Engagement & Pro Bono Activity
Through our work as heir investigators, we are declared specialists in genealogical research. It is our goal to use this skill also for a good purpose and to engage ourselves socially whenever possible. All the more so, since it is often the atrocities of the past that make our commission as heir investigators necessary. For during the world wars and genocides of the 20th century in Europe, emigration was often forced, families destroyed and records destroyed.
Below we have listed some examples of our previous activities in this area. If you have any relevant inquiries for us, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to see if we can help.
Examples from our commitment
Genealogical research for the Exilmuseum Berlin Foundation
The Foundation Exile Museum Berlin plans to establish a museum in Berlin about the people who had to leave Germany because of the Nazi rule. Our genealogist Dr. Max Bloch was able to clarify the background of a suitcase donated to the museum, which was used in 1939 by a Jewish girl who left on a Kindertransport presumably from the Anhalter Bahnhof to England. From this central station of Berlin, many concerned persons, such as Heinrich Mann or Bertolt Brecht, left the German Reich for exile. Many were deported from there a little later.
September 2022
Research for the "Stolperstein" initiative in Berlin-Eichkamp
For the Stumbling Stone Initiative Berlin-Eichkamp Dr. Bloch conducted research on the Berlin-born neurologist Dr. Eva Rosenfeld née Born. The research revealed that her birth name was actually "Buttermilch" and that she changed it to "Born" in 1925 - five years before her marriage to the physician Alfred Rosenfeld. Her father, Dr. Max Buttermilch, born on July 15, 1866, died in Theresienstadt on January 8, 1943. Her mother Johanna Buttermilch née Hirschfeld, born on 30.06.1879, had already died in Berlin on 04.03.1932. Eva Rosenfeld's husband, son of the socialist politician Kurt Rosenfeld, died in Berlin only four years after their marriage. Until our research, there were only incomplete details about Eva Rosenfeld's fate: It was known that she, who was allowed to work as a health care worker after the Nuremberg Laws came into force, lived underground from 1942.
Dr. Bloch's research revealed that Eva Rosenfeld had a sister who, like her, had gone into hiding but survived the Holocaust. Lizzi Schack née Buttermilch/Butt, born on May 9, 1907 in Berlin, deceased on July 8, 1963 in Philadelphia, stated in an interview about her sister that she took her own life with Veronal in January 1944 in Leipzig, "where she was living illegally". By finding this source (CS impuls 1 (2018), p. 25) became certainty, what until then was only a terrible suspicion.
September 2022
Help for a Lithuanian girl in an inheritance matter
Our correspondent in Lithuania contacted us with a request for assistance: A minor girl from the Baltic States urgently needed help in communicating with the authorities due to the death of her biological father, who had been living in Germany. She and her mother are destitute and therefore could not afford a fee-based lawyer,
Through our support - including the involvement of a German lawyer financed by us - the family could be helped.
September until December 2022
