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Number of pages: 10
Reference number: 1656/3/6/885
Catalogue ID: 105609
Subject: EscapeesGestapoRescue
Summary:

F. was only a schoolgirl when her family made an unsuccessful attempt at emigrating from Frankfurt to France and at settling in Paris. They returned to Berlin in 1935, whereupon the father was taken to Dachau and the mother to Moringen-Soling camp. The girl found a home with an aunt in Mecklenburg, and after 9 months she met her parents at the Czechoslovak frontier, sadly changed by the suffering in the camps. They reached Prague, and the Refugee Committee helped them until the father found employment in his profession as a chemist. N. became a pupil at the Rotter School, and after 2 years’ training obtained well-paid work as a commercial artist.

With the invasion of Czechoslovakia their life was shattered once again. While the synagogues in Prague were burning, the girl married Peter Lewin, a German lawyer. He had a brother in England, and they planned to go there via Poland and to cross the frontier illegally at Maehrisch Ostrau. Their parents preceded them and contacted a man who promised to take them across the frontier, but he turned out to be a Gestapo agent and delivered them into the hands of the Gestapo. The father was beaten until he revealed the whereabouts of the young couple, who were arrested at their hotel. N. spent 8 days in a tiny prison cell together with 27 other women under dreadful conditions. She was then taken to the state prison and reunited with her mother. Every day they were taken in a police van to a villa at the out-skirts of the town and interrogated. Unusually, a middle-aged SS-man, by the name of Schneider, fetched N., and this man was to become her saviour. One day he offered to walk with her to the villa and took her to a friend, where a good meal was waiting. He then told her to watch him in the mirror behind the typewriter in the office, and he would indicate by signs which questions to answer.

In the meantime, the women had discovered that their husbands were at the same prison and even managed to get in touch with them. When Schneider continued his clandestine friendliness, N. implored him to help them escape, but he would only promise to shift their index cards, so that they might be overlooked. However, one night he came to their cell and took them to a lorry, together with two other women, and N.’s father and the husbands of the women joined them. N.’s own husband was missing, something had gone wrong with his index card. Schneider took them to a cemetery outside the town which adjoined the frontier with Poland. He told them to walk straight ahead; on their left were swamps, on their right the Polish police and behind them, the Gestapo who would shoot them on sight. Later, N. heard that Schneider, having helped many more Jews, was shot.

N. and her parents reached Kattowitz and were sheltered by Polish Jews. The town was swarming with Gestapo spies, and there were raids every day. Meanwhile, N.’s husband had been tried at Troppau, discharged and joined his wife in K. On receipt of their English visas, the young couple went to England, via Danzig and Sweden. Their parents were supposed to follow, but they were caught. There was one last message from them from a camp in Kielce/Poland. After a difficult start in England, N.’s husband was interned on the Isle of Man. Later, he joined the Intelligence Service and perished in Luxembourg.

Number of pages: 8
Reference number: 1656/3/8/1127
Catalogue ID: 106293
Subject: ChildrenDeportationsEscapees
Summary:

A report on ill-treatment of the worst kind, atrocities, horrible conditions of life in camps and during transports; mass-murders. Also includes information on the author's deportation from Frankfurt am Main to Minsk where he arrived in 22 November 1941; unbelievably bad conditions; vermin (p.1, 4, 6). The Robert Ley-House (p.1). Wehrmacht and SS (p.1). When a gun was found at the Loot-Commando, left there by Russian workmen, every seventh of the Jewish detainees was shot including a former reserve officer who held both Iron Crosses.

High death-rate because of starvation (p.2, 6, 8) and mass-murder (p.2-5). Unteroffizier Peter Greven late of Cologne, saved the lives of five men of the Heeresbaudienst Stelle on occasion of the massacre of 60 internees. In July 1942, 8,000 Jews were murdered during one Aktion (p.2). Heeresverpflecmagazin: Oberzahlmeister Heinrich (p.2-3) ordered the Yellow Star not to be worn in the Office, his successor did not object, but Oberscharführer Rübe (on 13 March 1943) had the 12 girls and 4 women of the Office led to the cemetery by sixteen Russians to be shot there, including the author's twenty-year-old daughter, his only child. On 26 May 1943, Gestapo-men shot dead every living being at the sick-bay, patients, nurses, children and visitors alike. On this occasion, the author lost his wife who had fallen ill when she learned of her young daughter's fate.

In September 1943, all bachelors and girls were taken to the SS-labour camp in Minsk; the married people and children were never heard of again. In vans said to be transporting 120 men each to the labour-places, the passengers were being killed by burnt gas (p.3).

The author was transferred to the Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke in Budztn, Poland (p.3-4). Ill-treatment by the German foremen; wretched conditions of life; vermin and epidemics (p.4). Loudspeakers recording music during the mass-murder of twenty thousand Jews, on 23 November 1943 (p.4). At Heinkels’ at Milec, a Hauptwachtmeister, late of a police-station at Frankfurt am Main, shot the Baracken-Älteste Zimmermann, because he found the place not clean enough; he was also responsible for cruel punishments and atrocities.

In July 1944, the author was transported to Welicka and in September was sent on a horrible transport to Mauthausen (p.4-6) which turned out to be worse than any of the dreadful places before. Doing incredibly heavy work in the quarry, rushed and beaten up constantly. Mass-murders. After three months, he was transported to the Hermann-Goring Works at the Camp of Linz of about two thousand men. Cruel ill-treatment. Public execution of three Russians who had tried to escape. Air-raid; a bomb killing 110 detainees at Block 13 (p.5). Starvation (p.6); frost; vermin. On 5 May 1945, the author was liberated by the Americans. The Spanish Legion. The Hermann-Goring-Lazarett (p.6).

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