Looking for long lost family in Africa

I live in the United States, and recently found a letter and postcard that my late mother had shown me many years ago, but we didn’t put two and two together that we had lost family somewhere!

My mother, Anneliese Nossbaum (nee Winterberg), was from Germany. Although she never lived there (she and her parents lived first in Guben, then Bonn), the other Winterbergs lived in a town called Witzenhausen.

My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and several members of her family (including the Winterbergs) were interned or died in camps.

Her grandmother, Hannchen Winterberg (nee Lomnitz), had a brother, B. Lomnitz, who emigrated with his family to Africa before 1900. My mother knew that he lived in Johannesburg. Hannchen had three children:

Siegfried, my mother’s father, perished in Dachau.

Amalie married Moritz Vogel, who escaped to New York after Kristallnacht.

Gerda married Menna (Max) Goldschmidt, and since he was a communist, escaped with him first to what was then Palestine, and later to New York.

I was wondering if anyone knows the Lomnitz family, and how I could be in touch. They could be anywhere now, I know. I’m also writing to Yad Vashem to enquire what is known. I’d be happy to provide more information. – Contact: ivette.maoz@gmail.com