Jeannette Hammer Kaufmann memoir

Copyright Holder: Madelyn Levy Consists of a photocopy of a memoir, 20 pages, written soon after the end of the war by Jeannette Hammer Kaufmann, originally of Vienna, Austria. Married with two sons prior the war, she describes life after the Anschluss, their attempts to emigrate and being sent to the Opole ghetto in 1941. The family was able to escape from Opole to join Jeannette's parents in the Kunów ghetto. The family then moved to Bodzechów, where Jeannette's husband found a job as a chauffeur at a labor camp; Jeannette describes witnessing the liquidation of Kunów as they were leaving the ghetto and the residents were being deported to Treblinka. She describes the conditions in Bodzechów, the execution of her sister's family, and being sent to the Starachowice labor camp. In August 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz; in October 1944, Jeannette's husband and sons were transported out of the camp. Jeannette describes her forced labor breaking down the crematorium at Auschwitz, her deportation to a forced labor camp near Breslau at the beginning of January 1945, a forced march to Gross-Rosen, her deportation to Mauthausen and from there, to Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, she discovered that her husband, who, unbeknownst to her, was also in Bergen-Belsen, perished three days before liberation and her sons perished at Ohrdruf.