Historical Information And The Fate Of The Lehnsherrs

by Rivka Jacobs (Shiloh999@aol.com)

Originally appeared on AOL on 1/26/97. Reprinted with author's permission.

The evidence for Mags being Jewish is overwhelming. (I feel like a lawyer. Building my "mountain of evidence." Oops, wrong analogy. Wrong, wrong analogy.) (Maybe not.) This is what I found in the London Times, dated November 20, 1939 -- originally posted in this folder 10/20/96.

NAZIS HURRY JEWISH RESERVE --- 45,000 Already Deported

Zurich, Nov. 19--

[skipping a couple of paragraphs} "... The haste with which the reserve is being created out of nothing forced the Germans to resort to desperate improvisations. Trains are said to stop in the open country 25 miles from Lublin, and there discharge their load of Jewish passengers, with all their luggage, who have to look for makeshift shelter in the surrounding villages.

"It is understood that by November 10 45,000 Jewish men, women, and children had been dispatched to the reserve from Teschen, Oderberg, Mahrisch Ostrau (Moravska Ostrava), Prague, Pilsen, and other towns in Bohemia and Moravia, as well as from Vienna and the new Reich districts of Danzig, West Prussia, and Posen. Under the supervision of S.S. "Death's Head" units, the Jews are put to work on road-building and the drainage of the marshland. The age-limit is 70 in the case of men, 55 in that of women. But conditions in the province of Lublin are so unsettled that it is impossible for the moment to find occupation for all the Jews who arrive there."

So, there is what happened to the Jews of Danzig, 10,000 of them. And from Nov. 6, 1939, London Times, page 5 --

JEWS LEAVING GERMANY

FORCED EXILE TO POLAND

[skipping a couple of paragraphs] "... The first batch of Jews from other parts of Germany have been given 24 hours notice before leaving, and are only permitted to take three days supply of food and as much linen, clothing, and so on as they can carry with them. All the rest of their property is being sold through Jewish committees which will then meet all expenses and settle debts for the emigrating Jews. Any possibility that later the Jews may send property to their new reserve is excluded, as the German railways must not be burdened with such traffic ... "

So, if Erik and his family were from Danzig, they were given 24 hours notice, sometime in early November 1939. They were marched to Danzig's train station (their property confiscated to make them pay for their own trip) and shipped to the Lublin area of Poland, and dumped. We now know what happened to these people: some were taken in and sheltered by local Polish Jews or Polish Christian families, some never did find shelter and froze or starved to death, some went to various ghettos of Lublin, Lodz, or Warsaw, and other small towns, and some were marched to the new Polish/Russian border, where terrible atrocities were committed as these people tried to make it into Russian territory before the border closed.

So, this is history. Based on what Magneto said, or what was shown, in the comic books, and accepting he was born in Danzig and was indeed exiled with his family in 1939 -- which would have made his family Jewish since the Gypsies were sent to local municipal camps, not exiled to Poland in 1939 -- this tells us that the Lehnsherrs lived hand-to-mouth in some ghetto in Poland, among peasants, for at least a year before the SS lined them up and shot them, at which time sending the survivor, Erik, to Auschwitz.