Alkan Family

Submitted by Jonathan Isserlin, son of Senta Issserlin (nee Alkan)​

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I am the sone of Bruno Isserlin (originally from Bad Soden am Taunus) and Senta Isserlin (nee Alkan) originally from Coburg. Senta was born in Coburg on August 8. 1911 at the home of her parents, Reinhold and Johanna (nee Lowenstein) Alkan, Lossaustraße 5, opposite the Train Station. The house in which my grandfather, Reinhold practiced as an ophthalmological surgeon, still stands to this day.  There are four Stolpersteine placed in the sidewalk outside it. Below is the video of the speech I gave when the stones were laid by Gunter Demnig. 

Senta started in medical school in Leipzig, but completed only a year or so before she was expelled for the crime of being Jewish. She was sent to England by her parents after receiving a place in medical school in Bristol, and she completed her medical training there. To the best of my knowledge, she was the only female medical student in her class at Leipzig, and one of only four in her class in Bristol. While in medical school in Bristol she met, and subsequently married (in 1936), my father, who had suffered the same treatment while at medical school in Berlin.  He had initially left Germany to continue his studies in Switzerland, but completed only one semester there before he was informed that he would be returned to Germany on completing his medical diploma and would not be eligible for citizenship in Switzerland. He then also left for England and managed to get a place in the medical school in Bristol. Both my parents graduated from Bristol medical school in 1936 and took up British citizenship shortly afterwards. This was to prove crucial, because by the time their respective parents decided it was essential to leave Germany, they were able to sponsor them into England, an escape route which would otherwise have been closed to them, as Britain was, at that time, not allowing any Jews to come in who were not sponsored!

Both my parents pursued specialist training in Bristol, my father in orthopedics, my mother in anesthetics. They bought a large house in Bristol where my father's parents initially lived when they came to England in late 1938, after my grandfather had had his clinic in Bad Soden (Krankenhaus für Arme Juden) burnt to the ground on (so-called) Kristallnacht. He spent 8 days in jail in Wiesbaden but was surprisingly released by the chief of the Gestapo there (possibly a former patient of his) and told to "leave the country! Do not go home! Go straight to the railway station!".

Senta was the older of two sisters. Her younger sister, Maryann, was born in 1913.  She also came to England and practiced as a physiotherapist there. She never married and I have very little information on her.  After retiring she moved to a small island off the coast of Scotland with a friend and she died and is buried there. 

After marrying my father, Bruno, and settling down in Bristol, my mother gave birth to a daughter, Susan, in 1942 and me, Jonathan, in 1944. Her health deteriorated after Susan's birth in 1942, deteriorated again after a miscarriage in 1943, and, despite being warned not to have any further children, (not an easy thing in those pre-birth control pill days), she gave birth to me in 1944, after which she never really regained her health. She was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, given multiple medications (all useless and potentially dangerous), spent most of my young life in and out of hospitals, and died (probably as a result of the medications), the day after my fifth birthday. Clearly she suffered severe postpartum depression, a diagnosis that hardly (if at all) existed in those days. The diagnosis of schizophrenia haunted me, however, throughout my younger life as I waited for the 'other shoe to drop'! 

Reinhold Alkan, meanwhile, was hounded out of Coburg as early as 1934. He was born in the city in 1878. He had his practice on Lossaustrasse since 1907, but was banned from practicing in 1934 and he left Coburg for Muhlhausen where Johanna's family lived and where they had a furniture factory. They eventually moved to London when the furniture factory was 'sold' to the foreman (an Aryan) for a symbolic 1 DM. Reinhold and Johanna set up house in the Golders Green district of North-West London. Johanna's brother (Jaques Loebenstein, later changed to Lobe) moved to London at about the same time.   Reinhold found work in the world-renowned Moorfields Eye Hospital and also, I believe, ran a bit of a private practice. He died in 1951 and I have only sketchy memories of him. He was, though, according to people who did know him, an imposing man, tall, white-haired, Teutonic in many ways, and very 'old school'! He served as a medic in the Kaiser's German Army in WW1, apparently with distinction. I have his medals from that war to prove it. He was a dedicated German first and foremost. He was completely secular as far as his Judaism was concerned...even to the extent of having no Hebrew name and needing one to be made up for him when his daughter married my father.   

Johanna continued to live in Golders Green after Reinhold died. I used to see her regularly when I was at medical school in London and would go there frequently for Sunday lunch (before going to play football or cricket in her vicinity). She did not believe in doctors, (despite being married to one, having one as a daughter and a grandson in medical school), and became increasingly thin and wasted (and a bit paranoid) in her house, which she was very reluctant to leave, being fearful of being robbed or invaded.  She had several locks on the front and back doors and only left the house during the day. I tried (without success) to get her to seek medical help or to move into a Retirement home. There was one specifically for German-Jewish refugees about 3 miles from her home, but she adamantly refused to consider it, until eventually she fell when trying to change the channel on her TV, broke her hip and was taken by ambulance to hospital. There, they found she had a hemoglobin of 3 gm (about 20% of normal), and had to transfuse her before they could operate.  Despite this, she made a good recovery, but the medical staff wouldn't allow her to return to her home to live  alone (!!!) and organized her transfer to the retirement home that I had been trying to get her to go to for the previous 2 years. I visited her there  a day or two after she had been admitted,  and she told me it was "wonderful"!  "Why didn't you tell me about it before?"  She lived there for another 2 years, probably as happy as she had been in years, with people who understood and spoke her language,  and who cheated (just like she did) at Canasta! She died peacefully there in 1966. 

Reinhold's parents, Adolph and Minna Alkan, lived at Spitalgasse, 2,  in the centre of Coburg, literally next door to (and attached to) the Ducal Palace. There they ran a linen factory and department store, as well as living over it. Adolph initially ran the business with his brother Abraham, but, it seems, he bought him out when Abraham moved away on the death of his wife. The business was sold prior to Adolph's death in 1931.  Minna (nee Freund) died the next year.  They are buried in the Jewish cemetery (Friedhoff) in Coburg.  

Shortly thereafter, Gaby Schuller, informed me that she had discovered another grave, that of Abraham Hirsch Freund, Minna's father (therefore my great-great grandfather) who is also buried in the Coburg cemetery. He was a businessman (Kauffmann, as is written on his gravestone) who moved to Coburg from Mitwitz (as did his daughter Minna). He died in 1890 at the age of 76. His beautifully preserved headstone, translated from Hebrew, reads "A perfect and upright man, he walked innocently and acted righteously, he feared G-d all his days and was charitable and faithful." A grave was also found there for Reinhold's sister Dora, who died in infancy.

I was born in England, after my Coburg- born mother died tragically young,  I went to live with my paternal aunt and then my paternal grandparents who had moved to England from the Frankfurt area. My Coburg grandmother (Johanna Alkan) lived in London and I visited during school holidays often, and regularly when I was at medical school there. She died at the age of 82 in 1966. 

 When I was eight years old I went to boarding school in the South of England (Brighton) and then to another boarding school near Oxford after my Bar Mitzvah. Both were Jewish boarding schools.  I subsequently went to medical school in London, did a rotating internship in South West England (Exeter) where I met,  and married,  my wife,  Janet.  We then spent 2 years in Israel and another 2 years in Oxford while I was training to be an anesthesiologist and she completed her nursing training. 

When we moved to Western Canada (Saskatchewan) in 1973, it was to join a group practice as a GP/anesthetist. We had one young son (10 weeks old) when we arrived,  and, over the next 8 years we added another son and a daughter before we relocated to Ottawa in 1981, where we have lived ever since until retiring and living half the year in Canada and the other half in Tel Aviv. We have also taken up Israeli citizenship.  In Ottawa I ran a General practice with a hospital appointment which eventually developed into setting up and running a department of geriatrics and geriatric rehabilitation.

Our adult children are all gainfully employed.   One is a surgeon,  one software designer in high tech,  and one a bio-informatician working in a lab at the U of Toronto and also lecturing there.  We also have 8 grandchildren, the single most significant response to the Nazi intention of wiping the Jews off the face of the earth. Two of the next generation, and one of the one after that, have visited Coburg. Hopefully more will do so in the future to see where their antecedents came from...and from where they were driven out!

Were it not for the Nazis, my life (if it had occurred at all), would almost certainly have been very different. I owe a great debt to Gaby Schuller, without whose input I would have known almost none of this history. Because of their early demise, I didn't even know where my mother and her family had come from in Germany.  My mother died when I was just 5, my grandfather when I was 7. Although I knew my grandmother, she also died before I had reached an age when I started asking relevant questions.  When I eventually reached that stage, there was no-one left alive to ask. Gaby filled that gap, and for that I am eternally grateful.