Survival in WWII, 1933–1944 · Alfred Moritz (alias Mauricet)

nce the Nazis were in power, most of the members of our
mother's family—the Kaufmanns of Gindorf near Cologne—were unable to leave Germany, having nowhere to go.

Our grandmother, Sara Baruch Kaufmann, widow of Lazarus (Eliezer Kalonymos), aged 85, was deported to what the Nazis called a "family camp," Terezin in Czechoslovakia. It was, in fact, a holding station for the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

The "Muzeum Ghetta" in Terezin indicates that grandmother Sara Kaufmann died there on 3.16.1944 and that her body was cremated on 3.20.1944.

Her unmarried daughter, our aunt Emma, aged 59, had been deported to Riga on 12.6.1941 and, of course, did not survive. Oma's first grandson, Leo Baldeschwiler, aged 23, also did not survive.