United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Clara Lefkowitz Kempler was born in 1920 in Užhorod, Czechoslovakia (later Ungvar Hungary, now Uzhhorod, Ukraine) to Chaim and Leah Lefkowitz. Clara was deported in spring 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp then to subsequent concentration and slave labor camps Gelsenkirchen (Gelsenberg-Benzin AG) and Sömmerda. She survived a seven week death march in spring 1945 and was liberated by Soviet forces. Her husband, Jacob Koppler Kempler, was born in 1918 in Baranów, Poland, to Asher and Malka Kempler. He was imprisoned at Dachau from June to October 1944, in Flossenbürg from October to November 1944, and in Natzweiler-Struthof from November 1944 to April 1945, and was liberated by Soviet forces. Clara and Jacob spent several years in the Landsberg am Lech and Leipheim displaced persons camps after the war and immigrated to the United States in 1949 or 1950.
Copyright Holder: Mrs. Clara Kempler
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The Clara Lefkowitz Kempler papers are arranged as a single series.
The Clara Lefkowitz Kempler papers include a handmade diary created at the Sömmerda slave labor that describes a death march near the end of the war and photographs depicting Clara and Jacob Kempler with family and friends at the Landsberg am Lech and Leipheim displaced persons camps after the war. The collection also includes two post-war identification cards for Jacob Kempler, three photographs reproduced and published by Zvi-Hirsh Kadushin (George Kadish), and four postcards depicting Landsberg am Lech, Bremen, Marseille, and Holocaust victims. The handmade diary was created at the Sömmerda slave labor camp and details a death march beginning April 4, 1945 from Sömmerda through Altenburg, Lichtenstein, Stollberg, and Schwarzenberg, and other towns in Germany until liberation followed by a return trip home to Užhorod after the war. The diary also includes an allegory titled Inventory and dated January 30, 1945 about a Jewish family being forced from their home and into a ghetto, laments about someone who is missed and about unbearable living conditions, inscriptions addressed to “Hermin,” and notes. Photographs depict Clara and Jacob Kempler with family and friends at the Landsberg am Lech and Leipheim displaced persons camps after the war, relatives in Užhorod before the war, and the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps at liberation. The three photographs reproduced and published by Zvi-Hirsh Kadushin (George Kadish) include an image of a man being forcibly shaven in either Siedradz or Radom and an image used in the Stroop report showing the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Clara Lefkowitz Kempler papers