Biography
Evelyn (Evy) Woods (born Evelyn Goldstein) is the daughter of Ernst and Herta (Loschinski) Goldstein. She was born on June 26, 1938 in Berlin. During the first years of the war, the Goldstein family remained in their home, and Ernst and Herta were required to perform forced labor. On February 27, 1943, they went into hiding in the attic of an apartment house owned by an elderly Jewish couple, Ernst and Marta Lewent. This couple, in anticipation of Nazi round-ups and deportations of Jews, had constructed a small hiding place in the attic and entrusted their home to a friend, who was a non-Jewish lawyer. After approximately six weeks, the Gestapo discovered their hiding place. While the elderly couple was being arrested, they created a disturbance allowing Evy and her parents to flee. The Goldstein family then found temporary shelter with a former customer of Evy's father. Ernst had previously met Hilde Kniess, a university student who had slipped him her calling card for use as an emergency contact. Through that student, Ernst made contact with Dr. Elisabeth Abegg, a university professor who had been deposed on account of her anti-Nazi views. Dr. Abegg and her circle of students arranged a series of hiding places for Evy separate from her parents since the Gestapo was searching for a family of three. Evy was given the name of Eva Holstein, and in June 1943 she was sent alone to a more permanent refuge on the estate of Baroness von Huellensen in East Prussia, where she remained until the end of the war. Evy's mother also survived the war in hiding and found Evy prior to their liberation by the Russians. The Gestapo captured her father and sent him to Auschwitz where he quickly perished. The Russian liberators of East Prussia classified Evy and her mother as civilian POWs because they spoke German, not believing that there were any Jews left alive. Eventually both escaped several Russian DP camps. Herta placed Evy in a Jewish orphanage in Vilna, Lithuania while she worked as a domestic for a Russian-Jewish judge. After being detained by the Soviets for over three years, in 1948 Herta and Evy finally returned to Berlin under false identities. Two years later they immigrated to the United States in 1950. In 1967 Elisabeth Abegg was honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
