The Vow: Rebuilding the Fachler Tribe After the Holocaust

By Yanky Fachler

"Dear Papa and Mutti! I have chosen to write my personal history in the form of a letter to you. I have been conducting a one-sided dialogue with you for some sixty years, I feel that this is an appropriate way to record my thoughts about my life both before and after we were parted." Thus begins the journal of Eli Fachler, written six decades after he caught a last glimpse of his parents as the Kindertransport train taking him to freedom in Britain pulled out of the station in Berlin in May 1939.

Eva Fachler (nee Becker) had a different motive for writing her story. Frustrated that her parents didn't know enough about their family histories, she promised herself: "When I am a Mama and my children ask about my background, I'll be able to tell them."

With the exception of Eli's younger sister Miriam, and two branches of the family who survived in hiding or in flight, the entire extended Fachler family in Poland was wiped out in the Holocaust. The list includes Eli's parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. With the single exception of one Communist cousin, Eva's entire family managed to escape the Nazi killing machine.

On their wedding day in a field in Buckingham, England, in 1944, Eva (born in Frankfurt in 1922) and Eli (born in Berlin in 1923) made a vow to re-establish the Fachler tribe that had been decimated in the Holocaust. By early 2003, their tribe included 50 direct descendants: 7 children, 24 grandchildren, and 19 great-grandchildren.

With Eli and Eva's encouragement, their writer son Yanky has recorded their story in The Vow, which offers a fascinating view of the 20th century through the prism of one Jewish family. This is a story that will make you laugh and make you cry. It is a story of miraculous escapes as well as tragic deaths. It is a story of hope, of determination, of faith and of love. Above all, The Vow is the story of two remarkable people.

"No one knows what will happen here. We thank the Almighty that you are not here now. May the Lord look after you and hold his right hand over you to protect you."

-Letter sent by Dovid Meir Fachler in Poland in the last week of August 1939 to his son Eli in Scotland, just days before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 24, 2003
• ISBN: 9781412214483

Yanky Fachler

Yanky Fachler is an entrepreneurial trainer, motivational speaker and freelance writer. Born in the UK, Yanky earned his BA and MA from Brunel University, and worked in advertising in Israel before setting up his own copywriting agency in the 1980s. At the same time, he began a parallel career on the amateur stage and founded Israel's national amateur drama association. For several years, Yanky served on the executive board of the International amateur Theatre Association based in Tallinn, Estonia. He moved to Ireland in 1998, and established BallyHoo Entrepreneurial Consulting as a vehicle for his popular "Start Your Own Business" seminars and workshops. His books, "Fire in the Belly- an exploration of the entrepreneurial spirit," and "My Family Doesn't Understand Me- Coping Strategies for Entrepreneurs" are published by Oak Tree Press. in addition to his training workshops and speaking engagements in Ireland and the USA, he is a keen historian, and is currently working on a book about the Zion Mule Corps. Yanky has two sons: Ashi who lives in San Diego, California, and Amit who lives in Israel.

Book preview

THE VOW

Rebuilding the Fachler Tribe after the Holocaust

by Yanky Fachler

Based on the journals of Eva and Eli Fachler

Dedicated to the memory of:

Tyla Feige Fachler nee Milchmann (1900-1943?)

Dovid Meir Fachler (1896-1943?)

Melanie Becker nee Friedmann (1889-1947)

Samuel Becker (1886-1955)

David Fachler (1947-1953)

© Copyright 2003 Yanky Fachler. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Fachler, Yanky

The vow: rebuilding the Fachler tribe after the Holocaust / Yanky Fachler ; Ashi Fachler, illustrator

ISBN 1-4120-0755-0

ISBN 978-1-4122-1448-3 (ebook)

1. Fachler family. I. Fachler, Ashi, 1967-II. Title. DA990.U452F32 2003 929’.2C2003-903810-6

TRAFFORD

This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing. On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

Suite 6E, 2333 Government St., Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4, CANADA

Phone [phone] Toll-free 1-888-232-4444 (Canada & US)

Fax [phone] E-mail [e-mail]

WEB SITE WWW.TRAFFORD.COM   TRAFFORD PUBLISHING IS A DIVISION OF TRAFFORD HOLDINGS LTD.

Trafford Catalogue #03-1123 www.trafford.com/robots/03-1123.html

10   98765432

Contents

Introduction

PART I-PRE-WAR

1. ORIGINS

2. EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS

3. SCHOOL DAYS

4. GROWING UP IN NAZI FRANKFURT

5. GROWING UP IN NAZI BERLIN

6. FLIGHT FROM GERMANY

7. EVA SETTLES DOWN IN ENGLAND

8. ELI SETTLES DOWN IN SCOTLAND

PART II-WAR

9. THE SECOND WORLD WAR

10. WARTIME KIBBUTZ-EVA AND ELI MEET

11. ARMY WEDDING VOWS

12. THE WAR ENDS

13. AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST

PART III-POST-WAR 14. YANKY AND DAVID

15. DEMOB AND CIVILIAN EMPLOYMENT

16. MARCUS AND CHAIM

17. THE DEATH OF DAVID

18. HADASSA WINE COMPANY AND LUTON KOSHER FOODS

19. MELANIE, MEIR AND YOSSI

20. THE SEVENTIES

POSTSCRIPT

Introduction

Dear Papa and Mutti!

I am writing to you in a language you would not have understood in your lifetime. Yet all your grandchildren, most of your great-great-grandchildren and even some of your great-great-grandchildren have been raised in English. I wonder how many of them will be interested in reading, or will be able to read, this partial autobiography in years to come.

On the rare occasions when all our children get together, I glean some of their emotions, hopes, fears, and attitudes as they reminisce among themselves about the times when they were young and very young.

Yet you and I never had a chance to talk about the way you grew up at home, what your own parents were like in your eyes, and your relationships with your siblings. You knew how we grew up, Miriam and I, but we were denied the opportunity to be together for those extra years for you to find out from me what the world looked like to me when I was very small, and later, in my early teens.

I have chosen to write my personal history in the form of a letter to you. I have been conducting a one-sided dialogue with you for some sixty years, I feel that this is an appropriate way to record my thoughts about my life both before and after we were parted.

Thus begins my father Eli’s journal. These words were written at the turn of the 21st century, 63 years after he last saw his parents as they waved to him from the platform at Berlin’s Anhalter Station. He was a 15-year-old schoolbooy who had just boarded the Kindertransport train taking him to freedom in Britain. His parents were about to be repatriated to their native Poland, where they perished along with six millions of their fellow Jews in the Holocaust.

My mother Eva had a different motive for writing her story. In her memoirs, she wrote:

From a very young age, I loved company, so my parents arranged for my cousins to come and play with me. I was younger than them, but I loved them all. How I cried when they had to go home. Then I began to ask my parents for an older brother. I wanted a brother who stayed at home all the time and did not have to leave, someone who could look after me and protect me against all those secret ghostly enemies that would crowd me at night. Buy me a brother, I howled. Everyone has a brother except me. Mama said they were not for sale, so back to my cousins I went. Who are their parents, which aunt and uncle belong to whom? Questions, questions, and not many answers. When I began to plague my poor Mama for more information about her background, it turned out that she really didn’t know very much. Except for a few details, she remembered very little, and nothing at all about her father.

I was blessed with a good memory, and could not understand this at all. Just wait until I am a Mama, I promised to all who bothered to listen, when my children will ask me about my background, I shall be able to tell them.

By recording my memories for the benefit of our children and their future generations, I am fulfilling my promise.

The Vow traces the story of Eli and Eva Fachler. When they married in December 1944, the full horrors of the Holocaust were not yet public knowledge. But Eli already suspected that he would never see his family again.

On their wedding day, Eli and Eva made a vow to re-establish the Fachler tribe that had been lost. My birth in January 1946 marked the start of the fulfilment of their vow. This was followed by the birth of David in 1947.

In March 2003, Eli, Eva and their six children gathered in London to mark the 50th yahrzeit (anniversary) of the death of David, who died at the age of five and a half in 1953.

Just two weeks before the London gathering, the birth of another greatgrandchild marked the 50th birth after the vow taken by Eli and Eva in 1944.

As this book went to print, the renewed tribe included seven children, 24 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.

The inspiration for combining the stories of Eva and Eli into a single volume came after I delivered a paper at a historical symposium in Northern Ireland in January 2001.

The theme was Conflict in the 20th Century, and my paper examined the Second World War through the prism of one Jewish family-my own. The three history professors who shared the podium with me urged me to turn the material into a book.

I did not need much prompting. I have always been fascinated with family history, and I have always been a history buff, especially the history of the 20th century. With my parents’ willing approval and help, I set about telling their story in their own words, augmented by some historical context as well as my own comments.

The Vow draws on four written sources: Eva’s memoirs, A Tale of Four Cities-Frankfurt, London, Letchworth, Jerusalem, which I edited and published privately in 1992 to mark her 70th birthday; Eli’s memoirs in the form of a letter to his parents, written in 2001 and 2002; Eli’s letters and documents from the war years; and a cache of letters spanning a 40-year correspondence between Eva and her nanny, Anna Lottes.

As we trace the different experiences of Eva and Eli, we can see several parallels between their two families. Eva’s grandfather Joseph Friedmann travelled round selling his wares at the Messe (regional markets). Eli’s parents used to do the same, and for a while, so did Eva’s father.

Both Eva’s mother Melanie Friedmann, and Eli’s mother Tyla Milchmann, had originally planned to marry other men. Eva and Eli were both born in post-WWI Germany to parents who had moved there from other countries. Both Eva and Eli were brought up by nannies (Eva by Anna, Eli by his aunt Peppi).

Both Eva and Eli had close family who became communists between the wars: Eva’s first cousin Kurt, and Eli’s uncle Yuckel. Both Eva and Eli used to belong to the Ezra orthodox youth movement that was lukewarm in its Zionist affiliations, before eventually joining the modern religious Zionist Mizrachi movement.

Both Eva and Eli escaped from Germany by train to Holland, and both sailed to freedom in Britain, with Eva sailing into Dover and Eli sailing into Harwich.

Both Eva and Eli had planned to become teachers. Before the War, Eva wanted to train as a kindergarten teacher, but training college proved too expensive. After the War, Eli wanted to go to teachers training college but did not have the funds to do so.

But in one major respect, their stories diverge-the fate of their respective families during the Holocaust.

With the exception of Eli’s younger sister Miriam who escaped to England via the Kindertransport just days before the war broke out, and two isolated branches of the family who survived the war in hiding or in flight, the entire extended Fachler family in Europe was wiped out. The list includes Eli’s parents, grandparents, and dozens and dozens of uncles, aunts and cousins. With the single exception of her Communist cousin Kurt, Eva’s entire family managed to get out of harm’s way before the Nazis launched their murderous killing machine.

This book traces my parents’ stories from childhood and early adulthood in Germany, through their experiences as refugees in wartime Britain, to the postwar era of family building.

PART I-PRE-WAR

1. ORIGINS

At the turn of the 20th century, four Jewish youngsters who were later to become my grandparents were starting out on their life’s journey in various parts of Germany and Poland.

Samuel Becker (born 1886) was from a small town called Russ on the River Russ in Russian-occupied Lithuania, and was a schoolboy in Wuertzburg, Germany.

Melanie Friedmann (born October 31st 1889 in Vienna, Austria) was a pupil at the Shimshon Refoel Hirsch School in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Tyla Feige Milchmann (born around 1900) was living in her hometown of Driltsch in Poland.

Dovid Meir Fachler (born 1896) lived in his hometown of Lodz in Poland.

Melanie Friedmann went on to marry Samuel Becker, and their first-born daughter was my mother Eva. Tyla Milchmann went on to marry her first cousin Dovid Meir Fachler (her mother Sheindel was the sister of Moishe, who was Dovid Meir’s father), and their first-born son was my father Eli. To understand the backdrop against which the lives of my parents unfolded, we will first sketch the origins of their parents.

SAMUEL BECKER

There were two things to be scared of if you were a Jew in any of the regions controlled by Mother Russia. One was a pogrom, where Cossacks, priests, rabble-rousers and other rowdies would periodically attack Jews and Jewish property as a sort of national sport.

The other fear was the prospect of serving for up to 20 years uninterrupted military service in the barbaric conditions of the Russian Army.

Like so many other Jews at that time who were eager to avoid conscription, Samuel Becker’s father-my great grandfather Yaakov Wolpert, changed his name in the late 1800s. When call up papers arrived from the Russian Army for Yakov Wolpert, Yakov Becker ignored them-they must have been for someone else.

Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua (Jacob Joshua) Becker was a scholar. He came from an ultra-orthodox family and was descended from a long line of illustrious rabbis. Yaakov’s nephew was Joseph Kahanaman, later to become known as the Poneveczer Rav, the founder of the Ponevesc Yeshiva (talmudical college) in Bnei Braq, one of the biggest yeshivot in the world.

Yaakov’s wife was Freda Senderovich, herself from a long line of talmudic scholars. While Yaakov studied his Talmud all day, Freda eked out a living by running an inn for the timber workers in the town of Russ on the River Russ. The Beckers had six children: David, Fanny, Samuel, Cyla, Max and Isidor. In about 1898, Samuel was sent to Wuertzburg to receive a good German education. He lodged in a boarding house, and at first he was very homesick. But although he hated the food, particularly the vegetables which he was not used to, he loved the school and the studies, especially mathematics.

It was while he attended this school that he changed his name from Shlomo (Solomon) to Samuel (or Sam for short) because he thought it sounded less foreign. This earned him the family nickname Samuel der Arier (Samuel the Aryan). It was only years later that this particular monicker would have such terrible associations for the Jews.

To escape the cycle of poverty, Yaakov decided to follow the example of thousands of other Lithuanian Jews, and set off to seek his fortune in South Africa. Leaving behind his wife and children while he scouted out the prospects there, he set out for Pretoria with a cousin and a friend in the early 1900s, probably after the end of the Boer War in 1902.

Yaakov’s cousin (Eva was to meet some of his descendants during her first trip to Johannesburg in 1975) decided not to join the timber enterprise set up by Yaakov and his friend. We can assume that Yaakov knew something about the timber trade from his proximity to the timber industry in Russ.

After a year in South Africa, Yakov saw that he was making a decent living, and decided to bring over his wife and children.

He applied for and received South African citizenship-which in those days meant that effectively he was a subject of the British Empire. Yakov returned to Lithuania with a pocketful of British passports for his family, and started packing everything up for the move to South Africa.

While this was happening, he received a cable from his cousin in Pretoria, telling him that the partner had absconded with all of Yakov’s money, and there was nothing to come back to.

Since Yaakov had already sold his belongings, and since there was no point in returning to South Africa, he decided to join his eldest son David in Germany. David and his wife Bertha (nee Werblowski) had moved some years previously to Frankfurt on the River Main, where they had built up a very prosperous rubber factory in the East End of the city.

Frankfurt’s flourishing Jewish community went back to the 12th century. When more than 150 of the city’s 200 Jews were killed in 1241, Frederick II issued an imperial prerogative guaranteeing the safety of Frankfurt Jews and heavy penalties were ordered against Jew-baiters. By 1270 Frankfurt was again a busy center of Jewish life, and in 1462, the Jews of Frankfurt were transferred to a specially constructed street, the Judengasse (Jew’s Alley), an enclosed ghetto with walls and gates.

By the end of the Middle Ages, Frankfurt had grown into one of the richest and most powerful trade centers in Germany, and was home to one of the largest and most energetic Jewish communities in Central Europe. The city’s German-Jewish intellectual development was nurtured by great thinkers who taught and studied in Frankfurt, including Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Franz Rosenzweig.

Yaakov and Freda Becker settled in Frankfurt’s Scheidswaltrtasse, and were eventually joined by all their children. Samuel finished the Gymnasium (high school) in Wuertzburg, and proved to be a gifted scholar, specialising in maths and algebra. He was extremely well read, and loved the German poets Schiller and Goethe, whom he quoted by heart. He was a proper young German, and loved opera and concerts, especially Wagner and Beethoven. His plans to study maths at university came to nothing, as there were simply no funds availabl. Much to his distress, Samuel had to learn a trade. He was apprenticed to a haberdasher, and after he received his diploma, he set up his own business.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 posed an immediate problem for the 28-year-old Samuel and the other Becker males. They all held South African-issued British passports, and were thus considered enemy aliens, subject to internment as British subjects.

All the family gave in their passports, after successfully convincing the authorities that they had never lived in South Africa and that they were loyal Germans. The authorities agreed, and the Beckers were given German passports.

All the family, that is, except Samuel. Clutching his South African passport, and loudly proclaiming that he was a British subject, he insisted on internment. The German authorities obliged by arresting him and interning him in Ruhleben Castle near Berlin.

Here, far from the trenches, he spent a luxurious and enjoyable war in the company of British civilians who had the misfortune to be cut off in Germany at the outbreak of hostilities. He improved his English, he studied music, played chess, engaged in various cultural pursuits, and was quite happy to be away from his business which he had never really enjoyed.

In my own childhood, I befriended two veterans of The Great War: Mr Angel who fought for the Allies, and Dr. Friedman who fought for the Great Powers.

Mr. Angel was a Cockney Jew who lived in Letchworth. He would regale me with his war experiences in the Jewish Legion, which started out as the Assyrian Jewish Refugee Mule Corps (better known as the Zion Mule Corps) in March 1915.

As Allied casualties on the Western Front in France mounted, the British War Office formed the Jewish Legion in 1917. This was the first battalion of Jewish infantry to fight in Palestine for nearly two millenia. About 50% of the unit was British-born or were naturalised British citizens. One of the Legionnaires was Mr Angel, another was the father of Yitzhak Rabin. The Jewish Legion was transferred to Palestine where it was placed in the lines some 20 miles north of Jerusalem opposite the Turks.

Although the Egyptian Expeditionary Force led by the pro-Arab General Sir Edmund Allenby, later Field Marshal Viscount Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe, was not favorably inclined towards Jewish and Zionist aspirations, the Jewish Legion did participate in Allenby’s liberation of Jerusalem on 9th December 1917.

Mr Angel was with Allenby when he conquered Jerusalem, and I was very mindful of this when I strode down Allenby Street in Tel Aviv for the very first time in 1964.

The other WW1 veteran was Dr Fridolin Moritz Max Friedmann, who was my teacher in Carmel College. He had fought in the trenches in the German army (Sorry, boys, he used to say, I was on the wrong side), was shot in the backside, and was decorated for his exploits. It is common knowledge that tens of thousands of British, Commonwealth and American Jews fought and died in WWI.

But today, it is difficult to comprehend that less than 20 years before the Nazis came to power, close to 100,000 Jewish non-commissioned officers, officers, medical officers, army chaplains and military officials proudly fought for their Kaiser-and 10,000 of them died in his name. One loyal Jewish officer, Captain Hauptman, recommended that the Iron Cross be awarded to a certain Austrian corporal, and he personally pinned the ribbon on the lapel of Corporal Adolf Hitler. The unfortunate captain was later to be imprisoned for publicising this.

I didn’t know it when he was my teacher, but the same Dr. Friedmann who tried valiantly to teach me German at school had played a pivotal role in the educational and emotional rehabilitation of hundreds of children discovered alive in the concentration camps when they were liberated in 1945.

Samuel Becker emerged unscathed from the war. While he had enjoyed his incarceration far from the front lines, Frankfurt’s population suffered from a scarcity of food and fuel, and the winter of 1916-1917 was known as the Winter of Swedish Turnips. The postwar turmoil that gripped the rest of Germany only had limited influence on the city government of Frankfurt, even though Frankfurt was to be briefly occupied by French troops from April 6 to May 17, 1920 following riots in the Ruhr Valley.

After Samuel’s release from internment in 1917, he set about rebuilding his business. It was while he was staying in the Frankfurt boarding house run by Marie Friedmann that he first set eyes on her daughter Melanie.

MELANIE FRIEDMANN

On March 20 1883, Melanie’s mother-my great grandmother Marie Friedmann (nee Guttentag)-received a prayer book (now in Eva’s possession) to celebrate some joyous occasion.

The following entries appear:

Our son Isak is born 28th March 1884 in Kattowitz, 2nd Nissan. Our little son Leo born 18th April 1885 in Ratibor. Our little daughter Margarethe born 18th November 1885 in Ratibor, died 24th December 1886.

Our little son Moritz born 12th February 1887 in Vienna, 9 Muenzwardein Gasse, died February 1890.

Our little daughter Melanie, may she live, was born 31st October 1889 in Vienna, Muenzwardein Gasse.

Our daughter Stephanie was born 22nd November 1891 in Vienna, 2 Ober Auygarten Str. 34.

The reason that the Friedmann children were born in three different locations (Ratibor is in south-central Poland on the upper Oder River, Kattowitz is a Polish town just 20 miles from the site of Auschwitz) is that their gold and silversmith father Joseph used to take his family with him as he travelled the Messe (markets).

Joseph Friedmann was bon in Cracow, and died there in the early 1890s at a very young age. His widow Marie was left to bring up their four surviving children-Isaz, Leo, Melanie and Stephanie-with no means of support. Her family were craftsmen and businessmen, and Marie was the only member of her family who was orthodox.

By this time the family had already settled in Frankfurt. Marie wore a scheitel (wig) and was a member of the orthodox Breuer Synagogue. She decided to give her children into care while she tried to learn a trade. She managed to get the Frankfurt orphanage to accept Isak (known as Isho), Leo (who was an invalid from childhood) and Stephanie.

But Marie could not bear to have Melanie placed in the orphanage, so she arranged for her to board with the Langer family, originally from Hessen, who put her into the Volkschule (high school) of the Shimshon Refoel Hirsch School.

After Melanie graduated, she was sent to the Handelsschule (Commercial College) where she mastered shorthand typing, bookkeeping and other secretarial skills.

Marie scrimped and saved, working first as a milk mother nursing children whose mothers could not nurse them, and then as a Hebamme (midwife) and doctor’s assistant. Finally, she had saved enough to open a small Pension (boarding house) close to the Zeil, Frankfurt’s biggest and most important street. Melanie used to fondly recall the happy occasion when all the children came home and were reunited.

Melanie was a bright, ambitious and petite young lady, with beautiful pitch-black hair and an olive complexion. When a friend of hers was trying to describe someone’s skin colour, she said: Sie ist quitte-gelb, so wie Du (She has a complexion like yellow quinces-just like you.) Melanie was known as Die Schoene Frauelein Friedmann-the beautiful Miss Friedmann. She took piano lessons and voice training, she had a lovely voice, and she went on to speak five languages: German, French, Italian, English and Dutch.

In the context of the times, Melanie would have been regarded as quite avant-garde. She was an interesting balance of a thoroughly modern miss with a strong orthodox background, and indeed was one of the first young orthodox women of her generation to go out to work. Her first position was with the Israelii, an orthodox Jewish newspaper run by a much-loved communal leader, Jacob Rosenheim. As much as he treasured her, he realised that her talents were wasted in his little office, so he recommended her to the director of the Baer Sondheim metal company. She became private secretary to the directors, often travelling with them and taking shorthand notes on the train.

In the immediate years before the outbreak of WWI, Melanie led a very active social life. She had a large circle of friends, and more than a few suitors. She and her friends used to go climbing in the mountains, they played tennis, and they went to operas and concerts. She had become engaged to a young man from a prominent orthodox Frankfurt family of silversmiths. For some reason-maybe because war was on the horizon and they were afraid that he might not return alive, maybe because they feared that the families would not approve-the couple kept their engagement semi-secret. When war did indeed break out, the 25-year-old Melanie corresponded with her soldier fiancé for a few months.

Then silence. Then messages started filtering through that he was a prisoner of war in Russia, that he was starving to death, and that he might never return alive.

The details of this episode remain unclear, but in 1991, a very old gentleman met Eva at a reunion of Frankfurt Jews, and introduced himself as the uncle of Melanie’s fiancé. He claimed that at the time, he had personally made enquiries with the Swedish Red Cross about his nephew, and that it he who had informed Melanie that she was officially released from her unofficial engagement. Incidentally, the young man did eventually return safe and sound from the war, but by then it was too late-Melanie had already married.

Melanie was heartbroken at the news that her engagement was over. She refused to go out with other men. It was her mother Marie who pointed out to her the young lodger who kept casting admiring glances in Melanie’s direction whenever he stayed in the boarding house in 1917. That young man was of course Samuel Becker, newly released from internment. At first, Melanie was reluctant to allow Samuel to take her out, but she eventually succumbed, prompted by Marie’s encouraging prediction, He adores you, he will always be devoted to you (literally: He will carry you upon his hands).

At first, the courtship progressed at a slow pace. Eva still has in her possession a photo of Melanie on a mountain, sent to Samuel on 11 November 1917. In the accompanying note, while reminding him not to forget her sister Stephanie’s birthday, Melanie still used the more formal per Sie rather than the familiar per Du. But by early 1918 their relationship had blossomed enough for them to get engaged, and they were married in October of that year, shortly before the end of the war.

Samuel successfully rebuilt his business from scratch, and was quite wealthy by the time he married Melanie. They rented a lovely par terre apartment near his family in 63, Hapsburger Allee. They bought exquisite furniture and carpets, and kept a maid and a washerwoman. They had a Heitzer central heating, a spacious garden, a Hof (cellar), and a large storage boidem in the attic.

Melanie did not go out to work, but helped her mother Marie run her boarding house. By this time, Melanie’s brother Leo had died from consumption in the Juedischen Siechenhaus (Jewish Sanatorium for the Incurables).

Melanie’s brother Isho had married Jenny Rosenthal and lived in Frankfurt. Melanie’s sister Stephanie had married Walther Freund and lived in Berlin.

Melanie was determined to have children. When she showed no signs of getting pregnant, she decided to seek treatment, notwithstanding any embarrassment. Her efforts proved successful, and on 30th March, 1922, which fell on Pessach (Passover), on a day so icy that the heating had to be turned on again, Eva Becker made her maiden appearance on the world stage.

TYLA FEYGE MILCHMANN AND DOVID MEIR FACHLER

Much less is known of the detailed family histories of Tyla Feyge Milchmann and Dovid Meir Fachler. In the prevailing atmosphere of East Europe, Jews developed a healthy distrust of the authorities. In order to confuse the enemy, it was common practice for Jewish families to deliberately misrepresent birth dates, year of birth, and age. Our quest for an authentic Fachler family tree is made more difficult because Tyla and Dovid Meir’s son Eli proved to be somewhat less inquisitive as a child about his family geneology than his future wife Eva was about her roots.

From the stories I gleaned as a child, I formed the impression that the Fachlers had a less cohesive family glue than their Becker counterparts. What I took to be an apparent lack of interest displayed towards the wider family probably owed more to financial considerations. The Fachlers were borderline working class / lower middle class. Most of them would not have had the means to travel as frequently or easily as the Beckers, who had strong middle class pretensions, were able and willing to do.

As Ostjuden, East European Jews, the Fachlers’ lives were also more insular. They dealt with non-Jews only when when they had to, such as for business. In general, they shied away from the wider cultural influences. The Fachlers would have led very different lifestyles and adopted very different world-outlooks to the more sophisticated and cultured Beckers. Even though the latter were only one generation removed from being Ostjuden themselves, Yaakov Becker’s children came to regard themselves as part of a western and German cultural tradition that extended beyond the confines of the Jewish community.

The details of the Fachler dynasty are therefore much more sketchy. As far as can be ascertained, the family patriarch was my great great grandfather Nathan Fachler, who was born around 1850, and lived in the Polish town of Ostrowiec (Ostrofsje in Yiddish, or Ostrov as it is sometimes called). This typical Polish town had a large Jewish population with almost 40 Shtieblech (small houses of worship).

Many Jewish residents of Ostroviec were sole-traders eking out their livelihood. Another source of income was from Jewish family members who had emigrated from Ostrowiec to America and who sent a trickle of dollars to their destitute brethren back home. The first mass wave of Jewish emigration from Poland to America was in the wake of the attempted assassination of the Czar in 1905, the second in the years immediately before WWI.

We don’t know just how many members of the Fachler family left Poland for America, but it seems that the figure may have reached several dozen. One such emigrant was Yankov Hirsch Fachler, who called himself Fashler when he reached Canada. He left Lodz with his seven children in 1909, and two more children were born in Canada. When Eli escaped to England in 1939, Yankov Hirsch was the only relative that Eli knew in the New World. Several Fachlers reached Costa Rica and other Latin American destinations, while still others reached the USA.

During this same period, another Fachler left Poland, but his destination was Palestine, then part of the province of Syria in the Ottoman Empire. Gershon Hillel Fachler, a first cousin of both Dovid Meir Fachler and Tyla Feyge Milchmann, took his young bride Marjim and settled in Jaffa. Their oldest son Joseph was born there, and they all became Turkish citizens. Whether for reasons of climate, security or finance, the family returned to Europe in about 1903 or 1904, and settled in Berlin.

The patriarch Nathan Fachler had at least three children: Itzik (father of Gershon Hillel), Moishe (father of Dovid Meir) and Sheindel (mother of Tyla Feyga). At some point, the family moved from Ostrowiec to the much larger Polish metropolis of Lodz, 75 miles from Warsaw. In 1827, Lodz had a total population of 2,800 of whom 400 were Jews. Thanks to the rapid development of the textile industry, by 1939 Lodz had a population of 665,000, of which about a third were Jews.

Dovid Meir’s father (my great grandfather) Moishe Fachler was married twice. Nothing at all is known of his first wife. It is reasonable to assume that she died, since divorce was almost unheard of in those circles. It is not known whether there were any children from that first marriage. If there were, my father and his family knew nothing of them. Moishe and his second wife Galle lived in Lodz and had three children: Dovid Meir, Ester Zarke, and Noosen Noote, named after his grandfather Nathan.

Some time in 1918, probably in the closing stages of World War I, Dovid Meir left his native Lodz and went to work as a civilian on the German railroad system. Like a great number of Polish Jews, he soon gravitated to Berlin. Jews had first arrived in Berlin in the 13th century, and by the beginning of the 18th century, 1,000 Jews lived in the Jewish ghetto. The Jews excelled as merchants, mainly selling precious metals and stones, and as bankers. At the end of the 18th century, Berlin became the centre of the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) movement, and by 1812, the Jews succeeded in attaining Prussian citizenship. As Berlin’s Jews continued to enter the social and economic elite, their ranks continued to grow, and by the dawn of the 20th century, there were more than 110,000 Jews in Berlin.

In Berlin, Dovid Meir went into partnership with his first cousin Aaron Dovid (both young men evidently named after a common David ancestor), and opened a second-hand furniture business. Aaron Dovid’s brother Gershon Hillel also lived in Berlin, following his Palestine experiment. In 1922, Dovid Meir received a request from family circles to travel to Driltsh, the small Polish village where his aunt (Moishe’s sister) Sheindel lived with her husband Loozer Milchmann. They had 9 children. The oldest was Tyla Feyge, followed by Yechiel, Theo, Joseph, Pessel, Chaya, Yocheved, Yuckel and Chaim Meier.

The purpose of Dovid Meir’s trip to Driltsh was to escort his cousin Tyla Milchmann back to Berlin where she was to marry her first cousin, Aaron Dovid, who was Dovid Meir’s partner. Tyla was of course also a first cousin of Dovid Meir. How well the prospective bride and groom cousins knew each other or even wanted to marry each other is a matter of conjecture. As was quite common in those circles, the family hatched the match, and the young people agreed. At any rate, Dovid Meir dutifully travelled to Driltsch to escort his cousin Tyla back to Berlin.

At some point on this journey, the original plan was scuttled. Displaying a streak of independence that was later to prove such a distinctive characteristic of his son Eli, Dovid Meir decided that he was a better suitor for Tyla’s hand than Aaron Dovid. Tyla and Dovid Meir fell in love, and by the time they reached Berlin, Dovid Meir was escorting his own future bride. Tyla and Dovid Meir were married later in 1922, and the marriage ceremony was conducted by Rabbi Hildesheimer of the Adass Rabbinical Seminary.

There was always some confusion about the actual ages of Dovid Meir and Tyla. Dovid Meir’s passport actually showed that he was three years older than Tyla, but in those days, all newborn boys were registered as being younger in order to avoid army service with the Czar, while girls were registered as older. When officials would come round to register the number of people in the family, they were usually given phoney birth dates.

One can only guess what ripples the Tyla-Dovid Meir marriage caused in family circles, but most of the family seems to have accepted the changed arrangements as a fait accompli. Aaron Dovid cannot have been too delighted, and as part of the fallout, the partnership between Aaron Dovid and Dovid Meir was dissolved. Dovid Meir went into the knitwear and men’s underwear business. Eli was born in Berlin on October 27th 1923. His birth certificate does not record in which hospital he was born, but it was probably the Adass Hospital on Elsasser Strasse.

The scene was thus set for two new protagonists to take centre stage in our story: Eva Becker, born in Frankfurt in 1922, and Eli Fachler, born in Berlin in 1923.

2. EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS

Eva’s narrative:

By the time I was born in March 1922, Papa had become a victim of the rampant inflation that hit Germany in the early twenties. He lost all his money, his savings