A postcard sent to Anna (Goldstein) Hajsky, by her nephew, Robert Silberstern, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Photograph | Digitized | Photograph Number: 26141

Overview

Caption: A postcard sent to Anna (Goldstein) Hajsky, by her nephew, Robert Silberstern, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Robert writes that he is healthy and working hard. He hopes that his aunt has not forgotten him. By this time, however, Anna, had already been deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The postcard was received by Anna's sons, Marcel and Jan, who escaped deportation because their father, Cenek Hajsky, was not Jewish.
Date: 1944 April 15
Locale: Auschwitz, [Upper Silesia] Poland
Variant Locale: Brzezinka
Birkenau
Auschwitz III
Monowitz
Auschwitz II
Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ruth Wottitzky Binder

Photo Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Provenance: Ruth Wottitzky Binder

Keyword: AUSCHWITZ BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMPS CORRESPONDENCE/MAIL DOCUMENTS JEWS (CZECH) KILLING CENTERS POSTCARDS PRISONERS
Photo Designation: KILLING CENTERS -- Auschwitz -- WARTIME -- Documents

Biography: Ruth Binder (born Ruth Wottitzky) is the daughter of Richard and Jozi (Goldstein) Wottitzky. She was born January 17, 1926 in Windigsteig, Austria, where her parents ran the Wottitzky family general store. At the urging of an acquaintance, Ruth's father applied for American visas in the spring of 1938. With the escalation of the Sudeten crisis in September of that year, the German authorities forced the Wottitzkys to leave Windigsteig. The family went to Vienna, where after six months they received their American visas. From Vienna they travelled through Switzerland to France. On April 15, 1939 they set sail aboard the SS Queen Mary for New York. Upon their arrival in the United States the family settled in Washington, DC. Ruth's maternal grandparents, Julius and Fanny Goldstein, lived in Sevetin, Czechoslovakia, where they owned a general store and raised eight children: Bohus, Ruzena, Klara, Marie, Jozi (Ruth's mother), Olga, Rudolf and Anna. By 1941 all of the children but Rudolf had married, and all but Jozi lived in or around Sevetin. During the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Ruth's aunts, uncles and grandparents were deported to Theresienstadt, and from there, most were sent to Auschwitz. Three survived the war: Fanny, Anna and Rudolf. However, Rudolf succumbed to illness and malnutrition shortly after the liberation at a hospital in Dachau. Fanny and Anna subsequently returned to their hometown, where Fanny died in 1951.