Jewish ghetto police cap worn by an inmate/policeman at Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp

Fritz Joseph and his wife, Betty, were incarcerated at the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands in July 1943. They were deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Fritz was assigned to the shoe commando. This group of prisoners salvaged usable shoe leather. Within four months, they were transferred to Theresienstadt. Fritz was assigned to the Ghettowache [Jewish police]. Betty played violin in the camp orchestra. Fritz wrote a manuscript in 1956-1957 detailing his experiences during the Holocaust. He described Theresienstadt as having a wide variety of foods and goods, courtesy of care packages organized by the United States with favorable relations between guards and prisoners.

Near the end of 1944, the Josephs’ were sent to Auschwitz. Fritz volunteered as a mechanic. This kept him separate from the other prisoners, who were subject to weekly selections for the gas chamber. A month later, he was assigned to an outside work detail and transported to Meuselwitz, a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. It provided slave labor for Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft [HASAG], the third largest consumer of forced labor during the war. During the war, it produced infantry rocket launchers and other munitions en masse. At HASAG, Fritz assembled Panzerfausts, long handled, anti-tank grenades.

On April 12, 1945, Fritz and other prisoners were loaded onto empty coal train containers and taken to Graslitz, Czechoslovakia, a town on the Czech-German border. British planes bombed the train. On April 19, the SS guards forced the prisoners on a march but lost interest in their charges. Fritz and others escaped, hiding among civilian refugees fleeing German troops. After three days, an old German man caught the escapees at gunpoint and returned them to the train. Fritz sustained a leg injury, but managed to get to a doctor for treatment. While in the hospital, U.S. troops liberated the Graslitz area on May 7, 1945.

After liberation Fritz traveled to Falkenau, Czechoslovakia near the Czech-German border. He was reunited with Betty and the couple returned to Holland. At some point, they immigrated to the United States. Both Fritz and Betty are deceased.

Ruth Gabriele Silten was born to a Jewish family on May 30, 1933 in Berlin, Germany. She was the only child of Dr. Fritz and Ilse Teppich Silten. Both parents were born in Berlin; Fritz on February 16, 1904, and Ilse on February 23, 1909. They were married on August 6, 1931. As assimilated Jews they did not adhere to Jewish dietary laws, observe holidays or attend synagogue. Her father had a doctorate in pharmacology and was a partner an apothecary business with his father.

After Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, increasingly severe restrictions were placed on Jews. Gabriele’s grandfather was forced to sell his pharmacy and her father, concerned about his family’s safety, left for Amsterdam in September 1938. He established a business to produce and distribute pharmaceuticals to foreign companies. He then sent for Gabriele and Ilse. In 1939, her grandfather sent her grandmother, Marta, to join them, but he remained in Berlin, as did her maternal grandmother Gertrud. Gabriele went to Kindergarten, then elementary school, learned Dutch, and made friends.

In May 1940, German troops occupied Amsterdam. The Germans appointed Fritz to the Jewish council. The Amsterdam ghetto was established in 1941 and most of the city’s Jews were forced to live there, but the Siltens, due to her father’s council position, remained in their home. Subject to Germany’s anti-Semitic rules and regulations, Jews became more isolated and Gabriele’s life changed dramatically. She could no longer go to the library, theater, or the movies. Shopping was restricted to certain stores and the hours between 3:00 and 5:00pm. A curfew required Jews to stay home from 8:00pm to 6:00am. They had to wear the Star of David on their outer garments; the Siltens bought theirs at a local temple and Ilse and Marta sewed them on their clothes. Gabriele’s elementary school became a Jewish school and she could no longer play with her Christian friends. Many times the Germans came to arrest the family, but for reasons unknown to Gabriele, they never did.

Fritz tried to use his position to protect his family from deportation by getting their names on protective lists. But in June 1943, the family, including her grandmother, Marta, was sent to the Westerbork transit camp in Holland. They were housed in barracks #65, which housed only Dutch inmates and those deported from Holland but not of Dutch nationality. The family was separated with men on one side and women and children on the other. Ilse, Gabriele, and Marta shared two beds. Everyone worked at Westerbork. Ilse taught Kindergarten and Fritz worked in the metal shop. Gabriele, too young to work, stole things and bartered for food. Marta’s name appeared on a list of prisoners destined for to Auschwitz and she committed suicide in July 1943 rather than face deportation. Ernst had given poison to Marta and the rest of the family when they left Berlin and she used it to kill herself. Fritz told Gabriele her grandmother became ill and died. It was not until after the war that she found out the truth about Marta’s death.

In January 1944, the family was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. They were assigned to the Hamburger Kaserne [Hamburg Barracks] and separated according to gender. While interned at Theresienstadt, Ilse was forced to work in a glimmer [mica] factory. Fritz worked as an inventor. All children over ten years old were forced to work and Gabriele worked as an ordananz. Occasionally she was assigned to special jobs, such as chestnut gathering.

Soviet troops took control of Theresienstadt in May 1945. The family returned to Amsterdam that June. Fritz reestablished his pharmacy, Ilse kept house, and Gabriele returned to school. Gabriele immigrated to the U.S. in 1959 and became a citizen in 1965. She settled in California and, became a teacher, and has published five books. Her parents moved to London, England, before settling in Zurich, Switzerland, where they died: Ilse on February 23, 1977, at age 66 , and Fritz, on November 16, 1980, at age 76.