This problem might be more common than we think:

My genealogy research client has an official copy of his birth record he
personally obtained May 14, 1980 while visiting his small hometown in
Hessen. Although the photostat of his original familienstammbuch page
was written in 1930 (and was attached to the official record), the town's
typewritten portion STILL has his Nazi era middle name 'Israel'
inserted. These additional middle names became mandatory for German
Jews in January 1939.

35 years after World War Two! Did all such official records still contain
these additions?

The answer should be no. But it is not!

I contacted his Town Standesamt (registry office) which keeps
their civil registers.

They promised to correct the forced "Israel" and "Sara" entries in their
birth registers. They agreed to send him a corrected document at no charge.
However, He had to email to the Standesamt, ask for his birth record and
give his postal address.

It is the first time that I was confronted with the fact that the Nazi
entries in the civil registers of a town have not been corrected. Actually,
all German Institutions were ordered to do this in the 1950s! I strongly
advised the person in the Standesamt to carry out these corrections for
all their Jewish residents, not only him alone.

Stephen Denker
Brookline, MA

You are asking the office to take primary source documents and discard them,
in favor of eliminating what you find offensive in history? Any time
you want to know precisely when and where something happened, you look
for primary source records. I have primary source records of my family
in Germany - which also include the 'offensive' middle names. That is
what happened there at that time. Wiping the history out of the records
will not mean it didn't happen, and we should be reminded of it.

If you do research you should be looking for primary source documents.
When you find them, you don't ask for them to be changed - eliminating
the primary source.

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

"Although the photostat of his original familienstammbuch page
was written in 1930 (and was attached to the official record), the town's
typewritten portion STILL has his Nazi era middle name 'Israel'
inserted. These additional middle names became mandatory for German
Jews in January 1939.
snip.....

Dear Group -

Following up on this issue, I was recently given a scan of a
marriage document >from Vienna dated 1895.

Some little nazi functionary must have gone through the
archives. The entry is stamped with an official stamp dated
June 1939, to the effect that Israel-Sara are now officially
added to the names contained therein.

One wouldn't think they'd bother! But they did!

Robert Fraser
Perth, Western Australia
Researching:
NOWAK; Moravia, Austria, USA and the world: EISINGER;
Moravia, Vienna, USA and the world
NAGEL; Moravia, Vienna, New York: FINKELSTEIN; Galicia,
Vienna
WORTMANN; Slovakia, USA: KRAUTERBLUTH; Poland, ?
LICHTBLAU; Vienna

Snip....
Although the photostat of his original familienstammbuch
page was written in 1930 (and was attached to the official
record), the town's typewritten portion STILL has his Nazi
era middle name 'Israel'
inserted.
snip.....

Yes, but, if i understood correctly it is the law in germany, after
the war, that such "additions" be removed. Whether that is done with
a stroke of the pen and an explanatory note, or with a pair of
scissors, it is the policy of the postwar german government to
dissociate itself >from such artifacts of nazi persecution.
Obviously, a registrar issuing a birth certificate 65 years later
should be expected to comply with that law.

Our interest in researching our families should not take precedence
over the sensitivities of people alive today.


....... tom klein, toronto

Sally Bruckheimer <sallybruc@...> wrote:

You are asking the office to take primary source documents and discard them,
in favor of eliminating what you find offensive in history?
snip....