Memories, Comments and Questions

Comment from Ellen

We are slowly getting more info regarding the family. I remember Martin saying that Ella was actually Sephardi and the Lurie name was from some Spanish area/river but that does not add up. Ella was a Spitz.

Eva I don’t think had any siblings. Hannah was married very briefly and I think may have gone back to her maiden name – Axel Scheer the name definitely rings a bell. I will have to look through my things may I ever have the time. Eva gained more than some celebrity status – she was in the Resistance in Sweden and a very well known authoress in Norway. She was very anti-S Africa and would never visit. Sidsel Levin has a sister who is well known in Norway – cannot remember for what – something in the Arts and of course their father was Robert Levin.

  

 ooOOoo

Comment from Jeffrey

After so many years it is nice to have some of the fog lift. Jackie tells me that Lorje is the Spanish spelling. When I was excited about being in the school concert in 1958 or 1959 I remember my mother telling me that she had once been on stage in a play. She was the Bride in this play and there had been some concerns around “Harei At mekudeshet”. She would have been 13 or 14 at the time. Do we have any information about the Lurie cousins, the Scheers? Eva was about the same age as Mary and I think there may have been another sister. There was also somebody called Axel. I do not know how he fitted in to the picture (father? brother? husband? fiancé?). Eva apparently survived the war by escaping across the mountains into neutral Sweden. She attained some celebrity status in Norway after the war as a radio personality and author. She corresponded with my mother until about 1960. 

We had a 1 day stopover in Oslo about 2 years ago. I liked it very much and much was more or less as described in my childhood, except modernised.

Stanley replies: We have a lot of information on the Scheers, from the census material, from the Norwegian archives and also from the Jewish Museum in Oslo. Additionally, there is even more material on Eva Scheer I will share it with everybody soon.

 ooOOoo

Juliet has asked the following question – "......in all your work did you perhaps come across the name Burke Bod, or something similar - he was a childhood friend of my father, and apparently was deported - because my father always told me that the Nazis got him... - perhaps one of the cousins knows something?

Stanley replies: From my side, the available information sources (List of Jewish deportees from Norway during World War II and the Snublesteiner website) provide the following information…..

Bernhard Bodd was born on 17 July 1912, which would make him about a year younger than David. He lived at Lakkegata 15 A, Oslo. 

Bernhard Bodd

Oskar Bernhard Bodd (full name) was born in Oslo, the son of trade agent Leiser Bodd and his wife Liebe (b. Stiris). He was unmarried and worked as a freight forwarder at Freia Chocolate Factory. Bernhard was arrested by the Norwegian State Police on October 26, 1942, and taken to Bredtveit prison. Two days later he was transferred to Berg prison camp outside Tønsberg. A month later, on November 26, Bernhard Bodd was deported with the troop transport ship Danube, to Stettin and from there to the extermination camp Auschwitz. Here he managed to stay alive until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945. Bernhard Bodd was killed by an SS guard on a death march from Blankenburg in the direction of Magdeburg on April 8, 1945. Bernhard's father, stepmother and 5 siblings were also deported and killed in Auschwitz.

ooOOoo

Comment from Juliet, writing about her father David.

David Lurie (1938)

“Once a year, my father cooked - and I was wondering if any of the aunts, or brothers, ever made the same dish. It was called lapskous...though there are many variations of the spelling.

It is a stew, popular in Norway, made of diced beef, potatoes, lots of salt and pepper. I have since seen the recipe published with several variations but that was how I remembered him making it...perhaps there was onion and I just didn’t notice ....

For some reason I don’t remember ever eating it...he probably scoffed it all down by himself.
 
This stew is found in other Scandinavian countries, also in Holland, I think Germany, and also in the north of England. Spelling varies, of course - in Liverpool it is well known, as lapscouse, and scouse, I believe, apart from meaning the dish, is also a name for residents of Liverpool - just realised, Uncle Abraham and Auntie Esther - my great aunt and uncle, came to SA from Liverpool, if I am not mistaken, after changing name to Lewis...”

ooOOoo 

“A letter sent to my father from a sports club, in PE, called either St Georges or Prince Alfred’s -of that ilk - and briefly it goes something like this…

St Georges Club, PE

Dear Mr. Lurie
      Thank you for your letter of application to join our club.
      However, we cannot accept you as we have already filled our  quota of four Jews for 1938.”

Stanley comments: There still is a St Georges Club in Port Elizabeth whose existing building dates back to 1904.

ooOOoo

“Also I remember my father had been given a present from someone from Norway, don’t know if from a relative, friend or visitor - a big tin of viskerbolle, which he kept under the counter in the shop, and never opened nor tasted.”

ooOOoo

“My father was the only Jew, so he said, invited to the annual Christmas party held by the small local Norwegian community in PE - according to him. It was because he was the only one who knew all the words of the Christmas carols! How much is true, and how much is wishful thinking, or hyperbole, etc., in all these ramblings, I cannot say. Perhaps the other cousins know more, or differently.”

ooOOoo