We are related to the Australian Peter Nash

We are related to the Australian Peter Nash

• Sep 06, 2020
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Several posts back, I mentioned that Rodney wrote to introduce me to an Australian contact. Now I can tell you that he is Peter Nash, the author of Escape From Berlin, which describes the ordeal his family endured in their flight from Nazi persecution. 

Born Peter Nachemstein in Berlin in 1935, Nash was a young child during his family's desperate flight to Shanghai, where he spent his boyhood years, before his family was able to settle in Australia after the war. He deeply researched his family history before writing the memoir that was published in 2017. So far, I have read just the Kindle sample, but with the news below I will now buy it and read it in full.

Peter Nash is our third cousin. Actually it is third cousin once removed because he is a generation older. He emailed yesterday before I figured out the puzzle. It sounds like he is still vigorous and active in his mid-80s. 

If you recall from the previous item, Peter's Kleemann family from Danzig included his great-grandmother, Rosa Kleemann, geb. Paechter. I had run across her myself doing my indexing work for the JewishGen Danzig volunteer project. The leader of that project, Australian Rodney Eisfelder, knew that I also had a Paechter family line but he was pretty blasé about it when I first mentioned the coincidence. Paechter is not an uncommon name, and Rodney is a particularly unflappable genealogist. He doesn't get excited easily.

(The word 'Pächter' means 'tenant' in German, and it is used to describe certain vacation rentals, something like tenant cottages.)

You'll also remember that Rodney had recently reviewed the 1910 death record of my 2G grandmother, Friederike Paechter, where her birthplace was shown as Tiegenhof. What Rodney later noticed about Peter's great-grandmother's Danzig residency registration is that it listed a prior residence in Tiegenhof. 

Even skeptical Rodney raised an eyebrow about that. Two Paechter women from Tiegenhof, one born in 1838, the other in 1850. 

The leap-of-faith possibility was there for all to see. But could I find a paper trail that would show without doubt that Friederike and Rosa were sisters. I got thrown off track by a mistaken family tree on Geni, but now I have a near-perfect proof that I will lay out in the next post.