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Religion

Persistence kept her on the path

Since childhood, Sue Farley wondered what had become of her father's sister. After 20 years of research, she found the brutal truth.

By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published December 10, 2005

Sue Farley's father never talked much about his family.

They were gone, and that was all he said.

But Farley of Seminole couldn't let it go. When she was 6, she became fascinated with his late sister, her aunt Renate Grunebaum, a farmhand from Wenkheim, Germany, who had perished in the Holocaust.

But how did she die? And when?

In 1995, Auschwitz archives sent a copy of Grunebaum's death certificate.

"It said sudden heart failure," said Farley. "That's code for "shot while trying to escape.' I think that's what happened."

Grunebaum was 29. She had had a boyfriend, but no children.

Farley will tell her story about how she found her aunt's records to a Jewish Genealogical Society of Tampa Bay meeting at 2 p.m. Sunday at Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services at 14041 Icot Blvd. in Clearwater.

Led by Bill and Sally Israel, the group helps Jews trace their roots, although it's not easy.

Israel said that although there were Spanish Jews in the United States starting from around the early 1500s, a mass migration occurred between 1880 and 1920, mostly of Jews from Eastern Europe.

"There weren't many Jews in the U.S. until 1880," he said. "You have to go back to the old country."

That's when the search becomes difficult.

Peasants "didn't have last names until the early and mid 1800s," said Israel, who traced his own family back nine generations to the late 1700s.

World War II makes searching for ancestors tough, since so many records have been lost. But since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke up, more public records are becoming available, Israel said.

The genealogical society teaches people how to search through the available databases and document records, just as Farley did.

She discovered, in the course of her search, that police informed Renate Grunebaum, her father and her aunt on Oct. 22, 1940, that they had one hour to pack a small suitcase.

The family was transported along with 6,500 other Jews to southern France. The French sent them on to Camp Gurs.

She was working as a farmhand outside the camp when she was transported to Camp Rivesaltes, then to Drancy and to Auschwitz. Although most of the people in her convoy were put to death almost immediately, Grunebaum was allowed to work.

But records indicate that at 6:15 (the Nazis did not specify if it was morning or evening) on Oct. 20, 1942, she died.

At the genealogical society meeting, Farley, 62, said she wants "to honor my aunt."

Her search for details of Grunebaum's life took 20 years.

"Every time we got one little piece of information, it was so exciting," Farley said.

Farley's father, Manfred Greenbaum (he changed his name from Grunebaum years ago), is now 90. He left Europe and came to New York in 1937, leaving his family behind.

He took only a few items with him, including a tallit, or prayer shawl, and a matching bag with his initials embroidered on them by his sister, Renate.

They are the only items left from her life.

Eileen Schulte can be reached at 727 445-4153 or schulte@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 00:51:18]