A personal report by Heinz Landwirth, formerly from Vienna, who came with a children's transport to Holland in December 1938. He stayed first in a Children's Home, later with families. In 1941 he made Youth Aliyah to the Hachscharah-Farm Gouda. In 1942 the persecution of Jews became more and more threatening. This report includes details of an escape of a group of 25 young Zionists to Israel through Spain!. Amsterdam assumed an aspect of decay, inhibition and terror. Final razzia, including all Jews, on 20 June 1943. Mr Landwirth, meanwhile was 16-years-old, and went underground using false documents supplied by Hechaluz (Kurt Reilinger Gideon Drach) working as a farm hand with Jan Kuperus. In 1943 - via Belgium - he became known as the ‘Dutch’ boatsman John Gerrit Overbeck on one of the German Rhine barges.

Personal report. When the author was about ten years old, the family would be blackmailed by an SA-man, so that they moved into another district to escape from him. In the Margareten-Lyzeum, Ifflandstrasse, attended by 14 Jewish girls, the atmosphere was so antisemitic, that she left the school after some months. She attended a Jewish school until October 1937, and as she hoped to emigrate, went in for dressmaking. Compulsory work: Moeller, Children's Coats, Schützenstrasse (p.2). With the Fabrikaktion, her parents were deported to Auschwitz; on the way, her mother threw a postcard out of the wagon, which was sent to Berlin in an envelope with the words added: “Eine Frau, die noch menschlich denkt”. There came no further sign of life from them; but her brother, an electrician, survived the camp (p.3).

In February 1943, the author went into hiding; she lived with Turkish Jews whose daughter was her friend. Through a Jewish informer, Rechtsanwalt Jacob, they were found out; during the house-search, the Jewish informer Behrend fell in love with the author which circumstance she utilised to escape from the Gestapo as well as from him. Through her customer Lola Alexander she found refuge in the family Daene's house at Conradshöhe, where Miss Alexander and other Jews already lived illegally, in August 1943 (p.3-5). She started to manage the Dänes’ lending library in Moabit and would meet her friend on their way home at the S-Bahn Station Gesundbrunnen, every night. There, on 8 August 1944, she suddenly felt her arm grasped by the informer Behrend. She threw herself under an incoming train and was rescued with her foot smashed (p.6). She lay in the Jewish Hospital dangerously ill, for many months; Dr. Lustig rescued her from being sent to Auschwitz through a very long treatment instead of an amputation (p.7-8). Fever and starvation; living in the cellar. When all patients were released, on 29 April, she was too weak to leave, weighing 31kg, and had to stay on until 30 June 1945, then protected and assisted efficiently by the Russians.

The author was interviewed by Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler in Berlin.

He reports on antisemitismin a Berlin school in 1933. Forced labour for boys under sixteen: sixty hours a week for about 25 Pfennig an hour. In order to avoid impending deportation to Poland, at the end of 1942 (p.1,4), he went to live with a “Mischling” (p.1-3), now his brother-in-law, who was already hiding his father and sister as well.

Non-Jews helping Jews, among them Dr. George Grosscurth, Robert Koch-Krankenhaus, who was later executed for his work with a Resistance Group, liquidated, in the Autumn 1943 (p.2,4). Frightened, the three illegal guests left their hiding place which was bombed out, soon afterwards. Bombenscheine (p.2, 4). The author's sister went with her fiancé into hiding at Vienna, the other two found a little room in Karow near Bernau (p.2-3) under false pretenses and through a forged document. Arrested by the Wehrmacht, the author and his father were taken to the Jewish Sammellager Schulstrasse; ill-treatment through Gestapo (p.3-5). Deportation via Auschwitz to Sachsenhausen (p.3). In February 1945, the author was separated from his father and never saw him again. Transports to Neubrandenburg, Ravensbruck, a small camp near Ludwigslust (p.3-4). Rote Kapelle resistance group (p.4). Volksdeutsche SS (p.3-4).

Mrs Pirani, née Doubleday was a musical prodigy, who as a small child gave concerts in her native Australia. At the age of 12 she went to Vienna, where she studied under Prof. Arnold Rosé. Later, she married the Jewish music teacher Max Pirani and settled with him in London.

When the Nazi occupied Vienna, Mrs Pirani made strenuous efforts to help her Jewish friends and to make their emigration possible; amongst them were Prof. Rosé and his family, the radio specialist Prof. Gottwald Schwarz, and the architect Fritz Rosenbaum. Prof. Rosé’s daughter, also a musician, went to Holland. When the Nazis invaded the country, she escaped to France and was for a time sheltered by the French Resistance. Later, she was caught by the Nazis and deported to Auschwitz, where she died.

The author worked at the Belgian Ministry of Labour as a welfare officer. At the beginning of the year 1943, she joined theC.D.J. (Comité de défense des Juifs), in order to hide and help Jewish children. She describes the various departments and tasks of this organization (p.1) and how the work was done in the children’s group, to which she belonged; some examples of the complicated rescue work (p.2, 5-7). Reports on the extreme difficulties which had to be overcome, in order to return a small child to his mother, after the baby’s name had to be changed twice, his mother had been known to be dead for years and the foster parents wanted to keep the child (p.3-5).

Some people at Brussels were still afraid of the “Fünfte Kolonne“ when the occupation was over (p.4). Help from Catholic nuns, Avenue Clémenceau; deportation and imprisonment for other non-Jews helping Jews; Mr and Mrs Ovart, and their daughter who had hidden Jewish children and adults, pensionnat Gaty de Gamont (p.6). The author arrested twice could get away (p.6). Help from a police-officer; the Chief of the food office at Brussels generously helped out with ration cards (p.6-7).

Repeatedly they succeeded to rescue the children under the nose of the Gestapo during the raids, whilst the parents were arrested (p.7).

A report by Mrs Sussman, an Austrian Jewess, who had been living in Paris with her husband, an artist, since 1937. After the outbreak of war both were interned. They were not supplied with gas masks by the French as they also considered Austrian Jews as their enemies. When the Germans approached Paris the Sussman's marched together with about 2 millions French people into the so called “Free Zone”.

In 1942 Mr and Mrs Sussman decided to return behind the demarcation line in order to work against the Germans (Resistance). Seven times their identity papers had to be changed but in the end they were handed over to the Germans by the “Special Brigade” collaborating with the latter. Mr and Mrs Sussman were taken to the military prison at Fresnes. For two months Mrs Sussman was there in solitary confinement in her sixth month of pregnancy, but excluded from the care of the Red Cross. Thereafter she came to the reception camp Drancy.

In 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nightmare transport in cattle trucks with a notice board: “8 Horses or 40 Persons” but they were about 120 in each. Mrs Sussman describes her arrival at Auschwitz and the already well-known conditions there.

All pregnant women were ordered to register ”in order to obtain a daily supply of 1/4 pint of milk”. Mrs Sussman was warned by a Polish doctor not to do so and thereupon she warned also the other pregnant women. But when almost starved one of them did register. For 3 days she received the milk whereupon the other women - with the exception of Mrs Sussman - registered too. They were all called for and never seen again. When Mrs Sussman, as a punishment, had to carry a very heavy sewing machine without help she gave premature birth to her child, a little boy, in a corner of a hut, covered with filthy rugs infected with Dysentery Bacilli. She screamed only once but this brought Dr. Mengele to her block who took the child from her and threw it in the open fire. Then a Polish doctor took her - at her own risk - to the hospital hut.

In Auschwitz Mrs Sussman became a kind of philosopher. She did not expect her co-prisoners there to behave like human beings anymore and even did not blame the nurses who stole the sick rations of their patients. On the other hand she speaks with the greatest admiration of the exceptions, the few heroic people who risked their lives in order to save others. Her fellow prisoners were women from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Austria, and Soviet Russia. She observed that none of them spoke of a future, they were all deeply concerned with the past.

After 3 months in Auschwitz, Mrs Sussman was transferred to the concentration camp Kratzau near Reichenberg-Zittau, affiliated to the Gross-Rosen camp.

Addendum :

     1) On her and her husband's Illegal Work in France : They produced and distributed illegal literature.

     2) On her pregnancy at Auschwitz : It was not conspicuous as almost every woman, because of malnutrition, had a swollen stomach.

     3) On sabotage in an SS armament factory in Kratzau : She pretended to be a good technician and succeeded, together with a Hungarian girl, in damaging the precision, mashine to such an extent that it did not work any more.

     4) On her husband's survival : He was already selected for the gas chambers when a SS-officer called for someone able to design Christmas cards and when he said he could was given back to life.

This report deals with a little-known extermination camp, the “Jugendlager Uckermark”. In January 1945 the authoress, Mrs Breinin of Vienna, who spent a year at Auschwitz-Birkenau had to join the death march of thousands of women to Gross-Rosen, from where they were transported in cattle trucks to Ravensbruck. She was then sent as “Lagerlaeuferin” to the so-called “youth” camp Uckermark. It turned out that this youth-camp was an extermination camp, especially for old, sick and weak women, were still, in the middle of February 1945, about 6,000 people were either gassed or poisoned, also healthy women, women of many different nationalities and of all ages.

After the German occupation of Lodz in September 1939, anti-Jewish measures started immediately. Author lived with her mother and brother and sister; they were driven from their home in January 1940 and taken to Krakow. Hoping to save their possessions, author walked back to Lodz, but found everything seized by the Germans. She found a miserable, small room and was joined by her family in March 1940. When the Lodz Ghetto was set up in May, Lasmann's could remain in this room, as it was within the ghetto boundaries. Food became very scarce, as only those registered for labour had ration cards. The morale was extremely bad. The SS undertook frequent Aktionen, and author's mother had a narrow escape. Her brother was captured, but author succeeded in getting him released. Being trained as a secretary, she found work in the food office, but in addition she had to do hard, manual labour.

She joined the Resistance movement, and her office work enabled her to translate and type radio messages for distribution. Due to famine and overcrowding epidemics broke out. The sister was taken to the hospital and author, disguised, as a nurse, tried to save her from extermination, but all the patients had already been taken away. At the request of the SS., Jewish militia men had to select people for extermination. The victims were thrown into ditches and killed with quick lime. Sonderkommandos of the militia had to round-up children and hand them to the SS. for killing. Author reports the case of Mrs Leon Naymann who had hidden her two children and had to decide whether to save her husband who was taken as a hostage or surrender one of the children. She sacrificed the child, but the whole family perished later. At the end of 1944 Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. Its survivors, author and her family among them, were taken to Auschwitz. During the selection of the young and fit on arrival, a Jewish prisoner, attracted by the author's personality, saved her mother from death.

The women were then driven into a bathhouse, stripped, shaved and given dreadful rags for clothing. They were housed in horse stables, five to a bunk. The man, who had taken a liking to the author, continued his importunities until he was caught trying to enter the women's camp C and killed. In 1944 the author's mother died from Starvation. Later on, 200 girls were taken to work in an ammunition plant in Oederan near Chemnitz. Although the conditions were better, work was hard. The author tried to sabotage their work but was warned by an overseer who disclosed his anti-Nazi feelings to her. At the end of April 1945, with battle noise approaching, the factory was evacuated. 500 women under SS guard had to march for 2 days and travel for 8 days in coal lorries without food and water, until they arrived at Theresienstadt, already taken over by the Swiss Red Cross.

After the liberation, the author returned to Lodz. Here she learned that her brother, having been liberated from Auschwitz, died from over-eating. Another brother who had escaped before the Germans entered Lodz and joined the Polish Army under General Anders was in Italy and helped her to emigrate to Australia. She arrived there in 1948 and later married Paul Konewka.

The authoress was the only child of a well-off manufacturer in Vienna. In 1935 under the influence of the political situation, he moved with his family to Krakow, where he owned another factory. They lived in a most comfortable flat and the daughter studied philology, German and English. She reports here on the situation in Poland of the Jews, after the German army had occupied Poland.

In 1940 they were in Cracow (p.1, 3), in 1941 the Czknstochow Ghetto. This report includes details on Gestapo-chief Degenhard, the deportation to Treblinka of the older people (p.2), forced labour and ill-treatment for the remaining thousand by German SS, Ukrainians and Latvians (p.2-3). The authoress escaped together with her husband to “Nutzjuden” working outside the Ghetto, from there to Warsaw. Details forged documents and a job with the German “Ost Energie A.G.“. After several months of living with the family of a Polish army-officer (belonging, then unknown to them, to the Resistance Movement), everybody living in and arriving at the house was arrested and put in irons (p.4). Then, the men were taken to prison (Montelupe) and later back to the Ghetto, where the intellectuals were shot. The authoress whose husband was a doctor, never saw him again (p.4-5).

The women had to spend two months at Helclow after which all prisoners were transported to Auschwitz. Non-Jews helping Jews: an SS-official, like the authoress a grammar-school mistress, and a lady-doctor, interned as a Resistance-member, helped her to get a job with the Commando “Bauleitung“, where she worked for two years for the Chief, Sturmbannführer Bischof who proved to be human and helpful (p.6); their ‘Model Block’shown to Swedish Control Commission, in 1944; another model block was the ‘Experimental Block’ with lady-doctor Brewda, now London, and Dr. Fleck, his wife and child - the only child at Auschwitz - who returned back to Paris (p.6).

On 17 January 1945 she was evacuated and sent on a two-week death march to the Jiell of Ravensbrück. In February, she was transferred to nearby Malchow labour camp. Liberated on 9 April 1945 (p.6), the march back to Poland.

Since 1946 the author has been working with the Polish embassy in London. She has remarried and had a child; when she was called back to Poland; she left her job and stayed in England.

The author, a Catholic journalist in Prague, was correspondent of the Berlin Film-Kurier, editor of Prager Montagsbeatt and-under the pen name “Christianus” author of Die Totengraber des Sudetendeutschen Katholizismus. After the Anschluss he helped Austrian refugees and worked at the St. Raphaelsverein. When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, he fled with wife and child to Holland. He remarks bitterly about the bureaucratic attitude of the police who took him to a camp near Rotterdam and about the lack of understanding on the part of the camp administration in Sluis. Dr. Glaser's wife obtained a domestic post in England and took the child with her. Dr. Glaser became liaison man between the Czech National Committee in Paris and influential persons in occupied Czechoslovakia.

After Holland was invaded, Dr. Glaser fled to Belgium and was interned in Lombardzyde. Later, he lived in Middlekerke but was arrested by the Germans and after interrogations in Ghent and Allost, he was kept for weeks at the citadel of Huy under “catastrophic” conditions. After his release a fellow prisoner sent him to the monastery in Chevetogme whose prior found him a place in a refugee hostel in Brussels. Here, he earned his living by selling pictures of saints, published by the monastery. On the recommendation of the Abbe Augustin Van Roey Dr. Glaser got a room in an old men’s home in Ixelles in the winter 1940 - 1941, and was brought in contact with the Belgian resistance.

In August 1941 the Gestapo found out about Dr. Glaser’s earlier activities, and he had to report regularly at their offices in Avenue Louise. When the anti-Jewish laws were inforced, Dr. Glaser became a teacher at a Jewish school. In June 1942 he was given to understand at the Gestapo office, that it was advisable for him to disappear. With the help of Abbe Van Roey and the Resistance he reached Switzerland. He was interned at Neuenburg fortress, and during an interrogation in Berne he learned, that Dr. Jaromir Kopecky was helping Czech refugees. Dr. Glaser became Dr. Kopecky’s assistant in Geneva and tried to reach England via Spain in order to fill the post with the exiled Czech Government

Dr. Kopecky had obtained for him. But he was unsuccessful, and after his return to Switzerland he was sent to a labour camp in Mezzovico near Lugano. Upon intervention of “Caritas”, he later became secretary at the camps of Filisur and Inntertkirchen. In October 1943 he was released, and after a short period as civilian internee in Fribourg, he resumed his work for Dr. Kopecky. In March 1945 Dr. Kopecky’s office became the Embassy of the Czech Exile Goverment and was transferred to Berne, and in July Dr. Glaser was officially appointed Press Attaché. A little later he was reunited with wife and child.