Wertheimer and Reich families photograph collection

Hanka (donor, b. December, 12 1929) daughter of Fritz Wertheimer and Lily Reich Wertheimer and her older sister Miriam ( b. May 13, 1926) fled their hometown after Germany took the Sudetenland. Miriam was sent to Palestine with Youth Aliyah in November 1939; her father was arrested in 1940 and died in Dachau in April 1942. Lily and Hanka lived in Prague, where Lily, who was educated at Sorbonne, worked for foreign embassies. In March 1943 they were deported to Theresienstadt, where they were reunited with Lily’s mother, Malvina Reich, and uncle Leo Reich. Hanka was in children home #28 and Lily worked for the camp’s post office. In May 1944 they were deported together with Malvina to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hanka and her mother were selected to go to forced labor in Hamburg port and in March 1945 they were taken to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Lily died there on May 16, 1945 of typhus. Hanka returned to Prague to the apartment of the devoted housekeeper Mashka, but she had to go to a TB sanatorium in Davos for three years. In November 1949 she immigrated to Israel.