Biography
Alisa Tennenbaum (born Liselotte Liesl Scherzer) is the daughter of Moshe Mordechai and Edith Recha Scherzer. She was born on September 3, 1929 in Vienna, Austria where her father owned a wholesale grocery store. Liesl had one older sister Melitta, who immigrated to Palestine in 1939. After Kristallnacht, the family store was confiscated by the Nazis, and Moshe was arrested and sent to Dachau. He was released from the camp two months later on condition that he immediately leave Austria for Great Britain. In Great Britain he tried his best to bring his family to him. Though unable to find a job for his wife, Moshe nevertheless managed for Liesl to come on the last Kindertransport from Vienna to England. Organized by the Newscastle Jewish Community, the Kindertransport left on August 22, 1939. Liesl was taken to Percy Park in Tynemouth where she stayed in a hostel until May-June 1940 and then lived in another hostel for Jewish girls in Windermere until the end of the war. Meanwhile Liesl's father joined the Pioneer Corps. Liesl's mother, left alone in Vienna, was deported to the Lodz ghetto. From there she was sent to Auschwitz, an ammunition factory near Berlin and eventually to Ravensbrueck where she was liberated. After recuperating in Sweden, the family was reunited and left Great Britain for Palestine on board the refugee ship "Kedma".
