Fanny was the oldest of three girls born to a Jewish family in the Baltic seaport of Liepaja, a city with a large Jewish community in Latvia. Fanny attended a Jewish primary school there. Her parents owned and operated a shoe store and small shoe factory.
1933-39: As a young girl, Fanny's life revolved around activities with Betar, a Zionist youth movement founded in Riga in 1923. They had a group of about 25 boys and girls. They studied about Palestine and their Jewish heritage. In 1935 Fanny's mother gave birth to her youngest sister, named Liebele. When Fanny finished secondary school, at age 16, she left home for Riga to enter the university, where she studied nursing.
1940-44: In 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia and Fanny returned home. A year later, the Germans reached Latvia and occupied Liepaja within a week. The Germans immediately began rounding up and shooting Jewish men. Fanny's father was one of them. On December 15, 1941, her family was informed that they were being deported. They were rounded up and put in prison. Suddenly Fanny heard her name. A guard said she was being released. Defiantly, Fanny replied, "I'm not leaving without my mother and sisters." After a moment he said, "Take them and get out."
Fanny was eventually deported, and over the next few years was imprisoned in five concentration camps. She was liberated in Kiel on May 4, 1945.
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Jacob was born to a Jewish family in the Baltic seaport of Liepaja. He owned a clothing store in the city, and also owned some apartments, from which he collected rent. After his wife died, Jacob, who had retired, moved in with his daughter Sarah.
1933-39: Jacob was an avid reader. His favorite newspaper was Liepaja's German language daily, the Libauer Zeitung, which he liked to read in the garden and orchard around his daughter's home. On Sundays, "Grampa" would take his granddaughters Fanny and Jenny and other children from the neighborhood to the harbor. He would treat them to caramel candies, and they would sit and watch the ships.
1940-41: In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia. A year later, Germany invaded Latvia and reached Liepaja in one week. The Nazis immediately began rounding up Jewish males, ostensibly for conscript labor details. None of the men ever returned. The roundups abated for a few months until the night of December 15, when Latvian police began rousting Jews from their homes and taking them to prison. Those with work permits were released, but the rest were taken north to the village of Skeden.
Jacob Gamper was among approximately 2,800 Jews massacred by Latvian and German gunmen in Skeden between December 15 and 17, 1941.
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Sarah, born Sarah Gamper, was one of four children born to a Jewish family in the Baltic port city of Liepaja. Her parents owned a general store there. At the outbreak of World War I, Sarah was studying piano at a conservatory in Russia. During World War I, she remained there to serve as a nurse. She returned to Liepaja, and after marrying Herman Judelowitz in 1920, settled there.
1933-39: Sarah and Herman operated a shoe store in the front of their small shoe workshop. By 1935 they had three daughters, Fanny, Jenny and Liebele. Sarah and Herman were Zionists and they often helped collect money for Jewish settlers to buy land in Palestine.
1940-43: In June 1941 the Germans reached Latvia and occupied Liepaja. That July, Herman was murdered by the Germans in a nearby village. For two years, Sarah and her daughters managed to avoid deportation because Fanny had protected status as a nurse. But in October 1943 they were deported to Kaiserwald, near Riga. On arriving, the deportees were divided--those able to work on one side, the infirm and the young on the other. Eight-year-old Liebele was sent with the young. Sarah would not abandon Liebele and followed.
Sarah and Liebele were never heard from again.
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Bella, born Bella Hirschorn, was raised in a Jewish family in the Latvian town of Kuldiga. When she was a young woman, Bella moved to the small town of Aizpute, where she met and married Daniel Judelowitz. Together they opened a bakery-grocery in the town. In the 1920s they moved to Liepaja and opened a dry goods store. The couple had 10 children, one of whom died in infancy.
1933-39: The Judelowitzes' store sold fabric and various clothing items and accessories from buttons to shirts and stockings. After Bella and Daniel retired, their daughters took over the business. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Latvia, at the time, was still a free nation.
1940-41: A year after the Soviets occupied Latvia, German troops entered Liepaja in June 1941. Bella and her husband were ordered, as were all of Liepaja's Jews, to report to the local police station to register and to turn in their valuables. Within weeks of the occupation, mass executions were carried out by the Germans on the Baltic coast. These were halted in August. Then between September and December hundreds of Jewish men and women were killed because they were classified as "unfit for work."
In 1941 on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Daniel and Bella were arrested and deported. Neither was ever heard from again.
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Daniel was born to a Jewish family in the Latvian town of Aizpute. There, Daniel met and married Bella Hirschorn and together they opened a bakery-grocery in the town. In the 1920s they moved to Liepaja, on the Baltic coast, and opened a dry-goods store. The couple had 10 children, one of whom died in infancy.
1933-39: The Judelowitzes' store sold fabric, accessories and various clothing items from buttons to shirts and stockings. After Daniel and Bella retired, their daughters took over the business. In 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Latvia, at the time, was still a free nation.
1940-41: In June 1941, a year after the Soviets occupied Latvia, German troops entered Liepaja. Like all of Liepaja's Jews, Daniel and his wife were ordered to report to the local police station to register and to turn in their valuables. Within weeks of the occupation, the Germans carried out mass executions on the Baltic coast. These were halted in August. Then between September and December hundreds of Jewish men and women were killed because they were classified as "unfit for work."
In 1941 on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Daniel and Bella were arrested and deported. Neither was ever heard from again.
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Betty was one of 14 children born to a religious Jewish family in Aufhausen, a village in southwestern Germany. Her father was a successful cattle dealer in the area. On May 8, 1903, at age 20, Betty married Max Lauchheimer, a cattle merchant and kosher butcher. They lived in a large house by an orchard in the village of Jebenhausen. Betty and Max had two children, Regina and Karl.
1933-39: In late 1938 Betty and Max were visiting their daughter in Kippenheim when police arrested Max and their son-in-law. Hoodlums stoned the house, shattering the windows. Betty, her daughter, and granddaughter hid until it was quiet. Later, they learned that the town's Jewish men had been deported to the Dachau concentration camp; three weeks later, Max and his son-in-law returned home. That May, Max died of a heart attack.
1940-41: Regina's family moved into Betty's home in Jebenhausen. Many anti-Jewish laws went into effect: Jews couldn't use the bus; Jews had to wear yellow stars; Jews couldn't travel. In late 1941 the household was ordered to report for "resettlement in the east." Betty's son-in-law appealed to the local Gestapo to spare them, hoping they might listen sympathetically because he was a disabled World War I veteran. Though they granted his appeal, it did not extend to Betty. She was forced to report for the transport.
Betty was deported in early December to Riga, Latvia. In the Rumbula Forest near Riga, Betty was shot in a mass execution of Jews.
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Wilhelm was the oldest of two children in a Jewish family living in the Habsburg capital of Vienna. Shortly after Wilhelm was born, World War I broke out. Because of food shortages, Wilhelm and his mother left for her hometown of Hostoun, near Prague. After the war they returned to Vienna where his father had remained to run his shoe business. As a young man, Wilhelm worked for his father.
1933-39: In March 1938 Germany annexed Austria. Soon after, the Germans arrested Wilhelm because he was a Jew dating a Christian woman, an act forbidden under Nazi law. Released on the condition that he leave Austria within 30 days, Wilhelm, with a Jewish friend, traveled to the Czechoslovakian border. After several aborted attempts he crossed the frontier illegally. Wilhelm went on to Prague where he stayed with relatives.
1940-44: In 1941 Wilhelm was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and then to Riga, Latvia, where he was put in charge of a group of prisoners peeling potatoes in the ghetto's "German section" for Jews from the Reich. He was then deported to several other camps and eventually to Troeglitz, a subcamp of Buchenwald. There, he made contact with a Christian villager from outside the camp. The man often traveled to Vienna and managed to bring back bread from Wilhelm's aunt and smuggle it in to Wilhelm.
In March 1945 Wilhelm was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He died only a few weeks before the camp was liberated by the British army on April 15, 1945.
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Herman was the oldest of nine children born to a Jewish family in the Latvian village of Aizpute. He was a World War I veteran, and after the conflict, in 1918, he fought for the establishment of a free Latvian republic. Two years later he married Sarah Gamper and they settled in the city of Liepaja, where they owned a shoe store. By the late 1920s they had two daughters, Fanny and Jenny.
1933-39: Herman designed patterns for the uppers of shoes, which he used to fashion into finished shoes. His shoe store was in front of the workshop. In 1935 Herman and Sarah had a third daughter, Liebele. Both Sarah and Herman were Zionists and they often collected money to help Jewish settlers purchase land in Palestine.
1940-41: In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia. The Soviets seized Herman's business and nationalized it, but Herman was forced to continue running his business. In June 1941 Germany invaded Latvia, and quickly reached Liepaja. The Germans immediately began roundups of Jewish males in the city, ostensibly for conscript labor details: none of these men ever returned. A month later, an order was issued for men of working age to report to the city square. Herman reported to the city square.
In late July 1941, Herman and the rest of the men in his group were taken north to the village of Skeden. There they were shot and dumped into mass graves.
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