The Tuch family (Jenny Tuch née Gerechter and her children)

Jenny Tuch was born Scharne Gerechter, Armin's father Wilhelm's sister. Her family tied the Gerechters to Ruth's mother's family, the Lauers: her son Hugo married Martha Lauer, the sister of Ruth's mother Erna.

Jenny Tuch was born in Koschmin, in the Prussian province of Posen, on 10 May 1853. In 1880, in Borek, she married Meyer Tuch. They had at least nine children. She died in Berlin on 4 February 1929, aged seventy-five, before the worst began.

Gertrud Tuch was born on 28 September 1881. She lived in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, at Küstriner Straße 26, with her brother Hugo and her sister Martha. On 13 June 1942 she was deported from Berlin to Sobibor, and murdered. She was sixty.

Hugo Tuch was born in Koschmin on 14 September 1883 and became a merchant in Berlin. He married Martha Lauer, born on 18 July 1894. In the summer of 1939 they escaped to Shanghai. They arrived on 16 August 1939 and lived there as refugees through the war. In 1946 Hugo was registered as stateless. Martha later made her home in the United States, and died there in 1972.

Georg Tuch was born in December 1884. He too fled to Shanghai. He died there on 15 February 1945, of a vitamin deficiency, six months before the war ended. He was sixty.

Martha Hirschfeld, born Tuch in 1888 or 1889, was married to James Hirschfeld. She lived with Gertrud and Hugo in Wilmersdorf, and she died in Berlin on 31 October 1941.

Arthur Tuch reached Bogotá, in Colombia. In 1946 Hugo named him as his next of kin.

There were other children too: Sally, Carrie, and two whose names we have not found.