In this picture we see Aron Chaskel Mandel b. 1877 and family
Moyse Ber Mandel is recorded as having died in Plymouth in June 1917, although his death was only registered in June 1920 (we do not know the reason for the gap). There is a cemetery in Plymouth but we do not know for sure if he was busied there, and if so the location of the grave.
The name over the shop is A Mandel and we think this is Moyse’s oldest son Aron Chaskiel born 1877.
We were told they were “ships chandlers” living in Plymouth. Probably more likely “seaman’s outfitters” given the family profession and the photo above.
In the 1930s they moved to Rouen in France for unknown reasons. The families were in touch before the war but after the war there were no replies to letters. Joe remembers visiting Paris with Raphy not long after the war in an attempt to find them but without success.
[Looking now at the picture again, it look like it would have been taken around 1919 (we think the youngest child was born in 1909 and he looks maybe ten years old) so perhaps they moved to France earlier than the 1930s.]
Their shop was supposedly on the Rouen dock-front and in the picture what looks like a ship’s derrick can be seen in the reflection in the window, supporting the idea.
The Rouen docks were heavily bombed during the war and no buildings remain from the period. Jerome Libfeld said that some of his mothers family knew of the family and the place where the shop was located was bombed and totally flattened.
In 2012 I visited Bea Gal on Kibbutz Sa’ad and she showed me her old family photographs among which I found the picture above. It is the only one we have and the only documentary evidence we have of this branch of the family. Bea remembers them visiting her in Zurich in the 1950s. She thinks one of the daughters was called Germaine.
However it raises a new mystery. The shop fascia says “A la Ville de Bizerte”? The only place name called Bizerte in the entire world is the town of Bizerte on the Tunisian coast which was a French port and enclave. However no one ever mentioned them being in Bizerte or Tunisia, only Rouen.
