Introducing the Tenenbergs
For the past five years we have been attempting to trace the descendants of three of the six children born in Żarki to Ankiel and Chasia Halborn — Liba, born in 1816, Chana, born in 1826, and Berek, born in 1830. In the past year, we were able to re-connect with two living branches of Berek Halborn’s family. This is an account of what we found of one of those branches.
Berek, the youngest of Ankiel and Chasia’s six children, was born in Żarki around 1830. When he was a young man he married Jenta Krakauer and, probably in the 1850s, moved his young family to Częstochowa, where two of his older sisters, Liba and Chana, lived with their husbands and children.
All five of the children of Berek and his wife, Jenta Krakauer, were born in Częstochowa. Berek and Jenta’s second child, a daughter named Chaska, was born in Częstochowa in 1860. In June, 1884, Chaska married Mosiek Lejb Tenenberg. Mosiek and Chaska were first cousins — she the daughter of Jenta Krakauer and he the son of Jenta’s sister, Hana Krakauer. (Marriage to first cousins, as we pointed out in our Halborn family book, was not prohibited within the Jewish religion at that time and, with the small population of Jews existing in some Eastern European towns, it was certainly not uncommon.)
Chaska and Mosiek had eight children, born between 1884 and 1902. Mosiek Lejb died in 1903, not long after the birth of Fajgla, the last of their children. Chaska Halborn Tenenberg registered the birth of most of her children in 1904. She is listed in those Czestochowa records as a widow.
Our first efforts to trace the descendants of Chaska and Mosiek stalled at the Holocaust. Except for a small clue here and there, generally a clue that led nowhere, we were unable to find concrete evidence of any descendants who had survived the Holocaust. We reluctantly concluded that the entire family had been murdered.
Over time, however, some clues began to emerge that turned out to be far more positive. One of those clues led us to a large family of living Tenenberg-Halborn descendants. All are direct descendants of Moishe (Moisek) Tenenberg, the son of Berek Tenenberg and Tauba Wnuk Tenenberg, nephew of Zalma Tenenberg, grandson of Mosiek Lejb Tenenberg and Chaska Halborn and great grandson of Berek Halborn and Jenta Krakauer.
Hasag, a German metalworks and arms producer, was the third largest user of slave labor in the Third Reich. The Hasag company continued beyond the war and the Hasag brand was not discontinued until 1974. During the war, Hasag located several facilities in Częstochowa. Their workers were largely slave laborers who were at first housed, under terrible conditions, in the Częstochowa ghetto and, later, housed under even worse conditions in Hasag barracks run by the SS.
We do not know how many of our relatives were forced to work for Hasag. We do know that one of our relatives survived that ordeal. His name was Moishe Tenenberg.
The handwritten record above is currently archived in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is one of many Hasag listings recording the work assignments of slave laborers. The listing is undated. It states that Moishe Tenenberg, prisoner number 4106, was born on March 2, 1922. (The year, but not the month and day, agree with family statements about Moishe’s age.) The document, number 2939, states that Moishe arrived from Lodz –which the Nazi occupiers had renamed Litzmanstadt. His occupation is listed as carpenter. His “assigned” occupation in the slave labor camp is “worker”, His assigned group is “construction”. (The notation “Capo 101” is puzzling — the Nazis used the term Kapo, meaning overseer, to indicate prisoners who were placed is supervisory positions. Generally these prisoners were people with particularly brutal natures — often people with long pre-war criminal histories. It is a good guess that “Capo 101”, who was Moshe’s group supervisor, was one of these.)
Moishe’s profession as a carpenter is confirmed by family testimony, which notes that, before the war, the family owned a carpentry shop in Częstochowa and that the shop was able to employ several family members. It is also confirmed in a list of forced laborers in the Częstochowa ghetto. The list, now stored in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw is dated April 22, 1942. It, states that Moishe’s father, Berek Tenenberg, is an “unemployed cabinetmaker”
But that small hint — that Moishe Tenenberg was listed as a slave laborer in the Hasag-Pelcery facility in Częstochowa — was all we had. And we knew all too well that in 1942 the Częstochowa ghetto was reduced to a few square blocks in size and most of the Jews who had been confined in the original ghetto were deported and murdered. Later that same year the small remaining ghetto was eliminated, more Jews were deported and killed and the few remaining Jews were those still fit enough for slave labor work at the Hasag facilities in Częstochowa. Those few who remained were housed in the SS run Hasag barracks. For some time we found no evidence that contradicted our assumption that the whole family had been murdered.
Then, in 2015, following a clue in a record at Yad Vashem, Roman Weinfeld found a phone number for Sara Bialas Tenenberg, who lived in Berlin. Roman called and learned that Moishe Tenenberg had survived the war, that he had married Sara, and that the couple had two living sons — Robert, who lives in Germany, and Bernard, who lives in Australia. The sons, in turn had married. Robert had two living children, three grandchildren and a fourth grandchild on the way. Bernard had a son and three grandchildren.
While we had believed that we had no living Tenenberg relatives, Moishe’s wife and children were equally sure they had no living relatives outside their immediate family.
Soon Robert brought his mother to Warsaw to meet Roman and Roman then visited the family in Berlin. Affter some back and forth email and conversation, Robert wrote the following English language email to bring the English speakers in the family up to date. The letter was sent at Rosh Hashanah, 2015. It was written in English and has been lightly edited to accommodate language differences.
Dear Family,
We do not know each other, so I will write some basic information about us.
My father was Moishe Tenenberg. He was born on July 26,1922 in Częstochowa, Poland His parents were Berig and Tauba Tenenberg. Berig had a carpentry shop in town and all the family found work there. To this family belonged two sisters, both of them were murdered in Treblinka, probably in 1942.
My father was able to escape through a coincidence, but he did not get far away from the Nazis. He was sent through various working camps and then to concentration camp Buchenwald. Then he was sent on the Todesmarsch (death march) from Buchenwald to Treblinka. Then on the death march to Theresienstadt where he was liberated in 1945.
My mother, Sara, was born on December 12,1927 in Częstochowa, Poland. She was the daughter of Refael and Krona Schlifka (Śliwka). This family consisted of the parents and three sisters. My mother was the only Holocaust survivor of her family. The rest of the family, it is known, were murdered in 1942 at Treblinka.
After the liberation, both my parents tried to find their homes and families — without success, of course. Moishe and Sara had known each other from before the war and met in Częstochowa again. They married and went to stay in an ITP camp in Bavaria. My brother Bernard was born their on June 7,1946.
A few months later they went to Paris. Their destination was an aunt, Liebe Tenenberg, who had married Max Milstein. On September 1,1948 twins Christian and Robert (me) were born. Unfortunately Christian died after a few months.
My parents decided to leave France and live in Israel. Then, in 1961 my parents moved to Germany (Berlin) where we still live. Unfortunately, my father was killed in a car accident. That was in the year 1975.
My brother Bernard is married and has a son in Australia. He moved there to help his son with his three children. He is fine and we keep in constant contact.
I was married for 32 years and from this marriage I had two children. My daughter Mirjam is 45 years old and married. She has two children, Joel and Lilach, ages 17 and 12. They live in Cologne. My son Miron is 33 years old. He has a boy named Nikita, who will be 10 years old in March 2016. We are also expecting a granddaughter.
For 8 years I have lived with Hanna and I hope to continue for a long time. She is my interpreter of English into German. With my mother my brother and I talk in Yiddish. With Hanna I talk in Hebrew and German.
Please write us a little about you and about other families that belong to us. Hag sameah le Rosh Hashana, happy new year for you and your family.
Shalom,
Robert and Hanna and of course from my mother, Sara.
As I write this in 2018, Sara Tenenberg, who is in her late 80s, lives with her son in Berlin. She is still active and recently worked with a Warsaw klezmer band, teaching them Yiddish songs. This YouTube video was taken of Sara, singing a Yiddish tango during the 2011 Warsaw Music Festival.
