Waiting for news: The history of the Jewish family Getreuer from the Bohemian Forest between 1938 and 1942

By Regina Gottschalk

Letters that have been preserved are the basis of Regina Gottschalk´s research. By means of these letters, she reconstructs the fate of a Jewish family from the Bohemian Forest during the years of Nazi terror.
The Getreuers and their four children are the only Jewish family in the small village Schwanenbrückl. Due to the Munich Agreement in 1938, their homeland is annexed by the German Reich; the family is forced to flee to Prague, where they hope to be safe. The adult children manage to emigrate to the USA, their parents are to join them later. The family members that have been torn apart try to keep in touch by writing letters. From now on, waiting for news determines their life. Finally, the parents and almost all other relatives left behind in Hitler´s sphere of power are deported and killed. For a long time, the children keep waiting for news – in vain …
Based on the family´s correspondence and other contemporary documents, Regina Gottschalk describes in detail the humiliating living conditions and the emotional strain of people suffering under the anti-Jewish laws: their longing for their children abroad, their hope to survive "these hard times", their fears in the face of the imminent deportations, and their trust in God, which they keep up until the end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: lichtung verlag
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9783941306875

Book preview

them.

I. Home in the Bohemian Forest

What someone builds today,

another soon tears down;

Where now a city stands

will be a grassy mound

Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)

1. The lost village

Anyone who seeks Schwanenbrückl today will be very much reminded of the above-mentioned stanza written by Andreas Gryphius during the Thirty Years’ War. The village with a fairytale name can no longer be found on a map. Schwanenbrückl has gained a lost village status.

We will discover the meaning of this, once we begin to look for this village. Our journey starts at Schönsee, a bigger village, part of the Bavarian Upper Palatinate (Oberpfalz). We follow the trail of clues across the Czech boarder to our destination. At dusk we drive parallel to the Radbusa creek, on an unpaved road. Suddenly from the edge of the woods a glaring green sign leaps into sight. On it is written in Czech and German: Zaniklá ves – untergegangenes Dorf – Mostek/Schwanenbrückl. Next to the sign two gloomy cypresses stand like guardians, flanking a rusted crucifix. It is mounted on a stone pedestal bearing the date 1862. In the background of this eerie picture untamed forest grows rampant, the trees barely older than fifty years. In the dim light, between wall remnants and thicket, an elderly moustachioed man is picking wild garlic into a hamper. All gone, he tells us. Communists village kaput – shame.

All we have to find our way, is a hand-drawn map of Schwanenbrückl and an old picture of the village compound in winter. We tramp along a slowly ascending path angled to the West from the road, towards the Bavarian border. Ruins to either side of us, on the right the creek Johanesbächlein will soon become one with the Radbusa.

Left of the gently rounding trail, house number 14 must have stood, an estate once owned by the Getreuer family. We spy bricks and wooden beams overgrown with grass. We discover the ruins of a wall described as Judenmauer (Jewish wall) on the map and happen upon the torso of an ancient cherry tree. Just as it did decades ago, the view opens to grass planes and forests merging together in the soft, rolling landscape. It is hard to fathom that a lifetime ago, a village with two hundred and fifty people existed here.

Until 1918 the village was part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, then became a part of Czechoslovakia and, in 1938, was incorporated into the German Empire. After the end of World War II, the Czechs reclaimed the region and drove out the Germans. During the Cold War the border villages were branded a restricted area and were not inhabited again. A double fence marked the divide between the eastern and the western world. All villages along the border deteriorated. People from the neighbouring regions took from the empty houses what they needed for themselves. In 1950 Schwanenbrückl’s village status was eliminated. Around 1957 bulldozers levelled what had been left of the village. To facilitate border control, no houses close to it were to remain standing. In no time the scrub had swallowed the wall remnants, only the trees will tell where paths once snaked through the town.

After the Cold War, some inhabitants of Schwanenbrückl ventured over to look for traces of their past life in their former village. None of the Getreuer family could return. However a former neighbour unearthed a broken jug from their land. Later treasure hunters found a rusted shovel, a child’s blue enamelled chamber pot, a glass bottle and shards of white and brown bowls and cups: the fragments of a once wealthy family’s household.

Ill. 1: Location of the lost village Schwanenbrückl, May 2010

Ill. 2: View from inside the Getreuer house: the school (right) and the Sellner tavern (left)

Ill. 3: Sketched map of Schwanenbrückl, drawn in reference to the model by Johann Hauer and Franz Richter, made approx. 1985

Ill. 4: Finds from the Getreuer family garden in Schwanenbrückl, 2011

2. Schwanenbrückl

Village of 36 houses and 221 citizens, six kilometres to the west of Muttersdorf at 520 metres above sea level in the valley of Radbusa situated charmingly between river and forest: So begins an old topographic description. The climate in the Bohemian Forest is rough, sometimes frost comes as early as September. During harsh winters the village of Schwanenbrückl was often cut off from the outside world for multiple weeks. The poor soil and soggy grassland did not leave the people luxuriously fed.

The settlement was far off from any well-trafficked roads, almost 5 km from the Bavarian border between the massive woodlands of the Upper Palatinate Forest and the Bohemian Forest. Since 1918 the only public transport was a local railway. It travelled from Weißensulz (Bělá nad Radbuzou), close to Schwanenbrückl, to Eger (Cheb). Churchgoers had to journey on foot to the neighbouring village Waier (Rybník nad Radbuzou) or walk 6 kilometres to Muttersdorf (Mutěnín). Here one could find a doctor, who also functioned as a dentist, as well as the next pharmacy. Those with greater errands who needed a bank, the post office or a hospital, had to travel on to either the district capital Bischofteinitz (Horšovský Týn) or the country town Taus (Domažlice). The next city was Pilsen, around 80 kilometres away, and the capitol Prague was around 120 kilometres away.

The citizens spoke German. Few Czechs lived in this area. People led a simple life without hardship, but also without any modern conveniences. The way of life was hardly any different compared to how it had been hundreds of years before, until late into the 20th century. As in pre-industrial times, people lived off what forest, meadows, fields and waters provided. The gardens in which fruit and vegetables were grown were indispensable. The surrounding creeks and ponds were rich in fish and crayfish.

The villagers depended on self-sufficiency and were kept busy by this throughout the year. Most of them lived off their own little farm. The few traditional trades offered little paid work. Schwanenbrückl had two mills, a plank sawmill, a forester’s house, a school and a municipal building, a general store, a cobbler and a seamstress in the neighbouring village; also a baker and a butcher, a mason, a wainwright and a cooper practiced their trade. Even two inns were regularly visited. A peculiarity was the pattern-pricker, a skillful craftsman who made the templates for the highly sophisticated bobbin lace. The only way for women and girls to earn some money in the village was by working from home, making bobbin lace. At the age of 14, many other girls left for the city in order to work as maids in households or in a shop. Young lads also left home for Bavaria or Saxony to make some money as seasonal labourers. Social unity was crucial with these living conditions. Everyone knew everyone else, many were related, and they needed one another. A family could achieve whatever an individual could not, and the local community stepped in when the family could not cope. The village’s most important institutions were the school, founded in1789, the voluntary fire brigade and the general store. Schwanenbrückl owed the latter two to its citizen Heinrich Getreuer.

Ill. 5: Schwanenbrückl in an old postcard; the Getreuer family’s property was located at the upper fringe of the village centre

Ill. 6: A simplified map showing Czechoslovakia in 1937

Ill.7: Postcard showing Schwanenbrückl, residential and business building Getreuer-Klauber on the right

Ill. 8: Grandmother Fanny Klauber at her 70th birthday in 1921 Standing behind her are her son-in-law Heinrich Getreuer (middle) and other members of the voluntary fire brigade

3. The Getreuer family

Heinrich Getreuer, born 1883 in Vojnice (Groß-Wunitz), a small settlement in northern Bohemia, married 23-year-old Frieda Klauber from Schwanenbrückl in 1909. The Klauber family was the only Jewish family in the village. A few other Jews lived scattered throughout the neighbouring villages. The next Jewish community was six kilometres away in Muttersdorf, with its own synagogue, its rabbi and its graveyard. Frieda Klauber’s forefathers can be traced back to her great-grandparents Jakob Klauber and Mina Mandler. According to their handwritten family tree, Jakob lived from 1765 to 1857 and came from Ronsperg, east of Schwanenbrückl. Around 1850 Jakob was the tenant of the so-called Flusshaus, where potash was made from wood ash, a substance needed for glassmaking. In 1851 his son Bernhard, married to Sara Bloch, became his successor as the tenant. The lease of the Flusshaus included a licence to distill brandy.

After Emperor Joseph II had granted the Jews of Austria-Hungary civil liberties in the last decade of the 18th century, Jews managed to emancipate themselves step by step. After the revolution of 1848, they were free to choose their own residence, profession and marital status.

Bernhard’s son Emanuel (1850-1926) and his wife Franziska (1851-1933), nicknamed Fanny, became owners of the estate number 14 in Schwanenbrückl by the last third of the 19th century. At the end of the 19th century, the glass industry was abandoned in Schwanenbrückl and the Klauber family had to find another line of business, as potash was no longer in demand. In the economically poorly developed Bohemian Forest there were little opportunities to earn money. From the Erzgebirge to the Bavarian Forest and the Bohemian Forest, making bobbin lace had become a typical trade. At home, women and girls fashioned elaborate lace ordered, bought and marketed by merchants. One of these lace wholesales was run by Emanuel Klauber in Schwanenbrückl, it had probably been brought from Munich by his wife’s family. Apart from the lace business, Emanuel and Fanny Klauber ran a kind of rural department store in their residence, selling all commodities needed in an isolated village. The store was vital to the population of Schwanenbrückl and the surrounding settlements. Together with the lace, it secured the Klauber-Getreuer family a good livelihood.

Their estate, opposite the school, located on the main road of the village, included multiple buildings and grounds. The residential building comprised two living-rooms, five bedrooms, two kitchens, an office, the shop, four store rooms, an attic, four larders, a large basement and a workshop. The main house and the other buildings were surrounded by orchards, vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. They also owned two fields for cropping and five meadows for grazing. In all, their property amounted to around two hectares, its worth was estimated to be around 150,000 Czech