Doctor Stransky came from Doudleby nad Orlicí, after the occupation of the border region he fled from Most to Pilsen. Because the Czech Bar Association had expelled him as a Jew and had made it impossible for him to practice his profession since the autumn of 1938, he had essentially no income.
After the occupation of the rest of the country in March 1939, he and his family moved from to Prague, where there were more opportunities to obtain the much-needed emigration visas. He also immediately signed up for an emigration campaign organized by revisionist Zionists under the banner of the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of a Czechoslovak Colonization Society and attended retraining courses for emigrants.
In the meantime, the German Reich had confiscated all the property of the large family, including the furnishings of the apartment, trash cans and water buckets. After the confiscation, the properties of all persons identified as Jews were transferred to the city of Most, while the rest of the belongings were sold at auction to local citizens. Institutions with meaningless names like Stiko or the Construction Fund looted and sold off not only houses and land, bank accounts, shares and other assets of Jewish communities, but also tombstones from Jewish cemeteries.
For each act of the complicated bureaucratic procedure that gave the state-controlled theft the appearance of legality, Dr. Stransky's former colleagues, now purely Nazi lawyers, charged considerable sums. The collage below captures the face of Fritz Stransky and his son, but also the correspondence of a particular doctor of law, Richard Gruner, who skillfully assisted in the looting of the Stránsky family's property in Most.
“Subject: Property seized for the benefit of the German Reich from the estate of Dr. Emil Israel Kornfeld, a Jew, as well as the property of Minna Sara Kornfeld, Dr. Fritz Israel Stransky and his wife Lisa Sara née Kornfeld, and Hans Israel Häutler and his wife Anna Sara née Kornfeld, all formerly in Brüx. ”
Note that according to Nazi regulations, the mandatory names Sara and Israel were added to the names of persons designated as Jews.
The members of the Stransky family were deported on the Am transport from Prague to Terezín, and then in 1943 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Neither Anita’s father nor her brother survived the war.
Why do you think Dr. Stransky used the name Bedřich in his correspondence in Czech, and not Friedrich or Fritz?