Ilse Blumenfeld, born in Hannover on February 5, 1917,¹ was one of the fortunate ones who were able to leave das dritte Reich before it was too late. Her parents, Julius Blumenfeld and Dina née Hauser, managed to find a safe place for all of their three children: Jakob Heinz, Werner, and Ilse. Julius’ brother Joseph “Joe” Bloomfield in New York had agreed to pay the bond necessary for emigration to the US,² allowing Ilse to leave Germany on June 22, 1938. She boarded the “President Harding” in Hamburg with a ticket purchased by her father and $50 in her pocket.³ In New York, Joseph’s wife, Myrtle née Strauss arranged a job for her as a “baby nurse” with a Jewish family in Muncie, Indiana.⁴

Once in America, Ilse attempted to find a way to get her parents out of Nazi Germany. Her employer drove her to Winchester, Kentucky, where she wanted to meet with her two uncles Salomon “Sol” and Levi “Lee” Blumenfeld/Bloomfield. Ilse wanted to ask them to pay the bond which would enable her parents to come to the US. At this time, Sol was on his honeymoon with his second wife, Elsie Kann Marx. Ilse met with Lee and his daughter Miriam. Probably due to his debilitating illness, Lee was unable to offer his help. Her trip was in vain!⁵

Ilse Married Moritz “Mo” Stein on December 2, 1947.⁶ Moritz was the only son of Sigmund Stein and Regina née Einhorn, born on March 4, 1915, in Leipzig.⁷ Mo’s father was a merchant and ran in partnership with Siegmar Sichel a leather trade company.⁸ Sigmund and Regina were deported from Leipzig to the Riga Ghetto on January 21, 1942. Yad Vashem records that Sigmund was murdered the same year. Regina was transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp on October 1, 1944, and was murdered there on December 31, 1944.⁹

This was Mo’s second marriage, his first having been ended by the Holocaust.  What is known about Mo’s marriage to Bertha / Bertel Schauder comes from correspondence found in the Arolsen Archives about Mo’s and her brother Max’s search for Bertha.¹⁰ She was born in Kassel on September 16, 1907. Her last known address was c/o Warzawaski, Sienkewica 4a/9, Sosnowiec, Poland. The search efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, Bureau of Tracking lead to a dead end, and her case was closed on September 24, 1947. Either Bertha was taken from the Ghetto in Sosnowiec¹¹ to an extermination camp, transferred to a slave labor camp or otherwise murdered by the Nazis.

Mo’s name appears on lists of names of people at Bergen-Belsen from the beginning of May 1945 from the Polish Red Cross in London.¹² The lists indicate that Mo had been taken to Bergen-Belsen from Sosnowiec, where he had most likely been living with his wife Bertha née Schauder – or had been forcibly moved there by the Nazis. After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen Mo was transferred by the British to the nearby Wehrmacht barracks, where they had set up an emergency hospital and a displaced persons camp¹³. Mo weighed only 30 kg when the camp was liberated. Ilse would later complain again and again that in Bergen-Belsen “they ruined his health.”¹⁴

Bergen-Belsen
Ivan Lefkovits, a Holocaust survivor, spoke to students at the Kantonsschule Watwil, St.Gallen, Switzerland, in March 2021. There he described the conditions in Bergen-Belsen just before and after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.¹⁵ “On April 4, 1945, eleven days before the liberation, the camp was completely sealed off. Water tanks and warehouses had been blown up. The Germans had left the camp. ‘There was no more water. There was a pond next to our barrack with water for fighting fires, but it was already full of corpses and excrement.’ Even after the liberation, the prisoners had to wait another two days for water and food because the British had no way of providing for such a large number of people.

From the hospital Mo then went to one of the houses in Ludwigsburg used to house displaced persons. His file card lists his address as Königsallee 84. He left for New York on April 12, 1947, on board the SS Marine Perch. Here, as opposed to the entry on his displaced persons file card, his marital status is given as “widowed.”¹⁶

Ilse and Moritz began their life together in New York in an apartment on West 106^th Street. Then for many years, they lived at 9 Thayer Street in the Inwood neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. Around 1970 they moved to Miami, Florida, along with other Jews from Germany, some of which Ilse had known since childhood. In Florida Ilse worked at least part-time. Moritz had had to take early retirement due to health problems. In New York, he had at first worked in a factory and then as a waiter in the Chemists’ Club (or in a similar clubhouse for professionals). After being employed as a “baby nurse” in Muncie, Indiana, Ilse also found work in a factory and beginning around 1960 she was a waitress in Loeser’s Delicatessen in the Bronx.¹⁷

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Isle and Moritz traveled several times to Germany. On one of these trips Ilse located an old “friend” of her father. Ilse related that this fellow butcher, a Christian, had denounced her father. Visiting him his place of business, Ilse spat in the face of this shamus. Later she regretted doing this and spoke of this person without bitterness or anger.¹⁸

During the 1950s the Adenauer government in Germany passed restitution laws, offering each Jewish repatriate the sum of 6,000 German marks in start-up assistance. It was probably this offer that led Ilse and Moritz to consider returning to their old homeland. It is not known why they didn’t follow up on this idea.¹⁹

Ilse remained in contact with her cousin Grete Londner Steinweg and visited her at least once on a trip to Tel Aviv. She mentioned to my cousin Steven Bloomfield that she had also written to Grete’s brother Edmond in Paris. It is not known if he wrote back.

Moritz died on January 10, 1995, in Miami, Florida.²⁰ Ilse passed away on May 15, 2006, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.²¹

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1. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. ↩︎
2. Email from Steven Bloomfield to the author, 12. August 12, 2017, 8:25 p.m. Steven knew Ilse personally. ↩︎
3. New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, in: Ancestry.com, Year: 1938; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 6176; Line 15; Page Number 192. ↩︎
4. Information from Steven Bloomfield, New York, who knew Ilse personally. ↩︎
5. Information from Steven Bloomfield, New York, who knew Ilse personally. ↩︎
6. Marriage announcement in: Aufbau / Reconstruction. An American Weekly Published in New York, New York NY, Vol. XIII-No. 50, Dezember 1947, p. 46, and New York City, Marriage Indexes, 1907-1995, in: Ancestry.com, New York Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Manhattan; Volume Number 56: New York City Marriage Indexes, 1907-1995. ↩︎
7. File card, Israelitische Religionsgemeinde zu Leipzig, Arolsen Archives. ↩︎
8. Addressbooks from Leipzig. ↩︎
9. Entries for Sigmund Stein and Ruchel / Regina Stein née Einhorn in the online archives Yad Vashem. ↩︎
10. Suchanfrage bezüglich STEIN MORITZ, Signatur 6331032061, in: Arolsen Archives, International Center on Nazi Persecution, 21 documents. ↩︎
11. Sosnowiec Ghetto, in: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosnowiec_Ghetto. ↩︎
12. In: Arolsen Archives. ↩︎
13. Email from Bernd Horstmann, Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen, to the author, September 9, 2021. ↩︎
14. Email from Steven Bloomfield to the author, February 3, 2018 ↩︎
15. Meine Stimme wird bald verstummen, in: Tagblatt Online, March, 28, 2021. ↩︎
16. File care, Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the American Occupied Zone, in: Arolsen Archives. ↩︎
17. Email from Steven Bloomfield to the author, July 30, 2017, and February 3, 2018, 6:05 a.m. ↩︎
18. Email from Steven Bloomfield to the author, July 30, 2017. ↩︎
19. Ibid. ↩︎
20. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, in: Ancestry.com. ↩︎
21. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014, in: Ancestry.com. ↩︎