Ruth was sent on the kindertransport to London England in 1939. She
was soon evacuated to the countryside with other children from London.
Their parents Arthur and Marie spent the war in Germany. Arthur
jumped off of a train deporting him to a concentration camp and remained
hidden during the war. Marie, who was not Jewish, worked in a factory.
Irma married an American soldier she met in England and came to the
United States in 1947. She helped her parents and sister to immigrate in
the late 40s.
Holocaust Research Can Have a Bright Side
by Sharon Fahrer
Growing up I would hear occasional references to relatives who had
perished in the Holocaust: an uncle, aunt and cousin, but very few
details were ever discussed. Recently I decided to file Pages of
Testimony at Yad Vashem, the Museum of the Holocaust in Israel. I wrote
and obtained the appropriate forms. It was then that I discovered that
neither my aunt, nor my mother knew the names of their brother's, (my
uncle's) wife or child. He was in a refugee camp, Westerbork, in Holland
when he married so neither sister ever saw his wife or child.
To begin my search I had to find out the names of my missing
relatives and document their fate. Not knowing how to accomplish this I
contacted the Jewish Museum in New York City and asked for advice. They
recommended I contact Miriam Weiner, a specialist in this area. She sent
me information on where to begin my search in Holland.
My Uncle, Kurt Majerowicz, had walked to Holland from his native
Berlin, Germany, in 1938, so at least I had a country. My next contact
was the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam.
They were able to give me the names and dates of birth of my aunt, Rita
Schlachet and cousin, Marie from records of identity cards and
recommended that I contact the Dutch Red Cross for further information.
The information from the latter was much more detailed giving prisoner
numbers, times of deportation etc. It confirmed that my uncle had
perished in Auschwitz, but left no conclusion regarding Rita and Marie
who went from Holland to Theresienstadt and on to Auschwitz.
Around this time 400,000 Soviet-held documents including 70,000
previously unseen death certificates from Auschwitz were released and
the Red Cross expanded their Holocaust victims tracing service. I
promptly obtained the necessary forms and filed them with my local Red
Cross chapter sending along a copy of the information received from the
Dutch Red Cross. Shortly after, an alert worker, (one of 55 volunteers
who translate the forms) in the Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims
Tracing and Information Center in Baltimore, Maryland, discovered that a
Hugo Schlachet in Cleveland, Ohio was looking for information on the
same three people. Our applications were being processed at the center
on the same day! The Red Cross was thrilled with this match and notified
us b0th so that we could learn more about the family we had never met.
Our new friendship was well documented. Besides the pile of
photographs and correspondence that accumulated a videotape of our
reunion was produced for a segment of the ''Real Life with Jane Pauley''
show which was unfortunately never aired. It did, however, allow us the
opportunity to meet. For me, it also gave me better insight about a
close part of my family I never knew. They became ''real'' people as I
heard about their personalities and ambitions. My family had a picture
of Rita that showed her as the beauty she was. To me she looked like a
movie star. Hugo had later pictures that showed how life in a refugee
camp had aged her. Marie, named for my grandmother, looked like an
adorable baby. She died without even knowing why. Envisioning this young
family, Kurt was a carpenter and Rita a hairdresser, made the loss of so
many people in the Holocaust seem even more senseless.
The Schlachet family was from Vienna. There were five children; Hugo
was the oldest. He left home, went to Israel and joined the British
army. His parents and siblings escaped to Holland and ended up in
Westerbork. It was there that my Uncle Kurt, met Rita and they had a
child. The Nazis kept this camp intact hoping to trade the people
interred for Nazi prisoners, but that never materialized. When they
finally shipped everyone out in 1944 people were given a choice of
destinations. Rita and Kurt chose Terisenstadt because it was supposed
to be a model camp. The rest of the Schlachet family decided on Bergen
Belson. They all survived the war.
Hugo found the remainder of his family in Holland and brought them to
Israel. They never knew conclusively what happened to Rita and her
family; hence he contacted the Red Cross when he heard about the tracing
service. (Hugo and one brother moved to the United States in the
1950's.)
Kurt was the oldest of three children whose family lived in Berlin.
His father had tried to escape into Holland, but was not successful.
Miraculously and with great hardship Kurt's parents survived the war in
Germany. His two sisters, one nine and the other nineteen escaped to
England in 1939. The younger sister, Ruth, went on a kinder transport
and the older one, Irma (my mother), sponsored by an aunt, went to
England as a domestic. Irma met and married an American soldier and came
to America. Together they brought the rest of the family, parents and
sister, to New York. My grandparents had heard from the Red Cross that
Kurt had perished and assumed the worst for the rest of his family.
To file Pages of Testimony, however, conclusive evidence was
necessary. A year after my inquiry, the response from Arolson, Germany
arrived. Unfortunately it provided little information we did not already
know. We still have no confirmation on the fate of Rita and Marie, but based on the evidence concerning Kurt, Yad Vashem
is willing to accept their Pages of Testimony. Finally, we can record
the existence of our relatives and insure that they are no longer simply
a number among those who perished in the Holocaust. For me, they now
have an identity.
Footnotes
1. Herengracht 474-1017CA Amsterdam-C Holland. Telefax 020-278208,
telefoon 020-243312.
2. Het Nederlandse Rode Kruis, Hoofdbureau Leeghwaterplein 27,
Postbus 28120-2502 KC Den Haag, Holland. Telefax nr. 070-3846643,
telex 32375
