Tag Archives: Der Tag

Ph. Mr. Josef Focșăneanu (1861-1933)

In January 2011 I stated as follows: “Josef Focsaneanu, a very well known pharmacist in Sadagora, deceased on 13.01.1933 at the age of 72 years. We learn, that – among many personalities from Czernowitz and Sadagora – Josef’s three sons, Dr. Lazar Focsaneanu, Saki and Fritz Focsaneanu attended the mourning ceremony. We come across Saki’s name again in Hugo Gold’s “Geschichte der Juden in der Bukowina”:

“The summer of 1940 brought a great surprise with the marching in of the Soviet Russians, but also a great disappointment. The Sadagurans had hoped for deliverance from the Romanian Jew-hating regime, but the nationalization of the people’s possessions in the year 1940, from which the Jews were the most to suffer, was superseded in the spring of 1941 by the deportation of the so-called asocial elements, the so-called bourgeoisie, the small businessmen – there were no wholesalers any more – and the hard working trades people, who in their small businesses with a few workers and modern machines had achieved a modicum of success, and the Zionists. Many were jailed, like the pharmacist, Sacki Fokschaner, and the Jewish Gemeinde secretary, Josef Körner, who perished there. Many were deported to Siberia, such as Nathan Luttinger, Mosche Stupp, Hersch Roll, Mottl Katz, Jakob Rechter, Leon Brender, Leiser Metsch, Isak Beutel, and many others perished there with their families from hunger and cold.”

But who knows, perhaps there are still descendants of Josef Focsaneanu out there!?”

More than nine years later, in March 2020, Frank Fokschaneanu, Josef Focșăneanu’s great-grandson, contacted me by sharing details from his family history and the amazing family photo below. Frank’s grandfather Friedrich Fokschaneanu was the founder of the Goetheplatz-Apotheke in Munich. The family tradition persists!

NN, Josef Focșăneanu, Friedrich (Fritz) Focșăneanu, Sakhi Focșăneanu, Lazar Focșăneanu, NN

Prominent Visitor at the Turn of the Year!

At the turn of the year 1932, Henry Ludwig Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett, pays a visit to Czernowitz, accompanied by his secretary, a son of the famous poet and Zionist politician Berthold Feiwel.

Henry Ludwig Mond, 2nd Baron Melchett, 10.05.1898 – 22.01.1949, was a British politician, industrialist and financier. Henry Mond was born in London, the only son of Alfred Moritz Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, and his wife Violet. He first visited Palestine in 1921 with Chaim Weizmann and subsequently became an enthusiastic Zionist, contributing money to the Jewish Colonization Corporation for Palestine and writing for Zionist publications. He became President of the British Zionist Foundation and made financial contributions to Zionist causes. He was the first President of the Technion in 1925. Melchett founded the town of Tel Mond, now in Israel.

Henry Mond With His Father and Two Sons

Statue of Lord Melchett in Tel Mond

He was educated at Winchester College. From 1915 he served in World War I with the South Wales Borderers but was wounded in 1916. He then joined some of his father’s businesses, becoming a director, and from 1940 to 1947 chairman, of Imperial Chemical Industries and he was also a director of the Mond Nickel Company and Barclays Bank. He served as Member of Parliament for the Isle of Ely 1923-24 as a Liberal. He then became a Conservative and was Member of Parliament for Liverpool East Toxteth from 1929 to 1931. On the death of his father in 1930 he succeeded to the barony becoming the 2nd Baron Melchett. He then set about restoring the family finances and moved his interests away from politics to economics.

Having been brought up in the Church of England, he reverted to his family’s Judaism in the 1930s and became a champion of Zionism, hoping that the Jews and Arabs could live harmoniously with each other. He advocated the evacuation of Jews from Germany to Palestine and supported the formation of an independent state of Palestine as part of the British Commonwealth. He was chairman of the British Agency for Palestine and took an interest in the Maccabean Jewish youth organisation. He married Amy Gwen Wilson, from South Africa, in 1920. She was described as: “a show stopping beauty and artist”.

They had a London home, Mulberry House in Smith Square, Westminster, which had a work of art by the era’s proment artist Charles Sargeant Jagger on display in their living room. This revealed a sensational secret that led to censure and outrage. They indulged in a ménage à trois with writer Gilbert Cannan, a friend of D H Lawrence. Paying homage to their sexual proclivities, they commissioned a 1.6m high relief from Jagger called “Scandal”. This showed a naked couple in an intimate embrace watched by society ladies in a state of outrage. The work was bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum for £106,000 where it is on display.

Mulberry House – Lord & Lady Melchett’s London Residence

They had had two sons and one daughter. The elder son, Derek, was killed in a flying accident while he was serving with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1945. Mond bought and restored Colworth House on the edge of the Bedfordshire village of Sharnbrook and lived there for twelve years. During World War II he made the house available for the recuperation of American nurses and to house Jewish refugees.

Colworth House

He sold the house to Unilever in 1947 due to his wife’s conviction that moving to Florida would restore his health. He died at Miami Beach, Florida in 1949 and the title passed to his surviving son Julian.

Released by Edgar Hauster, based on Eric Turner’s article for the APOLLO MAGAZINE, dated 22.09.1009, published by The Esoteric Curiosa.