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Number of pages: 14
Reference number: 1656/3/4/1110
Catalogue ID: 105380
Subject: EscapeesDenunciationsHealth
Summary:

The authoress, née Lasocka, was the wife of the well-to-do manufacturer Paul Rosenfeld in Lodz (p.1-3, 12). He was arrested at the very beginning of the War, and she never saw him again. The Germans forced her to deliver to them all valuables she had deposited in a safe at her bank. Two days after the Germans had looted and ill-treated her mother, she died of her wounds (p.1).

A Jewish informer called Strassberg lured the authoress to Warsaw; making believe that he would help her husband, he got more and more money out of her (p.2-3).

The report describes life in the Ghetto (p.3-4). The helpful Christian maid (p.1, 3-5, 8, 11). Every morning, there were lying in the streets hundreds of bodies, either slain by the Germans or victims of the starvation. Escape (p.4).

Illegal life; everything was especially difficult and expensive because of the author's little daughter. An illegal group at the “Polish hotel” (Jewish agents among them) said to procure foreign documents for emigration. The price was enormous, about £1000 nonetheless she paid for her brother-in-law and his son but they were not heard of anymore (p.5).

Moving from one Polish family to the other, always paying highly for most unpleasant conditions, every moment in danger of being discovered. Arrested by police, escape after paying ransom twice (p.5-6).

The Polish riot, 1944 (p.8). The authoress with her child and her mother-in-law (who has been with her nearly all the time until her death in London) had to flee from the Germans. Non-Jews helping Jews: a railway-officer helped them to escape from the moving train near Ursus; another one put them up, his daughter and a girl in the street bore witness, in order to get a necessary document from a kindly clergyman (p.10). When finally every stranger had to leave, the authoress won the assistance of a high German officer (who did not recognise them to be Jews); he put a van and three Germans in uniform at her disposal to take them to a place near Lowicz, where her former maid was living. Because of this escort who insisted that the Mayor procured lodgings for them, too, they had to take to flight again, when the Russians approached. They went back to Lodz and their old flat.

In July 1946 they came to London after getting the necessary documents through an American relative who had learned from the radio, that they had survived. While they were waiting for the relative's arrival in London, the authoress became engaged to her present husband and decided to stay in England for good.

Number of pages: 40
Reference number: 1656/3/8/382
Catalogue ID: 105791
Subject: ChildrenKindertransportLublin-Majdanek (concentration and ex...
Summary:

This is a remarkable story told by an outstanding personality who seems to combine courage, intelligence and the gift of leadership to an unusual degree.

Mr Weichselbaum emigrated from Frankfurt am Main to Belgium towards the end of 1938; he was then 16 years of age. After considerable difficulties, he made his way via Dunkirk, Antwerp and Lille to Paris. He passed the final school examinations and, furnished with false identity papers, began to study medicine. Discovered, he fled to the south of France. At Limoges he founded a youth organisation which sent food parcels to Jewish concentration camp inmates; he also made contact with the Resistance. In August 1942, on the point of being arrested, he managed to escape together with all the fourteen young people under his care. At Lyon he worked for the Resistance, getting Jewish children across to Switzerland. (p.1-5). Again he was compelled to flee, became a 'Rabbi for young people' in the Jewish Resistance in the south of France, and joined the French Maquis (p.6).

When after the Italian capitulation the Germans began to occupy the whole of France, Weichselbaum, in the uniform of a French Army Captain, succeeded to obtain six lorries at the Italian Headquarters at Abbeville; these lorries were used as transport for escaping Jews (p.7).

Weichselbaum became a leader of the Maquis. In the disguise of a French Volunteer for the Waffen-SS, he managed to save 9 Jews from arrest, when the SS ordered the arrest of all Jews (p.10).

In September 1943 Weichselbaum was arrested by the Germans and after heavy torture confessed to being a Jew (p.11). He was deported to Birkenau concentration camp, where he was again maltreated. He then worked as a railway worker near Krakow, was then taken to Majdanek concentration camp, where the new arrivals were sadistically exposed to the winter frost, and when he returned to Birkenau he saw his mother, father and two sisters being dispatched for the gas chambers (p.12).

Between periods of extreme hunger there were short periods during which Weichselbaum, at the danger of his life, took part in the black market in foodstuff. He was able to provide his third sister with some food shortly before she, too, was gassed (p.17).

When about 15 coaches with children under 7 years arrived, SS-men killed the children in a horrible manner and afterwards shot the prisoners who had watched the scene (p.19). Another time Weichselbaum observed SS-men first raping, then shooting women and children (p.23).

Weichselbaum became a male nurse, and in the absence of the doctor had to operate on boils. When the paper dressing did not stay quite clean, the patients were beaten on their wounds (p.24)

In April 1944 Weichselbaum together with 20 other male nurses was taken to the concentration camp at Tannhausen near Waldenburg in Silesia. He contracted pneumonia, but had to continue work without being cured (p.27). In January 1945 the Death March, i.e. the flight from the approaching Russian armies commenced; after three weeks only 40 out of 400 prisoners survived. On 9 May the commandant and the SS left the camp and the Russians took over (p.30).

Weichselbaum remained in order to look after the burial of the dead and the necessary medical care for the many sick.

Number of pages: 10
Reference number: 1656/3/8/441
Catalogue ID: 105806
Subject: CrematoriumsHealthEscapees
Summary:

The personal report of a young girl who was deported from Stettin to Poland. Stating many details she describes the unbelievable sufferings she has witnessed and gone through herself in twelve camps. Before crematoriums were built, people were suffocated in disinfecting stoves (p.2). “Aktion”: the shooting of 29,650 Jewish men and women at Majdanek from 6am to 9pm, on 30 November 1943 (p.4). 100,000 people were marched to Gross-Rosen through the cold of January 1945 for eight days; the way was shown through thousands of corpses lying on both sides on the road; no food; then they continued the journey by train for another week without food; finally, there were fifty dead in each wagon. And for the next fortnight they had to live under circumstances which made the women kill each other (p.5-6). Typhoid fever (p.5-6).

Together with six boys and three girls, the author succeeded to rescue fifty sick internees from being burnt by the Nazis at the approach of the Americans. Three cyclists pretending to belong to the American Red Cross, followed by others with machine guns (p.7-8); definitive escape. youth transport to Switzerland.

Number of pages: 10
Reference number: 1656/3/8/1077
Catalogue ID: 106273
Subject: AntisemitismChildrenJudenrat
Summary:

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.

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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