Uncle Henry, Aunt Bea, and the Nazis

One of the more fascinating stories associated with our family involves Grandpa Chris’s brother Henry (pictured earlier here), his wife Beatrice, and the Nazi occupiers of France.

During the early days of World War II Henry went to Lyon, France, to participate in Mennonite Central Committee relief work. There he met and married Bea, a young Jewish woman whose family had fled Germany in the 1930s to escape the rising anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, before long the Germans overran France as well, and Henry, Bea (whom the Nazis apparently did not realize was Jewish, given her marriage to the Mennonite Henry), other MCC workers, and a variety of Americans were placed under house arrest for a year in a hotel in Baden-Baden, Germany.

The photograph above shows Bea, Henry, Peter P, and Margaretha looking at a map. One wonders if Henry is pointing to Baden-Baden, the site of his and Bea’s imprisonment.

Henry and Bea’s lives and stories are well known and amply recorded, as attested by each of their obituaries. Henry died first, in 1993. The Mennonite Weekly Review writes:

For Henry P. Buller, spending a year in a luxurious German hotel was hardly a vacation. Instead, it was a virtual prison. Buller was one of several Mennonite Central Committee workers interned by Germany during World War II. He died May 15 at the age of 77. Buller was doing relief work for MCC at Lyon, France, in 1943, when Germany occupied the area. He and his wife, Beatrice, plus about 175 American journalists, diplomats and their staff, were interned in a hotel in Baden-Baden, complete with Gestapo guards. “Once a day we were allowed to go on a walk.” Beatrice Buller recalled. To pass the time, and because most internees were well-educated, they held classes among themselves, including Shakespeare, medicine, music and languages. “Henry taught German literature and I taught German and French,” Beatrice said. Henry and Beatrice Rosenthal met at the MCC office in Lyon. The Rosenthals were Jewish refugees from Germany who went to the MCC office to try to immigrate to the United States. Henry and Beatrice were married Nov. 11, 1942. The Bullers were released in early 1944 in an exchange for Germans interned by the United States. Buller was born Dec. 20, 1915, in Lushton, Neb., the youngest of 12 children born to Peter P. and Margaretha Epp Buller. He received a bachelor’s degree from Bethel College, North Newton, Kan., in 1941. After completing his alternative service, the Bullers moved to Newton, Kan., in 1947, where Henry taught in area public schools. He later received his graduate degree in psychology and counseling from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. In 1961 he joined the faculty of the Lamar University psychology department, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. Buller was a member of Bethel College Mennonite Church, North Newton, He was preceded in death by his son, Rene Aldo, in 1969. (see here for the original)

Bea passed away fifteen years later:

Beatrice Rosenthal Buller died Oct. 12, 2008, in a Dallas, Texas, hospital. As in the 1930s, she again had become a refugee, this time not to escape the fury of the Nazis but that of Hurricane Ike, which threatened her home in Beaumont. She was born in 1920 in Duisburg, Germany, a child of a middle class Jewish family. Her father was a prominent lawyer in that city. The anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis forced the Rosenthal family to leave Germany in the early 1930s and to settle in Antwerp, Belgium. When the Germans invaded that country in May 1940, the Rosenthal family fled to unoccupied France, where they were able to find safe hiding places. She settled in Lyon, where she found employment at the Mennonite Central Committee office. There she met MCC worker Henry Buller, whom she would marry on Nov. 11, 1942, on the same day the Germans occupied the rest of France. They had hoped she would be baptized by Fritz Gerber, pastor of the Mennonite church in Langnau, Switzerland, but baptism would have to wait until they settled in the United States. Subsequently, she, Henry, other relief workers, American diplomats and journalists were interned for more than one year in Baden-Baden, Germany. Soon after their release in February 1944, Henry returned to war-stricken Europe. She would join him in France after the war to resume MCC relief work. Upon their return home, she graduated from and taught foreign languages at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan. Having no children of their own, they adopted Rene, a French orphan. Tragically, Rene was killed in Vietnam on March 27, 1969, where he served as a medic with the U.S. Army. For many years they lived in Beaumont, where Henry taught at Lamar University. He preceded her in death in 1993. She kept busy, in spite of some major health problems, teaching and doing local volunteer work. She will be missed by many friends in Beaumont and many Mennonites, who very much appreciated her for her kind and lively spirit. (Mennonite Weekly Review, October 27, 2008, p. 9)

The Beaumont Enterprise adds:

Beatrice R. Buller was born on September 25, 1920 in Duisberg, Germany, and passed away on October 12, 2008 in Dallas, Texas, at the age of 88 years and 17 days. Her husband of 51 years, Henry P. Buller, her son, René Aldo Buller, and her brother Kenneth Rosenthal and wife Anne preceded her in death. Her survivors are: brother Gerard Rosenthal and wife Marie of Aurora, Colorado, nieces Jeanne-Marie Neuroth and husband Richard of Wichita, Kansas and Carol Ann Rosenthal of Logan, Utah, nephews Roger Rosenthal of Arlington, Virginia, Robert Rosenthal and wife Kim of Denver, Richard Rosenthal and wife Felicity Thompson of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, Donald Rosenthal of Redwood City, California, nine great-nieces & nephews and one great-great niece. She is also survived by her daughter of the heart, Eileen Garrett. Bea was a Holocaust survivor who lived in Belgium and France before immigrating to the U.S. following her marriage to Henry Buller in 1942. They came to Beaumont in 1962 where Henry taught Psychology at Lamar and Bea began a 20 year career teaching French & German at South Park High School. At retirement, Bea & Henry pursued a long-held dream: they lived for a full year in Pezenas, in the south of France. Returning stateside, Bea rapidly became one of the busiest volunteers in Beaumont. Among the organizations that benefited from her involvement were the League of Women Voters, Beaumont Association of Retired Teachers, Lamar Women's Club, Some Other Place, Habitat for Humanity, Northwood Christian Church and the West End YMCA. She continued to teach: she introduced elementary school students in the Beaumont schools to foreign language, and she began an association with the Literacy Council that continued for the rest of her life. As she aged, she opened her home to Lamar graduate students, primarily International students. She was passionate about intercultural understanding as an avenue to world peace, and she never tired of learning about other countries. Yet she remained deeply grateful to this country and what it meant to her as a young immigrant. Bea literally never met a stranger, and because she had experienced discrimination herself, she was almost completely without bias. She accepted people as they were, and expected to be accepted in kind. In short, Beatrice Buller was unique. There will be a memorial service for Bea on Saturday, November 15, at 11:00 AM, at Northwood Christian Church, 5050 Eastex Freeway in Beaumont, TX 77708. Memorial gifts may be directed to Northwood Christian Church, Bethel College, 300 E. 27th Street, Newton, Kansas 67117, or Some Other Place, P.O. Box 843, Beaumont, TX 77704. The family would like to express special thanks to Pastor Melissa Roth and Nike Fagunwa, R.N. for their loving assistance to Bea at the end of her life. Further information about Bea can be found at: www.sybis.com/ beatrice_r_buller/. (see here)

Remarkably, the Mennonite Library and Archives at Bethel College hold three boxes of the Henry P. Buller and Beatrice Rosenthal Buller Papers, 1941–1968. Included in the boxes are correspondence, photographs, Civilian Public Service and peace-related ephemera, and an interview of Bea by James D. Yoder (audio cassettes and CD copies) (see here). Maybe someday one of us can explore that archive and add parts of it to our own online collection of names, dates, stories, and photos.