Oh my God! You really have information on her during that point. Please share with me what you know. - Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association helps! - Kinderheim.

My very first contact with Chase Kramer

Oh my God! You really have information on her during that point. Please share with me what you know. I should tell my grandmother this when I have a chance. All I know is that Anna and her two daughters spent quite some time in Sweden after being liberated from Bergen Belsen. My grandmother (Rita) fondly remembers the kindness the Swedish showed to her, her mom (Anna), and her sister (Ellen).

Hi Chase,

To start with, the fate of Your grand-grandmother and her daughters was "typical" for them who survived the Actions in 1942 in Piotrków Trybunalski.  "Typical" for those who had not survived, was the deportation to Treblinka and death by suffocation in a gas chamber (that was also the fate of my grandparents Rozental from Warszawa).

Many of the 1942 survivors were working at three different factories in Piotrków - Bugaj, Kara, and Hortensja.  After the end of 1943 and the Piotrków (Petrikau) ghetto was liquidated, the entire families of Jewish workers in these factories lived within the factory area, also small children.

During the deportations at the end of 1944 also entire factories in Piotrków were emptied and Jews were sent to different camps. December 4th deportations were very special: male workers with sons were sent to Buchenwald while females with daughters were sent to Ravensbrück.

They traveled in cattle trucks, without food or water. Upon arrival in Ravensbrück and had to strip before their heads were shaved. Thereafter there were given the typical concentration camp clothing and clogs. "Now we were really stripped of our personalities as well; we could not recognize one another". After about two and a half months in Ravensbrück, they were again put into cattle trucks and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. That must be at the end of February 1945. The situation there was terrible due to overcrowding, sanitation, and food shortage. In Bergen-Belsen, however, existed Kinderheim - children’s barrack number 211. It was run by Luba Tryszynska and a team of Jewish ‘nurses’ that came from Auschwitz. All of them were also inmates. Inmates who tried to do everything in their power to obtain a little extra food for the children. In the same barrack, across the hall there, lived women with children. I think that your grand-grandmother Anna and her two daughters also lived there.

After the liberation, the entire barrack 211 was after approximately 3 weeks moved to the Children's ward at Bergen-Belsen Hospital. Thereafter they moved on July 24th by ambulance train to the Swedish Transit hospital in Lübeck and from there on July 25th to Sweden by the UNRRA mission's White Boat S/S Kastelholm.

They arrived in Malmö in Sweden on July 25th and were separated according to age and gender. I have their names on the ship list. In Sweden, they were placed at different hospitals. I will send You, more info later. However, You will find a lot of information about Piotrków and Kinderheim on my blog. Just use the search option.

Best,

Roman Wassermann Wroblewski

Chairman

Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association.

Survival thanks to "Contacts" and "Paying off"

Ruta´s and her sister Tusia´s Rubinlicht story starts in Warszawa, Poland. Ruta, born in 1935 remembers that they lived in a building at the corner och Chmielna and Marszalkowska Street. Warsaw. They were daughters of a diamond broker Pinkus Leib Rubinlicht and Anna Perla Rubinlicht, nee: Finkelstein, both from Sulejów, a small city close to Piotrków Trybunalski. Having diamonds was actually an advantage and crucial to their survival. Ruta´s and Tusia's first memories are from Warszawa in September 1939. At that time they were just four and seven years old but remember the German bombardings of Warsaw, the outbreak of WWII. 

Family Rubinlicht decided that it might be safer to move out of Warszawa to Piotrków Trybunalski, a city 160 kom sout from Warszawa and close (15 km) from Sulejów, the place from which they originated. Sulejów was not an option during the very first days of the war. Between September 4 and 6 Sulejów suffered from a number of heavy bombardments and a fire that encompassed the entire city. Of the 93 houses in which Jews lived, 80 were destroyed by fire. After that many of Sulejów's Jews moved to Piotrków Trybunalski.

The area of the city of Piotrków which used to have a resident population of 10 000, increased quickly and when the ghetto was introduced it increased to 29 000. Thus, due to the deportations from surrounding cities and towns. Conditions in the ghettos deteriorated and the treatment of imprisoned Jews was barbaric. The ghettoes were the first step in the Nazi's planned genocide. Rita's parents were conscripted
into forced labor at Huta Hortensja, one of the Piotrków glass factories. Mr. Rubinlicht did the best he could with his available resources to maintain his family's presence in the ghetto, paying off whom he could to keep his family together. massacre). Rita's father appealed to Shimon Warszawski,

the President of the Jewish council (Judenrat), on several occasions, reminding him of the price he had been paid to protect the Rubinlichts. The President gave all the assurances he could and did his best to delay, but his position was already untenable. During the summer of 1942 when the Death Camps opened, the population knew what they were for and that almost the entire population of Warszawa Ghetto, 350 000 people, was sent during the Great Action to the death camp Treblinka.

During the Action of October 1942, transports to the death camp Treblinka, the Rubinlicht parents were relatively safe as workers in the glass factory, but their daughters, Rita and her sister Tusia went into hiding outside of the ghetto. The rest of their extended family was sent to their death in Treblinka. On the night of October 13/14, 1942, the inhabitants of the Piotrków ghetto witnessed Dantesque scenes. The Jews were expelled from their homes and gathered in the post-barracks square, where a selection was carried out. Those unfit for work were sent to Treblinka. The Germans were helped by armed Ukrainians and Latvians; Jewish police officers also took part in the operation. By October 29, about 22,000 people were sent to their deaths. Jews.

Workers of wood factories Dietrich & Fischer on Bugaj and glassworks “Kara”, “Feniks” and “Hortensja”.

On December 11, 1941, the Piotrków ghetto was closed (the order was repeated in March 1942), and glass factories had the privilege to have their children with them. While the children's parents, Anna and Pinkus were working shifts at the glass factory, their daughters stayed nearby the factory with a friend of Pinkus, along with another child, a cousin. A similar situation was at the Bugaj wood factory.

Looking back, Rita said she felt like she had to be "brainwashed" over and over because she was always memorizing new names and new cover stories to tell during another roundup. The punishment for hiding Jews was death and the Gestapo made a weekly sweep.

After the Actions and deportations to the death camps in October 1942 and despite all this danger of having the daughters half-legal (illegal), Ruta's father managed to keep them in and

around the ghetto, and in contact with each other. 

It is not clear to me what happened just prior to the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Ruta, Tusia, and their mother were separated. This was probably due to the typhus epidemic, lack of water, and starvation at the camp. However, after the liberation Ruta, 10 years old at that time found her sister laying on the pile of dead bodies. Tusia was, however, not dead and she recovered quickly having water and food. Thereafter Ruta found her sick mother in one of the barracks. This story tells us that they were not among the "children and mothers" in Kinderheim. Ruta met after liberation Bergen-Belsen someone who knew her father Pinkus that informed her that her father was dead. Ruta never forwards it to her mother. She understood early that her mother, weak and sick, needed to hope. Actually, Pinkus Rubinlicht perished in Mauthausen on March 27, 1945, in a concentration camp. The cause of his death was written in German Grippe. That means the flu. However, the camp records of the registered inmates use to state false causes of death. It is known that the official cause of death of the inmates that were shot was in many cases cardiac arrest.

It is likely that the mother Anna Rubinlicht and her daughters Tusia and Ruta were, after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, taken to the "Children Ward" run by Dr Robert Collis. All the documents issued thereafter, like Health cards, DP-2 cards, and White Boat transport are indicating that.

Your grand-grandmothers sisters, Ruchla and Estera were deported during the Actions in Piotrków Trybunalski ghetto in late 1942. Deportation to Treblinka meant death by suffocation in the gas chamber. There is also information about Pinkus Rubinlicht.