Nurit Greenberg from Haifa embarked on the great journey of her life, for the sake of family history

(haipo) - Nurit Greenberg, a Haifaite born in Nahalel, was a tour guide for years. But one of the longest and most significant journeys she made was not a journey on foot at all, but rather a journey to discover the family history and document it in a book that will remain as a souvenir.

Beautiful city and beautiful people

Nurit Greenberg, 71 years old, was born in the "Nahlel" settlement in the Jezreel Valley, she spent her childhood in the settlement, Azas was drafted, and after her military service she moved to Jerusalem and began studying tourist guidance. To finance these studies, she worked as a housekeeper. About 30 years ago, Greenberg moved to live in Haifa with her four children, and according to her, she fell in love with the city: "A beautiful city and beautiful people, since I moved every morning I wake up in front of the wonderful view."

Far from home, close to the heart

In September 1973, she went to study English in England, at the initiative of her grandparents. In October of that year, the Yom Kippur War broke out. From her seat she read the written press in England, which told about "the erasure of the state". According to her, she had feelings reminiscent of the experiences of Holocaust survivors, who feel a strong need to tell the family's story.

When she returned to Israel, she fell in love with Judaism, not the religious-ceremonial one, but with Jewish Halacha, and especially with Rambam. Thus, together with other "crazy people who talk" as a language, she founded a class on the history of Jewish thought at the kibbutz high school where she taught.

Light in the eyes

"Already at the end of my time working in the kibbutz, I started saving, because I felt that I would be fired. I learned to live at a lower level" she describes. "I was divorced with four children, I applied to a placement company in Haifa, and there I met a woman who saved my life," she says.

That woman was Orit Ben Shaul, who interviewed Greenberg at the placement center. At the end of the interview, Ben Shaul said to Greenberg: "When you said that you studied tour guiding, you had a light in your eyes. Why don't you come back?" Greenberg agreed with her. Hal started working as a tourist guide and also attended a taxi driver course.

Academic research for personal research

Greenberg is a graduate of the "Cultural History of Jewish Halacha" course at the University of Haifa. In this track, you learn how culture affects Halacha and how Halacha affects culture. During her studies Greenberg was exposed to the famous sentence "Honor your father and your mother in their life and in their death". This sentence made her think: "It was important for me to learn how a non-religious woman can embrace the general idea of ​​honoring parents when they die," she says. "For Maimonides, to honor parents when they die is to quote their words at every family event and thus maintain a family tradition." These thoughts were the first swallow on Greenberg's path towards a journey of family research.

Greenberg received additional motivation for the research from a book she read: "One day, on the way to school, I read Daniel Mendelssohn's book 'The Lost.' He needs a visa to the US, because it's going to be dangerous. That's how Daniel started researching the family's history," she describes. "This book changed my plans for the future."

Our path is not easy - the journey to reveal the family story

"Today I am focusing on writing a book about my family history," says Greenberg about her project. "Grandparents, Gideon and Hadassah Freudenberg, came from Berlin. His grandfather's grandfather was a secret adviser to the royal house and dealt in fashion, in the royal house's 'Hermann Gerzon' fashion house. The children of the dynasty did not want to continue working in fashion, so my grandfather bought the store in -1892 and left the name. This is the store that led fashion in Berlin. The first all-in-one in Germany," Greenberg describes the sequence of events. "This is how it was owned by my family, the Freudenberg family, from 1892 to 1935, for three generations."

Greenberg tells about the verbal obstacle in researching family history: "After the grandfathers passed away, the children were called from the moshav to take whatever they wanted as a souvenir from them. That's how I ended up with bundles of pages that were tied with rope and which luckily no one wanted. In addition, I also found albums and two books about the German grandfather and the Belgian grandfather of My grandfather. Unfortunately, I couldn't read them because I didn't know German and French."

Additional information came from an unexpected place: "I haven't opened the packages for a long time. After I let a German volunteer who came to the moshav read the German grandfather's book, I received a letter from the municipality of the city where he lived, with a photo from an old newspaper in which they wrote about the grandfather's grandfather the obituary that tells about him in Genesis his way".

Greenberg found more information about her family in letters written by her grandfather, Gideon, during the First World War. With the help of her father, she translated the letters. "The letters had dates, so I followed him day by day," she says. Today she also lectures on what she learned from these letters about her grandfather as a soldier in the war.

A fashionable discovery

"I continued to read and look at the photos that were kept in a special cover," she says. "I found out that my family's fashion house held a fashion show of modern clothing that led to changes in women's clothing. They invented the "fashion week". Later on in the journey I found an article that says that the Hermann Garzon department store presented modern furniture for the first time in Germany, something that was not customary at the time ..."

Writing happens in the gardens

While she was working on writing the family history book, Nurit discovered that she was not the only member of the family who decided to write a book: "My grandfather wrote a book in German called 'The Limits of Ethics.' and writes that 'Gideon Freudenberg opens a new branch in modern philosophy!'".

"Was that a surprise for grandfather from the seat?"
"of course!" Greenberg answers. "I continued to research these topics while my father was translating and I was printing."

Cow milker with 7 doctorates

Greenberg recounts her findings: "My family was a pioneer of modern culture in Germany. My grandparents immigrated to Israel in 1936. My grandfather decided he wanted to milk cows. When he arrived at the moshav, he did not reveal to the residents of the moshav that he was a doctor of philosophy, for fear that they would not accept him as a full member, because There were no "yakims" in the moshav. He actually chose Nahalel because he was the first moshav to follow the teachings of Aharon David Gordon. To this day, the members of the moshav are proud of the doctor who milks cows with seven doctorates."

Greenberg's father

And what about your father?
Greenberg: "Father accepted the move to Israel as a trauma. The first defining event in his life was when he arrived at a Kadori school. He received his parents' farm and grew up there all his life. He became one of the experts in cow genetics. He was self-taught by reading in English. He studied Trials when he was asked to be an arbitrator in the moshavim movement.

Greenberg also describes the impression her father left on her: "I was always amazed that my father could recite Bernard Shaw by heart and knew Shakespeare's sonnets."

The Freudenberg House - a second-hand story for the fourth generation

Greenberg: "One day in a second hand store in Haifa, my partner opened the book 'The History of Architecture'. In the book there is a picture of a house next to the inscription 'Freudenberg House, Cornerstone of German Architecture'. Of course I dug through the pages."

Where researchers find discoveries. Greenberg talks about the family connection she discovered: "My great-grandfather, Hermann Freudenberg, built a house, with no less than thirty-two (!) rooms. Among the rooms you can find executive rooms, a music room and a library room," she describes the unusual house that her grandfather's father built .

She tells about the special treatment given to the children at the Freudenberg house: "The most interesting thing about this house is the attention given to the children of the family. So that the children feel free in the house, even when hosting businessmen, they built a separate entrance for the children, from the yard to the house. In addition, a staircase was built where They could go up and down to their rooms, the game rooms and the gym, without going through the executive guest rooms."

She further adds about the uniqueness of adapting the building to the children: "The most important thing about the family's relationship with the children was that in the period when it was customary for the children's wing to be located far from the parents' wing, in the 'Beit Freudenberg' the children's wing was adjacent to the parents' room. In addition, the parents' room had space for a table and chairs, And every Sunday the parents and children ate breakfast there together."
The house was designed, according to the family's request, by the architect Herman Mothezius, who was already considered the "jewel in the crown".

From home in Germany to Israel

In the fall of 1934 the family was expelled from the house, and in February 1936 they arrived in Palestine - the Land of Israel. They arrived in March of that year and rented a one-room shack, infested with mice and bedbugs, next to the Notkin family's barn. "There is a picture where you can see Gideon and Hadassah, my grandparents, with my father and his brother near the barn, with my grandmother wearing the best fashion clothes of Hermann Garzon," she says.

And what happened to 'Beit Freudenberg'?
"Today, the Freudenberg Landhaus has become a historically preserved house. To this day, if you look for the house (Freudenberg Landhaus), you will find it. The architect who bought it during the Nazi period turned it into a convalescent home. After World War II, he divided it into 11 apartments, and in the seventies he wanted to destroy it and build in its place Housing estates. Thanks to the struggle of Professor Posner, head of the architecture department at the University of Berlin in Germany, they managed to preserve the building, and today one family lives in the house."

mission

What does the "digging" in the past give you?
"I enjoy it very much and feel a mission on the subject of writing family history. That is why I also give lectures and have a dream to open courses for writing family history. In addition, the pursuit of family history research is very intellectual, keeps the mind sharp and happy in life."

Thank you Nurit, oh you left us with the feeling that I too need and want to dig into my family history...

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