Menu
Select Page

RESCUING HOPE

Holocaust Remembrance | Histories

“I feel that it is important for as many people as possible to hear these stories in hope that something like this will never happen again.”​

~ Sam Weinreb, z”l, Holocaust survivor and TBE member 

We’re preserving the history of the Holocaust by recording and sharing the stories of our community members.

Read the stories of Holocaust survivors in our community.

Edith Szmukler Schlesinger

Edith Szmukler Schlesinger

Despite her losses and her wartime experiences, Edith had a tremendous optimism about the world. She lived her final days at Newbridge on the Charles and came to TBE often. We miss her every day.

read more

Zoltan Mathe

On October 17, 1944, a gang of heavily armed youth with an armband of their movement burst into our yellow-starred building and ordered all “dirty stinky Jews” to get down to the courtyard.

read more
Joe Schlesinger

Joe Schlesinger

One evening in fall of 1942 Joe returned to the Ghetto to find his home empty; his entire family had been taken to Treblinka.

read more
Walter and Elsie Kaufmann

Walter and Elsie Kaufmann

Walter and Elsie met in Munich and were married on Christmas Eve 1934. During the mid 1930s, as life for Jews grew increasingly intolerable, they could not imagine the horrors that were yet to come.

read more
Ilse Leeser

Ilse Leeser

Ilse was 10 years old when her father and 2 uncles were arrested, along with 30,000 other specific German Jews of influence and wealth, on Kristallnacht.

read more

Betty Lauer

Betty’s father made it to the US in March 1938. But by October 28, 1938, Betty, her mother, and sister were rounded up and expelled from Germany. They were sent to Poland.

read more
Charles Elbaum

Charles Elbaum

My father was born in Lublin, Poland in 1926. He almost never spoke about the Holocaust. This is what I have been able to put together.

read more
Sidonia Natansohn

Sidonia Natansohn

Sidi was a 15-year-old girl in 1944. That spring, she was among those deported from Hungary to Auschwitz, riding in a packed cattle car to an uncertain destination.

read more
Julian Bussgang

Julian Bussgang

Julian Bussgang was born in Lwow, Poland in 1925. Julian’s family belonged to the “Great Synagogue,” which at the time was considered Progressive.

read more
Israel Gajer

Israel Gajer

Israel (“Izzy”) was the third oldest of seven children (2 girls and 5 boys), born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Dubienka, Poland.

read more
Samuel Natansohn

Samuel Natansohn

Samuel was born into an Orthodox Chasidic family in Poland. He was ten years old when the war broke out, and his family was soon encircled by the German advance.

read more
Malvina Fisch

Malvina Fisch

Malvina was born in Yaroslav, a relatively large town in Eastern Poland. Her parents were store owners, and they lived a comfortable pre-war life.

read more
Hans Laufer

Hans Laufer

Hans Laufer was born in 1929 into a German Jewish family who owned the largest roofing tile/paper production company in Germany at the time.

read more
Eugene Kohan

Eugene Kohan

Eugene was at a youth group outing when the Germans took over control of Hungary, and he was discovered to be a Jew. He soon found himself under Gestapo control.

read more
Eva (Schiff) Wertheimer

Eva (Schiff) Wertheimer

Eva, at age 15, and her siblings were kicked out of school, and then attended a Cheder run by Jewish teachers forced out of their roles in secular education by the Nazi regime.

read more
Gerard Wertheimer

Gerard Wertheimer

By the time Gerard became a young man, the situation in Germany had deteriorated with the ascendancy of the Nazi regime.

read more
Edward H. Rose

Edward H. Rose

Edward H. Rose had a very remarkable life. His family is so proud of him and would like to share his story.

read more

Hersch Altman

Hersch was born in 1931, the only son of a deeply religious, middle class family, with three older sisters. His parents were shopkeepers.

read more
Skip to content