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A letter from Selek and Eda Kuenstler to Sophia Zendler promising land in exchange for hiding their daughter written just weeks before the liquidation of the Kracow ghetto.

Photograph | Photograph Number: N08739
A letter from Selek and Eda Kuenstler to Sophia Zendler promising land in exchange for hiding their daughter written just weeks before the liquidation of the Kracow ghetto. The letter beseeches her to save the child from "annihilation." As part of their agreement, Anita's father promised to pay Mrs. Zendler 30,000 zloty to care for the child.

A letter from Selek and Eda Kuenstler to Sophia Zendler promising land in exchange for hiding their daughter written just weeks before the liquidation of the Kracow ghetto.

The letter beseeches her to save the child from "annihilation." As part of their agreement, Anita's father promised to pay Mrs. Zendler 30,000 zloty to care for the child.

Date
February 1943
Locale
Krakow, [Krakow] Poland
Variant Locale
Krakau
Cracow
Photo Designation
EXHIBITIONS -- Special Exhibitions and Publications -- Hidden Children -- Archival/Textual Records
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Anita Kuenstler Epstein

About This Photograph

Biography
Anita Epstein (born Anita Kuentsler) is the daughter of Salek and Eda Kuenstler. Her parents married in Krakow on August 30, 1939. Anita was born on November 18, 1942 in the Krakow ghetto. When she was three months old, her parents spirited her out of the ghetto, persuading a Catholic family named Zendler to hide her. The Zendlers, who had three children of their own, baptized Anita and raised her as a Catholic. Salek was killed in Mauthausen, but Eda survived two labor camps and incarceration in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen from which she was liberated in April 1945. After hospital treatment for typhus she returned to Krakow and found Anita. Eda and Anita went with other Jews to a displaced persons' camp in Selb, Germany near the Czechoslovakian border. They lived in Selb until 1949 and then came to the United States on a troop ship, the USS Taylor.

Keywords and Subjects

Administrative History

Artifact Photographer
Max Reid

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Anita Kuenstler Epstein
Source Record ID: Collections: 2001.321.1
 
Record last modified: 2007-02-14 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1145395