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Inge Berg March 27, 1929 Cologne, Germany

Inge lived with her parents, grandparents, uncle, and younger sister, Gisella, in Lechenich, a small village outside Cologne. The Bergs were an observant Jewish family. Inge’s grandfather was the president of the local synagogue association and her uncle was the cantor. Her father, Josef, was a respected cattle dealer, who had many business and personal contacts with their Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors. 1933–39: In 1935, two years after the Nazis came to power, Inge was forced to leave public school in Lechenich, so began to attend Jewish schools in Linnich and Cologne. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis carried out a nationwide pogrom against Germany’s Jews, known as Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”). Alerted to the danger by a family friend, the Bergs fled to Cologne. Inge’s mother later returned to Lechenich, only to discover that their home had been ransacked and their possessions had been damaged or destroyed. In May 1939, the Bergs left for Kenya. 1940–45: In Kenya, then part of British East Africa, the family lived on a farm in the highlands, raising cattle and pyrethrum—a flowering plant used to make insecticide. Conditions there were quite rustic. Their home had a tin roof and cement floors, and their only source of water came from the rain. Inge, Gisella, and their mother moved to Nairobi so that the girls could finish their education. To support the family, Inge’s mother ran a guesthouse that quickly became a stopping point for Jewish soldiers on furlough. In 1947, the Bergs came to the United States, and eventually purchased a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, New Jersey. Inge took a position in an attorney’s office in New York, and, in 1951, married Werner Katzenstein, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany

Ezra BenGershom 1922 Wurzburg, Germany

Ezra was born to a Jewish family in the Bavarian city of Wurzburg. In the summer of 1929, his father, a third-generation rabbi, accepted a position as a district rabbi, guiding 12 congregations in Upper Silesia. In primary school, Ezra, who showed a keen interest in chemistry, was often harassed by his schoolmates for being Jewish. 1933-39: Because of my “Nordic” features, I was able to frequent places where Jews couldn’t go. In 1938, one year after I entered a Jewish secondary school in Berlin, the Nazis began deporting Jews to concentration camps. Seeking a way to get out of Germany, I joined a Zionist training cooperative near Berlin where city youth were being prepared to emigrate to Palestine to found agricultural settlements. 1940-44: In 1941 I fled to Berlin when the Nazis stepped up deportations of German Jews. To elude Gestapo patrols I constantly moved about the city and I fashioned a Hitler Youth uniform. With the swastikas and my blond appearance, I passed as an Aryan. In April 1943 I escaped to Vienna using false documents stating I worked in the armaments industry. Then I made my way to Budapest, where I went underground until the Germans invaded Hungary. I fled to Romania where, in November 1944, I boarded a Turkish vessel to Palestine [the Yishuv]. In Palestine Ezra realized his dream to study biochemistry. For 25 years he headed the Clinical Chemistry Division of the Academic Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam.

Gad Beck 1923 Berlin, Germany

Gad grew up in Berlin. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Austria. Gad’s mother had converted to Judaism. The Becks lived in a poor section of Berlin, populated predominantly by Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. When Gad and his twin sister, Miriam, were five, the Becks moved to the Weissensee district of Berlin, where Gad entered primary school. 1933–39: I was just 10 when the Nazis came to power. As one of a small number of Jewish pupils in my school, I quickly became the target of antisemitic comments: ‘Can I sit somewhere else, not next to Gad? He has such stinking Jewish feet.’ In 1934 my parents enrolled me in a Jewish school, but I had to quit school when I was 12 as they could no longer afford the tuition. I found work as a shop assistant. 1940–44: As the child of a mixed marriage (Mischlinge), I was not deported to the east when other German Jews were. I remained in Berlin where I became involved in the underground, helping Jews to escape to Switzerland. As a homosexual, I was able to turn to my trusted non-Jewish, homosexual acquaintances to help supply food and hiding places. In early 1945 a Jewish spy for the Gestapo betrayed me and a number of my underground friends. I was interned in a Jewish transit camp in Berlin. After the war, Gad helped organize the immigration of Jewish survivors to Palestine. In 1947 he left for Palestine, and returned to Berlin in 1979.

Inge Auerbacher December 31, 1934 Kippenheim, Germany

Inge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher, religious Jews living in Kippenheim, a village in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest. Her father was a textile merchant. The family lived in a large house with 17 rooms and had servants to help with the housework. 1933–39: On November 10, 1938, (Kristallnacht, ‘Night of Broken Glass’) hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of our home. That same day police arrested my father and grandfather. My mother, my grandmother, and I managed to hide in a shed until it was quiet. When we came out, the town’s Jewish men had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp. My father and grandfather were allowed to return home a few weeks later, but that May my grandfather died of a heart attack. 1940–45: When I was seven, I was deported with my parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. When we arrived, everything was taken from us except for the clothes we wore and my doll, Marlene. Conditions in the camp were harsh. Potatoes were as valuable as diamonds. I was hungry, scared, and sick most of the time. For my eighth birthday, my parents gave me a tiny potato cake with a hint of sugar; for my ninth birthday, an outfit sewn from rags for my doll; and for my tenth birthday, a poem written by my mother. On May 8, 1945, Inge and her parents were liberated from the Theresienstadt ghetto where they had spent nearly three years. They immigrated to the United States in May 1946.