Alfred Gessler

Dr. Judith Rényi wrote (to Peter R.): I've come across a couple of references to these two gentlemen whom you have posted in Geni in letters written to my father during and after the war. The info that follows is my English translation of letters originally written in German.

"The first is a letter of April 28, 1941 written by my father's cousin Malvine (nee Eckstein) Kohn (b. 1886) She is telling my father about a letter she received from Kurt Reik, the son of family friends, who now lives in Rio. He said in his letter to Malvine that "Gessler with his wife and children visited him [in Rio where Kurt has emigrated from Troppau, CSR], who will travel on to N.Y. although his parents-in-law are in Rio. They heard from P from Offendorf [a commune in Northeastern France on the Rhine] that they [the Gessler family] are doing very well, they have a farm and want to go to the city next. The children are big now and help diligently."

The second mention I have is in a letter from my father's friend Leo Haas on April 26, 1946 (yes, the artist: they were close friends] that "Hans Gessler [went] to London...Fredi Gessler [is] in New York." This is a postscript rounding up all their former mutual friends and reporting to my father as best he can who survived, and where they are now.

I think Fredi is Alfred, and that these brothers were also schoolmates of my father's at the Gymnasium in Troppau, and contemporaries. My father was born in 1900 and Leo Haas in 1901. (Kurt Reik was born ca. 1907). It would be Fredi who has the growing children and his wife whose parents have settled in Brazil. There should be a marriage record somewhere between 1920-early 1930s for there to be growing children helping on a farm."

Marriage record: PRAHA 2733 O 1937 (i) (3/17)