Arthur 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.