Israel Bergman and family

by Lanie Bergman

The people in the photo are Israel Bergman and his brother.
Israel (1865-1922) was married to Runya Wahrshavsky. Her mother's maiden name was Spivakoff. The family was in the tobacco business.

We are not sure what the family name was in Russia. My father said Silverberg and Hershberg at various times, and there is some anecdotal evidence it may have been Steinberg, since that family was also in the tobacco business in Odessa at the same time and has a similar history except for having moved to South America.

After the Odessa pogroms, the Ottoman Empire issued an invitation to Jews from the Crimea and other territories won by Russia from the Ottomans in the Crimean War. If they could prove that they had been born in the disputed territory, they could obtain Ottoman papers and resettle anywhere in the Ottoman Empire.

My great-grandfather, his brother and his brother-in-law took advantage of this. The brother moved to the US, and ultimately adopted the surname BLANK. I have Ellis Island records showing their arrival as BERGMAN and later trips to Europe and back as BLANK.

The brother-in-law went to England, and we lost touch, although I have a photograph of someone from that family.

My great grandfather and grandmother moved to Berlin. They had lost a number of children in Russia, and had four children in Berlin who survived: Ida, the oldest, may have been born in Odessa. Simon, Siegbert 1893-1950(my grandfather) and Ena were definitely born in Berlin.

Siegbert was actually in Odessa when WWI broke out and was interned as an enemy alien during the war. He supported himself as a piano player in a movie house in Siberia and attached himself to a Red Cross transport of German POWs to get back to Berlin when Russia left the war.

When he returned to Berlin, he married my grandmother, Edith MEYER, whose older sister was a friend and classmate of his youngest sister Ena.

Edith and Siegbert had two children, my father, Rolf (1923-1981), and a daughter, Evelyn.

Largely because they were stateless (the Ottoman papers were no good after WWI and she was given his status when they got married despite her being German going back to Roman times) and also because Runya, Ita and Simon had moved to the US at the invitation of their cousins after Israel's death, my grandparents were able to leave Berlin in 1937, one step ahead of the Nazis. My father and aunt joined them in May 1938.