Friedmann Family

Babette Braun Friedmann

Grandmother's Cupboard in My House in Haifa

Submitted by Esther Meyron-Holtz, great-granddaughter of Babette Braun (nee Friedmann) from Autenhausen near Coburg

My great-grandmother, Babette Friedmann, was born in Autenhausen (1868) near Coburg, and moved to Westheim near Hassfurt, when she married my great-grandfather David Braun. She died in Westheim (1930). We have photos of her, visiting in the late 1920s in Lucerne. She was the daughter of Moses Friedmann (1839-1901) and Minna (Mina) Friedmann (born Stern) (1845-1909), who both are buried in Autenhausen.

Babette’s older sister Clara married Adolf Gutmann from Autenhausen. They were one of the two Gutmann families, that were driven out of Autenhausen and moved to Coburg after the pogrom in 1923. Adolf Gutmann was in the cattle business. His son Herbert Gutmann fought in WW1, returned to Coburg, and eventually moved to the US. He had a daughter, Arlyne Gutmann-Cook, who lives in Carmel California.

I am the youngest of three. Our parents, Norbert Holtz and Lore Holtz (born Gutwillig) lived in Lucerne, Switzerland, where our father was born and our mother moved to, when she got married. Our mother was born in Fuerth near Nuernberg, Germany and grew up in England during World War II after having fled, with the Kindertransport.

Norbert Holtz’ parents, Joseph Holtz and Clara Holtz (born Braun) met in Lucerne. Joseph Holtz came there from a small village near Lodz, Poland, and Clara Braun came there from Westheim near Hassfurt, Bavaria. She worked for the Erlanger family in Lucerne as a maid. Clara Braun’s parents were David Braun and Babette Braun (nee Friedmann).

Now having established our connection, I am having trouble to tell you a story about my Coburg/Autenhausen ancestors, as even my memories of my grandmother Clara Braun are very faint. She died when I was five, in Lucerne. I do have a closet in my home in Haifa that I remember my grandmother opening and offering us grandchildren round small chocolate tablets that were covered with tiny colored sugar candy, but I don’t know the history of this closet. Other dark furniture that I remember from my grandmother’s house and later from my parent’s house had a distinct style, and a story, so here we go:

My grandparents, Joseph Holtz and Clara Braun were, what some Jews may have called back then a “mixed marriage,” yet, quite the opposite of the standard cliché of highly educated German Jews not wanting their children to mix with the poor Eastern Jewish families, it was my grandfather that was a very well educated “Ostjude.” He apparently knew an amazing amount of Jewish texts by heart, had a great voice and would chant in synagogue the weekly portions from the Torah without needing to prepare for it. In contrast, my grandmother did not come from a highly educated German Jewish ancestry, but rather from a simple family of cattle merchants, and with my grandparent’s bond, none of the families were shaken. My grandmother immersed herself into the large Polish Holtz family in Lucerne and must have felt there quite good. Moreover, their house was furnished with custom made furniture from a well-known carpenter near Westheim bei Hassfurt, where she grew up and this may have made her feel at home.

Her husband, my grandfather, died relatively young, in ca. 1942, when my father was just 17 and my grandmother, the young widow, saw it as her duty to continue to run the family business, until my father will be old enough to take over. These first years, that were also the last years of the war, were hard on all, but eventually my father was ready to join and the two of them, mother and son, must have been quite a team.

In a parallel universe, my mother grew up in Manchester, with the Slutzkin family, that has taken her in, in December 1938. My mother’s father died in 1930, and during the war, her mother and four siblings all were scattered over the United Kingdoms, Sweden and Palestine and all survived. By the age of 21 my mother had moved at least eight times, had lived through Kristallnacht, the relentless bombing of England and had grown up in a foster family, that was incredibly good to her, but nevertheless, her own family of origin had stopped to exist as a family.

The first years after the war, with the revelation of the atrocities that many of her childhood friends and extended family either endured or succumbed to, were not an easy time for my mother. In 1950 her foster family went on vacation to Switzerland and through family and friends, it was arranged that my mother will go visit the Holtz family in Lucerne, where she was introduced to my father and five days later, they got engaged.

Which girl does not want to hear from her mother over and over again, the tale of how her parents met in every detail, and how they fell in love, and got married happily ever after? Well, I was no exception, and I never got tired to listen to all the little twists of that story.

But many years later it hit me, that when my mother got married to my father, just four months after they first met, she left England and moved yet again. She moved to Lucerne, a new community, a town and a country that she hardly knew. She did not just marry a “stranger” she moved into a house that had functioned perfectly without her. There were her newlywed husband and her mother-in-law, as a seamlessly working team, and Sophie the maid who had raised her husband and had run that household for years. “It wasn’t easy”, said my mother, I was young and had already gone through a lot, but something in that house made me feel good. It turned out many years later, when my mother’s mother came to visit from then already Israel, to meet her daughter’s husband, three children and new family for the first time. She recognized the furniture. It was the same carpenter that had made the furniture for my maternal grandmother in Fuerth and my paternal grandmother in Lucerne. And when my mother first entered the house in Lucerne, she did not know why, but she felt, she was coming home.