Hana Müller
Hana was born to a Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia. Her father, a metalsmith, made pipes, spouts and gutters for construction companies. Because her mother was frail, Hana was raised by her father and grandmother. She attended a Jewish school through grade five, and later went to business school.
1933-39: In 1933 Hana read about the harrowing treatment of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and told her grandmother, "Aren't we fortunate that we live in the 20th century in Czechoslovakia, that such a thing cannot happen to us." Six years later on March 15, 1939, the Germans occupied Prague. It was a cold, snowy day. About a mile from Hana's home the Germans entered the city on tanks and trucks, with their guns pointed toward the rooftops.
1940-44: Hana was in her apartment reading The Grapes of Wrath when she received orders to report for a transport. She was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto in July 1942.
Hana was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. After some months as a forced laborer in a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, she was freed in May 1945.
Item ViewCarl Heumann
Carl was one of nine children born to Jewish parents living in a village near the Belgian border. When Carl was 26, he married Joanna Falkenstein and they settled down in a house across the street from his father's cattle farm. Carl ran a small general store on the first floor of their home. The couple had two daughters, Margot and Lore.
1933-39: Carl has moved his family to the city of Bielefeld, where he is working for a Jewish relief organization. Requests from this area's Jews to leave Germany have multiplied since a night last November [Kristallnacht] when the Nazis smashed windows of Jewish stores and burned synagogues all over Germany. Unfortunately, the United States and other countries have immigration quotas so that only a fraction of the Jewish refugees can get visas.
1940-44: Carl and his family have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. As a special privilege, they have been sent here rather than to a concentration camp further to the east because Carl earned the German Iron Cross in World War I. Still, the threat of deportation to a camp hangs over them daily, and they are always hungry. Their 15-year-old, Margot, has been assigned to a detail that leaves the ghetto each day to work on a farm: Sometimes she smuggles back vegetables to them by hiding them under her blouse.
In May 1944 Carl was caught stealing food, and he and his family were deported to Auschwitz. Everyone is believed to have perished there except Margot, who survived the war.
Item ViewArthur Karl Heinz Oertelt
Heinz, as he was usually called, was born in the German capital to religious Jewish parents. He and his older brother, Kurt, attended both religious and public schools. His father had died when he was very young. His mother, a seamstress, struggled to make ends meet. She and the boys lived in a predominantly Christian neighborhood.
1933-39: It frightened Heinz when Nazi storm troopers sang about Jewish blood dripping from their knives. But his family didn't have money to leave Berlin. In late 1939 Heinz was forced, with other Jews, to work for German construction companies. Many of them were professionals and businessmen unused to manual labor. They shoveled dirt and carried rocks by hand. Passersby would grin at them, and teachers brought students to show them what Jews looked like.
1940-44: In March 1943 Heinz, Kurt, and their mother were deported to Theresienstadt, where they soon became infested with lice, fleas, and bedbugs. They became obsessed with thoughts of food. Their soup was dished out from a huge barrel by lazy men who didn't bother to stir it, leaving the good food chunks near the bottom. Heinz had to time himself just right. If he was at the front of the line he would get mostly the watery parts. If he was too far back, he might get nothing at all or watery soup from the top of a newly arrived barrel.
Heinz was eventually liberated near Flossenbürg in April 1945, and emigrated to the United States in 1949. Kurt survived the war, but their mother perished in Auschwitz.
Item ViewBertha Wolffberg Gottschalk
Bertha was born to Jewish parents in the capital of East Prussia. Her father served on the Koenigsberg city council. In 1887 Bertha married Hugo Gottschalk, and the couple settled in the small town of Schlawe in northern Germany. There, Hugo owned the town's grain mill. The Gottschalks raised their four children in a home near a small stream, ringed by orchards and a large garden.
1933-39: Bertha and her daughter Nanny have moved to Berlin--Hugo passed away in 1934 and they were afraid of the growing antisemitism in Schlawe. They hoped that, as Jews, they would be less conspicuous here in a large city. But the Nazis have ordered all sorts of restrictions for Jews--recently Bertha had to register her jewelry and silver. Her daughter Gertrud has sent her three daughters to England. Bertha would also like to leave, but it's difficult to get an exit visa.
1940-42: Nanny and Bertha have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, where they have been assigned to a dirty, crowded and lice-infested room on the second floor of a house. Nanny hauls in bags of sawdust, which they burn to heat their room. Bertha had a chance to go to America in 1941, but she refused to go without Nanny. Her days in Schlawe are a distant memory now.
Bertha died in Theresienstadt on November 23, 1942.
Item ViewNanny Gottschalk Lewin
Nanny was the oldest of four children born to Jewish parents in the small town of Schlawe in northern Germany, where her father owned the town's grain mill. Nanny was given the Hebrew name Nocha. She grew up on the mill grounds in a house surrounded by orchards and a big garden. In 1911 Nanny married Arthur Lewin. Together, they raised two children, Ludwig and Ursula.
1933-39: Nanny and her widowed mother have moved to Berlin. They feared the rising antisemitism in Schlawe and hoped, as Jews, to be less conspicuous here in a large city. They live downstairs from Nanny's sister Kathe who is married to a Protestant and has converted. Shortly after they got settled, the Germans restricted the public movements of Jews, so that they no longer feel safe when they're out of their apartment.
1940-44: Nanny and her mother have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia. They've been assigned a room on the second floor of a house that is dirty, crowded and infested with lice. The stove is fueled with sawdust. As the youngest in their room--and Nanny is 56--she's been lugging in the bags of sawdust on her back. She's been getting increasingly weaker, is now hard of hearing and needs a cane to walk. Early this morning Nanny learned that she's on a list of people to go to another camp. She doesn't want to go but has no choice.
Nanny was deported to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944, and was gassed immediately upon arrival. She was 56 years old.
Item ViewAnna Pfeffer
Anna, affectionately known as Aennchen to her family, was the daughter of non-religious German-Jewish parents. Her father died when she was young and Anna was raised in the town of Bruchsal by her impoverished mother. Anna married a well-to-do, older gentleman in 1905 and moved to the fashionable city of Duesseldorf, where he was a department store manager. By 1933 they had two grown sons.
1933-39: The Pfeffer's comfortable life unraveled after the Nazis came to power. The Nazis arrested Anna's brother and deported him to a concentration camp, where he was murdered. Anna's oldest son, who had married a Dutch woman, emigrated to the Netherlands. After her husband lost his job and after the November 1938 pogrom, the Pfeffers also emigrated to the Netherlands. There, they joined their oldest son and daughter-in-law.
1940-44: Anna's husband passed away, and she spent her time in Amsterdam with her grandchildren. In May 1940 the Germans occupied the Netherlands. Jews were ordered to register and their rights were curtailed. Like other Jews, Anna lost whatever property she had. A year after being required to wear an identifying yellow badge, she was separated from her family and sent to Westerbork, a transit camp for Jews. Four months later, she was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
On October 9, 1944, Anna was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where she was gassed two days later. She was 58 years old.
Item ViewJan-Peter Pfeffer
Jan-Peter's father, Heinz, was a German-Jewish refugee who married Henriette De Leeuw, a Dutch-Jewish woman. Frightened by the Nazi dictatorship and the murder of Heinz's uncle in a concentration camp, they immigrated to the Netherlands when Henriette was nine months pregnant. They settled in Amsterdam.
1933-39: Jan-Peter was born soon after his parents arrived in the Netherlands. He was 18 months old when Tommy, his baby brother, was born. In 1939 the parents and brother of Jan-Peter's father joined them in the Netherlands as refugees from Germany. Jan-Peter and Tommy grew up speaking Dutch as their native language, and they often spent time at their mother's family home in the country.
1940-44: The Germans occupied Amsterdam in May 1940. Despite the German occupation, 6-year-old Jan-Peter did not feel much change in his day-to-day life. Then just after his ninth birthday, the Germans sent his grandmother to a camp called Westerbork. Six months later, Jan-Peter and his family were sent to the same camp, but his grandmother was no longer there. During the winter, the Pfeffers were sent to a faraway ghetto called Theresienstadt where Jan-Peter felt cold, scared, and hungry.
On May 18, 1944, Jan-Peter was deported with his family to Auschwitz. He was gassed on July 11, 1944. Jan-Peter was 10 years old.
Item ViewInge Auerbacher
Inge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher, religious Jews living in Kippenheim, a village in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest. Her father was a textile merchant. The family lived in a large house with 17 rooms and had servants to help with the housework.
1933-39: On November 10, 1938, hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of Inge's home. That same day police arrested her father and grandfather. Inge, her mother and grandmother managed to hide in a shed until it was quiet. When they came out, the town's Jewish men had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp. Her father and grandfather were allowed to return home a few weeks later, but that May her grandfather died of a heart attack.
1940-45: When Inge was 7, she was deported with her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. When they arrived, everything was taken from them, except for the clothes they wore and Inge's doll, Marlene. Conditions in the camp were harsh. Potatoes were as valuable as diamonds. Inge was hungry, scared and sick most of the time. For her eighth birthday, her parents gave her a tiny potato cake with a hint of sugar; for her ninth birthday, an outfit sewn from rags for her doll; and for her tenth birthday, a poem written by her mother.
On May 8, 1945, Inge and her parents were liberated from the Theresienstadt ghetto where they had spent nearly three years. They immigrated to the United States in May 1946.
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