Cats
All about cats.
Pondering whether Betty knew about Elly, and vice versa
Here is a question for Ruby family members to ponder. Elly and Helga Ringel reached New York in April 1941. Betty Wohlgemuth died in Berlin in February 1942.
Was Elly able to send word to her mother that she and Helga had safely arrived in America? If so, it would have been a great cause of comfort to Betty in her last year of life.
And conversely, did Elly receive news of her mother's death? To have known that her mother died of natural causes in a Jewish clinic in Berlin would have provided a sense of resolution and perhaps even relief.
Paechter's store pinpointed on a vintage map of Tiegenhof
As a boy, Otto Stobbe walked by the store on his way to the steamship landing
Hermann Ringel
Jewish Berliner who prospered as a wholesaler and later manufacturer of outerwear for men and boys. He died in Berlin in 1938 on the eve of a planned departure from Germany. His wife and only child completed that journey.
Betty Katz
Isaak Wohlgemuth's widow lived comfortably in Berlin's Bavarian Quarter. She chose to remain in Germany when her family members fled the Nazi persecutions. She died of natural cause in Berlin in 1942
Rose Tulbowitz
Pogrom victim as a girl in Russia became the Ratner family matriarch in Albany, New York
Isaak Wohlgemuth
Our Wohlgemuth family patriarch embraced the values and culture of assimilated German Jewry in the 19th century. Born in a small west Prussian town, he prospered in business in Elbing, Danzig and Berlin. He married Betty Katz from a merchant Kolberg family, and they had two daughters, Elly and Hilda. The family resided for 18 years in the elegant Woelkpromenade in Berlin-Weissensee before his death at age 63.