Tag Archives: Condolence

Ria Gold (Meerbaum) • 1912 – 2013

Ria Gold, geborene Meerbaum aus Czernowitz

In der Bukowina war sie in den dreißiger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts eine sehr bekannte Sportlerin. Skilaufen, Schwimmen und andere Disziplinen waren ihre Leidenschaften. Vier Jahre lang war sie die beste Skiläuferin in der Bukowina. Man erwähnte die Sportlerin in Zeitungsberichten und das Konterfei mit dem dunklen Schopf war fast jedem bekannt.

Am 20. Mai 1912 wurde Ria Meerbaum in Czernowitz geboren. Sport war ihre Leidenschaft, der Makkabi Sportclub ihr Zuhause. Der Vater besaß eine Molkerei und belieferte sämtliche Krankenhäuser in Czernowitz und Umgebung mit seinen Produkten, die Mutter bekam sechs Kinder. Täglich standen vor der Molkerei Körbe mit 200 frischen Brötchen und Faßbutter aus der Molkerei zum Mitnehmen umsonst für jeden Vorbeikommenden. Eine sehr soziale Einrichtung der Meerbaumschen Molkerei in der damaligen Zeit.

Gutbürgerlich wurde Ria erzogen, Not kannte sie keine. Erst als die Russen 1940 in die Bukowina kamen, Deportationen und Enteignungen stattfanden, wurde für die jüdische Familie und andere Ethnien das Leben schwer. 1941 erreichte die Deutsche Wehrmacht Czernowitz und die gesamte Familie Meerbaum kam ins Czernowitzer Ghetto und weiter wurden sie nach Ataki in Bessarabien ins Lager gebracht. Später kam Ria in das Lager Jedinitz. Ihr ältester Bruder wurde von der Sowjetischen Armee eingezogen und irgendwo in Russland von einer deutschen Einheit erschossen und in ein Massengrab geworfen. Zeugen haben gesehen, dass sich das Grab über den verscharrten Leichen wölbte. Rias Leben hat seitdem mit Angst zu tun.

Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, die zwölf Jahre jüngere Verwandte aus Czernowitz wurde ebenfalls mit ihrer Familie in ein Arbeitslager nach Transnistrien geschafft. Gedichte für ihren geliebten Freund Lejser Fichman schrieb das junge Mädchen in Czernowitz heimlich unter der Schulbank. Lejser Fichman übergab die Gedichte einer Freundin, die sie im Rucksack nach Israel rettete. Lejser, der Freund Selmas, ertrank auf dem Weg nach Palästina und Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger starb 1942 mit achtzehn Jahren an Typhus im Arbeitslager.

Noch vor dem zweiten Weltkrieg studierte Ria Gold Sport bei einer bekannten Sportpädagogin in Wien und irgendwann lernte sie in Czernowitz den Arzt, Dr. Edwin Gold, der in Wien studiert hatte, kennen. In den Mantel half er ihr, der gerade Kennengelernten und am nächsten Tag bekam Ria einen wunderschönen großen Blumenstrauß. In Bukarest heirateten sie. Zusammen wohnten sie einige Jahre in der Rumänischen Hauptstadt, wo 1945 die Tochter Gabriele geboren wurde. Über Umwege emigrierte das Ehepaar Gold mit der Tochter nach England. An der Universität Bristol arbeitete Professor Gold als Arzt und Wissenschaftler bis zur Pensionierung. Gemeinsam zogen die Golds im Jahr 1985 nach West-Berlin, um näher bei der Tochter Gabriele zu sein, die bereits 1972 zu ihrem Czernowitzer Ehemann Eduard nach West-Berlin kam.

Im Mai 2012 feierte Ria Gold ihren hundertsten Geburtstag. Vor einigen Tagen starb sie, die Czernowitzerin, und heute beerdigten wir sie bei winterlichen Temperaturen auf dem Jüdischen Friedhof an der Heerstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Christel Wollmann-Fiedler
Berlin, 17. Januar 2013

We Remember Lucca

From Irene Fishler

My first contact with Lucca and our first meeting.
Everything happened in November 2005, thanks to… Ehpes !
Irene

—– Original Message —–
From: Irene
To: Lucca Ginsburg
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 10:26 PM

Dear Lucca,

My name is Irene Fishler and I live in Haifa. 2 weeks ago I joined the Czernowitz2006 Group. Today I looked at your photos-collection on the Cz.- L group site. Since then I am going through a big excitement, I hardly calmed down. It’s about the Meisler Schule.

Tante Lea was my mother Leonore (Lea ) Ehrenkranz , geb. Kraemer.

Frau Singer was my beloved Tante Flora (geb. Kraemer).

Frau Direktor Meisler was their Tante Berta, my grandmother’s sister. It was a women- family- business and a teacher’s dynasty. I myself was for 26 years a teacher in Haifa, now retired…

Where do you live in Israel? I’ll be pleased to talk to you. What language do you prefer: Hebrew, Rumanian or German?

Can you please write your phone number? When do you like me to call?

Best wishes
Irene

============================

Dear Irene,
I think that I am not less excited than you were when looking at the Meisler schule photos!
I published them – I think – more than a year ago and up to now nobody reacted, I so hoped to hear from a previous school friend – and now, here, I get a much more exciting reaction from someone who was part (at least indirectly) of my early and really so happy years of my childhood!!

I loved “Tante Lea”! And Mrs. Singer, oh well, what can I tell you? Up to the present time I thank her in my heart for my fluent written German (as an executive secretary in foreign languages she contributed to my profession)/ One of my most priced possessions is a letter I received from her which arrived from Bucharest to the small island in the Caribbean where I spent 8 years with my parents.

Generally, those years in the Meislerschule were the happiest of my childhood because, as you know so well, our troubles started in 1940, when I was 10 years old. I never managed to visit the Carmen Sylva Lyceum which my parents had chosen for me!

My mother language is still German, I am also still fluent in Rumanian, but do not have much opportunity to use it. I too live in Haifa, for the last 1 1/2 years in the Elisha Towers (not due to health problems but due to personal tragedy, which I will tell you about.) I have one daughter plus family in San Diego, I just returned from there two weeks ago, and I have a married son in Frankfurt . My telephone number is 8100703, cellphone 052-3800531 unfortunately I often forget it at home …

Please, PLEASE, Irene call me! Elisha is full of activity, fitness center, swimming pool, all kinds of programs every day at 6 p.m. I do whatever I can! Best time to reach me is from 1 p.m. to 2, or in the evening after 9.
I am so looking forward to hearing from you.
In the meantime a hug,
Lucca

“Dorin Fränkel Radauti” – Video by Bondy Shtenzler

Dorin Fränkel from Radautz

Unveiling Ceremony for Eliezer Steinbarg’s Funerary Monument on 08.10.1933

It is sad, children, in this wide giant world.It is bitter! Let’s at least enjoy a fable!

Moshe Altmann Memorial Plate on 23, Kobylanska Street (Herrengasse)

History Museum of the Romanian Jews, Bucharest

Links: Eliezer Steinbarg, Arthur Kolnik, Barbu Lazareanu, Jacob Sternberg, Moshe Altmann, Dr. Shlomo Bickel, Leib Malach

Photos: Courtesy of Edgar Hauster, Irene Fishler, Lydia Schmerler, Sergij Osatschuk, Iosif Vaisman

Kyseliv – Borivtsi – Verenchanka

Pawel Otulakowski wrote to us: “Hello! I am Polish man who travelled to Ukraina to find family roots. Some of them are in Kyseliv. This is what I find near the village – monument without inscriptions (photo). I heard from local people history of this tragedy. Germans takes all jewish people from two twin villages – Kyseliv and Borivtsi (Kisielów i Borowce). They find also few Ukrainians who for promise to take all goods from victims agree to shot them. But they were usual people who don’t know how to kill. So they shoted even few times and they don’t kill some persons. Germans look for this and have fun that ukrainians do that “unprofessionally” . Died and alived – all were throwed to the little water eye that was deep in this time. There were corn around and few people saw everything. Everybody knows who were murderer but they lived without any consequences. Now they are die. I think You have to know about this and hope that monument will be repaired. There is also few macevas/gravestones in Verenchanka (Werenczanka) cemetery (photo).”

First I thought it is off-topic and off-area, but on closer examination I learned, that it is at least not off-area, as Kyseliv, Borivtsi and Verenchanka belong to the Czernowitz region and the Kitsman district. Above all, it can’t be off-topic, as similar brutal massacres happened in the whole area and – as Jerome mentioned – “it is one of those horrible, believable stories that is crying out to be heard, regardless of where it took place.”
Edgar Hauster

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!