Samuel Samu Morgenstern

Material is abundant on Samuel MORGENSTERN.though there are other confusing discrepancies here and there ...

Significant information on birth & marriage courtesy of:

http://histfam.familysearch.org/getperson.php?personID=I234820&tree...

Samuel MORGENSTERN Born Abt 1875 Gender Male _UID 9C52FABE15B645B58E36C48B917619A94777 Died Yes, date unknown Notes SOURCE - LDS 2442343 Item 5, COMMENTS - groom Budapest / bride Zedlersdorf; OTHER SURNAMES - ; OTHER TOWNS - Budapest / Zedlersdorf Person ID I234820 Knowles Collection. Europe

Last Modified 15 Jul 2013

Father Adolf Morgenstern

Mother Katalin Grunbaum

Family ID F130978 Group Sheet

Family Emma Pragan, b. Abt 1879, d. Yes, date unknown Married 28 Aug 1904 Pozsony, Pozsony, Hungary Last Modified 9 Mar 2013 Family ID F130976 Group Sheet

Sources [S965] Jewish (neologick?a) records of births, marriages, and deaths for Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia; formerly Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovensko, Czechoslovakia; and Pozsony, Pozsony, Hungary, Transcribed my Marelynn Zipser, (Salt lake City, Utah; Genealogical Society of Utah 2009).

Information on deportation & death courtesy of www.doew.at: Vorname: Samuel Nachname: Morgenstern Geburtstag: 25.03.1875 Geburtsort: Budapest, Ungarn Wohnort: Wien 9, Liechtensteinstrasse 4/6

Sterbedatum: 13.05.1943 Sterbeort: Litzmannstadt Deportation: Wien/Litzmannstadt Deportationsdatum: 28.10.1941

Information - interesting on his life, excruciating on his fate - to be found under the following: cf. WIKIPEDIA ENTRY FOR SAMUEL MORGENSTERN - only in German ...

cf. Jews in Vienna - two examples - The Jahoda family - Mr & Mrs Morgenstern http://www.porges.net/JewsInVienna/6TwoExamples.html

Here a few extracts to give an idea of this extraordinary Story:

" ... The Jewish glazier Samuel Morgenstern was the most loyal buyer of Hitler's paintings. In this case, Hitler did not rely on an agent but always delivered his paintings personally. Peter Jahn, who called on Morgenstern between 1937 and 1939 to search for Hitler paintings at the NSDAP's direction, stresses that their relationship was extremely friendly and Morgenstern certainly did not cheat the poor painter. In his deposition he said: "Morgenstern was the first person to pay a good price for the paintings, which is how their business contact was established."

Samuel Morgenstern was born in Budapest in 1875. In 1903 he opened his glazier store with a workshop in the back at 4 Liechtenstein-strasse near downtown Vienna, quite close to Sigmund Freud's practice and apartment. In 1904 he married Emma Pragan, a Jew from Vienna four years his junior. In 1911 their only child, a son, was born. That same year Morgenstern bought an estate in Strebersdorf near Vienna for five thousand kronen, and in May 1914 another piece of land, in Groß Jedlersdorf, for ten times that amount. Within a few years he worked his way up from nothing.

In a deposition he made from memory in 1937, Morgenstern stated that Hitler had come to his store for the first time in 1911 or 1912, offering him three paintings, historical views in the style of Rudolf von Alt. Morgenstern had also sold pictures in his frame and glazier store, "since in my experience it is easier to sell frames if they contain pictures."

...

When the former postcard painter took possession of Austria in March 1938 as leader of the "Greater German Empire," Mr. and Mrs.Morgenstern's destiny made an about-face too. In the fall of 1938 their stores, fully stocked warehouse, and workshop were "Aryanized" and taken over by a National Socialist. The "purchase price," which was set at 620 marks, was never paid. Because Morgenstern also lost his commercial license, he was no longer allowed to work. Thus the couple- sixty-three and fifty-nine years old, respectively-had no income whatever, and what is more: they could not leave the country, because they did not have the money either for the trip or for the obligatory "Reich flight tax," or for the required visa.

In this desperate situation Samuel Morgenstern saw only one way out: asking the Fuhrer personally for help, just as Dr. Bloch in Linz did around that time. Considering that Hitler immediately responded to Bloch's request, Morgenstern's hope for the Fuhrer to intervene and save his life was certainly not absurd, as long as the letter reached Hitler.

...

Precisely traceable by postmarks and without the eagerly waiting sender's having any idea about this, Morgenstern's letter went on the following journey: mailed in Vienna on August 11, it arrived in Hider's secretary's office at the Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden on August 12 and was forwarded from there to the "Fuhrer's Chancellery" in Berlin on August 14, where it was opened on August 15. This is where the marginal note "Jew!" must have been added. In any case, the secretary's office did not hand the letter to Hider but returned it to Vienna on August 19 however, not to the sender but to the Finance Ministry, where it was filed away and forgotten for the next fifty-six years.

The invasion of Poland began on September 1, 1939, and with it World War II. The Morgensterns waited fruitlessly for help from Hitler, but a short time later their house was taken from them. They had to relocate to a kind of Jewish ghetto in Leopoldstadt. From there, on October 28, 1941, they were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto in the Reich district of Wartheland. The deportation order was stamped, in red ink, "To Poland."

...

The Morgensterns were among 25,000 Jews deported to Litzmannstadt from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, and Luxembourg. Five thousand Gypsies from Burgenland were also relocated there; they were shortly sent to Auschwitz.

...

We do not know what happened to the Morgensterns there. Samuel Morgenstern died of exhaustion in the ghetto of Litzmannstadt in August 1943. He was sixty-eight years old. He was buried in the ghetto cemetery. As an eyewitness, Emma's brother-in-law Wilhelm Abeles, a former glazier in Vienna, was to report later on, his wife was with him until the end.

In August 1943, when the Russian army was advancing, the ghetto was vacated. The remaining 65,000 people, weakened by hunger and diseases, were deported to Auschwitz. Among them was Abeles, but he survived. Before he was deported, he saw Emma Morgenstern in Litzmannstadt for the last time. There are no other surviving witnesses.

Emma Morgenstern must have been deported to Auschwitz by August 1944, for on August 30 only a "cleaning-up commando" of six hundred men and a few people in hiding remained in the ghetto. Most new arrivals-above all, old women unable to work-were immediately sent to the gas chamber .

As a Vienna court would later determine, Emma Morgenstern could not have lived through the end of the war in 1945. In approval of her brother's application, retired Major Max Pragan, she was declared dead in December 1946..."

and also ...

cf. Young Hitler - Excerpts Appendix | Hitler´s Jewish Friends http://www.younghitler.com/hitlers_jewish_friends.htm

N.B. In niece, Ilse Loeb's Page of Testimony submitted to Yad Vashem Uncle Samuel's profession is given as "silversmith".

Results of research shown here may be erroneous ... BUT this really would seem to be THE Samuel MORGENSTERN who was a glazier.

This Samuel MORGENSTERN's (married to Emma, née PRAGAN) father Adolf has the occupation of "Glaserer" - glazier - marked on his IKG-Wien marriage registration to Katy, née GRÜNBAUM, dated 21st. November 1880 (cf. his respective Profile) - just as Adolf's father Elias "Illes" is likewise entered on that same registration under that profession of glazier ...

Footnote:

The Wilhelm ABELES mentioned as "Emma's brother-in-law" was also a glazier.

So far little further about him could be determined but this may be the person listed on www.avotaynu.com

Abeles, Wilhelm 04.03.1886 A

For reasons relating to this research cf.

Pierre Peter Walk