Ingrid Sacks collection

Ingrid Sacks (born Inge Klara Mayer) was born in Saarbruecken Germany on March 4, 1936. In August 1939, she and her parents moved to the village of Hoffenheim to live with an aunt, uncle and two cousins. On October 22,1940, with almost no prior warning, the Germans deported all the Jewish families in Hoffenheim to the Gurs transit camp near the border of France and Spain. After living in the camp for one year, workers from the OSE convinced Inge's parents to let them take Inge out of camp. She was placed in Chateau de Chabannes children's home. In later 1942, due to the roundups by the Vichy French, the OSE began to disperse the children in their homes. In February 1943 they brought Inge to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Auguste Eisenreich in the town of Romans. They explained to their neighbors that she was their godchild and that her parents had died. Inge called them Marraine and Parrain. August and Mathilde Eisenreich never had children of their own, and being very righteous people, they wanted to help a child in need and treated Inge very lovingly. Inge spent the rest of the war in their home as a French Catholic girl named Marie Meyer. Inge's parents did not survived the war. They were deported from Gurs to Drancy and from there to Auschwitz. In 1946 a maternal aunt learned of Inge's whereabouts and arranged for her to leave her rescuers and immigrate to the United States. Inge did not want to leave, and the separation was very painful both for her and her rescuers. She immigrated to the United States on September 9, 1946 on board the Athos II. In 1995 Auguste and Mathilde Eisenreich were honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.