A Hidden Lineage

For years there were whispers of Jewish ancestry in our German line. They surfaced occasionally in family conversation, but never in documentation. The records were unequivocal. My mother’s grandparents were known, named, and recorded as Protestant.

A generation ago, the question would have ended there.

Instead, I took an Ancestry DNA test.

The results came back as expected in many respects: Irish and English from my father; German, Polish and Balkan from my mother. But there was something else.

12.5% Ashkenazi.

Ethnicity estimates are often imprecise. But Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry is unusually reliable due to centuries of endogamy. Twelve and a half percent does not represent a distant ancestor. It points to a great-grandparent.

To narrow the possibilities, I tested my mother: a generation closer, and therefore genetically more informative.

Her results removed any lingering ambiguity. Twenty-one percent Ashkenazi. That percentage could not be reconciled with the documented lineage. The discrepancy lay somewhere among her four grandparents.

Heinrich Hoffman — born 1897 in Battweiler, Zweibrücken. Protestant, born to Protestant parents.

Anna Woll — born 1898 in Herschberg, Südwestpfalz. Recorded as Catholic, the daughter of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother.

Hermann Karrasch — born 1897 in Bolleinen, Osterode. Recorded as Protestant.

Anna Marie Engel — born 1906 in Grabenhof, Labiau. Recorded as Protestant.

Family information Karrasch and Hoffmann

Hermann Karrasch was my primary focus for some time. He was arrested by the Königsberg Kripo in 1942 and died in KZ Mauthausen in 1945. His imprisonment in a concentration camp inevitably raised the question of whether Jewish ancestry might be involved.

Hermann Karrasch HPK

However, the documentary record does not support that conclusion. Hermann was classified under SV (Schutzhaftvorbeugung), a category that by late 1942 was applied broadly as a mechanism of preventative detention. He was never recorded as Jewish in camp documentation, nor is there evidence of deportation under racial transport categories.

His children were never arrested or subjected to racial persecution under the regime’s laws.

Archival data from Mauthausen and its subcamps show distinct mortality patterns for Jewish prisoners compared to those held under preventative detention classifications. Hermann’s recorded imprisonment trajectory and cause of death align with the latter.

My attention then shifted to Anna Marie Engel. Of all my mother’s grandparents, she is the most elusive. Few primary records survive from Grabenhof, and much of her early life is reconstructed from secondary sources and family recollection.

Yet nothing in the available documentation suggests Jewish ancestry. Anna Marie and her children remained in Bolleinen until early 1945, when they fled the advancing Red Army. There is no evidence of racial persecution, deportation orders, or registration under the regime’s racial laws. She is recorded on my Oma and Opa's marriage certificate as Protestant, and never appears in any Arolsen or Holocaust survivor records. She never left Germany - remaining near my grandparents until her death in approximately 1962. The cumulative documentary record does not support the hypothesis that she was Jewish.

DNA offered little clarity for Hermann or Anna Marie. My mother has almost no significant matches on her paternal East Prussian side (none higher than 20cm) - a common challenge when working with regions and populations that remain underrepresented in genetic databases.

However, the DNA was far more telling for Heinrich and Anna. 

Heinrich Hoffmann’s family had lived in the same region of southwest Germany for centuries, documented as Protestant back to the 1600s. More importantly, my mother’s Hoffmann line produces some of her strongest and most clearly traceable DNA matches.

A second cousin, BH, was identified on MyHeritage. Her grandfather, Jakob Hoffmann, was the brother of my mother’s grandfather Heinrich. Their shared ancestor was their great-grandfather Jakob Hoffmann. BH has no Ashkenazi ancestry.

One generation further back, another match, EG, shares two sets of 2x great-grandparents with my mother due to repeated intermarriage within the Hoffmann line. EG likewise has no Ashkenazi ancestry.

There are dozens of other more distant Hoffmann matches. They are well-documented and genetically consistent. They show no trace of Ashkenazi heritage. Combined with the parish record evidence, the Hoffmann line could be excluded.

There remained only one grandparent: Anna Woll.

At first, her line appeared genetically quiet. There were no matches whose family trees clearly traced back to her father, Adam Woll, nor any easily identifiable connections to her mother, Katharine Gries. In isolation, that meant little. German testing remains sparse, and recent immigration often thins the match pool.

But there was one piece of data I could not ignore.

A match listed only as GS was my mother’s strongest connection on Ancestry, apart from myself. He shared 214cm with my Mum: a level consistent with a second cousin or similarly close relationship. He was also 100% Ashkenazi. The only possible path to their connection was via a Jewish shared ancestor.

I could not place him. He had no family tree, did not respond to messages, and bore a name so common it offered no obvious starting point.

And so I began a two year tree building process. Every GS I could find in records, I built a tree for. I messaged people called GS on LinkedIn and Facebook asking if they had done DNA. And for two long years, nothing.

One day I found GS on a JewishGen family tree. I could not be certain it was the correct individual. There were no immediate geographic links to my known family lines. But the centimorgan strength justified building the tree out in full. His parents were Elfriede Neumann and Gunter Schwarz. I looked into Gunter, but his family was from Zloczew, distant from my German side.

So I focused on Elfriede. Searching on Ancestry for Elfriede led me to an Arolsen file which showed that her father was Samuel Neumann. And searching Samuel led me to his wife Hedwig geb. Moses.

Hedwig Moses was born in 1884. 

In Herschberg.

Herschberg is not a large town. Today it has fewer than 900 residents. In the nineteenth century, it was smaller still: yet it sustained a documented Jewish community, centred around a handful of interrelated families, including the Moses family.

Herschberg synagogue

Anna Woll was also born in Herschberg.

The convergence could not be ignored.

If my mother’s strongest Ashkenazi match descended from Hedwig Moses of Herschberg, and my mother carried 21% Ashkenazi ancestry, then the connection between our family and the Moses family had to lie in that village, within a single generation.

The question was no longer whether there was a link.

It was how.