The aftermath of Kristalnacht found the various segments of the Romberg family scattering in various directions. From this point forward, each family unit lost contact with the others, focusing on their own survival. The war years would see some die and some survive. No significant contact would be made until a decade after the war, and then only the families of 2 brothers finding each other. But Magie Furst almost made an unexpected link with a lost cousin.
Magie is Bert Romberg’s older sister. Like Bert, she is my father’s first cousin. Born in 1929, Magie is only a year older than Bert, but that year makes a huge difference in the details that she remembers from her years in Germany. While she certainly does not have the same depths of memories as my father (he was born in 1923), she has clear recollections of Nazi oppression and the impact on her family.
She remembers the night their father, Alfred Romberg, died. He had developed heart problems and had had a series of incidents (I guess a doctor would call them infarctions). She remembers that the doctor told her mom that one more incident would likely kill him. And it did. The night of Alfred’s death was chaotic, with Sida crying, a cousin of hers who had come to help take care of the kids during Alfred’s illness, was trying to comfort someone. A pall settled over the house. Realize, this would leave Sida alone with two small children and a farmer’s supply business to run – while dealing with Nazis demonstrating outside the store to discourage customers from patronizing a Jewish business.
For the funeral, Uncle Karl Romberg (I will interview his son Ralph in San Francisco in July) came from Essen as well as Uncle Siegfried Romberg. As Magie’s family was one of only two Jewish families in Astheim, the funeral procession walked to another town to a small synagogue and then to yet another town where there was a Jewish cemetery. Nazi onlookers threw stones at the procession as well as the usual racial epithets.
After Sida moved with the children to Eschwege, Magie remembers Nazis goose-stepping to loud oompah music. She remembers the chaos of the Jewish school she and Bert attended – short of teachers because many had already fled Germany. She remembers that on Kristalnacht the synagogue was damaged and the children stopped going to even that chaotic sham of a school.
Magie also remembers a summer when Sida sent she and Bert to Essen to be with other members of the Romberg family. This is important because it shows that much of the family knew about each other and were in contact at least until Kristalnacht in November of 1938. In Essen they stayed with Uncle Oskar Romberg, whose second wife was a Catholic woman, the red haired, exotic, Margaret. Their daughter Doris, who I will be meeting next week, was just a baby. Magie remembers Oskar as a small but jovial man, a lot of fun. With him they visited a lot of his brothers and sisters, Tante Ella, Uncle Emil, and Uncle Siegfried – Rombergs all. It was a summer of family warmth and happiness – at least for the small surviving children of Alfred Romberg. It was possibly the last time that this much of the Romberg family interacted together until our family reunion in April of 2012.
There is one relative Magie does not remember being in Essen or hearing anything about – her uncle Walter Romberg – my grandfather. Perhaps Walter really was the black sheep of the family (I have heard that a few times). Or perhaps the fact he lived in Cologne and was raising 4 children of his own with his second wife (my father was the only child of Walter’s first marriage) just kept him from seeing family centered in Essen. We might never know.
The rest of Magie’s story very much parallels Bert’s: the escape from Germany on the Kindertransport, living with a foster family in England, having her schooling supervised by the Jewish orphanage, the brushes with the Nazi air war over London, and the eventual voyage to America are part of both Bert and Magie’s history. The big exception is that Magie’s foster experience was very difficult in the manner the family treated her.
Once established in New York, Magie met and married Harry Furst in 1948 and they married in January 1949. Harry was another German Jew, but one well connected in the German Jewish community that was established in the mid to late 1930’s in Washington Heights, Manhattan. One of the popular personalities among the young people of the German Jewish crowd in Washington Heights was a fellow named Teddy Tobar. Teddy seemed to know everyone, and gave many Saturday evening parties in the late 40’s and early 50’s.
Sometime in 1949, not long after they were married, Harry took Magie to one of Teddy’s parties. At the party she heard that there was someone there named Romberg. She does not know why she was timid about inquiring about him, but afterwards Harry told her he spoke with him. He was from Cologne and in the furniture business. As it turns out, that mysterious Romberg was my father. At this party in 1949 Magie was only a few feet away from taking the first step towards putting the Romberg family back together again. This time with the son of the uncle that no one seemed to mention in Germany.
Teddy Tobar, by the way, was a good friend of my father’s going back to his days in Germany. I met Teddy several times. He was a real character and I remember he looked a lot like Yogi Berra, the catcher for the New York Yankees. Later in life, Teddy took up photography as an art. One of his photos hangs in my office at Temple Israel.
So in a random party in 1949 my father was the cousin almost found. How our lives would have been different growing up being part of the larger family, I cannot tell. Instead of a uniting of cousins, it was just a near miss.
The story becomes more and more incredible! I am so glad you are able to meet and interview your relatives. I look forward to reading the next installment.
What a journey this is!