Michael Falkenstein was born on September 2nd, 1938, in Frankfurt, Germany, as the third child of Gustav and Hedwig Falkenstein. He had two older sisters: Ruth and Ingeborg (deceased). His parents ran a textile business out of their home. After Kristallnacht, Mike’s father smuggled the family out of Germany via the Tran-Siberian Railway, ending up in …
Read MoreMorris Engleson was born in 1935 in Vilna, Lithuania. He was six years old in 1941 when the Germans invaded the small town of Podbrodzie, near Vilna in Poland, where his father’s extended family lived. Ironically, his family was saved after the Russians came because they did not have money, which would have made it …
Read MoreMartha Emerson (nee Mayer) was born on December 30, 1901 and raised in Frankfort, Germany. Her father, Otto Mayer, was a traveling salesman before being drafted into the German army during the First World War. After serving only six weeks Otto was killed at the front. Needing to support the family, Martha’s mother started her …
Read MoreVictor Egert was born in Eisenstadt, Austria on April 20, 1911. Victor lived with his parents, his brother and his sister in Vienna, Austria until he was 22 at which time he took a job in a carpet factory about 20 miles outside of Vienna. He worked there for several years until the Anschluss in early …
Read MoreRuth Doctor Egert was born in Vienna, Austria on January 18, 1913. She grew up in a middle-class, observant family there and became a teacher for the city of Vienna in 1933. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, she lost her job. The family saw that life was going to be very hard and …
Read MoreStephanie Gerst Douglas was born in Germany in 1936 to Yitzach Gerst and Rita Daiczer Gerst. Her father was arrested as a Communist when she was a baby and sent to a death camp in 1941. Her mother was also arrested in 1941 and Stephanie was orphaned. She lived with an aunt in Belgium for …
Read MoreDoris Colmbs was born in 1928 in Meiningen, Germany to very upper-class parents: a German Jewish father and a Russian Socialist, American-born mother. She had two older sisters and remembers a very comfortable childhood in Berlin, Germany. As a child, she had little awareness of her Jewish heritage and was only vaguely aware of the …
Read MoreBernard Carr was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923. His family was not religious but he did attend a private Jewish school. His family had a summer home about 50 miles from Berlin. They fled Germany under unusual circumstances, partially because his father had a successful private banking business. They lived in Nice, France for two …
Read MoreJohn Carver “Jack” Capell was born on June 11, 1923 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. When he was three his family moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where they lived for a few years before the family settled in Seattle, Washington. Jack attended both elementary and high school in Seattle, and after graduation in 1943, he …
Read MoreCharlotte (Lotte) Geller Brown was born on April 2, 1924 in the small town of Lackenbach, Austria. Following the German occupation of Austria, all Jews were required to move into the cities and she went with her family to Vienna. Very soon, she was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport program. She lived in …
Read More