The Memorable Seventeen

07/29/2012

3 Comments

 
The Braunhart family patriarch and matriarch Lewin Jacob Braunhart and Wilhelmine Zadek Braunhart had four children, Bernhard, Samuel, Sara and Alexander. Between these four - twenty one grandchildren were born, and 17 lived to adulthood.

What are some facts about the 17?

  • One lived his life in a mental institution
  • One committed suicide
  • One was nearly murdered at his business
  • One escaped the Nazis by traveling to Shanghai and Palestine
  • One escaped the Nazis by traveling to England
  • One was born in California
  • Two were murdered in Nazi concentration camps
  • Two were in the German army in World War I
  • One was in the American army in World War I
  • 11 immigrated to America
  • Two never married
  • Two were tailors
  • One owned a hardware store
  • One owned a barber shop
  • One owned a bicycle shop in Germany and America
  • One was a gambler
  • One was a cook in a convalescent home
  • One owned a dry cleaners
  • Only one stayed in Germany after World War II
  • The first to immigrate to America was a seventeen year old girl - all by herself with no one to meet her at her destination.

Every one of these 17 had a story.

Their names, in order of birth date (from 1870 to 1902):

  • Ernestine Bernstein
  • Max Bernstein
  • Amalie Bernstein
  • Cecelia Bernstein
  • Hedwig Bernstein
  • Moritz Braunhart
  • Jacob Braunhart
  • Martha Braunhart
  • Julius Braunhart
  • Harry Braunhart
  • Carl Braunhart
  • Cecelia Braunhart
  • Anna Braunhart
  • Philipp Braunhart
  • Sara Selma Braunhart
  • Theodor Braunhart
  • Frieda Braunhart

Every one of these 17 matters.  Every one of these 17 deserves to be remembered. 

Documenting their lives and their stories is why family history research is so important - in EVERY family.  If we don't, who will?




 


Comments

Stuart
07/30/2012 2:22pm

There's one more those 17 have in common and that is you, Ken, to remember them and to help bring those memories to their many descendants. With a lot of love and care, you've brought them back from the dead and kept them alive in their family. We all, both the living and the dead, thank you.

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Jody
11/09/2012 8:48pm

Thank you Ken for your post, and Stuart for your comment. Sometimes I think family genealogists either have an extraordinary capacity of empathy for ancestors as individuals or an extrasensory ability to hear their desire to be remembered as such.

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Kenneth R Marks link
11/09/2012 8:59pm

Thanks Jody for your kind words. These seventeen, in particular, were not famous or rich but most exhibited extraordinary courage and heroism and in my view, deserve to be remembered as more than a line on an immigration record, a member of a database containing military records, or in a list of victims of the greatest atrocity of the 20th century.

It is I who is the lucky one, to be in a position to have the access and the skills to be able to bring them more to life.

Thanks,

Kenneth

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