Pink handkerchief embroidered GS owned by a Slovakian Jewish girl

Gabriela Fogel (b. 1935) was born Gabriela Müller to Ignác (Ignatz or Yitzchok, 1897-1945) and Irena (or Irene, nee Goldstein, 1908-?) in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). Ignác and Irena were married in January 1930. Gabriela had one brother, Erich (1930-1944). Irena and Ignác had another son, Teddy, but he contracted diphtheria and died before Gabriela was born. Ignác ran a successful wholesale grocery business, and the family lived in a well-furnished home in an all-Jewish neighborhood. They spoke Slovak and Hungarian at home. The family were Orthodox Jews and observed traditional religious practices, as well as the Sabbath every week. Gabriela attended a local public school, in addition to a large shul and synagogue for her religious studies.

In the fall of 1938, Czechoslovakia ceded parts of its western region, the Sudetenland, to Germany, and territory in the south to Hungary. In March 1939, Germany invaded and annexed the remainder of Western Czechoslovakia, renaming it the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Gabriela’s hometown of Michalovce was now part of the newly formed fascist state of Slovakia, which was dependent on Nazi Germany. The authorities introduced the yellow star badge to identify Jews in September 1941, but Gabriela was exempt from wearing it due to her age.

The first wave of Jewish deportations from Slovakia occurred between March and October 1942. Gabriela’s maternal aunt, Sarlota Rosenberg (nee Goldstein, 1912-?) was deported with her husband, David (or Deszo, 1907-?), and young son, Pavel (or Paul, 1940-?), from the town of Humenne, They were among the approximately 57,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, Lublin/Majdanek, Sobibor, and other locations in German-occupied Poland, where nearly all of them were murdered. When the Slovak president learned that German authorities were killing their deportees, he refused to deport the remaining 24,000 Jews. As a business owner, Ignác had a small level of protection, but he was eventually forced to transfer his business to a non-Jew. The family decided it was no longer safe to stay in Michalovce, and relocated west to the town of Nitra.

As a child, Gabriela did not notice changes in her everyday life until early 1944, when her parents decided to send the children to Hungary. They sent Erich to a children’s institute in Miskolc, and Gabriela went to live in Budapest with two relatives: her paternal aunt, Elsa, and her cousin Peter. That same year in March, the German army invaded Hungary and life became increasingly precarious for the Jewish population. In the summer, Gabriela was smuggled back across the border into Slovakia. She was returned to her parents in Nitra and discovered her mother, Irena, had given birth to her fourth child, Tibor (b. 1944), in June. Irena and Ignác also tried to get Erich out of Hungary, but could not get him released from the institution.

In August 1944, the Slovakian underground resistance staged a revolt, and the German army moved into the country to quell the uprising. The new German authorities once again began deporting the Jewish population. An SS unit occupied Nitra on September 4, and immediately began rounding up and deporting Jews. Gabriela’s father, Ignác, was imprisoned in Sered’ transit camp and then deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. On November 19, 1944, he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where he was assigned prisoner number 95569. He was then taken to the subcamp Niederorschel, which used forced labor to produce aircraft parts. At the end of February 1945, he was one of 16 prisoners transferred to the subcamp Halberstadt-Langenstein-Zwieberge to work on subterranean factory codenamed Malachit. In March, he sent a final card to Irena before he was killed.

After Ignác was deported, Irena became despondent, and was less careful about hiding. While she was walking on the street with the children, a non-Jewish couple offered to hide them on their farm. While they resided at the farm, Gabriela tried to maintain their cover by pretending to be Christian and going to the local church on Sundays. One day, she was observed making the sign of the cross with the wrong hand, and they realized it was no longer safe to continue hiding there. In November 1944, they returned to the railroad station in Nitra, where a German official caught Irena with forged papers. They were taken to Sered’, and in late December, they were put on transport XXVI/1 to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. There, Gabriela was separated from her mother and brother, and housed with children close to her age. Gabriela and the other kids sang and put on shows within the camp, and she spent time with her mother every day. As a nursing mother, Irena received better-than-average rations, which she often shared with Gabriela. Each time a new transport arrived in Theresienstadt, Gabriela searched for her brother Erich, who never appeared. Erich had been imprisoned in Hungary’s Sárvár internment camp, and was likely deported and killed.

The Soviet army liberated Theresienstadt on May 9, 1945. Now free, Gabriela, Irena, and Tibor traveled approximately 35 miles south to a small town called Žilina (now in Czechia). There, they were accommodated by a wealthy woman and stayed in her house until the railroad began running again. When they returned home to Michalovce, they discovered their house had been burned down, but was being rebuilt by the communist state. The family was able to reunite with Gabriela’s aunt Elsa and her cousin Peter. They remained in Michalovce until 1949, when they immigrated to Israel. When Gabriela was 18, she joined the Israeli army and spent two years working in communications. In 1955, Irena and Tibor immigrated to the United States, and Gabriela followed the next year. Gabriela lived in Brooklyn, attended college to improve her English, and worked for a publishing company. She later returned to Israel, where she intended to stay, but immigrated to the US permanently in 1960 with her husband and two daughters.