Adolf and Maria Althoff #Righteous during World War Two 1/n Darmstadt, Germany… Summer 1941 – Adolf Althoff and his wife, Maria, directed the well-known Althoff circus during World War II. The circus, which included
2/n approximately 90 performers, traveled throughout Europe and spent the summer of 1941 near Darmstadt. At one particular show, Irene Danner, a young Jewish acrobat from Darmstadt, was among the visitors. She was a descendant of a German-Jewish circus family. Although Adolf knew
3/n that including a Jew in the circus was prohibited, he offered Irene a position, provided her with a pseudonym and false identity papers, and essentially disguised her Jewish identity for the duration of the war. During her time in the circus, Irene fell in love with another
4/n acrobat, Peter Storm-Bento. When she later became pregnant, Adolf and Maria ensured that she received adequate medical care. On March 20, 1942, deportations from Darmstadt began, followed by additional deportations in September 1942 and February 1943.
Photos: Irene Danner
5/n Though Irene’s grandmother was deported, her mother, Alice, and her sister, Gerda, escaped to the safety of the Althoff circus. The Althoffs agreed to provide refuge for Alice and Gerda as well. Adolf and Maria were fully aware of the dangers associated with hiding Jews.
6/n They knew that the circus could be searched at any moment and that their employees could betray them. Fortunately, Adolf had contacts in nearly every city who usually warned him of pending searches. Despite a few close calls, Irene, Alice, and Gerda all survived the war.
“The Angel of Belsen" 1/n Luba Tryszynska, a Jewish woman from Belarus, near Brest-Litovsk, who lost her husband Hersch and three-year old child Isaac at Auschwitz, was transferred from Auschwitz in November 1944 to Bergen Belsen, and began caring for
2/n children with permission of the camp doctor and of SS officials in December 1944. Beginning with a group of Dutch Jewish children, the “diamond” children*, whom she found outside her barrack one night, but not limited to these,
3/n she and Hermina Krantz, a Jewish woman from Slovakia also transferred from Auschwitz, were placed in charge and cared for ninety orphaned children from less than one-year old to twelve years old.
Luba played the provider – she went all over the camp getting provisions,
"We are in a sad situation. Mother, Mrs. Wartski have been sent to an unknown destination..."
1/n Ten-year-old Jackie Zonzajn, the Zonzajns' older son, wrote a final letter from Pithiviers.
Georges Horan: "Arrival of the Children
2/n It is through this rare testimony, written from the vantage point of a child, that we know what befell the Polakiewiczs and the Zonszajns. Jackie wrote his letter following the deportation of his beloved mother and the Polakiewiczs,
Georges Horan: "Arrival to Camp"
3/n and the subsequent deportation of his friend Leon, aged 13, the Polkiewiczs' youngest son. He was left in Pithiviers together with his little sister Liliane, aged three,
Pithiviers, France, Jews being taken to the detention camp by French policemen
Suzanne Spaak
'Something must be done' 1/n Suzanne Spaak lived in Paris with her husband Claude, a filmmaker, and their two children. Spaak, as the daughter of a famous Belgian banker, and sister-in-law of the Belgian foreign minister, was accustomed to
2/n a high standard of living. However, she found the German occupation of France intolerable and decided to join the Resistance.
In 1942, Spaak offered her services to the underground National Movement Against Racism. When she joined them, Spaak said, “Tell me what to do...
3/n so I’ll know that I am serving in the struggle against Nazism".
Spaak did not recoil from any assignment; she walked the length and breadth of Paris to find a hospital willing to accept ailing Jews hiding under assumed names. When necessary, she used her social standing and
1940: Nearly turned back, a ship of Holocaust refugees got help from Eleanor Roosevelt 1/n The story of the SS Quanza began on August 9, 1940, when it sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, carrying more than 300 passengers, most of whom were Jewish.
2/n And save the 66 American citizens on board, each one possessed a visa issued by Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
In August 1940, Quanza was chartered by a group of passengers seeking to flee Europe. The passengers traveled with a variety of visas, some forged.
3/n The ship left Lisbon on 9 August, beginning its first trans-Atlantic voyage. After a difficult crossing that included a hurricane, the ship arrived in New York City on 19 August. 196 passengers disembarked, 66 of whom were American citizens.
On 7 August 1942, Esther Frenkel (Horonczyk) threw a letter from the deportation train.
"I am on the train. I do not know what has become of my Richard... Save my child, my innocent baby!"
They were separated at Pithiviers & murdered in Auschwitz. 1/n
2/n Born in 1913 in Krzepice, Poland, Esther Horonczyk was the youngest of five children of Rywka-Fraidla Horonczyk née Heller and Shimon Horonczyk. After Rywka's death in Poland, Esther emigrated to France with the rest of the family in 1926. In Paris, Esther
3/n married Nissan Frenkel and gave birth in 1940 to their only son, Richard. Esther Frenkel was deported from Paris to Pithiviers with her two-year-old son Richard. They were then deported separately to Auschwitz. Both were assassinated. Her husband Nissan was deported to
Mauthausen 1/n August 8 1938, Himmler ordered a couple of hundred prisoners from the Dachau camp to be transported to the little town of Mauthausen just outside Linz. The plan was to build a new camp in order to supply slave labor for the Wiener Graben stone quarry.
2/n Until 1939, most of the prisoners were put to work building the camp and the living quarters for the SS. The main camp of Mauthausen consisted of 32 barracks surrounded by electrified barbed wire, high stone walls, and watch towers. Due to the immense number of prisoners that
3/n poured into the camp, Commandant Ziereis ordered that the fields to the north and west were to be ringed with wire. Here, Hungarian Jews and Russian soldiers, mostly, were kept in the open, all year around.
Mauthausen was classified as a so-called "category three camp".