31 Rue de la Saussaye

Why would Colonel Engelke move from his position as chief of SS adminstration in Paris in June 1944 to an SS prison cell in Dachau in April 1945, if in fact he's the same person? That is the implied question that forum poster Ian Sayer asks on the Axis History Forum mentioned previously.

The answer is speculative, but it leads to a theory about what might have been discussed at those parties with Madame Kleinknecht, the one-time cabaret dancer who is now a premier hostess in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Der Spiegel mentions "German generals" being present at Neuilly, though not by name. Likely one of those would have been Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, a general of infantry from the Eastern Front (where he was responsible for atrocious war crimes) who in March 1942 was made the military commander of... more

The Der Spiegel article lists several names among the guests of Walter and Laure Kleinknecht at the Neuilly villa. The two French names, Pierre Laval and Marcel Déat, were leading politicians in the Vichy government. From Wikipedia:

Pierre Laval

Pierre Laval (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ laval]; 28 June 1883 – 15 October 1945) was a French politician. He was four times President of the council of ministers of the Third Republic, twice consecutively.

Following France's surrender and Armistice with Germany in 1940, he served twice in the Vichy Regime as head of government. He signed orders permitting the deportation of foreign Jews from French soil to the Nazi death camps.

After Liberation (1945), Laval was arrested by the... more

Joanne is in Paris visiting her friend Carrie, who is ill. She emailed Walter and I overnight asking did we have Hilda's old address in Neuilly. She said she would be in Neuilly today visiting her high-school exchange student pal Sylviane.

Walter replied that he and Joanne had looked for the house once before, in 2007 when their paths crossed in Paris, but that they had not found it. As for me, my only memories of that grand maison go back to early childhood.

So I googled "Joseph Liebman Clerc Neuilly". That is the name of Aunt Hilda's husband, the French jewelry business he owned for a time, and the Parisian suburb where they resided. Up pops a juicy page from a French jewelry history blog chock full of information, including the address of a house in Neuilly that was listed as a Clerc business... more

Here are a couple of fascinating new documents also discovered via Ancestry's hinting feature. First is the passenger manifest of U.S. aliens arriving on the SS Guine in New York April 15, 1941, showing Elly and Helga Ringel and Herbert and Hilda Peiser among the passengers. The second is a record of those aliens held for special inquiry, showing those same four names.

Both documents include lots of annotations and data that I have not yet taken the time to fully interepret, but presumably tells the story of the group's initial stop in New York, where they were denied admission to the U.S., but where they gained the documentation that allowed them to enter later through Miami from Cuba. More analysis to come.

... more