In August of 2011 while vacationing in Maui, my Mother, Ingrid Schmidt-Buchanan (nee Hartz), shared some family history with me that I had not heard before. It started by me telling my Mother about the exhibit from Munich, Germany that I was helping bring to the Pacific NW.
After telling my Mother all about the exhibit, she took a sip of her Mai Tai and said, "Well you know, your Great Grandfather Alois Hartz (Gustav Aloysius Richard Hartz, 1880 - 1962) helped several Jewish families escape Germany during the war". Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. She said she never mentioned it before because it never came up. I grew up primarily with my Father and Step Mother and only spent summers and some holidays with my Mother so this certainly made sense.
She then told me as much as she could remember about the situation. My Great Grandfather lived in Recklinghausen and owned a delicatessen supply company which offered him the connections outside the country needed to help the Jewish families escape. My Mother had the chance to meet several of the families, both in Germany and in America when she immigrated in the 1960s. One of the individuals Alois helped later served the King of Sweden as an envoy; she met this gentleman when she was 12 or so. She recalled talking to two sisters in New York City in 1964 that Alois had helped escape. The sisters later moved to Chicago and were successful in the stockyards. She also met other families when she was driving from NYC to the Carolinas.
Unfortunately, my Mother could not remember any of the individuals name's. My Mother did say that her cousins in Germany, Paul and Lisa Jantzen, and/or their sons Peter, Clause, and Uli might remember their names. To date, I have been unsuccessful at contacting the Jantzens as they moved out of Recklinghausen years ago. They did live in the same house as Alois though, Stenkhoffstraße 3 which was confirmed by one of my cousins as that is where our Grandfather, Rudolph Hartz lived until his death.
I have contacted the local Swedish Consulate to find out more about the gentleman that was the envoy of the King of Sweden...no luck. I may seek out an expert on Swedish history to help me on this topic. I have also contacted several organizations in Recklinghausen about Alois and although they were quite surprised and pleased to hear the story, they have no information that documents Alois's efforts. I hope to hire a genealogist/historian in Germany to help here. Finally, I have contacted several organizations in Chicago that maintain records of Jewish Holocaust refugees during that time, no luck but I'm hoping to visit Chicago sometime in the future to do more research on this topic.
What makes this particular family research project all the more interesting is that Alois is the very individual the NSDAP (aka Nazi Party) initiated genealogy research on that resulted in the documents that are responsible for me starting this blog. The documents identify Johanne Dorothea Albertine Auguste von Watzdorf (1792 - 1827) as one of my ancestors and it is the research into the von Watzdorf line that prompted me to start the blog. You can read about the background on this blog here and review the NSDAP documents here.
I didn't receive these documents from my cousin in Germany until January of 2012 and I certainly wasn't seeking them out since I didn't know they even existed, but their arrival did add to the complexity of the story. My family at the time was Catholic so I'm not quite sure why the research was undertaken. I've been told that it was done on all public servants at the time and I do know that one of my great uncles served in the SS. I've also been told that the Nazi Party was beginning to harass and persecute Catholics, particularly politically active Catholic priests so perhaps my family's Catholicism landed them on the research list. Of course the story that I am sharing here could also be responsible for the genealogy research. If Alois' efforts became known or suspected, this may have prompted the research into his background.
My Mother crossed over in March of 2014 so I no longer have the ability to work with her on this project but I plan to continue to research information on Alois and the Jewish families that he helped escape from Germany.
Updated 15 January 2015.
