Ekaterinoslav: One Family’s Passage to America, A memoir in verse by Jane Yolen 2012

"Jane Yolen’s new work combines her talents as a poet with her skill as a storyteller." from a review by Laurel Corona posted on the Jewish Book Council blog

The writer Jane Yolen has written an engaging volume of 35 poems that explore the lives of her grandparents and their eight children who left their home in Ekaterinoslav in Ukraine to come to America. The poems deal with the personal and the socio-political: her family and its life in the old country and the new. She divides the poems into three time frames - “Ekaterinoslav: 1873-1913, Passage: 1910-1914, and Greenhorns: 1914 -1939.

In a two-page “Note from the Poet” that precedes the poetry, Yolen sketches in what she knows about her grandparents, their trip to America and the family’s early life in Connecticut. But now that she is a grandmother there are no family members left who can fill in the many gaps in their family story, and she expresses regret that her father had never seemed interested or willing to talk about the past.

So she does some of the work that genealogists do – she contacts cousins for scraps of information and looks at documents which sometimes become the basis for poems. For example, the facts on a ship’s manifest about family members inspire a poem she calls “Manifests.” And she includes a number of family photos that are the source of poems, taken both in Ekaterinoslav and in America.

Yolen writes that she comes from a family of storytellers. She knows that family stories passed down are made up of truths, half-truths and total fabrications – intentional or otherwise. In her poetry she uses what she knows and what she supposes  in order to recover her family’s past both as a way to acknowledge their lives and as a way to help her to better understand the personalities and accomplishments of the many family she did not know at all or did not know well. And through her poetry she tries to apprehend how their lives shaped hers. She has used her inheritance, her gift for story telling, to create this wonderful "memoir in verse.”

To read about the history of the Jewish community in Ekaterinoslav, click here.

People
Samson Yolen – married to Mina Hyatt
   Louis Yolen – son of Samson and Mina
      Ruth – daughter of Louis
   Eva Yolen – daughter of Samson and Mina; twin sister of Sylvia; married Abe Dranoff
   Sylvia Yolen – daughter of Samson and Mina; twin sister of Eva; married Hyman Plotkin
   Vera Yolen Krassner – daughter of Samson and Mina
      Marsha Krassner, daughter of Vera
  Samuel Yolen – son of Samson and Mina; married Rose Pinkus
  Rose Yolen Davidow – daughter of Samson and Mina
  Velvel (Wulf, William) Yolen – son of Samson and Mina
      Jane Yolen – daughter of Velvel; author
  Harry Yolen – son of Samson and Mina

Relatives tagged in photos, exact relationships unclear: Micki Plotkin, Minnie Plotkin, Alvin Krassner, Claire Dranoff, Dorothy Yolen Mark, Eli Dranoff

Places
Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine
New Haven, Connecticut
Waterbury, Connecticut

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Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, The First Complete Edition 2004

"For those unfamiliar with the story of Hannah's exceptional courage, this is a moving collection." from a review in Publisher's Weekly 10/25/2004

Hanna Senesh (Szenes), born in Hungary in 1921 and executed in 1943, was a thoughtful, soul-searching writer whose diary is the centerpiece of this volume. Other writings by Senesh
included are letters she sent, mostly to her mother in Budapest, Hungary from her new home in Palestine, and poetry, some of it translated from Hungarian, some of it translated from Hebrew. In this volume the diary is introduced by a foreword written by the American poet/novelist Marge Piercy, a preface by Eitan Senesh, son of Hannah Senesh’s brother, a translator’s preface by Marta Cohn, and a short essay entitled “Memories of Hannah’s Childhood” by Catherine Senesh, Hannah Senesh’s mother.

The diary published in this volume starts with an entry written when Hannah Senesh was thirteen in 1934 where she writes about having just visited her father’s grave. It ends in 1943, five years after she had immigrated to Palestine and was about to embark on a secret mission to help Hungarian Jews escape from what was, at the time it was being planned, not yet Nazi-occupied Hungary. Reading from start to finish, we embark on a journey along with the writer as she formulates goals and makes deliberate choices to help achieve those goals. She is constantly going back and reflecting on past wishes and choices, analyzing her doubts and deciding what her next steps might be.

Early in her story, like many teenagers, Senesh is preoccupied with her place academically, writing about her studies and her teachers, but she is also concerned, as many teenagers are, about her social status, evaluating the boys in her social circle, wondering which one was right for her, despairing that she’ll ever find the perfect match. She is from a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family and is not particularly religious, but in her diary, every year at Yom Kippur she looks back over the past year and makes a serious attempt to analyze what she has done wrong and how she can improve. 

Overt anti-Semitism rears its ugly head during her years at the Protestant girls’ school where her mother has to pay double to secure her Jewish daughter’s education and where Senesh, because she is Jewish, is eventually denied the opportunity to be an officer in the Literary Society. In addition, overt anti-Semitism is more and more prevalent in day-to-day Hungarian life. Her response is to embrace Zionism and to plan to immigrate to Palestine when she graduates high school in Budapest. She applies to attend a two-year agricultural school in Nahalal. Accepted by the school, she leaves Hungary in the early fall of 1939 right after war is declared by the French and British.

The entries written in Palestine are very interesting. Partly it is because she was maturing and her thinking and writing are more complex. And partly it is because she is a careful observer of the geography of the land, its settlers – their personalities and their politics - and its structures, especially of Kibbutz S’dot Yam where she decided to settle after she finished the two-year agricultural program. At first she is excited to be in Palestine. It feels liberating to her to be in what feels to her to be a Jewish country where there is important work to be done, far away from the oppression of Jews in Europe. But a theme that runs throughout this part of the diary and becomes stronger toward the end, is her constant analysis of her status in Palestine. She believed totally in the socialist principles of kibbutz life, but often found the drudgery of kitchen and garden work mind-numbing and not the best use of her talents. She is constantly questioning her decisions. Is she sorry she immigrated to Palestine? No. Is life here harder and less gratifying than she expected? Yes. Is there something she could be doing in Palestine to take advantage of her previous education and talents? She continued to hope so.

Another topic she returns to frequently is her loneliness and the guilt she feels at leaving her mother behind. She suffers from more and more anxiety as the war engulfs more countries, so when the opportunity to go on a secret mission is offered her, she sees it as the big moment she has been waiting for.

At the end of the diary and letters is a section called “The Mission” which picks up from where the diary ends and narrates the end of Hannah Senesh’s short life up to her execution in November of 1943. "The Mission" includes two pieces by fellow parachutists, Reuven Dafne and Yoel Palgi, and an extended piece by Catherine Senesh entitled, “Meeting in Budapest,” which is about the months she spent with her daughter once Hannah Senesh had been captured and returned to Budapest to jail. The last essay is a short historical note written by Professor Judith Taylor Baumel of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

This volume also contains endnotes keyed to entries in the diary and other writings, and it also includes photos. A note on the title page indicates that parts of this book were published as “Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary by Shocken Books in 1972.

If you would like to read more about the parachutists from Palestine, including photos, click here.

Note: The documentary Blessed Is the Match, directed by Roberta Grossman, released in 2008 and available on DVD, is the story of Hannah Senesh's life based on the same material that is in the memoir. Voice-overs read excerpts from Hannah Senesh's diaries and from her mother's essay which is included in the memoir.  The film is most valuable for its many photos of the family, interviews with her brother's two sons, a short archival interview with her mother, and with contemporaries who knew Hannah Senesh. It also has archival footage of wartime Europe and of pioneers working the land in Palestine. Least satisfying are the dramatic reenactments, mostly in the last third of the film, deemed visually necessary because there is no footage and there are no photos of Hannah Senesh once she leaves Palestine and goes on her mission.

The film starts and ends with the moving ceremony of Senesh's coffin being taken from the ship in the harbor in Haifa that brought it from where her body had been buried in Hungary. The film shows the coffin being transported throughout Israel so its citizens can pay their respects, and then the ceremony where it is received in Jerusalem to be reburied with the bodies of other parachutists who had lost their lives.

The context provided in interviews by contemporary historians and in archival footage is useful. Having a voice off-camera recite several of Senesh's poems is affecting. But the diary itself reveals the life of this unusual young woman in a way the film can only hint at.

People (from the book and the film)
Family
Bela Szenes – married Catherine Salzberger
    Gyuri Senesh – son of Bela and Catherine
        Eitan Senesh – son of Gyuri
        David Senesh - son of Gyuri
    Hannah Senesh – daughter of Bela and Catherine; author

Elizabeth Salzberger – sister of Catherine; married to Steve Sas
    Evi Sas – daughter of Elizabeth and Steve

Friends
Eva Beregi
Surika Braverman
Magda Csecsy
Reuven Dafne
Mihaly Fekete
Peretz Goldstein
Avigdor Hameiri
Judit Kiss
Ilona Krausz
Aharon Megged
Marta Ozary
Yoel Palgi
Gyuri Revesz
Dina Schechman
Enzo (Hayim) Sereni

Places
Budapest, Hungary
Dombovar, Hungary
Janoshaza, Hungary
Nahalal, Israel
Sdot Yam, Israel
Haifa, Israel

The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer with Susan Dworkin 1999

"A well-written, tense, and intimate Holocaust memoir by an author with a remarkable war experience." from a review in Kirkus Reviews 9/1/1999

This very interesting and moving memoir was written by the Holocaust survivor, Edith Hahn Beer with the help of Susan Dworkin. The author, 85 at the time of its publication in 1999, had grown up in Vienna, lived out most of the war years in Germany under a false identity, and then left for England after the war where she lived for over thirty years. After her second husband, Fred Beer died, she settled in Netanya, Israel.

The title of this memoir underlines the most unusual aspect of her life. Provided with false identity papers by Austrians who did not support the Nazi regime, Edith Hahn Beer married a German member of the Nazi party whom she met at an art gallery, and who, after a short romance, declared his love. She shared her secret, but although his politics were not pro-Jewish, his personality was such that he chafed at authority and felt compelled to protect her and her secret. When he was drafted toward the end of the war, he became a Nazi officer.

Because the author spent most of the war years in Germany, we get a detailed look at what it was like to first be a slave laborer on an asparagus farm, then a worker in a box factory.  Then, once she got her false identity papers, she became what she calls a “U-boat” – a person living amongst the enemy - and we see what it was like living amongst Nazis and Nazi sympathizers through her eyes. The details she provides allow us to become emotionally involved in her close calls – in her need to be careful in order not to give away her identity. This meant that she was constantly strategizing, constantly being fearful that she might implicate herself and others who had helped her.

Edith Hahn Beer survived for a number of reasons: she was lucky, and she met a few sympathetic Austrians and Germans who provided help and cover at crucial moments. Mostly it was because she was smart and made the right decisions. However, she never would have suffered as she did, she realized much later, had she decided to leave Austria before Hitler invaded, as her sisters had done. For a variety of reasons she had not wanted to leave her beloved Vienna and she, like many others, was convinced that Hitler, who she considered an “idiot,” was not a real threat.

Throughout the years she kept in touch with her Austrian Christian friend Christl Denner Beran who helped save her life by agreeing to hand over her papers so that Edith Hahn Beer could assume her identity. For this selfless act of humanity she has been honored by Yad Vashem.

To see a trailer for the movie of the same name which includes a short clip of an interview with Edith Hahn Beer, click here.

To read an in-depth article on Germany's use of forced and slave labor during World War II called "German Industry and the Third Reich", click here.

People

Author’s family (Father and mother were distant cousins. Both had Hahn surname.)

Author’s father’s family

Leopold Hahn – married Klothilde Hahn

            Edith Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde; married to Werner Vetter; married to Fred Beer; author

                        Maria Angela Vetter Schluter – daughter of Edith and Werner

            Mimi Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde; married Milo Grenzbauer

            Johanna (Hansi) Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde

Gisela Hahn Kirschenbaum – sister of Leopold

Isadore Hahn – brother of Leopold

            Selma Hahn – daughter of Isadore

Author’s mother’s family

Ignatz Hoffman – Klothilde Hahn’s uncle – exact relationship unclear

            Klothilde Hahn –niece of Ignatz Hoffman;  married Leopold Hahn (see above)

            Richard Hahn – brother of Klothilde; married Roszi

            Elvira Hahn – sister of Klothilde

                        Jultschi – daughter of Elvira; married Otto Ondrej

                                    Otto Ondrej – son of Jultschi and Otto

            Marianne Hahn – sister of Klothilde; married Adolf Robichek

Max Sternbach – author’s cousin; relationship not clear

Friends and Acquaintances

Bertschi Beran – married to Christl Denner

Liesel Brust

Kathe Crohn

Heddy Deutsch

Suri Fellner

Philippe Halsmann

Max Hausner

Steffi Kanagur

Sigfried Kanagur – brother of Steffi

Mina Katz

Lily Kramer

Erna Marcus

Felix Roemer

            Wolfgang Roemer – nephew of Felix

            Ilse Roemer – sister of Wolfgang

Josef (Pepi) Rosenfeld

Hermi Schwarz

Places

Vienna, Austria

Stockerau, Austria

Hotel Bristol, Badgastein, Austria

Hainburg, Austria

Osterberg, Germany

Munich, Germany

Brandenburg, Germany

Netanya, Israel

Assembling My Father: A Daughter’s Detective Story by Anna Cypra Oliver 2004

"Oliver's memorial to her elusive dad—and the way researching and writing it changes her own identity—is unforgettable." from a review in Publisher's Weekly 2004

In this interesting memoir Anna Oliver investigates the trajectory of her father’s life through to his suicide in 1974 when her father, Lewis Weinberger, was 35 and the author was five years old. Both her father and her mother were from well-established, wealthy Jewish families and grew up in Queens in New York. Lewis Weinberger married Teresa Oliver in 1960 when they were still college students. He was the son of a successful housing developer; she was the daughter of a Jewish mother and a father who was an artist from Chile and a lapsed Catholic. Trained as an architect, Lewis eventually moved with Teresa to Miami, following the relocation of his parents and older brother, and tried working for his father. But he was restless and Teresa was unhappy, so in 1970 they set out for New Mexico where they lived amongst many others who in the 1960s and 1970s had dropped out of living conventional lives and had joined the counterculture. Sometime after his death, the author’s mother joined a Christian fundamentalist sect. Anna Oliver lived with her mother and two successive step-fathers and eventually left when she went off to a Christian college in Minnesota.

Anna Oliver reconstructs her family’s history as a way of examining the past for clues that would unlock the mysteries that surrounded her father’s life and death. She was longing to know a father she did not remember, to find comfort in learning about him. She felt that doing so would bring him closer, help to make him real, and help her to better understand her own roots. In order to find the pieces of the puzzle and to be able to assemble them, she conducted many interviews, following up on leads from family and family friends. She explored historical archives and found useful resources in unlikely places. She rescued a journal her father had kept from an old friend of her father’s who lived in New Mexico and who had found his body after the suicide and had kept some of his effects. She quotes relevant passages in her memoir and reproduces some passages in his handwriting.

In taking on this project, the author experienced the pleasures and frustrations of amateur genealogists. She met and got to know a number of relatives she had never met or barely remembered, including her father’s brother Joe who was able to pass on to her both facts and insights that she found invaluable. When her mother finally agreed to talk about her past she learned a lot about her mother’s earlier years and her relationship with her father. And she learned that an interview or source could very often lead to unexpected outcomes. For example, she contacted a friend of her father who, it turned out, had her father’s voice on audio tape. Finally, she came to realize that some of her assumptions were just that – assumptions not based in fact. From all the sources she consulted, she was able to draw informed conclusions and put together a textured portrait of her father although there are still many gaps that she doubts that she will ever be able to fill.

In a thread of the memoir Anna Oliver explores her own relationship to Judaism. She had always known that both her parents had been born into non-religious Jewish families but, having been brought up a Christian fundamentalist in New Mexico she knew nothing about Judaism. She had been close to her maternal grandmother who she visited fairly frequently in New York but she did not consider exploring Judaism as an option until she was well along in researching her father’s life and had spent extended time with members of his family and with some of his Jewish friends from when he was growing up in Queens. It took years before she could throw off the restricted life she felt was imposed on her by her mother's conversion to Christian fundamentalism. She felt the imprint deeply and ventured out into the world beyond Christian fundamentalism with trepidation. Partly, she was concerned about how it would affect her mother.

This memoir places her parents within the wider context of the turmoil of the second half of the twentieth century in the United States. In sketching in the chaotic socio-political decades of the 60’s and 70’s, she demonstrates that some young adults in her parents’ generation, including former friends of her parents, dabbled in alternative lifestyles and then moved on to live more or less stable and conventional lives. Not so her parents who seemed to have lost their way. For a host of reasons she explores they seemed vulnerable to the darker elements that were part and parcel of the counterculture. They had worked deliberately to put geographical and psychic distance between themselves and their upbringing, but they lost their way.

To read an article by a former hippie still searching click here.


People
Author’s father’s family
Morris Weinberger – married to Kate
    Joseph Weinberger – son of Morris and Kate; married to Myriam
        Stephan Weinberger – son of Joseph and Myriam
    Miriam Weinberger – daughter of Morris and Kate; married Robert
        Michael – son of  Miriam
    Lewis Weinberger – daughter of Morris and Kate; married Teresa
        Peter Weinberger – adopted son of Lewis and Teresa; marries Julie
        Anna Cypra Oliver (Weinberger) – daughter of Lewis and Teresa; married to Stephan Klein; author

Author’s mother’s family
Nathan
    Rose – daughter of Nathan; married to Juan Oliver
        John Oliver – son of Juan and Rose
        Teresa Oliver – daughter of Juan and Rose; married Lewis Weinberger (see above)
    Anna – daughter of Nathan

Friends
Irwin Sollinger
David Levine
Bobby Blender
Ernie Kirschman
Jerome Yavarkovsky
Barry and Runja Klein
Donald and Elaine Singer
Robert Greenberg

Places
Miami, Florida
New Hyde Park, NY
New York City, NY
Mahopac Lake, NY
Roscoe, NY
Taos, New Mexico
Blaine, Minnesota

The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt by Hannelore Brenner, published in German in 2004 and in English in 2009

"A deeply sympathetic account of a group of concentration-camp dorm mates who stayed in touch years after their release."  from a review in Kirkus Reviews 7/15/2009

This book focuses on a group of young teenage girls and their leaders who lived in Room 28 of the Girls Home in the Theresienstadt concentration camp from 1942-1944 in what is now the Czech Republic. The author, Hannelore Brenner, interviewed many of those who survived and read journals written by them and others who were deported to Theresienstadt. She quotes extensively from many entries from these journals, especially from the journals of Helga Pollak and her father Otto where they reveal the heartbreaks and stresses of day-to-day life in the camp. Helga’s entries chronicle the life of an undernourished child who was frequently sick, but who dreamed about the future and worked at becoming a contributing and supportive member of Room 28. Otto Pollak, who lived in another area of Theresienstadt, wrote about his concern for the welfare of his daughter.

In an introductory chapter we meet some of the girls of Room 28 in the present and learn about their annual reunion. In subsequent chapters the author goes back in time and uses these girls’ experiences to describe the early round-ups and deportations to Theresienstadt and the daily life at the camp. Several chapters deal with the production of the children’s opera Brundibar, the sham visit by the International Red Cross, and the filming of  Nazi propaganda at the camp. Finally, the author follows the deportation of some of the girls from Theresienstadt to camps like Auschwitz and then the death marches the Nazis forced on survivors as the Allies approached. She ends the main section of the book with the liberation of the camps and the girls’ search for survivors.

The author efficiently presents background material about the strategy of the Nazis to present Theresienstadt as a model Jewish town. So in that sense, this transit camp was a better place to be than some others. The camp was overcrowded, and prisoners were hungry, plagued by bed bugs and lice, and many were sick and died from typhoid and encephalitis as well as other communicable diseases. But children and adults were also were able to take advantage of many educational and cultural activities. Concerts and plays gave the many gifted artists and musicians opportunities  to participate as actors, singers, composers and musicians. Audiences sat in rapt attention and many commented about how attending or participating in such events was a transcendent experience that allowed them moments when they could forget where they were.

Journal entries and interviews reveal that for the children there were two particular beacons of light in an otherwise grim existence. The gifted artist Freidl Dicker-Brandeis created a rich art program that involved the children in drawing and painting. And the decision to mount a production of the children’s opera Brundibar allowed the children to throw themselves into an exciting, enriching activity. First they auditioned, then rehearsed, and then performed. The opera, written earlier by the composer Hans Krasa who became a prisoner in Theresienstadt, was performed in the camp over fifty times to packed houses.

The cumulative effect of the multiple stories we read is powerful. Over the course of the book we have come to know the girls and their leaders, and their family and friends through their writing, and through the author’s research and interviews. One tragic story is hard enough to bear; multiply it by the number of prisoners we follow in this book, and it’s overwhelming.

An Epilogue includes contemporary photos of most of the survivors of Room 28 and short narratives. The survivors went on with their lives; they picked up the pieces, married, and settled in Israel, New York, California, Sweden, Moscow, West Germany, Vienna, Prague and elsewhere. Some, due to the cruel fate of politics, became citizens of the Soviet Union and for many years were cut off from the West. Like other survivors of the Holocaust, the girls of Room 28 felt that only other survivors really understood their trauma. And they knew that their past was better understood by the girls who had lived together in Room 28 than by anyone else.  Living in very close quarters under very difficult conditions in Theresienstadt helped them to forge strong bonds that hold those who are still alive together still.

To learn more about the book and a traveling exhibition click here.
To see a short clip from a production of Brundibar filmed by the Nazis in Theresienstadt as a vehicle for their propaganda click here.
To go to a very informative site about music and the holocaust where you find biographical sketches of many of the musicians who were prisoners in Theresienstadt, and which also has a lengthy discussion of Brundibar, click here.
To read a post on this blog about a cookbook put together by women in Theresienstadt click here. 
To read a post on this blog about a memoir written by Gonda Redlich, also a prisoner in Theresienstadt, click here.
To read a post on this blog of a memoir written by Petr Ginz, also a prisoner in Theresienstadt, click here.
To read a post on this blog about Madeleine Albright's memoir Prague Winter which has several chapters on Theresienstadt, click here.



People
The girls in room 28, including their leaders in bold print; others are family members not in Room 28 or not in Theresiendstadt
Rita Bohm – cousin of Lily Reich Wertheimer (see below)
Marianne Deutsch
    Peter – son of Marianne
Eva Eckstein – married Hermann Vit
Hana and Herta Eckstein – sisters of Eva
Hana Epstein
Eva Fischl
Leo Flach – married Elisabeth Kober
    Anna Flach (Hanusova-Flachova) - daughter of Leo and Elisabeth; married to Viteslav Hanus
        Tomas Hanus – son of Anna and Viteslav
    Michael Flach – son of Leo and Elisabeth
    Alice Flach – daughter of Leo and Elisabeth
    Irena Flach – daughter of Leo and Elisabeth
    Lizzie Flach – daughter of Leo and Elisabeth
Leopold Frohlich
    Marta Frohlich (Mikul) – daughter of Leopold
    Ruzenka Frohlich – daughter of Leopold
    Zdenka Frohlich – daughter of Leopold
    Jenda Frohlich – son of Leopold
    Jarda Frohlich – son of Leopold
Lilly Gross
Irena Grunfeld
Ruth Gutmann
Eva Heller
Marte Kende
Nathan and Ernestine Klein
    Ilsa Klein – daughter of Nathan and Ernestine; married Nathan Landa
        Eva Landa (Nimarkova) – daughter of Emil and Ilsa
            Viktor Nimark – son of Eva
        Leisl Landa – daughter of Emil and Ilsa; married to Franz Petschau
Hanna Lissau
Olga Lowy
Zdenka Lowy
Lenka Lindt
Ruth Meisl
Helena Mendl
Maria Muhlstein
Hermann Nath – married Elisabeth Kolb
    Vera Nath (Kreiner) – daughter of Hermann and Elisabeth
    Hana Nath – daughter of Hermann and Elisabeth
Eugen Kolb – brother of Elisabeth
Vojtec Polecek
    Bohumila Polacek – daughter of Vojtec
    Jiri Polacek – son of Vojtec
    Hanus and Hanna Lederer – cousins of Bohumil  and Jiri (exact relationship unclear)
Eva Pollak
Karel and Alice Pollak
    Handa Pollak (Drori) – daughter of Karel
Hanicka Pollak – sister of Karel
Sophie Pollak
    Otto Pollak – son of Sophie – married to Frieda
        Helga Pollak (Krinsky) – daughter of Otto and Frieda
    Karl Pollak – son of Sophie; married to Maria
Marta Pollak – daughter of Sophie; married to Fritz
    Josef – son of Marta and Fritz   
    Trude – daughter of Marta and Fritz; married Hermann
        Lea – daughter of Trude and Hermann
Freida Freud – paternal aunt of Otto; exact relationship unclear
Mimi Sander – Otto’s girlfriend
Gustav Deutsch – cousin of Karel
    Walter Deutsch – son of Gustav
Karel Ancerl – cousin of Alice
Ella Pollak
Ruth Popper
Miriam Rosenszweig (Jung)
Ruth Schatchter
Alex Schatchter – Ruth’s brother
Julius and Charlotte Schwartzbart
    Judith Schwartzbart (Rosenzweig)– daughter of Julius and Charlotte
    Ester Schwartzbart – daughter of Julius and Charlotte
    Gideon Schwartzbart – son of Julius and Charlotte
Pavla Seiner
Ruth Shachter
Laura Simko
Alice Sittig
Anton Krauss
    Marketa Altenstein – niece of Anton (exact relationship unclear); married Max Stein
        Ela Stein (Weissberger) – daughter of Marketa and Max
        Ilona Stein – daughter of Marketa and Max
    Otto Altenstein – nephew of Anton; brother of Marketa; married to Anna
    Kamilla Korn – aunt of Ela and Ilona (exact relationship unclear)
Jirinka Steiner
Eva Stern
Doris Stern – sister of Eva
Erika Stranska
Emma Taub
Ella Weiss
Eva Weiss (Gross)
Fritz Wertheimer – married to Lily Reich
    Hanka Wertheimer – daughter of Fritz and Lily; married to Abraham Weingarten
    Miriam Wertheimer – daughter of Fritz and Lily
Adolf and Wilma Rosenblatt
    Edith Rosenblatt – daughter of Adolf and Wilma; married Fritz Winkler
        Eva Winkler (Sohar) – daughter of Fritz and Edith
        Jiri Winkler – son of Fritz and Edith
        Pavel Winkler – son of Fritz and Edith

Others in Theresienstadt
Juliette Aranyi
Heda Aronson-Lindt
Adolf Aussenberg
Jiri Bader
Yehuda Bacon
Karel Berman
Dasa Bloch
Felix Bloch
Bedrich Borges
Hana Brady
Jirka Brady – brother Hana
Jirk Broll
Zdenka Brumlikova
Gustav and Ettel Heller
        Horst Cohn – grandson of Gustav and Ettel
Ottla David-Kafka
Peter Deutsch
Freidl Dicker – married Pavel Brandeis
Kurt Dreschler
Jakob Edelstein
    Arye Edelstein – son of Jakob
Alice Ehrmann
Paul Eppstein
Rosa Englander
Walter Eisinger
Zdenka Fantlov
Anita Fischer (Frankova)
Karl Fischer
Jindrich Flusser
Ota Freudenfeld
    Rudolf – son of Ota
Walter Freund
Anny Frey
Bedrich Fritta (born Fritz Taussig) – married Heini
    Tommy – son of Bedrich and Heini
Karel Frohlich
Norbert Fryd
Renee Gartner-Geiringer
Honza Gelbkopt
Kurt Gerron
Jana Gintz
Petr Ginz
Eva Ginz – sister of Petr
Franta Goldschmidt
Markus Mordechai Groag
        Wilhelm (Willy) Groag – grandson of Markus; married Miriam
            Chava Groag – daughter of Willy and Miriam
    Heinrich Fleischmann – uncle of Willy (exact relationship unclear)
David Grunfeld
Kurt Hacek
Hanus Hachenberg
Eva Herrmann
Alice Herz-Sommer
    Stephan Sommer – son of Alice
Leo Haas
Pavel Haas
Fredy Hirsch
Hans Hofer
Greta Hofmeister (Klingsberg)
Micha Honigwachs
Luzian Horwitz
Yehuda Huppert
Karel Huttner
Leo Jannowitz
Hanus Jochowitz
Bernard Kaff
Ilse Kalinof
Erich Kessler
Peter Kien
Gerty Kersten
Israel Kestenberg
Eliska Klein
Franz Eugen Klein
Gideon Klein
Rudolf Klein
Paul Kling
Paul Kohn
Jiri Kotouc
Else Krasa
Hans Krasa
Harry Kraus
Stepan Krulis
Ilse Landa
Rudolf Laub
Egon Ledec
Wolfi Lederer
Pavel Libensky
Leopold Lowy
Josef Lustig
Franta Maier
Thomas Mandl
Freddy Mark
Licka Mautner
Margit Muhlstein
    Maria Muhlstein – daughter of Margit
    Pint’a Muhlstein – son of Margit
    Eli Muhlstein – son of Margit
Benjamin Murmelstein
Zdenek Ohrenstein
Franta Pick
Marion Podelier
Walter Pollak
Paul Rabinowitsch (took the name Paul Aron Sandfort)
Gonda Redlich
Eva Reiser
Kamilla Rosenbaum
Miriam Rosenzweig
Dita Sachs
Milos Salus
Eva Seger
Rafael Schachter
Vlasta Schonova
Coco Schumann
Resinka Schwarz
Ze’ev Shek
Kurt Singer
Ruth Steiner
Edith Steiner-Kraus
Walter Stern
    Eva Stern – daughter of Walter
Felix Strassman
Oscar Strauss
    Leo Strauss – son of Oscar
Romouald Sussmann
Karel Svenk
Carlo Taube
Honza Treichlinger
Viktor Ullmann
Otto Ungar
Hana Vohryskova
Ilse Weber
Sary Weinstein
Ben-Zion Weiss
Edith Weiss
Fritzek Weiss
Helga Weiss
Magda Weiss
Fritz Winkler
Frantisek Zelenka
Otto Zucker

Others mentioned who were not in Theresienstadt
Adolph Hoffmeister
Ruth Iltis
Seppl Lichtenstein
Suse Pick
Dov Revesz
Zuzanna Ruzickova
Eva Schlachet
Franz Singer
Gita Torbe

Places
Hagibor Athletic Field, Prague-Strasnice, Czechoslovakia
Brno, Czechoslovakia
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Vienna, Austria
Kyjov, Moravia
Olomouc, Moravia
Telc, Moravia
Znojmo, Czechoslovakia
Chrastany, Bohemia
Kocise, Slovakia
Opava, Czechoslovakia
Liberec, Czech Republic
Louny, Szech Republic
Pisek, Bohemia
Olbramovice, Czechoslovakia
Achen, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Sopron, Hungary
Novy Bydzov, Moravia
Bergen-Belsen, Germany
Auschwitz-Birknau, Poland
Kibbutz Hachotrim, Israel

Paper Kisses: A true love story by Reinhard Kaiser translated by Anthea Bell in 2006 (originally published as Konigskinder in Germany in 1996)

"Interweaving excerpts from their letters with information he gathered from relatives, ... [Kaiser's] gem of a story provides readers with a fresh, intimate angle from which to view the devastating effects of Hitler's war on the world." from a review in Publisher's Weekly 3/20/2006

When Reinhard Kaiser looked through a box at a stamp auction in Frankfurt, Germany in 1991, he noticed that some of the stamps were on envelopes still stuffed with letters written between 1935 and 1940, all addressed to the same woman, Ingeborg Magnusson in Stockholm, Sweden. Once Kaiser’s curiosity was piqued, his high bid secured the lot, and after he read the letters which were from 26-year-old Rudolf Kaufmann to the love of his life, he started on a journey to fill in the missing pieces. This short volume is the result of that journey.

Kaiser's quotes from the letters, and his subsequent research and interviews give us a wider context to help us understand the insurmountable obstacles standing in the way of a meaningful future for Ingerborg Magnusson and Rudolf Kaufmann. Kaufmann was a native of Konigsberg, Germany. A geologist with a PhD who had serious research ambitions, he had been unable to find employment in his field in Germany because of his Jewish background even though Kaufmann didn’t consider himself Jewish. His physicist father became an Evangelical Christian and had Rudolf baptized. But Rudolf soon realized that no matter what his stated religion, according to Nazi ideology he was a Jew and was to be treated as a Jew.

We don’t learn why Rudolf’s father converted and became an Evangelical Christian, whether his conversion was heart-felt or was meant to serve as much as it could as an inoculation against the rising Nazi threat. Rudolf Kaufmann never wrote in the many letters of any religious or spiritual feelings but at one point when he first learns that he has secured employment as a teacher at  Preacher [Rabbi] Hirsch’s Jewish boarding school in Coburg, a position which he ends up enjoying very much, he mentions that he does not want to have to become a Jew and he also says that he does not want to give up being an Evangelical Christian.

But as the years pass, we see through his letters that Kaufmann, whose lot has been thrown in with a group he knew little about, became more interested in Jews and Judaism. Once a Protestant German to the core, he now considered migrating to Palestine based on the advice of one his brothers, and with that goal in mind, started to study Hebrew. He wrote to Ingeborg that it upset him that the parents of his students were having to sell their businesses for pennies and he also wrote that many Jews have been very good to him, hiring him, housing him, and looking out for his welfare.

It is hard not to despair when reading the letters. With the benefit of hindsight we can see that Rudolf was an optimist and naive. Ingeborg and Rudolf met in 1935 in Bologna, Italy where he’d gotten a temporary position in his field. But his love for Ingeborg influenced his next choice: He decided to re-settle in Germany, assuming that the worst was over and that in Germany he would be closer to Ingeborg in Stockholm. Rudolf returned to a sobering reality, and as the years passed it was harder and harder to imagine a normal life as husband and wife, certainly not in Germany. And it got harder and harder for him to get out. He wrote that he sent out inquiries and applied for visas and positions in countries all over the world, from Australia to Persia. His siblings who have already fled try from abroad to do what they can. The last letters to Ingeborg are from Lithuania to where he has escaped and where he has managed at last to get a research position from the Soviets in his field. Now he confronted the reality of the effects of the war as it continued to engulf Europe. Over the course of several letters, five years after they had met,  he wrote to tell Ingeborg that at this point they must go their separate ways, stressing that, given his status, a future involving the two of them was doomed.

In the last several pages Reichart takes us through his search to find out as much as he could about Ingeborg and Rudolf, seeking out and interviewing survivors in Sweden, Germany and America. His search, in and of itself, is fascinating and what he discovered certainly illuminates the letters and brings these two lovers to life.

To read an article about the conversion of the prominent German Jewish Mendelssohn family, as a representative example of conversion from Jew to Christian, click here.

People
Walter Kaufmann – married Frieda Kuttner; second marriage to Else Bath
    Albert Kaufmann – son of Walter and Frieda; married Helene
    Hans Kaufmann – son of Walter and Frieda; married to Vera
    Liese Kaufmann – daughter of Walter and Frieda
    Trude Kaufmann – daughter of Walter and Frieda; married to Curt Teichert
    Rudolf Kaufmann –son of Walter and Frieda; married to Ilse
    Raimund Ludgwig Kaufmann – son of Walter and Else

Friends and Acquaintances
Hermann Hirsch
Max and Helene Holzman
    Marie Holzman – daughter of Max and Helene
    Margarete Holzman – daughter of Max and Helene

Places
Kronenberg, Germany
Cologne, Germany
Coburg, Germany
Freiburg, Germany
Copenhagen, Denmark
London, England
Amberg, Germany
Geissen, Germany
Bologna, Italy
Kaunas, Llithuania
Vilnius, Lithuania
Australia

Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust by Rutka Laskier 2008

"More than 60 years after the teenager wrote it, the diary vividly describes the world crumbling around her as she came of age in a Jewish ghetto." from an article by the Associated Press published in the New York Times on 5/5/07

Rutka Laskier, a teenager growing up in Bedzin, Poland during World War II, kept a journal for a very short time - from January 19 to April 24, 1943. At that point her family was forced to move to the ghetto in Kamionka, so she hid her journal under the floor boards and told a Polish friend to retrieve it if she didn’t return. Her friend found it two years later and kept it hidden until 2006. Its tragic brevity mirrors Rutka’s life which ended in Auschwitz to where she was deported in August, 1943. (Note: Though often called a “diary,” the more correct term in English is journal – writing used not just to record dates and events, but to reflect on perceptions, feelings, and daily events.)

In her writing Rutka records events and reflects on her past, her present, and her future. One minute she is full of life and excitement, discussing her friends, both boys and girls, and, like many teenagers everywhere, she critically evaluates her physical appearance. The next minute, with no transition at all, she describes her terror at witnessing beatings and murders. She recalls in vivid detail the horrifying sequence of events that had taken place during the Aktion of August 12, 1942, called the Hakoah after the sports field in the neighboring town of Sosnowiec where the Jews were forced to congregate. Her family, sent to the sports field, managed a reprieve. She also writes about her job working in one of the factories owned by Alfred Rossner who tried to protect his Jewish workers. She is tormented by day-to-day waiting for she knows not what. One minute she’s convinced the war will be over soon. The next, she despairs and expects to die.

This volume of the English translation called Rutka’s Notebook which was co-published by Yad Vashem, includes very interesting short essays. Much attention has been paid to illustrate the journal and the essays with historical photographs both of public scenes and of Rutka and family members.

Rutka’s half-sister, Zahava Laskier Scherz, is the author of two of the supplemental essays. The first one is an introduction in which she describes how she came to learn that her father had had a previous family before he married her mother and that they had been killed in the Holocaust. She then writes about how she came to learn, many years later, that her half-sister Rutka had kept a journal and that it had survived.

In her second essay, called “The Three Lives of Yaacov Laskier,” she describes her father’s early years as a Zionist member of D’ror, an early trip he made to Palestine, and a return to Poland when he became ill. Resettling in Bedzin, he became a banker and was raising a family when the Germans invaded Poland.  She describes how when he was deported with his family to Auschwitz he learned that the Germans were looking for people with experience working with money. He volunteered and was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he became a member of Operation Bernhard, which was set up to make counterfeit money. (Recently Operation Bernhard has been the subject of books and of the Austrian movie, The Counterfeiters.) She then describes his post-war life when he remarried and settled in Israel.

Another essay, written by Menachem Lior, a former Bedzin resident now living in Israel, details the search for Rutka’s surviving family once the the journal was made public. The next essay provides information about Bedzin and the Holocaust, and the last essay discusses journals by other teenagers who wrote about their lives during the Holocaust. The volume also includes an annotated bibliography of a selected list of teenage journals.

To read the memorial (yizkor)  book written to commemorate Bedzin's Jewish community pre-World War II, click here.

People
Family
David Laskier- married to Golda Zisman
    Yehezkel-Yosef – son of David and Golda
    Ester Laskier-Rodel – daughter of David and Golda
        Lily Rodel – daughter of Ester
    Zila Laskier – daughter of David and Golda; married to Josef Abramson
        Lipman Laskier – son of Zila and Josef
    Yisrael Laskier – son of David and Golda; married to Sara Prawer
        Yehoshua Laskier – son of Yisrael and Sara
    Gutsha (Gustawa) Laskier-Rottner – daughter of David and Golda
        Yosef Rottner – son of Gutsha
    Mania Laskier – daughter of David and Golda; married to Yitzhak Zilberscaz
    Emanuel (Moniek) Laskier – son of David and Golda; married to Bronia Oppenheim
        David Laskier – son of Emanuel and Bronia
    Yaacov Laskier – son of David and Golda; married to Dvorah (Dorka) Hampel; 2nd marriage to Hanna Weiner
        Rutka Laskier – daughter of Yaacov and Dvorah; author
        Joachim-Henius Laskier – son of Yaacov and Dvorah
        Zahava Laskier – daughter of Yaacov and Hanna; married Avigdor Scherz
            Yishai and Ruth – children of Zahava and Avigdor

Emanuel Laskier – relative, relationship unclear
Jonathan Laskier – brother of Emanuel; married to Else Lasker-Schuler

    Mordechai Hampel – sister of Dvorah
        Dalia Hampel Mercazi– daughter of Mordechai

Friends and Acquaintances
Natek Aleksandrowicz
Herko Brukner
Paulinka Gold Kleinlehrer
Hanka Granek
Menachem Lior
Luba Prawer
    Genia Prawer – daughter of Luba
Heniek Lewin
Salek Goldzweig
Niania Potocka
Haka Zelinger
Rozka Rechnic
Salek Saper
Heini Wajnsztok
Dasha Rittenberg   

Places
Bedzin, Poland
Kamionka, Poland
Zaglembie, Poland
Auschwitz, Poland
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Germany
Givatayim, Israel
Migdal settlement, Israel
Magdiel, Israel
Rishon LeZion, Israel

Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright

"Too young to have known her relatives beyond the odd childhood memory, Albright pieces together what she can, with letters, family recollections and a few photographs. She embeds these fragments in a well-wrought political history of the region, told with great authority." from a review by Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times 5/13/2012

Margaret Albright, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former Secretary of State, was born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia to Czech Jewish parents who fled to England in 1938 shortly after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. In London her father, a diplomat who spoke many languages, was part of the exiled Czech government until after the war when he returned first to Prague, and then to his post as Czech ambassador in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Shortly after the Soviet army invaded Prague in May, 1945, he and his family returned to Prague and stayed until 1948 at which point they immigrated to the U.S.

Albright tells the story of what happened to her family and her birth country during World War II mostly through research; she was, after all, born in 1937 and was far too young to remember or understand deeply most of what happened. Her description of England’s experience of the war is quite vivid. And she does have specific early memories, such as when she and her family and neighbors huddled in the cellar of their apartment building south of London as German bombs landed with loud explosions. Though she has many memories of having been sent off at the age of 10 to boarding school in Switzerland, it wasn’t until many years later that she realized that her parents sent her to Switzerland to protect her from the difficulties and tension of living in post-war Soviet-occupied Prague.

Albright discusses her Jewish roots at some length. An article detailing the fact that both sets of grandparents were Jewish was published in the Washington Post shortly before she became Secretary of State. Albright stated that she had never been told about her grandparents’ religion but she comes to learn to her horror that aside from her maternal grandfather who died before the war, her three grandparents and other close relatives were all killed by the Nazis. In this memoir she writes about trying to imagine why her parents had converted to Catholicism and she is sorry she had never asked her parents about her grandparents. She also wonders about  how her father's sister Greta and her husband died in the war. They were parents of a first cousin who lived with her family for a time in England and in post-war Prague.  

Because the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt was in Czechoslovakia which was where many of her relatives were imprisoned, Albright made a visit, read extensively about it, and wrote two chapters on its existence. She details its history and describes daily life in the camp, including its rich educational and cultural offerings, quoting from some of the memoirs written by prisoners in the camp. You can sense her outrage in the chapter she devotes to the carefully orchestrated inspection visit by Red Cross officials to the camp which was transformed for the occasion into a seemingly benign place to live, its residents well-fed and content. She is astounded that the Nazis succeeded in “fooling” the outside world for so long.

This memoir is very strong in its narration of the fate of Czechoslovakia. Albright is obviously well versed in the language, conventions, and machinations of diplomacy and tells the story of the rise of Hitler and the German invasion into Czechoslovakia by introducing us to its leaders. She takes us through meetings that sealed Czechoslovakia’s fate in Munich, Yalta, and Paris. She also spends some time discussing the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine and she brings the story of Czechoslovakia up to date with a mention of the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. And she feels some regret that 1993 saw the official demise of Czechoslovakia as a country. One country became two: The Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Albright is well aware that with hindsight it is easy to see how everything went so wrong. Her experience as a diplomat primes her to apply the plot points of history to current world problems – especially genocide, and she discusses the lessons that world leaders should have learned.

This memoir includes photos of public figures and family. It also includes an index.

To read an article that questions Albright's assertion that she didn't know about her Jewish ancestry, click here.
To read an article about the visit by Red Cross officials to inspect Thereseinstadt click here. 
To read a previous post of a review of a memoir whose subject is Thereseinstadt, Petre Ginz 1941-1942, click here. 
To read a previous post of a review of a memoir whose subject is Thereseinstadt, The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich, click here. 
To read a previous post of a review of a cookbook compiled by women in Thereseinstadt that was an earlier blog post, click here.   
 

Family

Author’s father’s family

Arnost Korbel – married to Olga

            Josef Korbel – son of Arnost and Olga; married to Anna (Mandula) Spiegelova

                        Marie Jana (Madeleine) Korbel Albright – daughter of Josef and  Anna; (author)

                                    Anne, Alice, and Katie Albright – daughters of Madeleine

                        Kathy Korbel – daughter of Joseph and Anna

                        John Korbel – son of Joseph and Anna; married to Pamela

            Jan(Horza) Korbel – son of Arnost and Olga; married to Ola

                        Alena and George Korbel – children of Jan and Ola

            Margarethe (Greta) Korbelova – daughter of Arnost and Olga; married to Rudolf Deiml

                        Dasa (Dagmar) and Milena Deimlova – daughters of Margarethe and Rudolf

Irma Korbelova – sister of Arnost; married to Oscar Pater

            Herta Paterova – daughter of Irma and Oscar

Karel Korbel – brother of Arnost

            Gert Korbel – son of Karel

Marta Korbelova – sister of Arnost

                        Pedro Mahler – grandson of oldest sister of Arnost Korbel (sister not named)

Author’s mother’s family

Alfred Spiegel – married Ruzena

            Anna Spiegelova – daughter of Alfred and Ruzena; married to Arnost Korbel (see above)

            Marie Spiegelova – daughter of Alfred and Ruzena

Gustav Spiegel – brother of Alfred; married Augusta

Friends and Acquaintances of the Korbel family

Jaroslav Stransky

Jirina Smolkova – married Vilem Holzer

                        Mica Carmio – granddaughter of Jirina and Vilem

Frantisek Kraus

            Tomas Kraus – son of Frantisek

Places

Kysperk (Letohrad), Czechoslovakia

Podebrady, Czechoslovakia

Strakonice, Czechoslovakia

Prague, Czechoslovakia

London, England

Terezenstadt, Czechoslovakia

Pikwicka Forest, Latvia