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"Empty streets, open windows, flowing curtains blowing with the wind. No people." | |||
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Chaia Gurvitz Born 1876 Lithuania 
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From a Jewish family, Chaia lived outside Kovno, a city with a large Jewish population that was renowned for its Hebrew school system. Chaia ran a grocery store with her husband, a retired shoemaker, and their daughter Yenta.
1933-39: I'm expecting my daughter Feiga, her husband, Josef, and our grandson, Abraham, for dinner. Feiga works so hard all week in her beauty shop, I'm glad I can help out by preparing the big Sunday meal. I've baked a special cake for Abe. I hope the family get-together isn't marred by talk of politics. There's been so much disturbing news on the radio about what's happening to Jews in Germany now that the Nazis are in power. 1940-44: The Germans have occupied Kovno. They've forced all the Jews to wear the Star of David and to relocate to a fenced-in ghetto. Every day the guards take people away, never to return. This morning--a cold, drizzly autumn day--everyone in the ghetto has to report to Democracy Plaza for an inspection. We have to comply or risk being killed. Where will they take us? What will happen to us? We march to the Plaza over streets lightly dusted with snow--Yenta and I, and Feiga, Josef, and Abe. On October 28, 1941, Chaia was taken with 10,000 other Jews to the Ninth Fort, outside Kovno. There they were killed by Lithuanian guards acting under Nazi orders. |
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Kathe Ert Reichstein Born 1882 Hanover, Germany 
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Kaethe was the fifth of nine children born to Jewish parents. After graduating from secondary school, Kaethe worked with her father in his bakery. In 1918 she married Samson Reichstein, and the couple settled in Hanover, where Samson was based as a salesman. Their son Herbert was born in 1920. As his wife, Kaethe was officially required to take on her husband's citizenship.
1933-39: In 1938 Kaethe and her husband succeeded in obtaining an exit visa for the United States for their 18-year-old son Herbert as part of the U.S. immigration quota for Poland. Herbert sailed to America in October. Later that same year, Kaethe and Samson were expelled "home" to Poland with 1,000 other Polish Jews from Hanover. The Reichsteins made their way to Samson's hometown of Tarnopol. 1940-44: Three months after the Germans overran the Soviets in Tarnopol in June 1941, the Germans established a ghetto. At 4:30 a.m. on August 31, 1942, Kaethe and Samson were awakened by screaming outside. People in the ghetto were being rounded up and herded into a public square. Samson pleaded with Kaethe to run with him to hide in a bunker, but she refused, more terrified of what would happen if she hid and were discovered. She decided to remain alone in the house. Ten minutes later, she was rounded up. Kaethe Reichstein was deported to the Belzec extermination camp in Poland. She perished there in September 1942. |
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Cecilie Klein-Pollack Born 1925 Korosmezo, Czechoslovakia 
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They told us the day before that we can pack one small suitcase and we should be ready to leave the ghetto. When we came to the, it was a, um, at one time a factory for, um, bricks, and there they started to search us again. The SS was there also, and every woman had to, and every girl had to undress, naked, and we were searched internally for valuables. My mother was a very religious person, and all I could think of was how terrible this is for my mother to go through something such, such a terrible ordeal. When we were finished my mother took the baby from my sister, she, because she was holding the little boy, Danny, and she had a bottle of milk for the child. And the SS grabbed the bottle of milk and said, "Let's see, you cow, what you have there." My mother pleaded, "Please, this is, the child needs the milk. Please don't take the milk from, from my grandson." He started to beat her with a horsewhip, and when I saw that she was being beaten, so I screamed, so at least I got away the attention from my mother. So my mother ran into the, because the trains were, were right there, we were just, you know, going into those, uh, cattle trains. So I took away the attention from my mother, and he started to beat me with that whip and finally, um, I was able to run away also, and we were finally in the cattle train. | ||
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Blanka Rothschild Born 1922 Lodz, Poland 
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When we walked through the ghetto to work after the entire ghetto was empty, it was a very weird feeling. Empty streets, open windows, flowing curtains blowing with the wind. No people. Once we thought that we saw a glimmer of somebody in the window, or a candle or something and, of course, we averted our eyes not to give away to the German escorts that somebody was there. In November of 1944 came our time, we had to be taken out. The entire population of our hospital was walked to the place where the cattle cars were, and we were loaded. It was a horrible thing because people had to stand. There was no place to sit or squat. If somebody was sick or even dying, he died on his feet standing up. It was just unbearable. Water was the worst...the lack of water, the thirst was the worst. | ||
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Fritz Alexander Rosenberg Born 1881 Goettingen, Germany 
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Fritz was one of three sons born to a Jewish family in the university city of Goettingen, where the Rosenbergs had lived since the 1600s. His father owned a linen factory. Fritz worked as a salesman there, and later he and his brothers inherited the business. In 1913 Fritz married Else Herz. By the early 1920s they had two sons and a daughter.
1933-39: In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. A year later the Rosenbergs' factory was seized and three Nazis came to the family's home. An officer set a gun on the table and informed Fritz that if they didn't leave in a week they and their furniture would be thrown out the window. Within a month the family moved to Hamburg. Supported by Fritz's uncle, the family remained in Hamburg until the war broke out in autumn 1939. 1940-43: In November 1941 Fritz and his family were deported to the Minsk ghetto in the USSR along with 1,000 other Jews from Hamburg. Herded by SS guards to a red brick building on arrival, the family saw bodies scattered over the ground. Before the Hamburg transport could be lodged, corpses had to be dragged from the building, and blood scrubbed from the walls. Half-eaten food was still on the tables. The prisoners there said that thousands of Soviet Jews had been killed to make room for the new transports. The Minsk ghetto was liquidated in October 1943. Fritz was not heard from again. His son Heinz was deported in September and was the only one in his family to survive the war. |
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