Former Capetonian Janice Levy, daughter of Fred Levy z’l, contacted the Cape Jewish Chronicle to share research undertaken by her cousin, Sivan Kaufman, into their family’s history in Germany. The Chronicle has previously featured Fred’s own story of escaping Nazi Germany as a baby.
Although she has never lived in Cape Town, Sivan has strong ties to the city and its Jewish community. Born in Israel and now living in Berlin, Germany, her interest in genealogy has enabled her family to connect with relatives around the world they did not previously know existed.
“My father, Ronny Kaufman, and Janice’s father were first cousins,” Sivan explains. “Their mothers were sisters, surnamed Bernstein. On the maternal side, the family name was Koeppler. The Bernstein-Koeppler family has been a main focus of my research.”
The two sisters and their families lived close to one another in Vredehoek in Cape Town and were extremely close-knit. Ronny recalls, “It felt like we each had four parents.” He left Cape Town in 1965 to make Aliyah to Israel, where he has lived since.
Ronny remembers the German émigré community in Cape Town with affection. “It was small and very close,” he says. “Everyone was a refugee, sharing the trauma of what they had experienced in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.”
Over several years, Sivan gathered extensive information about the Bernstein-Koeppler family and compiled a family tree of more than a thousand members now living worldwide. “My father knew a great deal of the family history and wrote down many names,” she says. “I also used genealogical websites like Ancestry and uncovered many relatives we hadn’t known about.”
Her research led to connections with cousins in Germany, Israel and the USA. “Two descendants live in Germany – one in Berlin, where I met him after identifying him as family. The resemblance to my grandmother was striking,” she says. “I’m still in touch with his son, my third cousin. Another third cousin lives in Israel; her father was the oldest living Bernstein family member until his recent death last year.”
Beyond the Bernstein-Koeppler line, Sivan also traced another branch of Fred’s family on his father’s side. “They changed their surname from Levy to Lee after Fred’s uncle Herbert arrived in the United States,” she explains. Herbert’s son, Peter Lee, lives in the USA and was part of a three-man comedy troupe, The Pickle Brothers. Sivan managed to connect Fred with this relative shortly before Fred’s death. Janice recalls that a week before her father passed away, a FaceTime call was arranged with family members present.
“Our family suffered many losses to the Nazis,” Ronny notes. “Fred and my uncle fled Germany, while siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins were murdered.”
Sivan organised the laying of Stolpersteine (“stumbling stones”) outside the victims’ last-known residences. Sivan and a German cousin helped lay Stolpersteine in Magdeburg two years ago in memory of members of the Schlein family, connected through marriage. Further Stolpersteine are planned in Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.
Now settled in Germany for over a decade, Sivan feels a strong connection to the country her family lived in for generations. She notes that her daughter is the first Bernstein family member to be born there since before the Second World War. “Before my baby was born recently, Fred Levy was the last Bernstein born in Germany – in 1935,” she says.
In addition to discovering family members previously unknown to both Sivan and Janice, Sivan’s research has highlighted the tragedy of a relative of Fred and Ronny who had been well-known in pre-War Germany for his empathetic approach to those less fortunate.
Dr Otto Schlein, the Doctor of the Poor
Dr Otto Schlein’s mother, Lina, was a Bernstein. Lina’s brother Max was the father of Sivan and Janice’s paternal grandmothers.
Dr. Schlein served in the German army during World War I and was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class. Having started his medical studies prior to the War, he completed his medical qualification in the 1920s, and settled in the German city of Magdeburg, where he went into private practice as a dermatologist. Schlein, a Communist, was empathetic towards marginalised people, often treating poor people for free, leading to him being known as ‘the Doctor of the Poor’.
In the 1930s, as the Nazi hold on Germany became stronger, Schlein and his family fled to the Netherlands, but they were arrested there by the Nazis in 1943, and sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto. In 1944, he and his wife and daughter were murdered in Auschwitz.
Today, Magdeburg memorialises his contribution to the people of the city through Stolpersteine bearing his name and the names of his immediate family. In addition, there is a vocational school in the city that is named after him, and a promenade running along the Elbe River called Schleinufer. ●
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