Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Why ... why did they die?

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I've thrown myself into our family history with a vengeance over recent autumnal weeks. And I've made enormous headroads into the Austro-Hungarian Jewish side of things. The Ganzl family tree has sprouted all sorts of hundred-and-fifty years old branches which I had never thought to discover. But now it is winter. Time to fly to my Winter Palace by the sunny seaside at Yamba. And to give this fascinating journey into the past a rest. To let it mull ....

But I'll say my temporary goodbye with one more little query ...

When John and I were little, we didn't quite understand about ancestors. 'All dead', father would say shortly. Mother occasionally mentioned her Scottish grandparents. You had to catch father off-guard to get a little story out of him. Why had he changed his name? We know, now, that it was because the unspeakable word 'Jewish' was involved.

We winkled out that his father's parents had died young. His uncles had been brought up by an Aunt.   After we got rid of the myth that they'd died in a car crash in Switzerland (in the 1880s? hardly), we came out with the story that Julie Gansl (sic) had died, and then Adolf had followed, shortly after, 'of a broken heart'.  It happens. But not usually when the folk are 40 years old. Anyway, the facts of their deaths were there. The unmarked graves in the Zentralfriedhof bear their ashes. The Währing Todesbücher hold the registrations. And they are simple enough to decipher, because I know what they say. Except for one column. The last. Cause of death.

Here's Julie's ..


Is that Krebsige .. something? Cancer?



And here is Adolf's ...




Gosizmpsorgfluss????

Hopefully somebody can put the Swiss carcrash and the broken heart into the realm of fiction for all time ...

PS Ten minutes later! All solved! Its that Marie-Theres Arnbom again, and Simon Srebrny and the wonderful folk of Jewish Genealogy Portal.
Julie indeed died of cancer ('Kresbische entartung der Organer') and Adolf of 'Gehirnschlagfluss'. A stroke. At forty. So maybe the broken heart story has an element of truth to it ...



2 comments:

mta said...

Good morning: krebsige entartung der organe is cancer. And gehirnschlagfluss is stroke!

Unknown said...

Sad story. I have the contact for the stonemaker in the Zentralfriedhof Wienna. The stone from the grave of my grandmother disapeared as well. The part of the cemetery of 1935 is not as well kept as other parts, ptobably because of the missing relatives after these difficult years. Now it is our task to improve it. I will have my grandmother's stone done. My adress is chava@seznam.cz