The Woman in the Photograph Read online

  Alice rarely thinks about the past, though sometimes just as she is falling asleep, she has a flash of memory—an image of her mother, agitated and remote, pacing back and forth across the bedroom floor, or of coming home from school that awful day and seeing blood on the sidewalk. For a moment she is jolted by these visions, but they come less and less often, and she is happy with her life. She is becoming an American, with a husband she loves and a little baby son. Her life is unfolding once again as if by destiny.

  26

  Ralph Rotholz

  I knew very little about Erika’s first husband. Willy had told me that he was older, a doctor, and Erika had told her children that her ex-husband had “jumped off the Empire State Building.” It was a horrifying image, but I probably would have forgotten about Rotholz had it not been for Lynne urging me to find information about the two missing trunks that the Rotholz family bitterly refused to relinquish to her father almost sixty years ago.

  “Whatever was in those two trunks is yours,” Lynne repeated every time we spoke. “Your mother went to court, but the family claimed that the contents of the trunks belonged to them. Thank god my father was able to collect the first trunk before they found out that Erika left him.”

  “But Lynne,” I reasoned, “after all this time, who would even remember what was in the trunks, let alone return them to me? Maybe our best shot is to see if the court has any evidence on record about the case or the contents. I’d just like to know what Alice and Erika chose to send to America.”

  I tried to imagine what went on in my mother’s mind as she pared down the belongings of a lifetime into three trunks. Did she choose carefully or just throw in anything that might have value? I pictured the enameled spoons and the silver candy dishes she once tried to give me, a few small rugs and a set of silverware we used when we lived in Jamaica. When Tom gave the set back to me I was surprised by the beauty of the pieces, the engraved initials of a large L with M and N on either side. They must have been used at the home on Grassistrasse for the family reunion when Lynne visited. I noticed that many of the forks were bent and remembered using them to pry open tuna fish cans. I knew they came from Europe and to me they seemed too clumsy and old-fashioned. When my mother remarried, they disappeared and I had never thought of them again, until now.

  Tracking down the ancient trunks seemed like an impossible task, so I called on the help of my computer-savvy friend Terri, who had been helping me with research. What she unearthed went far beyond my expectations.

  “I haven’t been able to find anything about the trunks yet,” she told me the following week, “but I’m in touch with a man named Jim Mahoney, the director of the Nyack Library. He’s spent years researching his own family genealogy and wants to help you. Can you send him all the information you have?”

  The next day I emailed Jim the little I knew about the trunks—their point of origin in Berlin and speculation that they would have been sent around the end of 1935 to some member of the Rotholz family in the vicinity of Nyack, New York.

  Within a few days, he sent an article from the New York Times dated July 13, 1936. The headline alone sent chills down my spine: “Exiled Physician Ends His Life Here: Dr. Ralph Rotholz, Who Once Had Prosperous Practice in Berlin, Drinks Poison.”

  Dr. Ralph Rotholz, 39 years old, who came to this country four months ago from Berlin to escape Nazi restrictions that left him penniless and wiped out a once lucrative practice, committed suicide yesterday morning by swallowing poison in a drug store about half a block from his home, 1166 Gerard Avenue, the Bronx.[13]

  The article said that Rotholz left his sister’s apartment to make a phone call. He entered the Gerard Drug Store and began a conversation with Abraham Snitofsky, the proprietor, with whom he had gained an acquaintance since his arrival in this country. Snitofsky told police that Rotholz appeared to be in a jovial mood and that he seemed particularly optimistic over resuming his practice soon.

  When a customer entered the store, Snitofsky left the prescription room, where they were talking, and walked to the front of the store. When he returned, he found Rotholz slumped against the counter in the rear, a large bottle of poison clutched in one hand. Noting that he was still conscious, the druggist carried the physician to a taxi cab and rushed him to the Morisania Hospital, two blocks distant. But Rotholz was dead when the doctor examined him.

  The article stunned me. The Empire State Building story was dramatic, a sinister echo of the circumstances of Nelly’s death. But this revelation of the actual circumstances forced me to see Ralph Rotholz in a more sympathetic way, a man whose suffering drove him to a terrible end. His sister was quoted as saying he was in excellent health, but his actions told a poignant story of a man who could not reassemble a sense of himself or his place in an uncertain world.

  A few days later, I got another email from Jim Mahoney. He still hadn’t found any evidence of the shipment of trunks, but he included two references to the probate of Dr. Rotholz’s estate. The first notice, under “Wills for Probate,” was dated October 3, 1936. It indicated that the administration of his estate was assigned to his brother Joseph Holz (an Americanized version of Rotholz?) in Geneva, New York, about 200 miles from Nyack.

  The second notice was dated almost two years later, May 26, 1938, and was listed among estates appraised by the Bronx County Surrogate Court. It listed four brothers, two sisters, and a niece and nephew by name. Jim said I might be able to find probate records at the Surrogate Court.

  It soon became clear that to find the documents, I would need to go to New York. We were invited to a friend’s wedding in Brooklyn in October 2002, and I seized the opportunity to plan a search for records. I also wanted to visit Lynne again. Time was passing. She was in her eighties now and had started to walk with a cane.

  Jim Mahoney was not the first, or the last, stranger who stepped forward to assist in my search. In fact, it seemed as though at every turn help came from people I hardly knew.

  I spoke to an attorney in New York who had once given me some legal advice. He offered to send his paralegal assistant to the Bronx Surrogate Court to request the Rotholz file from the archives. A week later he let me know that the records were available. All I needed to do was call the court clerk and tell her when I would be there.

  The social events surrounding the wedding kept us busy for the first part of our visit, but in the back of my mind, I counted the hours and minutes until I could get to the Bronx. Finally, the day arrived. Michael and I had lunch with Lynne and took the subway up to Grand Concourse. By the time we exited the subway station, it was pouring rain, with a brisk wind blowing water into our faces. We walked the two blocks to the courthouse and followed directions to the Surrogate Record Room on the third floor. My clothes were soaked and the cold corridor did little to relieve my chill, but I was restored by the warm greeting of the clerk behind the desk.

  “We expected you much earlier today,” she said.

  I had not been able to tear myself away from Lynne and now I noted that the clock on the wall read almost four. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I hope we’re not too late.”

  “Here it is,” she said. She pulled a legal-sized file out from under the counter and handed it to me. “There’s a copy machine over there that takes quarters.” She pointed to the other side of the room. “You cannot remove the file from this office, but you can copy whatever you want.”

  The package had a musty smell, the file folder crushed and bent by the years it had spent untouched, stuffed in a box on a shelf in the courthouse basement. I sat on the bench and began turning pages. It was awkward and time consuming to maneuver the thick folder to make copies, and I knew the minutes were passing too fast. Michael, wet and tired, did his best to help me with the copying, but he grew impatient while I nervously read pages clipped together at the top, anxious and afraid I might miss something significant. I labored through the first dozen pages, noting references to the family members in the newspaper probate listing, and
found nothing informative. Then I came to the papers entitled “My Will” and read:

  As I have brought divorce-suit against my wife because of improper behavior, I state herewith, that she inherits nothing.

  “Improper behavior” like a child who has not shown good manners. I saw the pain in Ralph Rotholz’s words, the hurt feelings, the anger. His successful professional life was violently interrupted, derailed by the Nazis. His young and beautiful wife ran off with her former lover. His life had crashed on the rocks once again.

  The rest of the will had just two paragraphs listing his brothers and sisters as heirs, and a distribution of one hundred pounds each to three others—a doctor in London, a doctor in Tel Aviv, and a child named Fritzi Kohlhagen, daughter of his dear friend Gustav.

  I handed the bulky file to Michael to copy the page with the will, hating to surrender the precious information and all too aware of the clock on the wall. Michael made the copy and then had to go down the hall to change more bills into quarters. I turned the next pages.

  I found a deposition from Max Jonas, one of the three unrelated legatees. Dr. Jonas described himself as having “a most intimate friendship” with Rotholz since their days as students at Frankfurt University, and referred to Rotholz’s professional success as a foot specialist who worked in the German branch of the international firm of Dr. Scholl’s Foot Appliances. He reported that Dr. Rotholz had an offer of employment from Dr. Scholl of Chicago. Things might have gone differently for Ralph Rotholz. But even though he presumably passed his licensing exam, something stopped him from taking a new position as a podiatrist in America.

  Dr. Jonas testified that Rotholz had requested his assistance to get out of Germany, including help with an insurance policy to protect the valuables belonging to himself, his wife, and his sister-in-law during their travels. I stared at the words: wife…sister-in-law. The clock on the wall was nearing 4:45. I prayed for time to slow down.

  In these dusty, discolored legal pages, I felt my mother’s past come to life. Here in the depositions, I saw a marriage born of desperation, and a mature man, practiced in making legal arrangements, with connections that aided the escape from Nazi Germany. I had an impulse to thank Rotholz for helping Alice and Erika, though it didn’t work out for him. His life was beginning to matter to me, and I wanted to know more than just the fate of the trunks. At that moment, turning a page, I found a startling revelation:

  In order to expatriate his capital from Germany, Testator entered into an arrangement with his then wife, his then sister-in-law, and an uncle in-law, whereby the uncle purchased cattle for them in Germany and exported the same to Palestine, there to be sold, and again converted into funds for the three parties in interest to the extent of their interest. This device resulted in a substantial shrinkage of the asset value of the funds given to the uncle for the purchase of the cattle. (italics added)

  A dispute arose between the parties, which was the subject of arbitration in Palestine. After the Testator left Germany and before he came to this country, he and his wife were divorced. His former wife subsequently remarried.

  “The cows!” I grabbed Michael so suddenly that he grimaced. “The file documents the cows that Alice’s uncle bought for them to convert to cash in Palestine. But when they got there, he told Alice and Erika, and I guess Rotholz too, that their cows died!”

  I saw the cows jostling each other in the bowels of a freighter bound for Palestine. I saw my mother with rings and brooches sewn into the lining of her dress, gems covered by insurance purchased by Rotholz before they left Germany and later hidden by Erika where no one would ever find them.

  27

  Fritzi’s Tale

  Ms. Feniger, it’s closing time. We need you to return the file now.”

  The voice of the clerk pulled me back to the sterile room. I managed to hand the file over to Michael to copy the pages about the cows and the listing of the legatees, including Gustav Kohlhagen and his young daughter, Fritzi. As I walked back to the desk, I desperately flipped through the remaining pages. I didn’t see anything compelling but was crestfallen to have to stop. I hoped that I hadn’t missed anything critical in my haste. Contrary to clichés about New Yorkers, the woman was sympathetic even at five p.m. on a Friday afternoon.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. “Thank you for your help.”

  I was excited about what we had seen and sad to leave the documents behind to rot in the courthouse basement. I vowed not to betray Rotholz’s existence. Like Selma Hamburger, who died in the camps, my grandmother Nelly, who lost all hope, or Sidy Rayfeld’s mother and brother, who were sent back to Warsaw, Ralph Rotholz deserved to be remembered.

  Walking back to the subway, I was exhausted and cold. I stumbled on the stairs leading down to the station and bumped into a woman who was rushing to catch her train. I would have fallen if Michael hadn’t caught me, his firm hand under my arm.

  Monday morning, our last day in New York, Michael and I made one last attempt to find records from the court case involving the trunks. We took the subway to the Hall of Records, now called New York Surrogate’s Courthouse on Chambers Street. Endless rows of 3-by-5-inch drawers contained typed or handwritten cards with names of plaintiffs or defendants. We tried every name we could think of—Lewin, Wojewoda, Wedgewood, Feniger, Kohlhagen, Rotholz, Holz—but found nothing. Disappointed, we followed the clerk’s suggestion to go to the King’s County Courthouse in Brooklyn. After another crowded subway ride, we found the office, sat on stools, and scanned five years of microfiche, sliding the film up and down under the projector, searching for the familiar names. But at the end of the day, we had nothing. Any lawsuit concerning the trunks seemed to have vanished. I was ready to give up.

  When we returned to California, my friend Terri decided to hunt on the Internet using every name in the Rotholz file. After a few days we decided that the only person mentioned in the probate case young enough to still be alive was Fritzi Kohlhagen. We found a newspaper announcement of her marriage to Gerald Thorner in 1952, and eventually discovered a comment she had posted on a website from a cruise she and her husband had taken. There we found the lead we had been hoping for—an email address.

  I wrote immediately, explained that I was distantly connected to Ralph Rotholz and wondered if Fritzi would be willing to talk with me. I didn’t hear back, but following more threads, I found a Florida address and phone number for Fritzi and her husband Gerald.

  I finished my Saturday morning cup of tea and picked up the phone. My heart raced as I dialed the number, and a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello. Am I speaking to Fritzi Kohlhagen Thorner?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I know this might sound strange, but I am the daughter of parents who were from Leipzig, and I am trying to learn more about Ralph Rotholz.”

  After a very brief pause, she said, “What do you want to know?”

  I filled her in some more, and soon discovered that she was a warm and open person who once loved Ralph Rotholz very much.

  “He was my Onkel Ralph,” she said. “When I was a little child in Germany, he came to our house every Sunday night, and my mother made his favorite dish—pea soup. He was a lady’s man,” she added, “a handsome gentleman whose house always smelled of leather.”

  When I asked about his marriage to Erika, Fritzi recalled her parents saying that he had had romantic relations with both Erika and her sister. Neither she nor I chose to say more about what this meant, but I remembered Willy’s comment that the two girls went wild, that they shared lovers.

  Fritzi was six when her parents came to Brooklyn in 1936. Her father, Gustav, was Ralph’s best friend and colleague.

  “Ralph had been a diplomat in Orthopedics,” she explained. “That means he had already achieved a high status, and it was terrible blow for him to have to begin over. My father had planned to join him in New York and open a practice together on Park
Avenue. Our arrival in New York was a shock. The minute we landed, his sister met us at the boat and told us he was dead. My father was devastated.” She paused. “He never got over Ralph’s death. My father felt he had let his friend down. Every year he visited the grave where Ralph was buried.”

  Fritzi didn’t know much more about Ralph, but she had a vivid memory of someone else. “I was just a little girl, and one day a beautiful tall woman with dark hair came to see my father. She brought me a miniature glass tea set. They talked a long time about Onkel Ralph. I believe the woman was Erika.”

  The court documents indicated that Gustav had spent two months with Ralph and his wife in Ascona, Switzerland. He and Erika knew each other.

  I found Gustav Kohlhagen, listed with his wife, Meta, and daughter Fritzi, in the Ancestry.com records. They arrived on the S.S. Berengaria on July 21, 1936. Rotholz took his life on July 13, 1936, just eight days before his friend and colleague arrived. I thought of how little even good friends know about each other’s suffering, and the price we pay for missed communication.

  28

  The Call

  We had lived in our El Cerrito home for four years and the thrill still hadn’t worn off. Michael added a deck to the back and I had planted a larger vegetable garden. I continued to sift through information that might pertain to Leipzig, and in March of 2003, I got a break. I received an email from a man in Leipzig:

  Dear Mani,

  A friend in San Francisco sent me your article in the Jewish Bulletin. Maybe I can help you find what you are looking for.

  Matthias Wiessner

  Universität Leipzig

  Institut für Kulturwissenschaften

  Who is this man? I wondered. An old Jew who miraculously survived the war in Germany? I pictured Matthias with wisps of white hair and a long beard. How odd and mysterious it was that a seed planted two and a half years ago in the article for the Jewish Bulletin had born fruit. A stranger from Germany had answered my call.