Hannah Kastan Weiss papers

Hannah Kastan Weiss was born on November 23, 1938 in Berlin, Germany, to Günter (1914-1945) and Charlotte Sonja Kastan (née Kogen, 1913-1943?). Günter was born in Breslau to Harry (1891-1949) and Magdalena Kastan (1894-1977). During the Nazi years, Magdalena and Harry Kastan benefited from a protected status because she was born in a Christian family, and Harry Kastan remained free by performing heavy labor in Berlin. After World War II began, Hannah’s parents were pressed into forced labor at the Siemens plant in Berlin. Hannah lived with her parents during the weekends and with her grandparents during the week. In March 1943, Hannah and her parents were rounded-up and taken to the Berlin Jewish Home for the Aged, a key assembly point for deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hannah's grandmother spotted her there and managed to smuggle her out, but Günter and Charlotte were deported. For the rest of the war, Hannah lived with her grandparents, who registered her as their own child. Hannah had to remain indoors and hide whenever there was a knock on the door, but she otherwise led a normal life. Hannah's mother was never heard from again after her deportation, and is presumed to have perished in Auschwitz. Her father was able to smuggle mail to his parents and daughter from the Monowitz concentration camp (Auschwitz III) until January 1945. He was reportedly beaten and then shot to death by an SS guard on February 28, 1945, during the death march from Auschwitz to Germany. In 1947, Hannah and her grandparents immigrated to the United States aboard the Marine Flasher and settled in Chicago with the assistance of the United Service for New Americans. Her grandfather died in 1949, and her grandmother died in 1977.