Holocaust experiences of Adela Kestenberg Manheimer

Adela Manheimer (née Kestenberg) was born on 21 June 1921 in Dąbrowa Górnicza (Kielce, Poland) to Wolf and Leisa Kestenberg. Adela’s father was a tailor and owned a shop. She was engaged to Wolf Manheimer (d. 1984) in the late 1930s. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Adela was a forced-laborer. On 7 February 1942 she was deported to Sosnowiec and then the Grünberg subcamp of Gross-Rosen. In January 1945 she was sent on a death march. She and a friend managed to escape from Volary, Czechoslovakia (Volary, Czech Republic) on 3 May 1945 and were later rescued by French POWs who brought them to a hospital run by the United States Army. Her fiancé Wolf also survived the Holocaust and they were reunited in the Feldafing DP camp. They married in 1947 and their first child Aron was born in 1948. In 1951 the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Cleveland, Ohio.