This is Therese Klau. She is 36 years old and she has just
given birth to her second daughter. I know these things because that infant grew up and kept four boxes full of old photos and letters which are now
available on line for anyone to look at.
This is what I could tell from reading the letters and
looking at the photos. Theresa
was married to Dr Oscar Klau, a lawyer who was seven years older than her. She had two sisters and an elegant mother with
white hair called Bella.
Theresa lived
in Frankfurt and signed her name ‘Resa’.
Her oldest daughter, Helga, was born 11 years before Ursula. Before the war, the family went on holiday in
Davos, St Moritz and even saw the pyramids in Cairo. In the photo above you can see the flowers
around her bed, the comfy cushions and decorated cottons and satins. You can see these things for yourself. You could think that a life that like would
keep you safe. Looking at this picture, of the infant Ursula in her mother’s arms,
it’s hard to imagine that Resa could die thirteen years later; unwashed, sick
and starving at the end of a long train journey at the end of the war. But
that is what happened. It’s shocking
that that could happen and how hard to stop that from happening once it starts.
Resa and her family tried hard to escape Nazi persecution by
moving from Frankfurt to Switzerland and then to Amsterdam in 1936, but to no
avail. The family was taken to Westerbork
transit camp from where Jewish people were then sent on by train to the death
camps. 60,330
people were sent to Auschwitz. Most were
gassed on arrival. One of those people was
Resa’s elegant, white haired mother, Bella. 34,313
people were sent to Sobibór. Very little is heard about that death camp because
all the people sent there were killed on arrival. 4,413 people were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Three of those people were Resa, Oscar and
their 12 year old daughter Ursula who were sent there in February 1944. Oscar
died there a few months later.
As the war was coming to an end, Himmler decided
to send three train-loads of Jews from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. The
last train left on April 9 with 2,500 people inside including Resa and her
twelve year old daughter. Two weeks later the train was abandoned by the
driver and guards in Troebitz.
Squashed, starved, and without drinking water
or toilets, 133 people did not survive the journey and were buried near
the railway tracks. Another 320 people
died of disease, starvation and exhaustion after being liberated. Resa Klau was one of those. On
May 7, 1945, on the same day, that Germany signed an
unconditional surrender at the Allied headquarters in France, Resa Klau died
in her thirteen year old daughter’s arms.
As part of the Yellow Candle project to remember individual
members of the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah on April 23rd, I was given Theresa
(Resa) Klau-Altheimer. There are still many more candles available
from New North London Synagogue that can be picked up on Wednesday, April 19
between 7.30 and 9.30 pm and on Sunday 23 April between 9 and 11.30pm.
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| From Helga, the oldest daughter to an American relative. She calls her sister 'Uschu' |
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| from the family album |
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| A letter from Helga to a relative where she describes her mother's death as told to her by her sister. |
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| Oma Bella |
