Josef Jakobs - 1898-1941

War separates families. It separated Josef Jakobs from his wife and children, permanently. It's not a unique story but sometimes I wonder... after hostilities... do people find each other again? Or are they forever burst asunder by the legacy of conflict?

A few months back, I had written a blog post about the apparent estrangement between Robin W.G. Stephens and his parents, William H. and Elizabeth J. Stephens. From what I can glean, Robin's parents went to Jersey in an ill-timed trip. When the Germans invaded in July 1940, William and Elizabeth were stuck for the duration of the war. Meanwhile Robin was commandant of two interrogation centres: Camp 020 during the war and Bad Nenndorf after the war.

In February 1946, after returning to England from Jersey, Robin's father wrote an impassioned plea to the War Office for any word of his son. The letter is contained with Stephens' army service records file, but there is no evidence that father and son ever reconnected.

R…

In my last blog, I looked at the man who paid for Vera Ericksen's burial, Ernst Bodo Wilhelm Theophil von Zitzewitz (what a name!). Ernst had married Anne Vera Viktoria von Bonin in 1951, who also seemed to have ancestral roots in the Pommern region. After that post, David Tremain sent me a message with another tidbit (or titbit as they say in England): There was an Abwehr officer named Udo Wilhelm Bogislav von Bonin - could there be a connection?

My research for the von Zitzewitz article had already convinced me that both families were genealogical black holes. Trying to find a connection between Udo Wilhelm Bogislav  and Anna Vera Viktoria seemed like a bit of a Sisyphean task. David kindly sent the National Archives Security Service file on Udo (KV 2/1973) and... it contained the names of his parents and his birth date. With that info, it was off to the races.

The following genealogical reconstruction is based primarily on Ancestry records as well as a dusty volume entitled: Ge…