Elk-Zernik Family Collection

The scholar Julius Elk lived in Memel (today Klaipėda, Lithuania). In 1878 he married Hana Egwy; the following year they had a son, Benjamin. Due to a rise in anti-Semitic attacks the Elks left Memel in 1881 and settled in Frankfurt am Main, where in addition to teaching Julius Elk worked with a charity organization and also promoted Volapuek, a forerunner of Esperanto. Eventually he requested and received German citizenship for himself and his family. Julius and Hana had seven other children: Marie (1881), Salo (1885), Rebecca (1887), Rosel (1892), Selma (1894), Max (1898) and Rudolf (1901). In 1906 Julius died, requiring Benjamin, who had studied dentistry at the University of Frankfurt, to support his mother and younger siblings.

In 1906 Benjamin Elk established his own dental practice in the town of Diedenhofen, in Alsace-Lorraine. In the summer of 1914 he took a trip to Belgium, where he met Aenne Ulmann of Elberfeld. Although they became engaged within two weeks of meeting, the outbreak of World War I interrupted their future plans. On April 7, 1918 they married in Elberfeld. Their daughter Charlotte was born in Diedenhofen (by then Thionville, France) in April 1919. Due to their German citizenship they were required to leave Thionville and moved to Frankfurt am Main.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Elk's younger brother Max (later changed to Meir or Meyer) had been studying theology at the Jüdisches-Theologisches Seminar in Breslau, which he attended from 1916-1925. In 1925 he became a rabbi in Munich, the following year he moved to Stettin. In 1934 he immigrated to Palestine, where he settled in Haifa; that same year he founded the Leo Baeck School (later the Leo Baeck Education Center) with just fourteen students. In 1936 he helped to found Congregation Beth Israel.

Due to the political changes in 1933-1934, Benjamin and Aenne Elk decided to send their daughter Charlotte to school in Switzerland. In August 1934 Charlotte Elk began attending a boarding school outside of Lausanne, La Ramée, from which she graduated in 1935. Following her graduation Charlotte began training at the Rothschild Hospital as a medical laboratory assistant and x-ray technician. In 1938 she found a position at a sanatorium in Bad Neuenahr; in September of 1938 she became engaged to a colleague from the sanatorium, Hans Ansbach.

During Kristallnacht Benjamin Elk was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. In order to secure his release the family planned to immigrate to Uruguay but three days before their planned departure, Uruguay closed its borders, so the Elks fled to friends in Antwerp, Belgium. Since Charlotte had been born in Thionville she was able to immigrate to the United States more easily than her parents. With the aid of a distant cousin in New Jersey she left Europe on the S.S. Pennland on September 26, 1939. On board the Pennland she met an American of German ancestry, Ludlow Chester Grosse.

Charlotte Elk lived first with her relatives in Passaic, New Jersey, but soon took a room in Manhattan. In May 1940 Belgium was invaded and Charlotte lost contact with her parents until December, when they cabled her from Spain. With the help of Grosse, who supplied affidavits for Benjamin and Aenne, they arrived in New York via Cuba in May 1941. In December 1941 Charlotte Elk received notification that Hans Ansbach, her fiancé, had been deported and killed in Poland.

In January 1943 Charlotte found a position as a photocopyist with Amitas, a branch of a Belgian firm. That April she and her close friend Ludlow Grosse married. In May 1944 she became an American citizen. At some point during the mid-1940s she and Ludlow Grosse divorced, and in 1947 a friend reintroduced her to salesman Helmut Zernik, whom she had known in Frankfurt.

Helmut Zernik was born September 25, 1911 in Berlin, but grew up in Frankfurt am Main. On Kristallnacht he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp with his father, and remained there for three months until his mother was able to arrange a steamship ticket to Shanghai for him. He arrived in Shanghai on April 25, 1939. From October 1940 through August 1944 he was employed as a bicycle and radio mechanic and salesman; From November 1946 until his departure from Shanghai in May 1947 he worked in the migration department of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. On April 18, 1948 he and Charlotte Elk married. They spent the rest of their lives in New York City, but often spent summers in Connecticut.

During the 1950s, Charlotte Zernik traveled to Europe to visit friends and family and it was on a passage home that she became acquainted with architect Walter Gropius. In 1962 she left her position with Amitas and visited her uncle Max Elk in Israel. Charlotte Elk Zernik died on April 13, 1996 in New York. Helmut Zernik died in Connecticut on June 30, 2003.