Abraham Neumark was born in Lomza, Poland, which was then part of Imperial Russia, on the 3rd March 1863, of Jewish origin.
He was married to Pia Rochkovsky, and they had a number of children, including Harry and Eva.
Abraham Neumark was a jeweller and moved with his family to Antwerp, Belgium, no doubt because of its thriving diamond industry, where he became a diamond broker.
It is not known exactly when he moved to Antwerp, but on the outbreak of World War I, the Neumark family fled to London, where they lived for a time at 153. Whitechapel Road, London. It is believed that Abraham Neumark had brought a large quantity of diamonds with him to London at that time.
On the 7th November 1914, Abraham and two of his children, Harry and Eva, sailed from Liverpool to New York City in the United States of America, on board the s.s. New York and set up temporary residence at 97, Division Street, Brooklyn. His purpose for going there was to continue in the diamond trade and in the spring of 1915 he decided to return to London, with some diamonds, leaving his two children behind.
Consequently, he booked second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool and boarded her at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York port on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. sailing. This was then delayed until the afternoon as she had to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war service as a troop ship, at the end of April. Before the ship had sailed, Abraham Neumark handed over a parcel of diamonds into the safe keeping of the purser’s office.
Six days later, he was killed after the liner was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20, within sight of the coast of southern Ireland and within hours of arriving at her destination and home port. As no trace of his body was ever discovered and identified, he has no known grave. He was aged 52 years.
Since his death left two dependants and he had resided in America, The Mayor of New York’s Fund for The Relief of Lusitania Sufferers took up the case and in the late summer of 1915 discovered that Harry had found himself work and Eva had undertaken training as a milliner and had also secured herself a position in that trade.
This notwithstanding, the Mayor’s Committee awarded a grant of $130.00 to the pair, with an additional sum of $70.00 to be administered by The United Hebrew Charities, if needed.
The records of The Lusitania Relief Fund, set up by The Lord Mayor of Liverpool upon similar lines to that of New York, record that an Alfred Neumark made a claim on that fund also in the summer of 1915, whilst residing at ‘The War Refugees Home‘, in The Manchester Hotel, Aldergate Street, London. This must have been another one of Abraham’s children.
It is known that 32 packages of diamonds in a sack were recovered from the sea after the liner had gone down and later given in to the authorities, who eventually forwarded them to the original owners. However, there was another diamond dealer on board, named Martin Van Straaten, who traded from London, and it is more likely that the recovered diamonds would have been his, not Abraham Neumark’s. Van Straaten, like Abraham Neumark, died as a result of the torpedoing, although his body was recovered from the sea and eventually returned to his home.
Cunard records and contemporaneous newspaper reports spell Abraham Neumark’s name as Neimark, but this was obviously incorrect.
Belgium Antwerp Police Immigration Index 1840 – 1930, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Liverpool Record Office, New York Times, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Paddy O’Sullivan, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.