slaves and of all Jewish history.   Let us recall Sam’s Exodus story at our Seder as a way to help us fulfill the obligation that “In every generation, a person is obligated to feel as if he or she left Egypt.”

May your Seder be meaningful and filling.   

Polish Historians Found Guilty of “Violating Honor”

Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland

When my mother-in-law Esther, and later my father-in-law, Sam, hid in Poland during World War II, they weren’t just hiding from the Germans but also from their Polish neighbors.  Citing research done by Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking in my book, My Soul is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story, I share how Polish people hunted the hidden Jews for rewards or sometimes, just for sport.  Polish people would betray hidden Jews in the countryside, with devastating results for the Jews and for the Polish families that were helping them.  I’m grateful for the honest, meticulous and powerful work done by Grabowksi and Engelking.  

Grabowski is a Polish-Canadian history professor at the University of Ottawa and Engelking is the founder and director of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research in Warsaw.   In a 1,600-page work that Grabowski and Engelking co-edited titled: Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland, they document the fate of Polish Jews who tried to hide from the Nazis.  It’s written in Polish.  I looked it up on Amazon and found that the book description is also in Polish.  I copied and pasted the description into google translate and, though the English translation is stilted, I want to share what google provided:

In all the counties we examined, the greatest number of Jews sought help, not in towns, but in nearby villages – at their neighbors’ homes. The ability to survive largely depended on the willingness of these neighbors – Christians, on whether they were able to overcome the fear of the threat posed by the hiding Jews to the rural community. It was not favored by the applicable group norms, anti-Semitism that was everywhere, and the mechanisms of social conformism. All the more we should emphasize the courage and unparalleled sacrifice of the Righteous. All the more we should admire those who were able to oppose not only German legal regulations, but also the written and unwritten rules of group life.

The pronunciation of the numbers is impeccable: two out of every three Jews in search of rescue – have died. The studies included in the volumes provide evidence indicating a significant – and greater than it has been previously thought – scale of participation of local residents in the destruction of Jewish fellow citizens.

Sixteen hundred pages – imagine the years of work that went into this book and the tears that were shed by the Polish researchers uncovering the truth of what their countrymen did during the war.  These historians are, to me, heroes.  They are looking under the rocks of history and shining a light where dark truths lay dormant.   

Barbara Engleking and Jan Grabowski – Yad Vashem Photo

But no good deed goes unpunished.  Grabowski and Engelking were sued by 81-year-old Filomena Leszczynska.  Ms. Leszczynska claims that in their book her Uncle, Edward Malinowski is wrongly accused of assisting in the murder of Jews.  Ms. Leszczynska argued that her uncle was a Polish hero and saved Jews.   The plaintiff maintains that her family’s good name was damaged. 

Well, on February 9, 2021, the Warsaw District Court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking must issue a written apology for inaccurately writing that Uncle Edward, “robbed a Jewish woman during the war and contributed to the death of Jews hiding in a forest in Malinowo in 1943, when Poland was under German occupation. They were also ordered to apologize for “violating his honor.”[1] 

It’s not all bad — the court ruled that Grabowski and Engelking don’t have to pay the 100,000 zlotys ($27,017) demanded. Why?  Because as the judge writes, “it might have a cooling effect on academic research.”[2]

I believe that this lawsuit is a direct outgrowth of the Polish government’s attempt to rewrite history and engage in a competition over who had it worse – the Poles or the Jews?  The twisted narrative is that Polish people didn’t assist with the genocidal murder but helped the Jews during the war.  The large numbers of Polish Righteous Among the Nations is often cited as evidence.   In fact, to claim that the Polish nation had anything to do with the murder of three million of its Jewish citizens is against a law passed in 2018. 

While it is certainly true that there were Polish Christians who helped Jews, including the Stys family, without whose help Sam and Esther surely would have died, “[h]istorians debate how many Poles aided the Nazi death machine, with estimates ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.”[3]

The Times of Israel reports that a “2019 study on Holocaust remembrance in Europe argued that the Poles are among the “worst offenders” when it comes to . . . . ‘minimizing their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews.’ According to the study, conducted by researchers from Yale and Grinnell colleges, the government in Warsaw has ‘engaged in competitive victimization, emphasizing the experience of Polish victims over that of Jewish victims. The government spends considerable effort on rewriting history rather than acknowledging and learning from it,’ the study found.”[4]

While we rejoice in Sam and Esther’s survival, we must take a hard look at what happened to most Polish Jews who tried to escape the death grip of the Nazis.  All too often, they were betrayed or murdered by Poles.  For example, Esther’s first husband, Moishe Kwiatek was murdered in the forest by a Polish man and his mother and sister were betrayed in hiding by their Polish neighbors. 

Esther and Sam never got over the betrayal of their friends and neighbors.  They told their children never to step foot in finstere (dark) Poland.  I heard them often say: “the Poles were worse than the Germans.”  This, coming from two people who survived with the help of Christian Poles. 

What are the lesson to learn from this lawsuit?

What are the lessons to learn from betrayal?  

I don’t know. I am struggling. 

[1] Gera, Vanesa, Scislowska, Monika, Poland Orders Scholars to Apologize in Case That Could Muzzle Research, Times of Israel, February 9, 2021.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.