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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…
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…
Michel's parents were Russian-born Jews. His father had been a police official in Russia who had been deported to Siberia for being an outspoken Zionist. After escaping, he and his wife had made their way to Belgium, and two of their four children, including Michel, were born in Brussels. 1933-39: In Brussels Michel's father owned and edited two newspapers, one French and one Yiddish. As a kid, Michel enjoyed reading comics like "Yordi," who in the United States is known as Superman. A day after his…
Monique's Jewish parents met in Paris. Her father had emigrated there from Russia to study engineering, and her mother had come from Poland as a young child. Monique's father did not have enough money to finish university, so he went to work as an upholsterer. He also shared a small business which sold his hand-tooled leather purses. 1933-39: Monique's mother was 20 when she gave birth to Monique in 1937. Two years later, Parisians were threatened by the possibility of bombing by the Germans, and French…
Zalie was the second of three children born to immigrant Jewish parents. Her Polish-born father was a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who had met and married her Hungarian-born mother during World War I. Shortly before Zalie was born, her parents settled in Paris. There, Zalie and her brother and sister grew up in a religious household. 1933-39: Zalie's mother said it was better in Paris than in the poor village in which she grew up. Her mother spoke broken French, but Zalie grew up speaking…
The youngest of 11 children, Chaje was raised by religious, Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents in a village in Czechoslovakia's easternmost province. At the age of 12, she was apprenticed to a men's tailor. In the 1920s she married Jermie Adler from Selo-Solotvina. Together, they moved to Liege, Belgium, where they raised three daughters and she continued to work as a tailor. 1933-39: Chaje's customers called her the "Polish tailor." Raising her children as Jews in the largely Catholic city of Liege did not…
Vienna, home to some 175,000 Jews before World War II, was a major center of European Jewry. Vienna was also the intellectual heart of the Palestine resettlement movement. Most of the city's Jews lived in two large districts on the east side of the Danube Canal. Renee's father owned a prosperous men's clothing store in the city. 1933-39: German forces occupied Austria in March 1938. Anti-Jewish measures were quickly imposed. Renee's father was prohibited from doing business and his store was seized. He…
Flora's Romanian-born parents immigrated to Antwerp, Belgium, in the late 1920s to escape antisemitism. Flora's father owned a furniture workshop. Antwerp had an active Jewish community. There were butcher shops, bakeries, and stores that sold foods which were prepared according to Jewish dietary laws. Flora was the oldest of three girls, and the family spoke Yiddish at home. 1933-39: When Flora arrived for her first day of kindergarten at public school, she was shocked to learn that there were other…
Frederick was born to a Jewish family in the Austrian capital of Vienna. His father died when he was a baby, and he and his mother moved into an apartment with Frederick's widowed grandfather. As a young boy, Frederick attended a Viennese public school. 1933-39: Frederick was a rambunctious child. Once, when his grandfather was baby-sitting, Frederick used a silk lampshade as a "parachute," and jumped from the top of the wardrobe closet. That was the last time Frederick's grandfather would baby-sit.…
Frida was the eldest of three daughters born to Jewish parents in a village in the easternmost province of Czechoslovakia. When Frida was 2, her parents moved to Liege, Belgium, a largely Catholic industrial city with many immigrants from eastern Europe. Frida attended Belgian public schools and grew up speaking French. 1933-39: In Liege Frida's family lived in an apartment above a cafe and across the street from a Catholic church. Frida had many Catholic girlfriends at school. At home she spoke Yiddish…
Bertha was the second of three daughters born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents in a village in Czechoslovakia's easternmost province. Soon after Bertha was born, her parents moved the family to Liege, an industrial, largely Catholic city in Belgium that had many immigrants from eastern Europe. 1933-39: Bertha's parents sent her to a local elementary school, where most of her friends were Catholic. At school, Bertha spoke French. At home, she spoke Yiddish. Sometimes her parents spoke Hungarian to each…
Nelly was the youngest of three daughters born to Jewish parents in Liege, a French-speaking industrial city in eastern Belgium. Her Yiddish-speaking parents had moved there from Czechoslovakia a year before Nelly was born. The Adlers were one of only a few Jewish families in the largely Catholic city. Nelly grew up speaking French with her friends at school. 1933-39: The Adler's apartment was above a cafe and across the street from a Catholic church. Her parents ran a successful tailoring business from…
Josephine, known affectionately as Pepi, and her brother and three sisters were raised in Vienna. Her father traded in furs and her mother was a homemaker. Only a few years after Pepi married, her husband died unexpectedly and she was left to care for their young son, Fred. She and her son moved in with her widowed father. 1933-39: Pepi spent much of her time with her sister Helene. Helene's husband was a Singer sewing machine representative, and in the summer of 1937 Pepi and Fred joined him and Helene…
Rudolf, known as Rudi, and his brother were born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family of Spanish descent. The family lived in a pleasant neighborhood in the southern part of the city. Rudi attended Montessori grade school and high school. 1933-39: For summer vacation in 1935 Rudi's parents rented a house near the beach in Zandvoort, near Amsterdam. There he met a girl, Ina, and they became good friends. In the summer they discovered that they would be attending the same Montessori high school. Rudi and Ina and…
Judith was the younger of two children born to religious, middle-class Jewish parents. Judith's mother, Clara, was Sephardic, a descendant of Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. Her father, Lodewijk, was a traveling representative for a firm based in Amsterdam. The family lived in an apartment in a new section of Amsterdam on the southern outskirts. 1933-39: Judith attended grade school with her cousin Hetty who was the same age. Judith loved to study. Her mother taught piano to students who…
Hilde was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Amsterdam. Like many of the Netherlands's Jews, Hilde's family was well-integrated in Dutch society. Hilde excelled in high school, especially in languages. After graduation, she studied homemaking for two years, and then took a job as a secretary in Rome. Hilde returned to Amsterdam where, at 24, she married Gerrit Verdoner in December 1933. 1933-39: After their wedding, Hilde and Gerrit moved to Hilversum, a residential town in the heart of the…
Hans was born to a Jewish family in the small Dutch town of Kampen. His father worked as a tailor, and he taught Hans about the tailoring trade. 1933-39: Hans was a skilled tailor, and an accomplished pianist as well. Inquisitive about all subjects, Hans loved to read and to keep abreast of current events. 1940-43: When the Jews in the Dutch provinces were ordered to relocate to Amsterdam in January 1942, the Rudelsheims complied. In early 1943, while in hiding with a Christian family near Leiden, Hans…
Dora, her parents, brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins lived together in her grandfather's home in Essen, Germany. The Ungers were an observant Jewish family, and when Dora was 8, she began to regularly attend meetings of Brit HaNoar, a religious youth organization. 1933-39: In October 1938 a teacher, with tears in her eyes, came to Dora at the municipal pool, saying "Jews cannot swim here anymore." Just weeks later, on November 9, Jews were arrested and their property destroyed. A neighbor tried to…
Coenraad was born to a Jewish family in Amsterdam that traced its roots in the Netherlands back to the 17th century. After graduating from public school, Coenraad went on to train as a pastry maker at a trade school. But after completing his training at the age of 13, he decided for health reasons to change professions, and he began to study tailoring. 1933-39: Coenraad finished apprenticing as a tailor in 1937 when he was 20. Then he spent a year working as a nurse in a Jewish home for the permanently…
Thomas' father, Heinz, was a German-Jewish refugee who had 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 with Thomas' older brother. They settled in Amsterdam. 1933-39: Thomas, also known as Tommy, was born 18 months after his older brother, Jan-Peter. In 1939 the parents and brother of Tommy's father joined them in the Netherlands as…
Judith was one of three children born to a Yiddish-speaking Jewish family living on a farm near the Lithuanian town of Jonava. Judith's mother had an extensive Jewish education and taught her daughters at home. Her son, Abe, attended a Jewish religious school in Jonava. Judith's father worked in the logging industry. 1933-39: In the fall of 1938, six months after her father died, Judith and her mother moved to Kovno, the capital of Lithuania. She was 9 years old. Kovno at that time had a large Jewish…
Olga was born to a large Jewish family living in the Bessarabia province when it was still part of the Russian Empire. In 1918 the province was annexed by Romania. When Olga was 12 years old, she was arrested for the first time for having participated in a strike at the mattress factory where she worked. Despite her youth, she was put in prison and beaten. 1933-39: Olga was an active and vocal member of the local workers' organization. She had been arrested and imprisoned so often that she simply…
Aron and his three sisters were raised in a traditional Jewish family in the town of Slonim. Most of Slonim's inhabitants were Jewish, and the town had a long tradition of Hasidic scholarship. Aron's father, Chaim, owned a yard-goods and clothing store. 1933-39: Aron attended a Hebrew-language middle school and was active in the Zionist youth movement, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir. He had been accepted to study in an agricultural school in Palestine when war broke out in September 1939 and Slonim fell under Soviet…
Rubin was the second of four children born to a Jewish family in the northeastern Polish town of Ivenets, approximately 60 miles west of Minsk. His father was a butcher. Rubin attended Ivenets' public elementary school until the age of 10, when he transferred to the Mirar Yeshiva to study Jewish law. 1933-39: In 1936, after completing yeshiva, Rubin made his living as a house painter. In Ivenets people would stand in front of Jewish stores and drive customers away, telling them not to buy from Jews. In…
Zofia was raised in a well-to-do, prominent Hasidic Jewish family in Warsaw. Uneasy with the constant tension between the Polish people and the Jewish minority, Zofia joined the communist student club Spartacus when she was a teenager. Spartacus actively campaigned against the growing fascist movement in Europe. 1933-39: When Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 28, 1939, Zofia was 14 years old. She stopped going to school. Though the Nazis banned Spartacus, she secretly helped to revive the…
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