us-005578-irn515012
record resource extent: folder 1
biographical history: Susan was born 9 January 1926 in Vacha, Germany, a small Thuringian town where her family had lived for more than 400 years. Her father, Hermann, owned a general store and her mother, Bertha, managed the home and took care of Susan and her younger sister, Brunhilde (b. 1928). The Strauss family was one of about twenty Jewish families living in Vacha in the years leading up to the war. Soon after the Nazis took power, many of Susan's friends stopped playing with her. In 1938 she was forced to leave the public school and she and Brunhilde moved to Frankfurt am Main to study at the Jewish school. That November, the Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms throughout Germany known as Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass”. In Vacha, local party members damaged the family store and imprisoned her father in Buchenwald. He was released four weeks later on the condition that he would emigrate quickly; he fled to Belgium in 1939. Nearly a year later, in February 1940, her father reached the United States, but he was unable to get his family out of Germany. After Susan’s father emigrated, the family moved to Berlin with Hermann’s mother, Jettchen. Susan, her mother, and sister were conscripted into forced labor and were put to work producing radio equipment for the German U-boats. On January 25, 1942, Susan and her family were deported to the Riga ghetto in occupied Latvia. Shortly after arriving, her grandmother, Jettchen, was taken to the nearby forest and killed. The ghetto was liquidated in October 1943 and Susan and her family were deported to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp. After arriving, Susan was separated from her mother and sister and sent to the Meteor factory where she repaired and painted pontoon boats. In August 1944 she was transported by boat to Stutthof, only to be transferred to Sophienwalde two weeks later. At Sophienwalde she was forced to uproot trees to clear the way for a new road and later worked as a bricklayer. In January 1945 the camp was ev…
has record set type: Item
record resource structure: The letter is a single item.
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
identifier: irn515012
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn515012/alternateIDs/1
has or had holder: us-005578
type: RecordSet
has or had subject: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/vocabularies/ehri-terms/843
title: Letter from Margarete Jacobson to Susan Taube
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn515012/acquisitions/1
date: 1947 May 30
has or had some members with language: deu
scope and content: The letter, addressed to Susan Tabue, was written in Hamburg, Germany by Margarete Jacobson. The letter reveals the fate of Susan Taube’s mother and sister, Bertha and Hilde Strauss.