User Comments:
L.H. was transfered as following:
August 1944-To Auschwitz;and couple of days later to-Bomnitz near Hannover (forced labor).
November 1944-To Bergen-Belsen;
December 1944-To Elsnik forced labor in weapon factory;
April 1945-Toward Oranienburg,and in April 4th 1945 was liberated in Sedin near Berlin.
Approver Comments:
Mr. Porat,
Thank you for sharing with us your personal knowledge of your mother's history.
A quick survey of our digitized archival holdings confirms much of what you have shared (though the records indicate about a month's difference in some cases between your mother's recollection and the German records).
From the research of Andrzej Strzelecki, compiled in "The Deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their
Extermination," we know that in late August approximately 150 Jewish women from Lodz were routed through Auschwitz to be employed by the SS as forced laborers at the Bomlitz sub-camp. In mid-October 1944, SS authorities closed Bomlitz and transferred the surviving women back to the main Bergen-Belsen camp.
Records from Buchenwald indicate that your mother, a Polish Jew born January 29, 1926, was transferred October 19, 1944 from Bergen Belsen to Buchenwald, where she was assigned prisoner number 30315 (The number 38480 is crossed out on several forms; I don't know whether that might have been her number at Bergen-Belsen, or if it had a different meaning). Then, on November 1, 1944, your mother was sent to Elsnig/Elbe.
Strzelecki notes that in October 1944, the SS transferred more than 250 Lodz ghetto Jews to Buchenwald-Elsnig, where they were forced to work in an explosives factory. Of course, you indicate that your mother remembers it as being December, and the camp records say it was November 1st. However, Strzelecki goes on to write that despite starvation rations, 12-hour work shifts, and brutal treatment by guards, some prisoners reported conditions as being better than at Auschwitz. In April 1945, the SS evacuated the camp in a train carrying explosives and bound for Berlin. Near Potsdam, Allied planes bombed the transport, killing many of the prisoners. The Germans hunted down and murdered most of those who managed to escape the inferno. Few prisoners survived. Do you know if your mother was on this train? Did she ever talk about it?
Again, thank you so much for sharing your personal knowledge with the researchers on this site!
