{"id":349,"date":"2013-06-03T09:41:58","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T13:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/?p=349"},"modified":"2018-05-22T07:53:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T11:53:06","slug":"cecilia-mayer-koch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/2013\/06\/cecilia-mayer-koch\/","title":{"rendered":"Cecilia Mayer de Koch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"id09182\"<\/a>Caecilia Mayer<\/a>\u00a0(dutch link<\/a>) was the seventh of ten children, four boys and six girls. She was born in 1880 in Schifferstadt, Germany<\/a>, and for reasons that are not known to me, she was at some point boarded with her uncle Isaac Mayer<\/a>\u00a0(dutch link<\/a>) and his wife, who were childless.<\/p>\n

She married Ludolf Koch sometime before 1908. He was born in Landstuhl<\/a>, about 80 miles to the east. After the marriage, they lived in Landstuhl, and they had four children there: Hans, Werner, Trude, and Ilse.<\/p>\n

Then came the second World War. Being Jewish, Ludolf and Caecilia, and their children Hans and Ilse decided to emigrate to Argentina. (Werner had died in 1930, and Trude was in the Netherlands.) I have found Caecilia on a list of passengers to Argentina, arriving in Aug 1938 at Buenos Aires with the ship “Madrid,” but have not been able to find proof of arrival for anyone else. But not all years are available in the database of \u00a0CEMLA (Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinomericanos<\/a>). It seems likely that Ludolf and Hans went earlier, and so are not covered in the database.<\/p>\n

As with all emigrants, life was not easy. Ludolph’s health does not seem to have been good, several letters refer to health problems. In addition, they had the worry of what was happening\u00a0to friends and relatives in the the war in Europe, and the mail was not that reliable. The following letter to Trude, her husband and mother-in-law shows some of the concerns.<\/p>\n

\n

Buenos-Aires, 22 April 1941<\/p>\n

Dear children!
\nDear Rosalie!<\/p>\n

This is already the sixth week without a letter from you.\u00a0 Think about how we feel.\u00a0 Hopefully the transportation is the cause of the slow mail delivery.\u00a0 Hopefully you are all healthy, so that that is not the cause.\u00a0 We are so far all right.\u00a0 The winter comes bit by bit with lots of rain, also at Easter, that has passed well, it poured.\u00a0 Shortly before there were still two very hot days, 32C.\u00a0 Suddenly it changed.\u00a0 It is this awful climate, and so unhealthy.\u00a0 One is lucky to get through it without a cold.\u00a0 Papa has problems with his right eye, and is under doctor’s care.\u00a0 His vision in that eye is very bad, so he has to be careful with the left one.\u00a0 Fortunately he has no more pain, because that was very bad, and Papa is very impatient, as he is not used to being sick.<\/p>\n

For the moment he is not allowed to read, until the doctor gives him glasses.\u00a0 So I have to read him the newspaper as good as I can, and the radio has to be a substitute.\u00a0 Ilse’s nose is finally also getting better, that was a protracted and for her so unpleasant business with sleepless nights, that her weak nerves again returned.\u00a0 And no vacation at all during that time, as good as the people are, as stupid in hindsight, everyone thinks only of himself.\u00a0 Hans and I are the most mobile, hopefully it stays that way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then only a few week later, Ludolf dies. The next letter brings the hard news,<\/p>\n

\n

Buenos-Aires, 11 May 1941<\/p>\n

Dear children, dear Rosalie<\/p>\n

We still didn’t receive a letter from you for May.\u00a0 In our thoughts we are very much with you.\u00a0 Hopefully you are healthy, and have received our letter, so you know what illnesses we had to through.\u00a0 I, and Ilse also, had written to you , how Father was afflicted with serious eye problems, now we thought that everything would turn out OK, even though not totally, but it was far from us to think that he would be worse some day.\u00a0 Anyway, then his heart was also not so good, and my dear sweet children and Rosalie, on Friday morning at 9 o’clock he died of a heart attack, without pain, without spasms.\u00a0 You can imagine, how terrible this is for me and our children, so suddenly and unexpected, and I alone as I realized the frightful facts.\u00a0 I was thinking, Father is sleeping, until I saw his left hand, which had become white.\u00a0 I called Hans in, he ran to Mrs. Abraham, and she saw immediately what was unfortunately happening.\u00a0 When Ilse came, although she had to come from far and the doctor, Ilse saw him still alive, he drew his last breath.\u00a0 The funeral had to be already at 3 PM, because Saturday was close.\u00a0 It was a horrible day and Friday with its difficult memories.\u00a0 Another letter will follow.\u00a0 I stop now with the sad news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Caecilia lives 27 more years as a widow. She sees her daughter and granddaughter married, and even knows her first great-grandchild, who is born in Santiago, Chile. She dies in Buenos Aires in 1968 at age of 88. She is buried in the\u00a0Cemeterio de Tablada<\/a> in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caecilia Mayer\u00a0(dutch link) was the seventh of ten children, four boys and six girls. She was born in 1880 in Schifferstadt, Germany, and for reasons that are not known to me, she was at some point boarded with her uncle Isaac Mayer\u00a0(dutch link) and his wife, who were childless. She …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[39,38,26],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-koch","tag-mayer","tag-women","column","onecol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dutchgenie.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}