It used to be a big event when someone left his home village to seek a better life in a faraway land. So it was with Hermann Goldmann who, at the age of 27, decided to emigrate to America. At the present time people still remember him, even though they only knew him from hearsay.

In Milwaukee, long popular with German immigrants, he found employment in a dairy, in a large factory and as a gardener for the Wisconsin Club. In 1932 he became an American citizen. He and his wife Ada, nee Metzger, had three children: Dorothy, Ernest and Richard. Hermann is also remembered for the help he gave to his relatives during the difficult postwar period in Germany. During the 1960s he visited his native village and the family farm which by then was Polish property.

Hermann's father Wilhelm was one of the wealthier farmers in the village, and the grounds (on the left of the adjacent photo) were well kept. The farm was a so-called Erbhof or Hereditary Farm. Wilhelm senior had eight children: Paul, Martha, Wilhelm, Hermann, Emma, Ernst, Fritz, and Richard. After the death of their mother, Emma kept house for the family. Later, Wilhelm senior married again and his next wife, Bertha, ran the farm after his death in 1939 and continued to do so until the evacuation of the village in January 1945.