Eighty Years On

By Michael Hermann

If the extraordinary events before and during the Second World War had not happened, then it is unlikely that the lives of our parents would ever have crossed.
They came from different countries and cultures, had different religions and their family backgrounds and circumstances were 'poles apart'.
It was a case of 'Sudentenland meeting Sunderland' in the small village of Brixworth, Northamptonshire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Hermann
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781911559719

Book preview

Illustrations

Map of Czechoslovakia prior to 1938

Family Tree of Kurt Robert Hermann

Family Tree of Vera Wilkinson

Part 1 Plzeň, Sunderland and Brixworth

Part 2 The Gate of Death

Part 3 Jewish Cemetery Plzeň

Part 4 Berlin Wall

Part 5 Tools of the Trade

All illustrations, other than the map of Czechoslovakia, are by Kitty McCurdy.

www.kittymccurdyart.co.uk

[e-mail]

The adaptation of the ‘Brixworth’ image appears by kind permission of the Brixworth History Society. The Gate of Death and Jewish Cemetery Plzeň are adapted from photographs of Susan Hermann.

Photographs and Images

Ski Group Eisenstein, 1937

Joyce Wilkinson (1928–1931)

Daughter Chris, Mother Chris with Norma, Vera and George Wilkinson

Vera and Chris Wilkinson

Robert and Vera, June 1944

Aryanisation of Glaser and Hermann, October 1939

Edith (1926–1945)

Zdeněk Sedlák (1912–1945)

Hede with My Father

Viktor Freund (1892–1917)

Artur and Eva Freund, 1937

Georg Freund (1894–1944)

Robert Freund with Thomas Mann, 1937

Robert Freund with Somerset Maugham, 1938

Kokoschka Portrait of Robert Freund destroyed by the

Gestapo in Vienna, 1938

Julius Hanak

Karl Hermann

Zikmund and Paula Naschauer

Bedřich, Marta and Inge Hermann

Wedding of Willma Hermann and Max Trauer, Siřem, 1913

Vera and Robert, 1946

Robert, ‘Gan Gan’, Peter, ‘Nanna’ and Michael

Walter Freund, August 1965

Grandad with Alan Plowman

My Father with Paul, 1991

Robert and Vera Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary, 1994

Sheila Anne Hermann (1955–2010)

Liberator and Edith Memorials

Brookwood, November 2015

Magda, Václav and Su, Plzeň, August 2016

Plzeň, Thursday, 2 March 2017

Detektivové v Podbořany – The detectives in Podbořany

The Family, 2019

Foreword

I feel privileged to have been asked to write this foreword and hope that my words manage to convey how strongly I believe that the contents of this book deserve to be shared by a wide readership.

Michael Hermann and I were both born in 1947 in the Northamptonshire village of Brixworth, just two weeks and a quarter of a mile apart. Recently we have made joint presentations to local history societies about growing up in the post-war era and a key point of our introduction has been that, although we shared many common elements in our young days, very different journeys brought our parents to the village, mine via Suffolk and Rutland, Michael’s via much more circuitous and fraught routes, as you will read.

His parents were much younger than mine and my memories of them are now limited to general impressions and a few specific incidents, although I would have encountered them regularly as Michael and I moved through primary school and grammar school together, and the social groupings of teenage years. In all our shared time in those formative years, I can’t remember Michael and I having a serious conversation about his family background, although we may have done.

Michael and I went our separate ways on leaving school and it was many years later that a shared interest in Northampton Town Football Club led to us meeting regularly. The re-established friendship developed and deepened, not just between us but also our wives, Su and Gail.

We began to learn more and more about the research that Michael, fully supported by Su, was undertaking into his family history; more about the facts he had uncovered and more about the processes and sources entailed in such a project.

We also learned about the personal characteristics required of somebody intent on exploring the ramifications and repercussions of inhumane policies in Europe, in the build-up to war, during the war itself and in its aftermath. Sections of the book recount the devastation those policies and acts inflicted upon the Hermann family. Michael has been resolute in his determination to investigate and record every piece of evidence that threw light on what his family members experienced, and that has meant dealing with an enormous amount of heart-rending information.

The final sections bring us up to date, and in writing about each passage of time Michael has described the national and international background to events. He has been open about family relationships and has included descriptions of amusing characters and incidents, illustrating the lighter side of family life. Michael is to be congratulated on bringing this very impressive, thought-provoking project to fruition.

These stories need to be told and written. They need to be heard and read, shared and remembered.

David Blake

19 April 2019

Preface

How do you know who you are if you do not know where you came from?

Pierre Helleputte

It was never my intention to publish this book, but it has evolved largely as a means of achieving my primary aim, which is to inform the present and future members of my family of their early relatives and the key historical and other events which impacted on their lives. The quotation which appears at the top of this page, from one of our friends, was a helpful reminder of the importance of a project such as this.

My second aim is to pay tribute to our parents, whose values and beliefs guided and influenced my brother and I as we made our own ways through life.

One of the main themes throughout the book is ‘remembrance’ and the words of David Berger which appear earlier have been an important personal motivator. David is not a relative, but his words remind us that all lives are important.

After I left school I trained and worked as an accountant, initially in the public sector and then later in academia. I have written and published short stories, academic books, teaching and learning materials and also poems, but mainly I have been accustomed to writing in a formal, documented manner.

Hopefully this work is a departure from my ‘unemotional’ academic publications.

A second theme which runs throughout this work is research and genealogy. Without the availability of the internet, I would never have been able to undertake this project. For readers who may be interested in the research conducted to support this work, there are two chapters devoted to the processes used and some of the consequences. There were occasional errors, some confusion on my part, a few tedious complexities and a certain amount of frustration, but on the other hand there were a number of surprising coincidences, discoveries and outcomes. For those not interested in genealogy, these chapters can be ignored, hopefully without detracting from the main content of the book.

After my father, Robert, died in 1998, I had become curious about our family history. He had been reluctant to speak at length about his relatives, or possibly because he was unaware of the existence of some members of his pre-war Czech family, the task of documenting the lives of a number of his family seemed daunting.

When I had previously asked him about his life in Czechoslovakia, he rather unhelpfully responded with one of his many humorous quips – ‘I come from a long line of bachelors!’

Nevertheless, in the year 2000 I started the research process. My mother, Vera, was still alive and was able to assist me from the outset and as I knew very few of my father’s family members to write about, I had not anticipated a lengthy process. Some fifteen years later, though, I was still discovering family members. My wife, Su, pointed out that I had not yet formally written up any of the research findings and so there was a danger that all the information gleaned so far might never be passed on to our children, grandchildren and those of my brother Peter.

I have now fully documented and referenced the genealogical research, in true academic manner, which has taken another three years. It is from these records that I have extracted the information which appears in this book.

I accept that the family research can never be ‘complete.’ Even as I was preparing to submit my draft work to the publishers, vital new information came to light. The process has been rather like creating an ‘infinite jigsaw puzzle.’ It has no boundaries and many missing pieces, some of which will get discovered, but others may never be located.

Although the stories you will read in this book are drawn from the larger project, Su has tried to ensure that I have not presented them as an academic paper! They include some fascinating revelations about key members of the family, a significant number of tragic and sad events and also, a number of survival and success stories ‘against the odds.’

Although I am certain that my parents would not have wished me to publish this work, I was recently reminded there are important wider messages which complement my personal aim for the memories of our family members to be preserved.

In December 2019, a friend, Finn Holding, who has encouraged me throughout my lengthy research process, sent me the following message:

It would be amazing to see the whole story in a published volume. And I reckon it would be a timely reminder too in this day and age where so many people seem to have forgotten what happened. Or at least just don’t want to remember.

Finn’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Sophie recently won an essay competition arranged by the Holocaust Educational Trust. Her prize-winning work is included as Chapter 24.

In his foreword, my good friend David Blake, a writer and storyteller, has written the following:

These stories need to be told and written. They need to be heard and read, shared and remembered.

So here they are!

Introduction

I am conscious that not everyone who reads this book will feel comfortable with all aspects of the content. ‘Dark’ themes are explored in Parts 2 and 3 before the more positive or ‘lighter’ ones in Part 4 which develop as the family expanded.

The nature of this family history, if it is to be balanced, must, by necessity, deal with the bleak days of depression in the 1920s and 1930s British mining communities and the impact of the Second World War on Britain and Europe. It must also describe how the Holocaust decimated my father’s family and how the subsequent introduction of Communism in Czechoslovakia robbed him of the possibility of ever living and working there.

The stories of those family members murdered in the Holocaust are not pleasant reading. I have agonised on how much of the documented evidence I should include here. It is not my intention to shock and so I have tried to exclude most of the truly objectionable aspects. Even so, certain descriptions and first-hand evidence are essential if I am to faithfully capture the reality of this part of our family history.

World and other events beyond 1945 also impacted on my family and influenced its development. The inclusion of key political and social issues throughout this book will hopefully remind readers of some of their own experiences during their lives.

I have enclosed, as Chapter 23, a personal contribution from my younger brother Peter. Written some time ago, it is his reflection on a particular period when, as a young boy, he was becoming aware of the various influences on his life. By necessity, the chapter contains words which today may be considered by some to be racist.

The notes at the end of the work, in addition to the acknowledgement of the sources used, include some detailed expansions of historical and other events. These notes should be helpful for those readers who are interested in such levels of analysis.

I remain unable to comprehend how my parents, who in different ways lived through the earlier traumatic periods, were able to live such long and successful lives.

The fact that they did so makes them truly remarkable people.

Abbreviations

Image No. 1

Czechoslovakia prior to 1938

Podbořany and Siřem were towns where many of the Hermann family were born, lived and worked.

Plzeň and Olomouc were the main towns where the Glaser and Hermann businesses were located.

Přeštice was the birthplace of Hede Freund.

Image No. 2

Family Tree of Kurt Robert Hermann

Image No. 3

Family Tree of Vera Wilkinson

PART ONE

Family Backgrounds and the Impact of World War Two

Not all those who wander are lost.

J.R.R. Tolkien

In this introductory section of the book, the social, political and economic backgrounds of the Hermann and Wilkinson families and their ancestors are briefly discussed and compared. This includes a description of the various events in Britain and Europe which impacted directly on my mother and father and their immediate families.

My brother, Peter, and I realise that if the extraordinary events before and during the Second World War had not happened, then it is unlikely that the lives of our parents would ever have crossed. They came from different countries and cultures, had different religions and their family backgrounds and circumstances were ‘poles apart.’ It was a case of ‘Sudetenland meeting Sunderland’ in the small village of Brixworth, Northamptonshire.

Image No. 4

The Great Synagogue, Plzeň

Image No. 5

Sunderland

Image No. 6

Brixworth

In these chapters the life of my mother as a young girl is documented in some detail. Regrettably too little is known of our father’s upbringing and that of his sister Edith. Three significant ‘departures’, or changes of location, necessitated by events from 1939 are described for our mother and her family, our father and his sister Edith.

This part of the book then ends with an exploration of the key events of 1945 which would fundamentally change the direction of the lives of our family for the future.

CHAPTER 1

Backgrounds and Influences – The Hermann Family

Three generations of each family are summarised in the trees which appear in the introduction to this part of the book. In this chapter, I will introduce significant members of my Hermann family, most of whom were established in the ‘Sudetenland’ area of Czechoslovakia and who lived in the period from 1816 to 1944.³

My Father’s Parents

Kurt Robert Hermann, or Robert as he preferred to be called, was born on 25 March 1921 in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia. He was the son of Karl Hermann and Hedvika and had a younger sister, Edith, who was born in 1926. His mother, Hedvika, known as Hede, was the only surviving daughter of Wilhelm Freund and Amalie, born Hanak. She was born in Přeštice, some twenty kilometres from Plzeň on 7 January 1896 and was the fifth child of six, born to Wilhelm and Amalie. His father, Karl Hermann, was born in Podbořany on 25 August 1884.⁴ He was one of six children born to Moritz and Klára, born Glaser and spent a significant portion of his life in military service.⁵

He married my grandmother, Hede, on 16 March 1920 when he was thirty-five and was a senior partner of the Glaser and Hermann family business in Plzeň until his death, aged forty-nine, on March 27 1934.

Grandparents

My father’s maternal grandparents were Wilhelm and Amalie Freund and his paternal grandparents were Moritz and Klára Hermann. Wilhelm Freund was born in 1856 in Bdeněves, near Plzeň. He was one of at least ten children born to Simon Freund and Theresia born Herrmann.⁶ Wilhelm married Amalie, born Hanak, in 1887 in Plzeň. She was born in 1861 and was the elder of at least nine children of Josef Hanak and Barbara, born Lederer, known as Babette.⁷ Wilhelm Freund was an industrial producer of malt and lived with his family in Plzeň. He died aged seventy-six in 1932 and his wife Amalie, aged seventy-four, in 1936.

Moritz Hermann, my father’s paternal grandfather, was born in 1855 and was one of at least seven children born to Israel Hermann and Deborah, born Fischer.⁸ Moritz married Klára Glaser in 1878. She was born in 1857 and was one of at least seven children of Wilhelm Glaser and Johanna, born Schickl.⁹ Her brother, Alfred Glaser, was a senior partner with the family firm Glaser and Hermann and was responsible for the business which was operated from Olomouc.¹⁰ Moritz died in 1926 and his wife Klára in 1939.

Great-Grandparents

My father’s maternal great-grandparents were Josef and Babette Hanak and Simon and Theresia Freund. The Hanak family, as large-scale producers of yeast, would have been one of the wealthiest families in Plzeň and even today the scale of their property and industrial areas can still be seen. Much of the area, near ‘Lochotín’ in Plzeň, though, remains desolate and undeveloped. Like many Jewish businesses the production plant and property came under German control during the Second World War and the factory and land was nationalised in 1946.¹¹

Simon Freund was born in 1819 and was one of at least five known children of Phillip and Babette Freund.¹² He was married to Theresia, who was born in 1830. My father’s paternal great-grandparents were Wilhelm and Johanna Glaser and Israel and Deborah Hermann. Wilhelm Glaser was born in 1835 and was one of at least seven children of Jacob Glaser and Amalia, born Glaser. He married Johanna, born Schickl, in 1856. The Hermann and Glaser glass-manufacturing business was founded jointly with this branch of the family.

Israel Hermann, my father’s paternal great-grandfather, was born in 1816 and was one of at least ten children of Elias Hermann and Elizabeth, born Leiner. Israel was a butcher and he married Deborah, born Fischer, in 1844. There was an unfortunate episode in the family of Elias Hermann during 1850 which mirrors a similar tragedy which occurred in 1849 to my mother’s ‘Darling’ family from Sunderland, where three members of a family of four died from cholera. One of Israel’s brothers, Meyer Markus Hermann, born in 1822 was also a butcher. He married Johanna, born Steinkopf in 1850.

According to information available via Jiří Danda, before her formal marriage, Johanna gave birth to a daughter Theresia who was possibly born in 1847.¹³ Theresia died from dysentery, on 13 December 1850, aged three years. Meyer and Johanna also had a son Eduard, born in June 1850 but who died in December 1850. Meyer and Johanna also died within days of their son Eduard. Meyer’s death is recorded, just under twenty-nine years old, from lung disease in November of that year and Johanna died aged twenty-eight or twenty-nine, from Typhus, in December 1850. So, tragically, all four members of the family of Meyer Markus Hermann died in 1850 within two weeks of each other. Given the nature of the deaths, it is feasible that typhus was the major cause.

Economic, Social and Political Circumstances

The families discussed above were exclusively Jewish and most of them had a large number of children. The ‘Familiants Law’ – which applied to Jews from the early 1700s until the 1850s – would have impacted on my father’s great-grandparents. It was initially introduced to reduce the number of Jews in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia where the wider Hermann families were living.¹⁴ Under the system, a Jew was not able to marry and start a family unless he had been classified as a ‘familiant’ and this right could only be transferred to an eldest son who had achieved the age of twenty-four, following the death of the ‘familiant.’ The Jewish Virtual Library includes details of other important rules about residence, education and professions which impacted on all Jewish families during this period.¹⁵

Jews were permitted to reside only in places to which they had been admitted before 1726, and within these they were limited to special quarters, streets, and even houses (Judenhaeuser-židovny). Violations of the regulations could be punished by flogging and expulsion. From 1786 a certificate to prove that he had attended a German or Jewish-German school was required. Marriage permits could also be given to those taking up agriculture or a guild craft, or after military service.

One of the consequences of the ‘familiant’ system was that it forced some Jews to marry in secret.

The children of such couples were considered illegitimate by the authorities and had to bear their mothers’ names. It was not until 1847 that the fathers were permitted to acknowledge their fatherhood in the records and thus a quasi-legitimacy was established. In one instance, in Prostejov (Prossnitz) in 1841, some women who had ‘illegitimate’ children were sentenced to forced labour and only released by special favour.

The ‘familiant’ system was formally abolished in 1859. Many of my father’s ancestors enjoyed lengthy lives and most of the male members had occupations in agriculture, butchery, business, dentistry, manufacturing and the law. The women did not tend to have paid employment. Some of the families led comfortable lives and many of the Freund and Hanak families would, even by today’s standards, be considered wealthy. Some of the men from my father’s families were involved in the First World War as part of the Austro-Hungarian Army and would therefore have been fighting against the Allies. Second World War military service, other than for my father and his sister Edith, does not appear to be a factor as far as his side of our family is concerned.

In October 1918, Czechoslovakia had been declared independent, by the Czechoslovak National Council in Prague. The area of the country, which included Bohemia and Moravia, became known as the ‘Sudetenland’ and was strategically important because of its border defences, banks, industries and the high proportion of ethnic Germans living there. This was an important aspect of the Nazi doctrine and used to justify the annexation of the ‘Sudetenland.’

My Father’s Early Life

My father’s life in the period from 1921 to 1939 is not known in great detail. From time to time though, he would give my brother and I insights into some aspects of his time as a youngster, growing up in Plzeň. Independent evidence of the nature of his upbringing is available in the form of a testimony for my father, written by Arthur Hofmann in New York in 1960.¹⁶ Hofmann informs that my father originated from a purely German family and that he attended a German elementary school for five years followed by the German State High School in Plzeň. There he was exposed to German culture and language. His colloquial language at home and in circles of relatives and friends was exclusively German. Consequently, my father was very familiar with the German language, both orally and in written form. Hofmann also confirms that, due to the premature death of his father Karl in 1934, my father entered the glass business in Plzeň together with his mother, so that the business could continue to run.

The glass business was ‘Glaser and Hermann’ which, until 1933, was run by senior partners Karl Hermann in Plzeň and his Uncle, Alfred Glaser, in Olomouc. After Alfred died in 1933 his son, Hans Wilhelm Glaser, known as Jan, became a partner and following Karl’s death in 1934, Hede became the Plzeň partner. In addition to Plzeň and Olomouc, the business also had retail outlets at Liberec and Krnov.¹⁷

My father told me that his wider family had a villa, possibly in Austria, where some holidays were taken. Amongst the photograph collection of his Uncle Walter Freund, there are a number of ‘holiday’ groups which include a young Robert and his mother. He played football at school and enjoyed skiing and playing tennis. His own photograph collection includes photographs of his school friends, football team and a ski group, shown below, which was taken at Eisenstein on the Czech border with Germany. My father, wearing a white top, is standing in the centre of the group.

Image No. 7

Ski Group, Eisenstein, 1937

My father was not a superstitious person, but there are two of his anecdotes which are very puzzling. The first is a strange incident that happened one night whilst skiing with his friends. The group were joined by another skier for a short while, after which he vanished. Later the group returned to this part of their route and found a marker where there had been a tragic accident. The second of these stories is mentioned later at the time of my father’s commando training.

He had a favourite Uncle ‘Frithjoff’ who the family would visit from time to time. On their arrival, ‘Frithjoff’ would joke: ‘Why come all this way when you could have sent a postcard?’

The family do not appear to have been devoutly religious, but they had family seats in Plzeň’s Great Synagogue. My great-grandfather, Moritz Hermann, has his name on a plaque on the Synagogue wall alongside the names of various benefactors. The family homes of my father’s parents and grandparents were either in large houses or apartment blocks. The last residence of his parents was an apartment in a block of twelve, at 19 Nerudova Street in Plzeň, where other family members also had homes. His family also owned a car.

Whilst it seems that my father would have had a comfortable life given that his parents were business people in Plzeň with a number of wealthy relatives, the fact that his father had died in 1934, in his fiftieth year, must have had a huge impact on the thirteen year old and the family. Karl had given his gold pocket watch to my father in March 1934, possibly as a ‘Bar Mitzvah’ gift and, although we do not follow Jewish customs, it has become a tradition in my family to ‘hand down’ this watch to the first son when he has attained the age of thirteen.¹⁸ My father told me that at some time after his father’s death, his mother had become friendly with another man. My father told me that he had opposed this friendship, but admitted to me that, had he not intervened in this matter, his mother may not have been left to fend for herself during the Second World War. As will become clear, the memories of this and various other events from the 1939–1945 period were a daily emotional burden on my father until the day he died. He was also very fond of his paternal grandmother, Klára, who died shortly after he had left Czechoslovakia. His paternal grandfather Moritz had died in 1926 when my father was five years old and his maternal grandparents, Wilhelm and Amalie Freund had died in 1932 and 1936 respectively.

During the period 1933 to 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party ruled Germany. In September 1935 the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ were conceived, thus setting the scene for anti-Semitic activity which was to dominate Nazi behaviour.¹⁹ Another major political event which would impact on the future of the Czechoslovak nation from 1938 onwards was the ‘Munich Agreement’, to which Britain was a signatory.²⁰ Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, in one of his most frequently quoted speeches, justified a policy of non-intervention in respect of the German claims on the Sudetenland lands.²¹

How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gasmasks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.²²

This hugely unpopular and catastrophic agreement would impact dramatically on the daily lives of Hede and her family, as it did for all Jewish families in the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia. From the first day of German annexation of Czechoslovakia, 1 October 1938, a series of ‘anti-Jewish’ measures were introduced. These included various restrictions on ‘non-Aryans’, examples of which are documented in detail by Miroslav Kárný.²³

Writing in the Terezín Memorial Book, Kárný informs that doctors and lawyers were forbidden to practice, the holding of senior industrial positions were not permitted, businesses were taken over, and there were restrictions on buying and leasing Jewish property and changing residence.²⁴ Day-to-day living for Jews was affected by the requirement to carry identity cards marked with a large red letter ‘J’, entry to certain streets and areas was forbidden, as was attendance at theatres, cinemas, libraries, swimming pools and sporting events. Shopping was permitted between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. only and a person’s home could not be left after 8 p.m. Tram and train usage was restricted to the end carriages only and telephones and radios were confiscated.²⁵ The expulsion of Jews from German schools and their exclusion from Czech schools would have been a significant problem for my father and Edith and even more so as private teaching of children was also banned. Severe penalties were in force for any Jews who breached these regulations.

Kárný also indicates that on 21 January 1939 Adolf Hitler had met with the Czechoslovak Minister of Foreign Affairs, František Chvalkovský, regarding the ‘Jewish Question.’²⁶

The goal of its solution – as recorded in the protocol – was formulated by Hitler as follows: ‘The Jews in our country shall be exterminated.’ According to Hitler this was to serve as an example of how to ‘solve the Jewish Question’ in Czechoslovakia.

This extreme and hostile environment explains why around 14,000 Czech Jews left the country in the period from October 1938 up to March 1939, by which time German tanks had entered Prague. It also explains and validates Hede’s own attempts to save her children from Nazism.

CHAPTER 2

Backgrounds and Influences – The Wilkinson Family

Three generations of the families are summarised in the tree which appears at the beginning of the book. In this chapter we will introduce significant members of my Wilkinson family, most of whom were established in the Sunderland area of County Durham, England and who lived in the period from 1833 to 1995.

My