Isaak Lindenberger

Isaak Lindenberger, born in Janov, Polen, moved in his early 20s to Labiau, Ostpreußen, together with his father, Mordechai, to establish a business of smoking fish from the Baltic. By 1985 the business was thriving sufficiently that the family moved to Berlin. Isaak eventually sent three of his sons to the United States, where they established salmon canneries in the Pacific Northwest and in Alaska; they also developed an early freezing process that allowed them to send salmon to Berlin, where Isaak owned a Kühlhalle and exported Räucherlachs throughout Europe from England to Russia and from Scandinavia to Italy. The First World War separated the American and German businesses. After the war Isaak continued smoking salmon and manufacturing ice that was distributed throughout Berlin. By the time of the Nazi takeover he was showing signs of dementia and had his unmarried son Nathan, who lived in the family house, take it over. Desperate to leave Germany, they, together with Lotte Lindenberger (the youngest of Isaak's eleven children), obtained visas to sail to New York in early 1940 from Genova. They had to break up the trip in Munich, but the only hotel that admitted Jews was full and they were told to sleep on the lobby floor. Isaak became hysterical, and his two children decided to send him back to Berlin with Nathan and allow Lotte to continue on to the United States, where she lived until 89. Nathan took care of his father, who died the following year at 92, but instead of starting a new life in America, as he had hoped, was deported to Theresienstadt, where he died a "natural" death less than a year after deportation.