us-005578-irn571050-irn615603
type: RecordSet
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
biographical history: Ilona Kellner (later Elena Kalina, 1912-2011, some records list her year of birth as 1916) was born in Pelsöc, Austria-Hungary (now Plešivec, Slovakia) to Karoly (1887–1944) and Jolan Freimann (1890-1944) Kellner. Ilona had one younger sister, Vera (1927 -2017, some records list her year of birth as 1922). Karoly was a merchant. Ilona was unmarried and worked as a kindergarten teacher in Rožňava. Following World War I, Pelsöc had become part of Czechoslovakia, and became a part of Hungary in approximately 1938. During the 1930s, Hungary was an ally of Nazi Germany, and in 1938, Hungary’s fascist regime adopted anti-Semitic measures based on the German Nuremberg racial laws. In November 1940, Hungary joined the Axis Alliance, and participated in Operation Barbarossa, the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. After the German retreat from Stalingrad in February 1943, Hungary sought a separate peace with the Allies. In March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary and began deporting all Hungarian Jews to concentration camps. On May 8, 1944, the authorities forced Ilona, Vera, and their parents, Karoly and Jolan, from their home and moved them into a ghetto that had been set aside in another area of the town. In mid-June, the family, was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp in German occupied Poland. Their parents were taken to the gas chambers in the camp’s killing center, Birkenau, and killed upon arrival. By August 2, Ilona and Vera had been deported to Hessisch Lichtenau, a sub-camp of Buchenwald concentration camp as part of a transport of 1,000 Hungarian women brought to Germany to fill a labor shortage. On September 19, Ilona and Vera were officially registered at the camp, and were assigned prisoner numbers: Ilona was assigned 20409, and Vera 20407. All of the women in this transport were assigned numbers, by last name, between 20,001 and 21,003. The camp provided labor for an explosive munitions factory run by Fabrik Hessisch Lichtenau GmbH zur Verwertung c…
has beginning date: 1929-01-01
has end date: 2002-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: hun
has or had some members with language: deu
has or had subject: 701
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn615603
is or was included in: us-005578-irn571050
record resource extent: folders oversize boxes 2 3
record resource structure: The Ilona Kellner papers are arranged as two series: I. Photographs, 1929, 1947, 1992, 2002, II. Recipes, approximately 1944
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: The Ilona Kellner papers consist of hundreds of recipes written on the backs of unused forms from the Nazi labor camp at Hessisch Lichtenau by Ilona Kellner and dictated by her fellow women prisoners. Ilona worked as a translator and messenger at the labor camp and tidied the factory. She pilfered the blank pages from wastebaskets in the camp. The forms include munitions delivery and fulfillment receipts for bombs, mines, and mortars; access passes; discharge bills; shift inventories; and prisoner correspondence templates. Two pages appear to include letters from Ilona to her mother. The collection also contains five family photographs (originals and copy prints) from before and after the war, including one of Ilona Kellner and her daughter, Eva Moreimi, with cakes prepared from the recipes for Ilona’s grandchild’s Bar Mitzvah.
title: Ilona Kellner papers