Senta Hirtz, a refugee from Nazi Germany, pictured after the war in 1945-46 as a Jewish Relief Unit Nurse in a Displaced Persons Camp in Celle, Germany.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
After the defeat of Nazism, survivors of Nazi persecution attempted to reconstruct their lives, or begin new ones. This section explores different survivors’ lives after liberation.
Sonja, Adolf and Lotte pictured prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
After the war, Lotte wrote this account of the family’s arrival in Bucharest. At the time, Adolf was extremely ill and paralysed with tuberculousis.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Lotte describes the British air raid and her daughter’s subsequent death.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A picture of the Jaslowitz’s with friends and family taken in Czernowitz 1933. Lotte is the second from the right, Sonja is in the middle, Harry is third from the left, and Adolf is fourth from the left.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Following the war, Lotte travelled to England and was reunited with her son, Harry. She returned to education, training as a barrister. On 10 February 1959, she gradated as a barrister from Lincoln’s Inn.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
After the war, Lotte enjoyed writing and published several short stories. This excerpt is from a story entitled ‘Umbrella’.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Lotte Jaslowitz (née Singer) was a Romanian, wealthy, German-speaking Jew. Lotte attended university where she was awarded doctorate in philosophy. In 1921, she married a doctor named Adolf Jaslowitz. Prior to the Nazi invasion, the couple lived in Czernowitz, a bustling town with a large Jewish community. They had two children, Hörst (later known as Harry, born in 1922) and Sonja (born in 1927). In the 1930s, fascism rose in popularity across Romania and antisemitism increased. As a result of this, Lotte and Adolf sent their son, Harry, to study in England in 1938.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Czernowitz was occupied by Nazi Germany on 5 July 1941. On 4 June 1942, the Jaslowitz’s were deported to the Ladijin Concentration Camp (also referred to as Cariera de Piatra). From Ladijin, the Jaslowitz family were moved to another concentration camp at Obodovka and from there to the Tiraspol Ghetto.
Sonja, Lotte, and Adolf were released from the ghetto sometime between 17-19 March 1944. Following their release, they travelled to Bucharest, where, on 7 May 1944, Sonja was killed by a British air raid on the city. Adolf died from tuberculosis shortly afterward. Following her daughter and husband’s death, Lotte Jaslowitz emigrated from Bucharest and joined her son in England.
After settling in England, Lotte returned to her education. She trained as a barrister at Lincolns Inn, was called to the bar on 10 February 1959. After graduating, Lotte became involved in the welfare of blind Jews and campaigned on their behalf for better services. As a result of her work, she was made the Life Governor of the Jewish Blind Society. In her free time, she enjoyed writing, and wrote many fictional short stories. Lotte Jaslowitz died on 10 February 1984.
Senta Hirtz’s identity card from her pre-war life as a teacher at Medau Gymnastic School in Berlin.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Senta Hirtz in her role as a JRU nurse in Celle, Germany, 1945-6.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A report written by Senta Hirtz on her activities during her time as a Jewish Relief Unit field officer helping Displaced Persons in Celle.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Senta Hirtz describes the welfare programme set up to help the Displaced Persons (survivors) of Celle.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
After the war, Senta Hirtz became a qualified physiotherapist. This certificate, confirming her registration with the physiotherapists board, was issued to her in 1963.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Senta Ruth Augusta Hirtz was born in London on 12 March 1908, where her Belgian-Jewish father, Heinrich Hirtz, worked as a chemist. In 1910, the family returned to Germany. After finishing school, Senta worked first as a nursery nurse and then as a teacher in Berlin. Following the Nazi rise to power, she was forbidden to work under the new Nazi employment laws due to her Jewish heritage.
As a result of the increasing persecution, the Hirtz family emigrated to London as refugees in 1936. After teaching as a dance tutor for several years, Senta was accepted at St Thomas’s Hospital to train as a physiotherapist.
Following the end of the Second World War, Senta applied to work for the Jewish Relief Unit (JRU), a British charity which focused on providing relief work abroad, and in particular with the Jewish survivors in Europe. Senta was first sent to Bergen-Belsen , arriving in July 1945. She worked for the JRU for about eleven months in various locations across Germany.
After her work with the JRU finished, Senta returned to the UK in 1946. Her mother moved to England to live with her in 1957. Senta Hirtz became a registered physiotherapist and specialised in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy and other special needs. She retired from physiotherapy in 1977, having been appointed at Greenwich District Hospital to work with older people in the early 1970s.
In her later years, she continued the study of different world religions and enjoyed painting. Senta Hirtz died on 26 November 1998.
Ludwik Finkelstein (middle) pictured next to his father-in-law, Alfred Wiener (second from right) and his wife Mirjam Finkelstein (nee Wiener) (far left) in the early 1960s.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
In 1957, Ludwik Finkelstein met his wife, Mirjam Wiener, pictured here in 1947. Mirjam was the daughter of Alfred Wiener, who founded The Wiener Holocaust Library. During the war Mirjam had been imprisoned by the Nazis in Westerbork and then Bergen-Belsen.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Ludwik Finkelstein was born in Lvov, Poland, on 6 December 1929 to Adolf and Amalia Finkelstein. The family were Polish-speaking, merchant Jews. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Ludwik’s father, Adolf, was imprisoned in a Soviet labour camp, while Ludwik and his mother Amalia were deported to a labour camp on the border of Siberia by Soviet forces. Following the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Finkelstein’s were released in September 1941. Reunited as a family, Adolf joined the Polish army and moved his family to Iran and then Tel Aviv. In 1947, the family emigrated to Britain.
Once the family had settled in north London, Ludwik was determined to become an engineer. Despite the interruption to his education during the war, on his arrival in Britain he studied physics, applied mathematics and engineering at Northern Polytechnic (now part of London Metropolitan University), and graduated in 1951. After spending several years researching scientific advancements to improve the Coal Mining industry in the UK, Ludwik undertook a master’s degree in physics and graduated 1959. Later that year, he became a lecturer and professor at Northampton College of Advanced Technology, where he specialised in the science of measurements. In the mid-1960s, the college became City University, and Ludwik became pro-vice-chancellor.
In 1957, Ludwik met and married Mirjam Wiener. Mirjam was the daughter of Alfred Wiener, who founded The Wiener Holocaust Library. After fleeing to Amsterdam, Mirjam was deported with her two sisters and mother to Westerbork and then Bergen-Belsen before being released on a prisoner exchange scheme in 1945. Together, Mirjam and Ludwik had three children, Anthony, Daniel and Tamara.
Ludwik retired in 1993 but continued to study. Following his retirement, he was awarded a master’s degree and a doctorate in Hebrew and Jewish Studies from the Leo Baeck College. Ludwik Finkelstein died on 27 August 2011. His wife, Mirjam, died on 28 January 2017.
A photograph of Theresia and Gabriel, taken shortly after the birth of the twins in March 1943, walking in Würzburg under Nazi escort.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Theresia Seibel as a performer in the Würzburg Stadttheater in 1942, after she had been informed she would be sterilised, and shortly before she became pregnant with her twin daughters.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A postwar photograph of Rita Reinhardt Seibel, Theresia’s surviving twin daughter, in 1948.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Theresia Seibel with her nephew, Peter Winterstein, in Würzburg in May 1953.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Theresia Seibel was German Sinti born in 1921. From 1937 onwards she worked as a dancer and singer at Stadttheater in Würzburg, where she met her partner Gabriel Reinhardt in the early 1940s. Following the Nazi rise to power, Roma and Sinti were subjected to increasingly brutal persecution and, from 1936, they were also subjected to sterilisation. In 1941, the Gestapo approached Theresia and forced her to sign an authorisation form agreeing to be sterilised.
Theresia knew that she wanted children and would not be able to have them after the procedure. She decided to get pregnant. She was successful and by the time she was booked in for the sterilisation procedure, she was three months pregnant with twins. The Nazis allowed Theresia to continue with the pregnancy, under the condition that the twins were given to the University of Würzburg for research purposes following their birth.
The two girls, Rita and Rolanda, were born on 3 March 1943. Shortly after, Theresia found Rolanda dead in the clinic at the University having been the subject of medical experiments. Theresia attempted to remove Rita from the clinic, but she did not succeed and did not see her remaining daughter for another year, during which time Theresia was sterilised. In April 1944, Theresia was reunited with her remaining daughter, Rita, and both survived the war.
After liberation, Gabriel and Theresia separated following the discovery that Gabriel’s first wife (who had been deported to Auschwitz) had in fact survived. In 1962, Theresia Seibel married an American soldier and in her later years she founded a Sinti human rights organisation to raise awareness of the Nazis’ treatment of Roma.
Ronnie and Carol Roberts with their children outside the entrance to the Hotel Cecil in the 1970s.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Ronnie Roberts at the seaside in England in c1960.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Ronnie Roberts (left) pictured with his mother Alma (centre) and sister Beryl (right) in Rostock, c1924.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Ronnie and Beryl Roberts pictured with friends in 1928.
Courtesy of The Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Roberts was a man of mixed Barbadian/ German/ British descent born in Germany in 1921. After the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, Ronnie experienced increasing racism because of his skin colour and heritage, including being excluded from his local youth group and being threatened by the Gestapo with castration. As a young man, he attended music school but was later removed and forced complete labour building motorways instead.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Ronnie was imprisoned by the Nazis in various hard-labour and civilian internee camps in Germany including Würzburg, Bavaria. He was released in 1945.
After the war he spent a short amount of time working in DP camps in Austria as a translator and driver before moving to Vienna to live with his sister, Beryl, who was married to a night club owner. In Vienna, Ronnie became a cocktail waiter and secured a prestigious position at the Hotel Sacher in 1946-47 where Ronnie’s Bar became one of the most popular spots amongst the Viennese night clubbing public. Around the same time, he married a friend of his sister, Hermine.
In the early 1950s Ronnie and Hermine emigrated to London, where they acquired several properties. Hermine and Ronnie later split, and he met and married Carol. Together, they bought a hotel and moved to Devon, where they had two children.
On 9 November 1923, Hitler and the Nazi Party tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic. This became known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
On 8 November 1937, an exhibition called ‘The Eternal Jew’ was opened in Munich. The exhibition promoted antisemitic stereotypes.
On 9 November 1938, Kristallnacht took place. Throughout Germany, synagogues were burned and Jewish businesses were looted by the Nazis.
On 8 November 1939, labourer Georg Elser attempted to assassinate Hitler. Elser was later murdered in Dachau concentration camp.
On 24 November 1941, Theresienstadt, a concentration camp and ghetto, was established.
On 20 November 1945, the Nuremberg trials began. Twenty one top level Nazis were tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
