karl hofmann was my step grandfather. the other night i saw a movie where the mother died and her gravestone said hofmann. her husband was jewish. i assumed he was german because my grandmother was.

help??????

Hi, sharon,

Fascinating about the movie with the tombstone of the German Jewish Hofmann! What movie was that, please??

Your last sentence, "i assumed he was german" referred to your step grandfather Karl Hofmann, right?

See the following messages:

http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3071258
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3070530
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3076494
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3086824
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3076302
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3086874
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3065776
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=2730897
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=1155318
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=1353692
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=1353762
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3102025
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=2152403
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3074273
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3078191
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3081203
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3099163

[ESPECIALLY THESE (Jewish connection?):]
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3100616
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3100915
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3100150
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3100709
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3047462

[AND THIS: Star of David connection?]
http://www.familyhistory.com/rd.asp?id=3092189

As you can see, you're not the only one to have come up with this idea.

You seem to have a special attraction to this topic, based on your profound response to the movie tombstone. This is your baby. When you follow it up and come up with the answer, would you please notify me?

My project is overwhelming in and of itself: basically taking the Bible apart, stone by stone, and seeing how it's constructed and what the true underpinnings of it are (the Glorian Code).

My Grandfather Luther Langdon Huffman was originally a Lutheran, and I know that Lutherans are rather male-centered, just as Jews are. If Martin Luther's followers in the 1500's Reformation years moved closer to the Jewish underpinnings of the Bible (permeating the New Testament as well as the Old Testament), then it would make a lot of sense for persecuted Jews to find refuge particularly with Lutheran Christians, to the extent of joining their churches and claiming to be Lutherans.

If what I suspect about the Jewish social structure is true (its own Egyptian pyramid architecture), then a Jewish Hofmann origin would explain a whole lot of things about my own Huffman family and my personal life.

Good results in your search!
Gloria Merle Huffman
gloriasunproduct@aol.com

http://www.gloriasun.com (see especially the IchiDollarPyramid and FirstJackOLantern pages)

the movie was hallmark's "lost child". it was a wonderful movie, but i was shocked to see the name hofmann referred to as a jewish name.

my grandmother's son, manfred runte, very german name, ran away when she married this karl hofmann. he ran away to war. now i know why, if his mother married a jew. so fascinating.

thanks for your response.

sharon

On the Hoffmann surname message board, I exchanged notes with a college student named susanne, who is looking for info on her grandmother Susanne/a Hoffman Alexander. Her now deceased mother and aunts refused to write down any family history.

This past Wednesday, she emailed me with the url to a picture of Ellis Island in New York City: (http://cmp1.ucr.edu/cmp_image_files/gif_files/immigration/L6...), saying, "This site has original photographs of Ellis Island, with photos of German immigrants lined up. I wept when I thought one of them could be my grandmother and grandfather. Why wouldn't my mother give me information? ... Now it is too late."

I think it may be appropriate to share here the text of my reply to her, because a German Jewish connection is surely shaping up.

Thursday, November 23, 2000

"What you felt looking at these pictures must surely be the same feelings that welled up in me when I was a 20-year-old college student studying abroad in Europe [1967-68]. When I visited Germany (I was enrolled in UNC-Chapel Hill's Year-At-Lyon in France), I decided to make a 10-minute whistle-stop visit to the concentration camp at Dachau. I walked quickly to the small Museum building and began what I intended to be a 'put-it-in-your-eyes-and-leave' brief look at the huge photographs that were on display. When I saw the photographs of huge piles of emaciated, naked bodies, I was riveted to the spot. I was overwhelmed, and moved as though in a dream from one image to the next. I missed my bus and didn't even notice. An hour later, I came to, changed forever by this up-close brush with Man's Inhumanity to Man, a term often used by my favorite UNC choral director, Dr. Lara Hoggard.

"In a perhaps unrelated vein, I have found myself sometimes wondering, since I moved to New York City at age 30 after my divorce, whether there were any Jewish blood in my family. Grandpa Luther Langdon Huffman (raised a Lutheran) used to pronounce 'vest' and 'west,' and 'vinegar' as 'winegar,' etc. I know that this is not a German accent [could it be Dutch?]. I have not researched to see whether it's Yiddish, the modern form of Hebrew spoken by Jews today. I now understand that Lutherans probably moved away from Catholicism and towards Judaism instead. Perhaps Lutherans were among the Christians who tried to help save German Jews by making them Christians in name but allowing them to practice Judaism. This is just a half-educated guess on my part.

"Once, in New York, a Jewish musician let me accompany him to his gig for a Bar Mitzvah (the special celebration at puberty for Jewish boys; girls eventually got their version, the Bat Mitzvah). There was a dance, and one of the Jewish men I danced with said, 'You're not bad for a Gentile,' or something like that. I was constantly being called Hoffman in New York, and people seemed to assume I was Jewish for some reason. [More Jews live in New York City than in the entire state of Israel!] I lived many years [1978-80] in a New York City building inhabited by nothing but older German Jews who had escaped the Holocaust. I was first taken to this building by a black couple (I had met the woman where I worked at the United Nations).

"In New York [while I was] in my 30's, comparing what I knew of the Huffman family attitudes (especially towards women), and the religious beliefs of my preacher father and his father (whom my father idolized), I couldn't help wondering whether there was a Jewish connection in the family. At first, I speculated years ago that the name change from Hoffman to Huffman [besides the obvious first thought that it was the result of illiteracy or of illegible handwriting] might have been a way to disclaim Jewish heritage in order to escape persecution or death.

"Now that I know that the Christian religion is only a slightly different form of Judaism, and not different at all, I realize that this speculation isn't necessarily applicable.

"Just some thoughts ... I do believe, though, that religion (Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Fundamentalist, Masonic) plays a huge role in the Hoffman/Huffman family. And it is the men who control the knowledge of their system for social domination. This topic is vast, and is not easily grasped without long-term, concentrated effort. (But you can start at my web site! http://www.gloriasun.com)"

END OF QUOTE

These thoughts are the result of many years of thinking and observation. I was born in 1946 (in Asheville, North Carolina) in the first wave of World War II baby-boomers. I'm now 54. I've probed and wondered and pondered. If anyone has a reaction to these thoughts, I'd be glad to know.

Gloria Merle Huffman
gloriasunproduct@aol.com

http://www.gloriasun.com (see especially the IchiDollarPyramid and FirstJackOLantern pages)

Oops! typo: I lived in that building with German Jewish Holocaust survivors 1978-89, not 1978-80. And the Polish superintendent was a huge man who was very abusive to me, too. He even threw me against the wall of the corridor once!

Gloria Merle Huffman
gloriasunproduct@aol.com

http://www.gloriasun.com (see especially the IchiDollarPyramid and FirstJackOLantern pages)

Did you stick? It sometimes happens to Spaghetti when they're cooked too fast without watching and turning!

Sharon, Manfred was my uncle too.

I remember that story. Would like to talk to you.



Dotty

Derunte,

I got an email that you replied to me, but I see that you were trying to reply to Sharon. Go to this link to find a post by Sharon and click on the hyperlink to bring up that post. At the bottom right corner of the gray box around her post, click on the tiny word 'Reply' to post a message that will generate an email directly to her.

http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.hofmann/43.46.48.50/mb.a...

I apologize if I'm explaining too much, but I just want to speed up your process.

Good luck!

GloriaMerl

Sharon:

Manfred was my father's brother. Karl Hoffman was German. Many Germans, Jewish and Polish have similar or the same last names. Sometimes the Jewish names have "sky" at the end as opposed to "ski" at the end for polish. Manfred did not want his mother to remarry so he lied about his age and went into the Army. Karl Hoffman lost his wife and young daughter to an illness. My grandmother was a friend of theirs, she would help take care of them and she had lost my grandfather when he was 47 years old. Karl Hoffman was my father and my mother's boss at the company they worked for. Manfred was upset that she remarried. When they found out how old he was he was sent home. He carried on so that my grandmother agreed to sign for him. Three months later he was killed in his first battle.

Dotty

According to a holocaust survivor that I know personally by the name of Bert Hoffman,there was a man named Karl Hofmann(Hoffman)? who was a camp commander in Dachau. Bert truly believes that the only reason he survived was because he had the same last name as the camp commander. As for Bert, he is Jewish and was Austrian. I am not sure if the different spellings of the name have any clue as to their nationality or religion. I suspect the Hofmann spelling was German and not Jewish. He was in the Czeck camp, Aushwitz and then lastly Dachau. When he was finally liberated by the allies, he weighed 65 pounds.

I hope this helps.