Herman Taube papers

Herman Taube papers 

Herman Taube (1918-2014) was born in Łódź, Poland in 1918. Orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his grandparents Mirle and Gershon Mandel. Gershon ran a small shop that produced soap and candles. Herman attended a yeshiva, and Gershon hoped he would become a rabbi, but Herman pursued a career in nursing. He was called for duty as a medic in the Polish Army in August 1939. Germany defeated Poland by early October, the retreating Polish Army was captured by Soviet forces, and Herman was sent to Siberia with other lower ranking Polish soldiers. He was released following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and served as a medic with the Second Polish Army in Uzbekistan for two years and on the eastern front for another year. In June 1944, Herman was injured when his ambulance drove over a land mine. After recuperating, he was sent to the newly stationed Second Polish Army headquarters at the liberated Majdanek concentration camp, where he cared for inmates who had been left behind when the retreating Nazis liquidated the camp. He ended the war working at a hospital in Pomerania. After the war Herman married fellow Holocaust survivor Susan Strauss, and the couple immigrated to the United States in 1947. Herman was the author of more than twenty novels and books of poetry and has worked as a writer and journalist for over 60 years. Herman lived in the Washington, DC area and volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Marie Koreffová, Susan Taube’s stepmother, was born in Bílina, Czechoslovakia to Frantiśka Popperová (1865-1943). She married Jewish grocer Karel Koreff (1891-1944) in 1934. Karel was arrested following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, deported to Theresienstadt in 1943, and killed at Auschwitz. Marie survived Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, and Flossenbürg. She immigrated to the United States via Gdynia, Poland, in 1948 aboard the M.S. Stefan Batory and settled in Macon, Georgia. 

Herman Taube papers