This is the story of my father Walter Selig

My father was born in 1917 in Gersfeld/Rhön (Hessen,Germany). He had two sisters Ilse and Hilde - Hilde maried Walter Lövenstein - and one brother Hugo (of the bakery Selig & Jacob). My grandfather - Abraham Selig was the owner of the original Bakery in Gersfeld which still exists, under the name of Hahling. In 1934 Joseph Hahling took over the bakery, I think in a more or less decent way. Read this: In the Bakery in Gersfeld there is a plaque which says: "Geschäftsübernahme. Den geehrten Bürgern von Gersfeld und Umgebung bringe ich hierdurch zur gefl Kenntnis dass die bisher van A. Selig [my grandfather] Gersfeld am Martktplatz betriebene Bäckerei übernomme habe. Eröffnung: Mittwoch den 1. august 1934.. Es wird mein Bestreben sein...Mit deutschen Gruss! Josef Hahling”. Now you must realize that my grandfather was not selling the bakery just for fun. Apparently my grandfather recognized what was going on in the early 1930’s to make this dramatic step, in time!

From my aunt Hilde who lived in Gyvatayim and later in Be'er Sheva, I learned that the whole inventory of the Bakery was shipped to Haifa, so according to her the Bakery in Nahariya was equipped with the original material from Germany.

My father was sent out of Germany by my grandfather already in 1933. He was sent to Paris
to the Jewish watchmaker Obstfeld to further learn his profession. Note: I have to dig a bit more in the old documents because I found out that this Obstfeld lived in Gersfeld too). In 1935 he was sent on aliya and arrived in Nahariya - the town of the yekkes. In Nahariya he lived in the house of Irma Markus - who came from Czech Slovakia - until he met my mother Suze Worms who went on aliya from Amsterdam somewhere 1946/1947.
During his time in Nahariya there were four very close friends: Yitchack Neuberger, Abraham Lipowski, Walter Selig and Sascha Blitzblau.

One of the big questions for me is what happened to my grandparents Selig. As I understood they arrived at some time late 1930's in Eretz Jisrael but according to my father they never met the rest of the SELIG family. So question is: did they really arrive in Israel, and if yes where are they buried.

My father was a great hobby photographer working with his Rolleiflex and I have many photographs of the 1930’s up to 1956. Among these pictures are Nahariya in snow, the “illegal” ship landings in the 1940’s. Now I also think I remember him talking about Andreas Meyer. As soon as somebody explains to me how to upload images to this side, I will start to do so!

To be continued

Avri Selig
Odijk, the Netherlands