They Survived the War, But How? Part 2 of How I Located Relatives Assumed to Have Perished in the Holocaust

In last week's installment, I wrote about my research into the whereabouts of two cousins that my grandmother remembered sledding with in Vienna when she was about four years old. All she remembered about these brothers was that they were called Pauli and Karli, and to the best of her knowledge, they had died in the Holocaust. I described how I was eventually able to identify these two brothers as Paul and Karl Teichner, sons of my great-grandmother's sister who had perished in the Holocaust. Through a Viennese probate record from 1967 for my grandmother's uncle, I learned that Paul and Karl did not in fact die in the Holocaust, but instead were still living, in Europe, unbeknownst to my grandmother. 

This second part of the Teichner story addresses how I was able to locate what happened to Paul and Karl, both during the war and after the war, through the archives of three new countries.

Paul Enlists in the War and Finds Himself in . . . England?

After receiving the probate information from Vienna identifying that the two brothers were still living in 1967, I now knew the following about Paul Teichner:

• He was born July 28, 1917 in Prague, appearing in the Smichov Jewish birth register under the name Paul Gabriel Teichner.
• By 1919, Paul's parents had relocated to Vienna, where his younger brother Karl was born.
• According to the Meldezettel record shown in the previous installment, Paul had apparently left Vienna for Hungary in April of 1938.
• According to the Yad Vashem entry of Malka Gantz shown in the previous installment, Paul's parents were killed in Budapest in 1944.
• According to the probate filing for Paul's uncle in 1967, Paul was then living in Prague.

Back to the drawing board... Once in a while, I return to Ancestry.com -- which continually adds records -- to newly search for individuals for whom I am still missing their eventual whereabouts. I did that here for another reason as well: I now had Paul's birthdate. I went on Ancestry and searched for a Paul Teichner born in 1917, but I got nothing. There are some records, though, where birth dates are not included, so next I searched for any Paul Teichner with no date limits, and an entry that I had previously overlooked now sparked significant interest: a death index entry in England for a Paul Teichner who died in 1984 and who was born on July 28, 1920. A person named Paul Teichner living in Europe, with the exact birth date as our Paul, but with a birth year off by three years. Often times, years of birth get mixed up, but three years off -- in England of all places -- seemed less likely. And when did this Paul get to England? Nonetheless, two Paul Teichners born on the same date within a few years of each other seemed too unlikely. I had to dig further in England.

My next stop was to search the catalog of the UK National Archives, which has indexed many post-war UK naturalization records. I was curious to see if there was one for Paul, most notably to assess whether any family members might be listed. Searching the catalog for Teichner resulted in a promising entry: Paul Teichner, from Czechoslovakia, residing in Prague, with a certificate of naturalization from 1949. I ordered the record. The results were just what I had hoped for: Paul Teichner, living at Prague I, Dlouha 44 (the exact address shown on Benno Hirschmann's probate papers from 1967), born in Prague on July 28, 1917, the son of "Ludvik and Barbara" (Ludwig and Bora, close enough).

Excerpt from British "Certificate of Naturalisation" for Paul Teichner, 1949

There were two particularly interesting entries on Paul's British naturalization record. First, Paul was being naturalized in the UK, but he wrote that he was living in Prague. So why and how was he naturalizing in the UK? Second, Paul identified that he had a wife named Edith. I had a gap for Paul from 1938 in Vienna (single) to 1949 in England (married), so next I set out to look for an Edith Teichner in the UK. 

A Wife of Many Names

No marriage entry popped up in the UK for a Paul Teichner to an Edith. In fact, there was only one record that appeared in all UK records for an Edith Teichner: an entry on the 1939 England and Wales Register for an Edith Adele Kolarek, whose surname was crossed out and replaced with Teichner. I didn't think much of this, though, because this Edith was born in 1901, while Paul was born in 1917. So I figured that Paul might have gotten married outside of the UK, but just to be sure, I searched for various combinations of these names on Ancestry and ultimately saw a 1943 UK marriage index for an "Adele E Kollarek" marrying a "Pavel Teichner." 

I promptly ordered the marriage record from the UK General Register Office. (Note on prices: ordering to the US from the UK register itself cost me £11 while doing the same through Ancestry.com would cost $40). A few weeks later, I received the marriage record in the mail, and yes indeed, our Paul Teichner, aged 26, married Edith Adele Kollarek, a divorced 42 year old. Important lesson: never rule out age differences!

Marriage entry for Pavel Teichner and Adele Edith Kollarek née Suschny, Paddington, England, December 4, 1943

The marriage record left more questions than answers. In relevant part, it included the following information:

• Marriage on December 4, 1943 at the Register Office in the Registration District of Paddington (not in a synagogue).
• Pavel Teichner is listed as a 26 year old bachelor who was a private in the Czechoslovak army.
• Adele Edith Kollarek formerly Suschny is listed as a 42 year old divorcée. The record states that she was "formerly the wife of Wilhelm Ladislaus Luzidus Kollarek from whom she obtained a divorce."

I dug a bit further into "Adele Edith," who also seems to have had an interesting life of her own. She was born Adele Fischer on September 2, 1901 in Vienna. Her parents were Simon Suschny and his second wife Sali Fischer; they had not registered their marriage by the time of Adele's birth, so she was listed as illegitimate and with her mother's surname. Simon acknowledged that he was her father in 1904. By 1936, she had married the non-Jewish Wilhelm Ladislaus Luzidus Kollarek, and in that year, she registered with the Vienna Jewish Community her "resignation" from the Jewish religion, i.e., a likely conversion to Christianity. 

According to a subsequent UK record, Adele divorced Wilhelm Kollarek on June 29, 1938. By 1939, she was living in Wolverhampton, England working as a cook. As described above, she married Paul Teichner -- 16 years her junior and a Czech soldier at the time -- in December of 1943. According to Paul's 1949 UK naturalization, the couple was still married, but they seemingly divorced soon thereafter, as there is a marriage index entry for Adele marrying a Josef Sedlacek in England in 1951. He appears to have died, though, in 1953. Adele married yet again in 1973 (at least her fourth marriage), to one Charles H L Rose. I have yet to find her whereabouts after then.

Paul, the Prague-Born Vienna-Raised Czech Soldier Turned English Citizen Who Returned to Prague Then Returned to England

Now I knew about Paul's marriage but I still had significant holes. Paul was a Czech soldier living in England in the middle of World War II? Huh? Paul became a British citizen but then was living in Prague in 1967? What happened? To find out more, I turned east, to Prague. Based on recommendation, I reached out to the local researcher Julius Muller (check out his website). Julius was able to dig into post-war archival records in Prague from the Czech National Archives and found records on our Paul that revealed his wartime and post-war experience.

First, Julius was able to find a police registration card for Paul, listed as Pavel Teicher, dated December 21, 1945. Among other things, this record indicated that "Pavel" was a demobilized private ("demob. vojín"), stated that he had no religion, was still married (Adele is listed here as Edita Kolarikova), and had no children. Items 7 and 8 then identified that Paul was now living at Dlouha 44 in Prague, that he was there alone, and that he was living in a home owned by a woman named Julie Reimanova (Reiman). Next, item 11 identified that Paul's last address was in the town of Moravská Třebová, specifically the military headquarters. 

Police registration card for Pavel Teichner, Prague, December 21, 1945

Julius additionally sent me a "Foreigner Questionnaire" from 1949 (conveniently typewritten this time), which resulted in my ability to fill in nearly all of the picture:

• Entry 16, army service: on November 23, 1939, Paul was drafted into the Czech Foreign Brigade, in France, and ultimately returned to Prague as a civilian with the rank of private on December 22, 1945. During the war, he took part in campaigns along the Marne in 1940 and in Dunkirk in 1944.
• Entry 18, relatives abroad: a brother, Karel Teichner (i.e., Karl) is identified, as being a manager at a company manufacturing machines in Oran, Algeria.
• Entry 19, relatives in Czechoslovakia: an aunt, Julie Reimanova, as in the person from whom Paul was renting property.

And, best of all, it included a picture!

Excerpt of Paul's Foreigner Questionnaire, Prague, 1949

Let's return to Entry 16, though, because this gave us essentially everything we needed to know about Paul. After extensive research into what exactly the "Czech Foreign Brigade" was and how that could have caused Paul to enlist in France and live in England, everything finally came together. I learned the following: By 1939, there had grown a large Czech exile community in France. After a French and Czech treaty of cooperation was signed, the 1st Czechoslovak Infantry Division was formed and included within the French "order of battle" by the beginning of 1940. As the site Military History Online describes: "During the campaign for France in 1940, the unit was involved in heavy fighting [near the Marne River] against the German 16th Panzer Division and steadily driven back, until most of its personnel were evacuated to Britain when France was collapsing in June 1940. The British reformed the approximately 3,300 remaining Czechs into the 1st Czechoslovak Mixed Brigade Group in July 1940." In 1943, this merged with another Czech unit to form the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade. The unit then trained in the UK until the summer of 1944. Military History Online describes the remainder of this unit's experience in the war as follows: 

The 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade was transferred to Normandy during the summer of 1944, and attached to the 1st Canadian Army. It was immediately assigned to besiege the 15,000 German soldiers holding out in Dunkirk and remained there until the German surrender in 1945. The brigade would suffer over 10% casualties in the fighting for Dunkirk, some 660 men killed in all.

After the surrender of Dunkirk in May 1945, the brigade returned to Czechoslovakia and reached Prague one week after the Red Army, generally aligning with the explanations Paul described in his Prague documentation about his wartime experience.

Ultimately, I completed Paul's research endeavor by returning to the UK death index entry I mentioned above, and learned that Paul apparently returned to England at some point, where he died in 1984. Alas, I was finally able to paint some type of story about Paul Teichner. As of today, my understanding of Paul's life is as follows:

Paul Teichner left Vienna for Hungary with his brother Karl in 1938. By November of 1939, Paul (and Karl, as will be described below) fled Hungary for France, and Paul enlisted into an international unit of Czech expatriates living in France. That unit fought in France in 1940 but then relocated to the UK for four years. While there, he met and married Adele Edith née Suschny, a divorced Jew from Vienna 16 years his senior who had abandoned Judaism before the war. In 1944, though, Paul's unit departed England and spent significant time in France fighting in and around Dunkirk. By May 1945, the unit finally left Dunkirk and headed back to Czechoslovakia. In December of 1945, Paul (alone) returned to Prague, where he lived with his aunt Julie Reiman. In 1949, Paul, now a chauffeur at the British Embassy in Prague, acquired British citizenship. By 1951, Paul was divorced. At some point in time, Paul returned to the UK, and he ultimately died in Surrey, England in 1984.

And that completes the unique story of Paul Teichner, my grandmother's first cousin who she never knew. Oh wait...did I mention that there is a file on Paul in the Czech Secret Police Archives for allegedly collaborating with the Communist Secret Police? I suppose we'll save that for another time.

Karl, the Foreign Legionnaire 

Karl's story took longer to determine (indeed until this year), but the outcome was rather straightforward once the records become available, especially compared to the wild story of his brother Paul. As I addressed last time and above, I had learned:

• Karl Teichner was born November 18, 1919 in Vienna.
• He went to Hungary in 1938 with his brother.
• He may have been living in Algeria after World War II, according to Paul's Prague documentation.
• He was living in Sarcelles, France (near Paris) in 1967.

I reached out to the Paris archives and additional archives for the town of Sarcelles. I got nowhere. No one had anything on Karl Teichner. I also suggested to those archives checking under the French equivalent of "Charles" instead of Karl, but still nothing. I also checked other resources that are valuable for French research, such as Gallica (which has many newspapers), but still, nothing.

The breakthrough ultimately came in two phases on one site, Filae. Although a relatively recent entrant into the game of French genealogy, Filae is a powerful resource, and its team is diligently working on indexing French vital records, as well as other types of records such as military records. I've had significant success for French research through Filae, especially in locating Paris vital records.

Ultimately, I searched Filae (which, like Ancestry, is continually adding new records) and found that, upon a new attempt at searching, Filae had included in its database certain military records from the war. In these, I located Charles Teichner. These records indicate that between 1939 and 1940, Karl/Charles had found his way to France like his brother, was in Montpellier, and registered for the French Foreign Legion, a very well known and historical military unit with soldiers of all backgrounds. The record was a perfect match: it included Karl's correct birth date from Vienna.

Registration of Charles Teichner in the French Foreign Legion, 1939-1940

So Karl/Charles fought for the Foreign Legion in World War II and was living in France in 1967. Still, though, significant time passed without knowing where and when he died. That information did not come until early 2020, when I read in Gary Mokotoff's Nu? What's New? newsletter that the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies had released an index of all persons who died in France from 1970 to 2019. Shortly thereafter, I was doing a search on Filae and remembered that I had read about this new French index (which is now on several sites, including another valuable French resource, Geneanet). I search Teichner, and lo and behold, there he was: Charles Teichner, with the correct birth date and location, who died in Montpellier, France in 1996.

Death index entry for Charles Teichner

Concluding thoughts

My grandmother was born and raised in Israel, where she lived out her life. Unfortunately, she lost her mother when she was a teenager, and in the midst of World War II. Consequently, she lost touch with many family members who continued to live in Europe. Most tellingly here, my grandmother had two first cousins who lived in Europe throughout the mid to late 20th century, and my grandmother never knew. Indeed, she traveled to France and England several times, with no knowledge of her first cousins living there.

Genealogy really can do wonders. But it requires patience, and a good understanding of the history and regions in which you want to research. This endeavor to locate the whereabouts of Paul and Karl Teichner took me to the archives of six countries! And each was needed to understand the full picture.

It is unfortunate that Paul and Karl both passed away and seemingly left no descendants. That being said, I'm glad that I was able to discover their lives and experiences, and to know that they were able to escape the fates of their parents and many other loved ones. And finally, this search is a perfect response to all those who ask me: "Aren't you done? Haven't you found everything already?" The answer always remains, no. As time goes on and more records get digitized and indexed, we will always be able to learn an increasing amount about the lives and experiences of our ancestors and relatives.

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