World of Yesterday

14 Oct 2019

I received your correspondence with my cousin Yoram Grozner and would like to add some information.
First, let me introduce myself.
My name is Daniel Porat (born Daniel Placek in Israel 23/1/1951), and I am the son of Karl Placek who was Bruno"s eldest son (born 21.8.1912). I had a brother Dov (named after Bruno - it means bear in Hebrew) Thomas Porat (born 14.1.1944 on Bruno's 65th birthday in London UK as Thomas Placek). Dov graduated in 1965 from Columbia University where he majored in political science and economics and unfortunately was killed in the six day war succumbing to his wounds on 24.6.1967.

Adding some information regarding the family tree in Israel - Max and Clara Placek immigrated to Israel following their daughters Margit and Trude in 1937 and lived in Tel Aviv.
Trude gave birth in Israel to a son named Daniel Hirschler, and had 2 more children from Yona Hirschler named Yoram and Dorit (I believe they were born in 1953 and 1955). Margit married Joseph and had 2 daughters - Rachel born in 1945 and Ruth born in 1951.

When my parents immigrated to Israel in late June 1949 they lived with Dov in Max and Clara's apartment in Tel Aviv together with Margit, Joseph and Rachel (8 persons in a 2 bedroom apartment).

My father Karl (his hebrew name was David) had a fascinating rich life, but this I'll leave for future correspondence. During WW2 he was the acting chief supply officer of General Svoboda (who became president in 1968) on the Russian Front. and after the war he was an under secretary of food in the Benes government.
In Israel he moved up the ranks quickly and headed the government of Israel supply mission in New York between 1959-1964.

I am married to Nurith (born 23.12.1951 as Nurith Kapeller) who was a research scientist and we have 3 children:
Leor Tommy born 17.11.1975, Michael born 4.5.1977 and graduated from Yale in 1998 and a daughter Roni born 25.6.1983. Both Michael and Roni live nowadays in the US - Michael in Palo Alto Ca. and Roni in Princeton N.J. where she is doing a post-doc in social psychology.

My Michael graduated in 1998 majoring in economics. Roni is a post-doc fellow at Princeton University completing her stay in the summer of 2020 and returning to the Hebrew University.

21 Oct 2019
During our holiday season (which actually ends today), I had some time to go into geni and gather some information. I figured out that we are 4th cousins as you mentioned. It is much easier to sort out paternal relationships because of the same family name.
From what I understood my great great grandfather Moritz Placzek married twice. His first wife Charlotte died of typhus in May 1879 leaving him with 2 sons Otto (Charlotta and Johanna-Ping's father) and Bruno (my great grandfather). Hugo, a third son had passed away a year earlier at the age of 10 months. Moritz married Charlotte's younger sister Ernestine (which was quite common in those times) and had with her 4 additional children: Max born in 1880 (who I knew as an infant) and died in Tel Aviv in 1962, Anna Klein born in 1882 and perished in the holocaust in 1942, Karl born in 1891 and died before the age of 3, and Fritz who died aged 4 weeks in 1896.
My great grandfather Bruno named his two sons with the names of his deceased brothers (Karl- my father born in 1912 and Hugo my late uncle who was born in 1921 and perished in the holocaust in 1944). This may have been the source of your slight confusion. By the way, Otto, their eldest son named his first daughter Charlotta after his late mother Charlotte.

As Charlotte was very young when passing away, I assume that both Otto and Bruno (aged 3 and 1 at the time) regarded Ernestine as their mother and Max and Anna as their full siblings.

By the way, last fall I gave a lecture at the Masaryk University in Brno and had the opportunity to visit Kyjov. In the municipality register they mentioned that Moritz had 4 children - Otto, Bruno, Max and Anna. The branch that perished in the holocaust include Otto and Irma( as described in Yoram's mail), Anna Klein and her son Walter Klein (as well as his family ???, and my uncle Hugo).
A good part of the family immigrated to Israel: Otto's daughter Ping and Laudy Lawrence (in 1970), Bruno's surviving children Karl (my father with his wife and son in 1949) and Zita-Charly with her husband and two sons in 1965, Max and his wife Clara in 1939 following Margit (born August 1920) and Trude (born August 1921) who arrived in 1938. Margit married later Joseph Faivel and Trude married Yona Hirschler (from Budapest).
Our contact to Anna Klein's was lost as described by my cousin Yoram. If you could help us in any way to find the contact in Australia with her great grand daughter, we would be very grateful.
My parents had had some contact in the far past with Charlotta Burstein in Canada in the early sixties when we lived in NYC.

A bit regarding my family.
I was born in January of 1951 a year and a half after my parents immigrated to Israel. I grew up in Ramat Gan (a suburb of Tel Aviv),with my brother, and in 1959 we moved to New York City where we lived until 1963 while my father headed the Government of Israel Supply Mission. We returned in late 1963 (just before JFK's assassination) and my brother remained to complete his undergraduate degree at Columbia in political science and economics.
My brother returned to Israel upon his graduation in 1965 and was killed in the 6 day war when escorting a photographer of Life Magazine. This was a severe blow to our family and my parents really never fully recovered. I graduated from high school in 1968 and deferred my military service to study chemistry at the Hebrew University where I earned a B.Sc. in 1971 and an M.Sc. in 1973. I served in the military between 1973-1976 and Married Nurith Kapeller in March of 1975. Nurith had also lost a brother in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 which hastened our marriage. By 1977 we had 2 sons born - Leor Tommy born 17.11.75 and Michael Shalom born May 4th 1977. Both boys were named after their late uncles. Our daughter Roni was born 25.6.83. I completed a second masters degree - an MBA in 1977 from Tel Aviv University.
Nurith (born 23.12.51 in Israel) had studied chemistry graduating from Tel Aviv University with a B.Sc. in 1973, did an M.Sc. in Basic Medical Studies at the Hadassah Hospital of the Hebrew University (1977) and completed her Ph.D in biophysics at Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva in 1988. Nurith did a post-doc at the Rockefeller University in NYC between 1991-1994. Our sons graduated from Riverdale Country school in NY in 1993 and 1994 respectively.
Leor studied 1 year at Brandeis and returned with us in 1994 for his military services. He studied economics and international relations (BA in 2000) and continued studying law graduating and becoming a lawyer in 2004. That year he married Shachar Sheinfeld (born 3.6.77 in Israel to American Parents) who studied law with him and they have 3 lovely children - Itai (a boy born 19.11.2006 - next month is his Bar Mitzvah), Tamar (a girl born 18.8.08) and Eyal (a boy born 22.12.13)
Our second son Michael remained in the US upon our return in 1994 and went to Yale graduating in 1998 majoring in economics. He married Na'ama Goldman who has a law degree from Haifa University (born 5.8.77 in the US to an Israeli mother and American father) on 26.6.07 and they have 3 children: Shira (a girl born in Israel 6.3.09), Amit (a girl born in Israel 16.10.10) and a son named Yoav born April 5th 2013 in Palo Alto. Micha (as we call him) and Na'ama moved to Palo Alto in 2012 where he worked for Cisco in mergers and acquisitions for 6 years and now works for a big startup company named Cohesity.
Our daughter Roni has a BA (2007) and MA (2009) from the Interdisciplinary Center (idc) Herzliya in diplomacy and government and a Ph.D in psychology from the Hebrew University (2014). She has been at Princeton since November 2017 and is planning her return for August 2020 to become a scientist and staff member at Hebrew U.
Roni married Avishai Hacohen (born 13.6.84 in Israel) on August 10th 2014 who has a law degree from Hebrew University and they have 2 children - Ann born 14.2.15 in Israel and Bar (a boy born 26.8.16 in Israel).

I had a very rich career. In 1980 I joined the Makhteshim-Agan Group in Be'er Sheva that was then the 26th global sized company in agrochemicals. I moved quickly up the ranks and by 1986 I was commercial manager of the company responsible for sales of 200 million dollars. In 1991 we moved to New York for 3 years so Nurith could do her post-doc and I expanded our company's activity in the US. I returned to Israel to become the COO and by the time I retired in 2008 we had become the seventh largest agchem company in the world with sales exceeding 2.7 billion US Dollars. Since retiring, I have been active in a few Israeli startups, and have been very busy in helping our kids. We moved back to Tel Aviv in 2012 and Nurith retired in early 2017 from Ben Gurion University and the Soroka Medical Center where she did basic research in infectious pediatric diseases.