Henry goes to Australia

My mother had another uncle, Henry. He was the older brother of Max, Jack and my mother's mother.

I have found a P&O passenger manifest showing that Henry with his wife, Margarethe, and teenage daughter, Ilse, sailed from London on 1 September 1939 aboard the Stratheden bound for Brisbane.

They had been in England for about 4 months.

They were in Australia by October 1939.

War in Europe was declared while they were travelling. A family story says they were also shadowed by a German U-boat. The Stratheden returned to Europe as a troop ship loaded with young Australians bound for the European War. Ilse had joyful memories of the ship and her many young friends she made en route. It was such a welcome relief and total change from the chaos, violence and persecution in their home city of Vienna, Austria, and an anxious Britain, with war clouds gathering rapidly.

Australian records for family history researchers, particularly those for South Australia, are not as readily available on the internet as they are for other countries such as the UK and the USA.

Fortunately my Australian family have remained in contact with us so I know that this branch of the family settled in Australia and Ilse married, having two sons.

Unfortunately she died at only 52 in a tragic accident whilst swimming in the sea.

One of the two sons married and he now has a family of his own.

They in turn are in contact with another family member in Australia and through him I have been put in touch with living relatives in New Zealand, Israel, Canada and the USA.

The discovery of these other families was even more rewarding because very little of my mother's family was known to have survived the war and she did not previously know of their existence.

The challenge was now to see if I could make contact with my newly discovered family, to see where these new lines would fit on the family tree and to continue this family history journey with any additional information I could gather.

I had four names and four email addresses for new family members spread across across the world.

So Jack had reached USA with his family via Ellis Island.

My mother told me that her uncle, who was Jack's brother, had made it to the US via the Far East.

My cousin, Jack's son, still lives in California and is in contact with us in the UK, particularly my mother. Recently he made a chance remark to her. He had read a book that had mentioned a person in Shanghai who could have been this uncle's first wife .

With the power of the internet, I followed up on this mention and discovered that they were both involved with the International Committee for European Immigrants in Shanghai.

The International Committee for European Immigrants in China was a refugee assistance organization in Shanghai that was founded on August 7, 1938 to deal with the wave of Jewish refugees arriving in Shanghai from Nazi Germany. Established under the aegis of Sir Victor Sassoon, a wealthy Iraqi Jew with British citizenship, the committee was organized by Hungarian businessman Paul Komor, together with Eduard Kann, Aladair Kelen and Michael Speelman. The International Committee was referred to as the I.C. or Komor Committee, after its first secretary. I.C. headquarters were first located at Komor's firm, but was soon moved to the Hotel Cathay owned by Sir Victor Sassoon. Initially, the I.C. provided housing, meals, jobs and financial assistance for the Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Later, after the establishment of the Committee for the Assistance of European Refugees in Shanghai under the direction of Michael Speelman (the Speelman Committee), the I.C. focused its efforts on providing international identification cards to the Jewish refugees whose passports had been confiscated or invalidated. These documents, which bore the I.C. stamp and Komor's signature, gave the refugees "legal" status in Shanghai, and were used in lieu of regular passports for those applying to emigrate.

Photographs of the Committee staff were given to Paul Komor in 1941 and have since been made available to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Valerie S. Komor.

Max, full name Maximillian, left Shanghai on 17 June 1947 aboard SS General MC Meigs arriving at the port of San Francisco on 3 July. I know that my great uncle had a second wife, but I have not yet managed to establish what happened to his first wife. She did not accompany him on the ship from Shanghai to San Francisco.