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Jacob Polak

Jacob, known as "Jaap," and his three sisters grew up in Amsterdam in a religious, Zionist Jewish family that could trace its roots in the Netherlands back 200 years. Jaap attended a Jewish elementary school until the age of 12, and then enrolled in a commercial high school, where he studied accounting. After graduating, he took a position in the Amsterdam Carlton Hotel. He worked there in 1931 and 1932. 1933-39: Jaap's life had been centered mostly in the Jewish community, so the Carlton Hotel was a new,…

Wilhelm Edelstein

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…

Helen Lebowitz

Helen was one of seven children born to a Jewish family in Volosyanka, a town in Trans-Carpathian Ruthenia. Nestled in the Carpathian mountains, Volosyanka was a small town with a sizable Jewish community. Jewish life revolved around the town's synagogue. Helen grew up in a close-knit family; many relatives lived nearby. Her father owned a shoe store in the town. 1933-39: When Helen was 11 years old, Hungary occupied the Transcarpathian region. At once, Jews were prohibited from holding government…

Aranka Ecksdein Muhlrad

Aranka was the youngest of 10 children born to Jewish parents living in the highlands of Slovakia. While visiting Budapest to attend her sister's marriage, she was introduced to Jeno Muhlrad, a pharmacist. They were married and the couple moved in with Jeno's father and sisters who lived in Ujpest, a suburb of Budapest. Aranka had two children--Eva, born in 1924, and Andras, born six years later. 1933-39: Aranka's husband has leased his own pharmacy in downtown Ujpest so they can finally afford to move…

Felicia Karo

Felicia grew up in a Jewish family living in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood in the large, industrial city of Lodz. Her father's side of the family had lived in Poland for 400 years. He was the principal of a Jewish secondary school for boys. Known affectionately by family and friends as Lusia, Felicia attended a bilingual Jewish school in which both Hebraic and Polish subjects were taught. 1933-39: When Felicia was 12 she heard a lot of bad things about the Nazis. A Polish-born German Jewish…

Margot Heumann

The older of two girls, Margot was born to Jewish parents living in a village close to the Belgian border. The Heumanns lived above their general store. Across the street lived Margot's grandfather, who kept horses and cows in his large barn. When Margot was 4, her family moved to the city of Lippstadt. As a young girl, she learned to swim in the Lippe River, which flowed behind their garden. 1933-39: When Margot was 9, her family moved to the nearby city of Bielefeld, where she was enrolled in public…

Erzsebet Markovics Katz

Erzsebet was born to Jewish parents living in a town on the Bodrog River in northeastern Hungary. Sarospatak was a picturesque town with a ruined medieval fortress, the Windischgratz castle, and many wineries, flour mills, and brickworks. Erzsebet's father was a locksmith and sheet-metal worker. 1933-39: Erzsebet has married Jozsef Katz. It was a lovely, formal wedding. Jozsef comes from a large Jewish family. He's a joiner by trade and was working in Sarospatak when they met. Now they have moved here to…

Survivors prepare food

Soon after liberation, camp survivors cook in a field. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, after April 15, 1945. In the days before liberation, the prisoners had been left without food or water. An estimated 500 inmates per day died in the days preceding and following liberation.

Tonie Frederika Kaufmann Soep: Maps

Kazimiera Banach Justynowa

Kazimiera was born to Roman Catholic parents in the town of Mierzen. After graduating from a teacher's college in Staniatki, she married Wincenty Justyna, a secondary school teacher. The couple settled in the small industrial city of Piotrkow Trybunalski and raised three children, Jerzy (a boy), Danuta and Maria. Kazimiera worked as a school teacher. 1933-39: With their combined incomes the Justynas were able to buy a plot of land and build a house. The Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and…

Caring for survivors

Soon after liberation, a camp survivor receives medical care. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, after April 15, 1945.

Romani (Gypsy) woman's skirt

This taffeta and cotton skirt dates from the 1920s. It belonged to a Romani (Gypsy) woman who was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and who lived in Germany before the war. She was arrested by the Nazis and interned in the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, and Bergen-Belsen camps. She died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, shortly before the camp's liberation. Her husband and two of her six children were also killed in the camps.

Commemorative postcard

Commemorative postcard with a drawing of barrack 11 of Bergen-Belsen and marking the time the people on the Kasztner train spent in the camp. The Jews from the Kasztner transport lived in two barracks, 10 and 11, inside Bergen-Belsen. (This was probably drawn by the Hungarian artist Robert (Imre) Irsay who himself was on the Kasztner transport.)

Martin Spett

Known as Monek, Martin was the elder of two children raised by Jewish parents in the large town of Tarnow. His mother was an American citizen who had been raised in Poland. His father worked at the city's tax office. As a child, Martin liked to collect stamps and catch lizards. His parents wanted him to be a pharmacist, but he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. 1933-39: When the Germans occupied Tarnow in September 1939 after war began, Martin was 10 years old. The soldiers, in beautiful uniforms,…

Wolfgang Lachman

Wolfgang was the only son of observant Jewish parents living in Berlin. Though trained as a mechanical engineer, Wolfgang's father ran a wholesale kerchief and handkerchief business that he had taken over from his father-in-law. Wolfgang's family lived in an apartment above the business. They enjoyed vacationing at their country home in Neuenhagen, a suburb of Berlin. 1933-39: Wolfgang began school when he was 5; that year Hitler was named leader of Germany. Every morning they had to sing three songs: the…

Edith Riemer

Hela Pinsker and Elimelech Riemer were married in 1928. Two years later the Jewish couple's only child, Edith, was born. The Riemers lived in a comfortable apartment in Berlin, in a building that also housed offices of the Communist Party of Germany. 1933-39: Hitler banned the Communists, so their offices in Edith's building were shut down. When these offices were later broken into, the Gestapo blamed it on "the Jews." Though Edith's family wasn't involved, the Gestapo said that if the culprit was not…

Jeno Brieger

Jeno was born into a large, religious Jewish family in the village of Nagyhalasz in northeastern Hungary. The Briegers spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. After Jeno's mother died, his father remarried and the family moved to the town of Nyiregyhaza where his father owned and operated a hardware store. Nyiregyhaza had a Jewish population of 5,000. 1933-39: Jeno was the oldest son in a household of seven children. Nyiregyhaza was a rural town in which people still used horses and buggies. Jeno attended a…

Hildegard (Hilda) Krakauerova Nitschkeova

Hilda was the youngest of six children born to Jewish parents in a small Moravian town, where her father ran a dry-goods and clothing store. Her family spoke both Czech and German at home. Hilda was a tomboy when she was growing up, and competed on the Maccabi swim team. She attended a public secondary school in Hodinin, and wanted to pursue a career as a dental technician. 1933-39: In February 1933 Hilda moved to the Moravian capital of Brno where she attended dental school. On December 23, 1935, she…

Training in farming skills

Jewish youth attend a class on transplanting seedlings, part of a general course in farming sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee at the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. Germany, August 1, 1946.

Jeno Brieger: Maps

Jeno Brieger was born to a Jewish family in northeastern Hungary. The Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. Jeno was forced into a ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberate...

Joseph Muscha Mueller

Joseph was born in Bitterfeld, Germany, to Roma ("Gypsy") parents. For reasons unknown, he was raised in an orphanage for the first one-and-a-half years of his life. At the time of Joseph's birth, some 26,000 "Gypsies"—members of either the Sinti or Roma tribes—lived in Germany. Though most were German citizens, they were often discriminated against by other Germans and subjected to harassment. 1933-39: At age one-and-a-half, Joseph was taken into foster care by a family living in Halle, a city some…

Hela Los

One of nine children, Hela grew up in the Polish capital of Warsaw. Her father was an art and antique furniture dealer and had a store on Marszalkowska Street. Every year, from the beginning of the summer break until the Jewish High Holidays in the fall, the Los family vacationed in the town of Miedzeszyn, located a short train ride's distance from Warsaw. 1933-39: Hela and her family were still at their vacation home when the Germans entered Warsaw on September 28, 1939. As soon as it became possible,…

Mirjam Waterman Pinkhof

Mirjam grew up on her family's farm in Loosdrecht. Her parents, secular Jews, had moved from Amsterdam in 1914, two years before she was born. The Watermans were pacifists. Mirjam attended a progressive school in Hilversum. Her brother and youngest sister attended the Kees Boeke School, a progressive school located in Bilthoven that taught pacifist and humanistic ideals. 1933-39: In 1938 Mirjam began teaching at the Kees Boeke school. A group of German-Jewish refugees came to the school in 1939. Mirjam…

Dosia Szabszevicz

Dosia, her older sister and parents lived on her grandfather's estate in the town of Ozorkow, eight miles from Lodz. Dosia's parents were secular Jews. They spoke both Polish and Yiddish to each other, but only Polish to their children. Dosia's father worked as an accountant, and her mother was active in organizing charity events for several of Ozorkow's Jewish organizations. 1933-39: A few days after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Dosia saw the Polish army retreat through Ozorkow, carrying their wounded…

The 11th Armoured Division (Great Britain) - ID Card/Oral History

The 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945. When its soldiers entered the camp, they witnessed the horrific conditions that prisoners had faced. Here, survivors of Bergen-Belsen recount their experience...