Here is what I know about my Treuer family history, and it only goes back three

generations. Before then it becomes hearsay and probably myth. I am Robert Treuer, b.

Wien (Vienna) 31 Jan 1926 to Fritz and Marie (nee Weil)Treuer. My mother and I

escaped Vienna in Aug. 1938 having been declared Jewish, although konfessionslos, and

dispossessed. She became a domestic servant in England, which only admitted refugees

if they had proof of employment. I think she obtained the job through an employment

agency, and had been a music teacher in Vienna. I was admitted to England because a

Jewish boarding school offered to take me in; however they turned me out because I had

no religious training and did not know Hebrew. Another boarding school took me in,

saving me from deportation (I was 12). At this school I was sexually abused by a staff

member, and found refuge in a camp for Basque orphans from the Spanish Civil War,

most of them from Guernica. Eventually a refugee organization found a legal placement

for me at a Quaker boarding school in Waterford, Ireland. Meanwhile my father, in

hiding as an itinerant farm worker in the Austrian countryside, returned to Vienna for his

exit papers which were granted only after he submitted to hernia surgery without

anesthesia. He left Vienna in Nov. 1938 after witnessing Krystallnacht, came to England.

In Feb. 1939 we were reunited and came to the U.S. Fritz Treuer died in 1967 after

retiring from a printing plant in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Marie Treuer died in 1989 after

retiring from her position as a corporate officer and a pioneer in the application of

computers to business management. I have seven children (Robert Smith, Paul, Derek,

Anton, David, Megan, and Micah). Several of them have web sites -- Robert Smith

Treuer is a restaurateur, Paul a professor at University of Minnesota/Duluth, Derek a

desk-top publisher, Anton and David professors at University of Wisconsin, Megan a

student at Berkeley, Micah a student at Princeton. Paul, Anton, and David have

published books and articles. I am retired but still active as a writer and a tree farmer

and live in northern Minnesota on my tree farm, about 100 miles south of the Canadian

border. Now, on to the earlier generations. Fritz Treuer b. 20 April 1894 in Wiener

Neuburg to Wilhelm Pinkus and Pauline (nee Weizman) Treuer. His twin brother died at

birth. His younger brother Richard died childless in Philadelphia some years ago. His

younger sister Marianne (m. Rudolf Fessler) died several years ago; they had one son,

Fritz, who lives in retirement in New York. Wilhelm Pinkus Treuer, ca. 1860-ca. 1947,

was born near Werschuetz (today Vrsac) and close to Temesvar where the family had a

vineyard and bought grape mast, then wholesaled wine. He was one of twelve boys and

one daughter. His mother died in childbirth and the father remarried. When perenospera

fungus destroyed vinyards across Europe in the 1880's the family business collapsed and

the family scattered. I do not know the names of his brothers or sister. Wilhelm worked

in Trieste, Fiume, Budapest, and Vienna, where he ultimately became an

expediter/dispatcher for the Danube Steamship Company until his retirement. He stayed

on in Vienna after the 1938 Anschluss, was hidden in a coal cellar by friends, and died

about 1947 after the war. Wilhelm Pinkus Treuer's father, whose first name I do not

know, was the first vintner in the Banat to use a steam-driven wine press. My father met

him once when the man was very old and recalls a stern man with huge sidewhiskers like

the Emperor's. This is where the factual arround ends and I have to pass on "family

stories" which say that the Treuers came from the Tirol and were removed (expelled)

when the Empress Marie Therese, an enthusiastic Catholic, ordered all Protestants and

Jews who would not convert moved into the Balkans. Some Protestants converted to

Judaism to avoid the edict, but it did not help them. This accounts for the German

-speaking enclaves that still exist in Rumania, Serbia, and elsewhere today. There is a

mountaintop in the Tirol named Treuerzipfel. I came across the name of a Treuer who

was a cartographer in Basel in the 1600's. I hope all this is of interest, and you are

welcome to share it with other Treuers. If you have any questions, please get back to me.

--Robert Treuer’s Accounts