Lily Sigmann walks down a street in Amsterdam on the arm of her uncle, Moritz Gutman, prior to immigrating to Switzerland.
Overview
- Caption
- Lily Sigmann walks down a street in Amsterdam on the arm of her uncle, Moritz Gutman, prior to immigrating to Switzerland.
- Date
-
1946
- Locale
- Amsterdam, [North Holland] The Netherlands
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Charles and Gita Siegman
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Charles and Gita Siegman
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Charles Siegman (born Charlie Jechiel Sigmann) is the youngest child of Berish (Berl) Sigmann and Henrika (Yetta) Sigmann-Weinberger. He was born on October 13, 1935 in Scheveningen, The Netherlands where his father was a stamp dealer. He had four older siblings: Aron (b. 1924), Yosef Tsvi (b. 1926), Leo, Chaim Aryeh (b. 1931), and Lily (Leah, now Blum, b. 1933). His mother was born in 1922 in Zborov, Slovakia, but as a child moved with her family to Zurich, Switzerland. His father was born in Przemysl and as a young man he moved to Western Europe. Berish and Henrika met and became engaged. They married in 1922 in Frankfurt because Berish's family could not get visas to come to Switzerland. After their marriage they moved to Scheveningen, a small town in the Netherlands outside The Hague. They observed a religious Orthodox lifestyle. In May 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands, and soon thereafter the Sigmann family moved to The Hague. In 1942, as the police increasingly began rounding-up Jews for deportation, Charlie's parents decided to split up the family. Since they thought only the able-bodied would be deported, they moved in with people they thought would be exempt. Henrika and the two oldest sons went to a mental asylum. Lily stayed with a pregnant woman, and Charlie and Leo went to a woman who had just given birth. Berish remained at home, but saw his younger boys daily at the synagogue for morning prayers. Berish suddenly stopped coming one day in December 1942, and Charlie and Leo realized he must have been picked up. After living with the foster family for a couple of months, Leo and Charlie were sent to the Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam. In January 1943, their mother and older brothers were deported to Westerbork. Almost immediately afterwards, they were sent on to Auschwitz where they were murdered on January 18, 1943. Charlie, Lily, and Leo were arrested in February, taken to the Schouwburg Theater and sent to Westerbork in February 1943. As soon as they arrived in Westerbork a scarlet fever epidemic broke out which by coincidence ended up saving the lives of the children. Since the Germans did not want to expose their troops to the disease, they placed the camp under quarantine and temporarily halted all transports to Auschwitz. During this week of quarantine, the children's aunt, Rosie Weinberg Gutman, sent them Honduran visas from Switzerland. As a result of their foreign visas, the children now fell under the special category of detainees temporarily exempt from deportation. They remained in Westerbork for a full year from February 11, 1943 to February 25, 1944. Charlie spent the year in the camp's children's home run by a Mr. Birnbaum. Since Charlie became friendly with the Birnbaum children, he enjoyed extra attention than he might not have had otherwise. At the end of February 1944, Charlie, Leo and Lilly were deported to Theresienstadt. They traveled in a regular passenger car; accompanied by a trained social worker, Malka Polaczek Weinman, and her husband Paul Polaczek who were also being deported. For the next year, Malka served as Charlie's surrogate mother. Charlie's brother and sister lived in adult barracks. Charlie briefly stayed in a men's barracks and then moved to a special children's barracks primarily for Dutch children run by Malka Weinman. Charlie and Lilly did not work, but Leo was put to work as a messenger. Charlie mostly entertained himself, but on occasion attended clandestine classes and visited his siblings regularly. Charlie also managed to observe Jewish rituals to the extent possible. He attended weekly Sabbath services, and his brother Leo even celebrated his bar mitzvah in the camp. Leo read from the Torah and Malka Weinman organized a celebration with cheese that she had brought with her from Holland, and some chocolate that she received from another prisoner. A Czech prisoner who had brought two sets of tefilin with him to the camp gave one pair to Leo as a bar mitzvah gift. Charlie, Leo and Lily were liberated by the Red Army in May 1945. They left Theresienstadt the following month, after their parent's cousins, Pepe Felsen Berger and her husband, heard that they had survived and requested temporary custody of the children. The Bergers had survived the war in hiding. They had owned an elegant kosher restaurant before the war and now fed returning survivors. Charlie, Leo and Lily remained with the Bergers for one year. Then their mother's sister, Rosie Weinberg Gutman, requested that Lily come live with her. Lily later immigrated to Israel in 1951. The children's paternal uncle, Mendel Siegman, who had immigrated to the United States before the war, and his wife Susie adopted the two boys. Charlie and Leo immigrated to the United States in July 1946.
- Record last modified:
- 2008-08-12 00:00:00
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1154494
