Ilse Schindler was born in upper Silesia and during the Nazi era was forced into the ghetto in Sosnowiec, Poland. She was sent to Annaberg labor camp and from there to Auschwitz and by the end of 1944 was sent to Ravensbrück and then to Beendorf near Magdeburg, Germany, where she worked for several months in a salt mine where parts for V2 missiles were manufactured. As the Allied troops approached, work was no longer possible and she was then shipped from one small camp to the next until liberation on May 2, 1945.
The photograph depicts Ilse Schindler (wearing a checkered kerchief) and others anxiously awaiting their first meal minutes after their arrival in Malmö, Sweden, where they were brought after liberation on May 2, 1945, from Flensburg, Germany, (Flensborg, Denmark), as part of the Count Folke Bernadotte action.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
folder 1
Photograph of refugees in Sweden, ca. 1945
Copyright Holder: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum