Isidor Brenson, an orthopedic doctor, had a private practice in Riga. Clara Hertzenberg was his wife. They owned a house on Dzirnavu Iela which later (i.e. in the Soviet times) became the property of the state and was rented out to tenants.

Clara's father, Robert Herzenberg, was born in Metava in Courland (then a part of the tsarist empire; later it became the Latvian city Yelgava). He started a textile firm in Metava/Yelgava, and his four grandchildren (Ruth, Ellen, Theo, Robby) grew up there.

Of Isidor's and Clara's four children--Ruth, Ellen, Theo, and Robby, only one--Theo--survived the war, as he was not living in Latvia at the time.

Ellen Brenson (188?-1941)

Ruth's sister Ellen; her husband Mr. Meltzer, a German-Jewish pianist, and their son Anatol (6 yrs. old). All three were killed by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Latvia.

Ruth Brenson(1889-1941)
Born in Yelgava, Latvia. While temporarily staying in Moscow she met Stephan Kossman, whom she married around 1910. She had two children: Nora (b. 1911) and Leonid (b.1915). Ruth was killed in Riga by the Nazis.

stephan kossman ruth brenson (offspring: Nora Gottlieb nee Kossman, Leonid Kossman) (2 group photographs--one on and around a large tree, the other (very dim one)--everyone is seated around a table, with a samovar in the center): caption (under both of these photos): The Kossman-Brenson family, when the times were still good.

The family lived in Moscow, at Chistye Prudy 11, in a ten-room apartment in a five-story building; later they moved to an apartment on First Meschanskaya. Since Stephan Kossman was a merchant of the First Guild, it was no longer safe for his family to live in the city after the Bolshevik take over. The Brenson-Kossman famil left Moscow for Riga--where Ruth's father lived--in the beginning of 1918. _________________ group photograph in riga

Back row (from left to right): Leonid Kossman, his sister Nora Gottlieb (nee Kossman), Nora's husband Volya (Voldemar) Gottlieb, Volya's sister. Front row: Ruth Brenson, Volya's parents.

Of the seven people pictured here, seven were killed during WWII: Ruth Brenson (Leonid's mother), Volya's sister, and both of Volya's parents. davis (dagobert) kossman Davis (Dagobert) Kossman

Davis (Dagobert) Kossman, born in 1881-82?, died c. 1948 in a Soviet concentration camp. Professional artist. Davis' wife, Raisa Lozinskaya*, a staunch Trotskyist, was imprisoned by the Soviets for one month in 1924. Davis worked first for Mosfilm (the Moscow Film Studio). In 1925, Davis was sent on a business trip to the film studio Ufa in Berlin. Despite having a Soviet passport, he decided not to return to the Soviet Union. He stayed in Berlin and worked for the Ufa Film Studio. He survived WWII in Berlin by staying in hiding throughout the war. His German friends hid him in the eastern part of Berlin, while his wife was hidden in the western part of the city. After the Soviets took charge of the eastern section (renamed East Berlin), Davis was arrested by the Soviets and accused of having "survived" the war while remaining (on paper) a Soviet citizen. (A Soviet citizen was not supposed to have survived the war in Berlin, whether or not he had spent that time in hiding). At that time and place this was enough to be accused of treason to the Soviet motherland. Davis was sent to a Soviet concentration camp ("a corrective forced labor camp") in Byelorussia, where he perished a few years later.

In the camp, ill from cold and malnutrition, Davis wrote a letter to his brother-in-law Lozinskii*, in which he asked to send him a blanket and some warm clothes. Lozinskii didn't send the things but he told Mael (Davis' niece) about the contents of the letter; Mael* kept silent about it until Stalin's death in 1953 when speaking to one's relatives about one of their own dying of cold in a camp no longer meant putting one's own life in danger. Thus, in 1953 Mael told Leonid Kossman about Davis' letter to Lozinskii. Leonid wanted to send a blanket and warm clothes to Davis. Since he didn't know the name or address of the camp, he wrote to the KGB asking where he to mail these things. In reply, the KGB informed him that Davis had died in the camp some five years before.

*Davis' wife, Raisa Lozinskaya, having been hidden in West Berlin, was free to leave West Germany when the Americans came. She went to France.

*Lozinskii, director of SovInformBureau, was executed in 1950, in one of the attacks of Stalin's murderous paranoia.

*Mael (the name comes from "Ma(rx)/E(ngels/ L(enin)")--daughter of Lyolya (Karolla), Leonid Kossman's cousin. Her parents sent her to study in a Jesuit school. When she was about 18, she entered the Communist party, was arrested in the 1930's and spent many years in a Soviet concentration camp simply for being a sister of Nikolai Basekhis, Moscow correspondent of the Austrian paper Neue Freye Presse, who was the first to write about the fake trials under Stalin. Nikolai was forced to leave the USSR in 1938. While in Paris, he wrote "Uncle Joe," a book about Stalin which was translated into many languages. While still in the Soviet Union, Nikolai often met with brother Zhenia, which is why Zhenia was arrested and executed by the regime. Nikolai's sister Lyolya remained a staunch Communist despite the many years she spent in the GULAG. His brother Fred was also arrested and spent over a decade in the camps. After his release Fred became a very well-known theatre critic.