Flora Grünebaum
1885 - 1973

Flora Rosetta Igersheimer was born on September 18, 1885, in Frankfurt on the Main as the daughter of the Jewish broker Leopold Igersheimer (Mergentheim 1849-1921 Frankfurt) and his Jewish wife Jenny Igersheimer, née Fränkel (Würzburg 1857-1941 London). Flora had three siblings: Joseph Igersheimer (1879-1965), Marie Kass, née Igersheimer (1881-1962), and Alice Igersheimer (1887-1892), who died as a small child in Frankfurt. Flora Igersheimer married the lawyer Alfred Grünebaum as a 27-year-old widow in December 1912. She had previously been married to the Jewish real estate agent Nathaniel Hess, born in October 1877, but he died young. Their son Fritz Grünebaum was born in Frankfurt on the Main in November 1913. At that time, the family lived at Böhmer street 10.

Her father Leopold Igersheimer died in 1921, at which time Flora's parents lived at Brentano street 4. Before fleeing to Turkey in 1933, her brother Joseph Igersheimer was head physician at the eye clinic in the Bürgerhospital, while Dr. Arthur Kutz was head physician at the women's clinic there at the time.

Flora Grünebaum and her son Fritz became members of the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in 1932, at a time when Jews could no longer become members of numerous other sections of the Alpine Club. Whether she left the Frankfurt section immediately after the National Socialists came to power in January 1933 or was later excluded with the introduction of the so-called "Arierparagraf" (Aryan paragraph), we are currently unable to say due to a lack of sources.

Her husband Alfred Grünebaum, who according to the annual report of the Frankfurt section had first joined the Alpine Club in 1914 but was no longer mentioned in the 1925 directory, does not appear to have left the Frankfurt on the Main section after he rejoined in 1931, as the Frankfurt section's Nachrichten-Blatt mentioned his death in 1938. It can therefore be assumed that he remained a member until the end. This was possible due to his status as so-called "Frontkämpfer" (front-line fighter): Alfred Grünebaum had served in the First World War as a soldier with the rank of captain in the reserves.

As far as we know, Flora Grünebaum was still living in Frankfurt on the Main when her husband Alfred Grünebaum died in May 1937. Her application for naturalization in the USA, submitted in March 1941, shows that she arrived in the USA from Havana (Cuba) in December 1940 and lived in Boston. Before that, she had lived in Tel Aviv (then Palestine), but it is unclear when. She probably emigrated from the German Reich before the start of the Second World War in September 1939. She died in the USA in June 1973 and was burried on the Temple Israel cemetery in Wakefield, Middlesex County (Massachusetts, USA).

Flora's mother Jenny Igersheimer celebrated her 80th birthday in Frankfurt on the Main in August 1937. She lived at Beethoven street 71 at the time and later managed to emigrate to Great Britain, where she died in London in 1941. Her brother Joseph Igersheimer also emigrated to the USA and died there in November 1965 at the age of 86 in Brookline, Norfolk County (Massachusetts, USA). Her son Fritz Grunebaum passed away in April 1992 in Lynnfield. He was also burried on the Temple Israel cemetery in Wakefield, Middlesex County (Massachusetts, USA).