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Werken van Hertha Feiner

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Gangbare naam
Feiner, Hertha
Geboortedatum
1896-05-08
Overlijdensdatum
1943-03-12
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
Germany
Plaats van overlijden
Auschwitz, Poland (en route)
Woonplaatsen
Berlin, Germany
Beroepen
teacher
letter writer
Korte biografie
Hertha Feiner was a German Jewish teacher and community leader who lived in Berlin with her two daughters, Inge and Marion Anmus. She was divorced from their father, who was not Jewish. When the girls were ages 11 and 14, she sent them to a private boarding school in Switzerland with the help of her ex-husband, because she feared their future in Nazi Germany. She wrote to them often, but never saw them again. She made desperate attempts to leave Germany herself, but was arrested and deported early in 1943. She killed herself on a mass transport destined for Auschwitz. Her children survived the Holocaust. A series of eloquent letters from Hertha to her daughters was published under the title Vor der Deportation: Briefe an die Töchter, Januar 1939-Dezember 1942 (in English, Before Deportation: Letters from a Mother to Her Daughters) in 1999.

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A somewhat unusual Holocaust book. Hertha Feiner was Jewish and lived in Berlin with her two daughters. To save the children from Nazi persecution, she and her Aryan ex-husband sent them a boarding school in Switzerland in 1939. Hertha never saw them again. She wrote them frequently, trying to provide a mother's love and guidance through the mail, but as the book reveals, her ex-husband and the boarding school staff often connived to make sure the girls didn't receive many of her letters, and also discouraged them from writing her back.

As the situation becomes ever more desperate, and Hertha's attempts to leave the country come to nothing, you see her make veiled references to this in her letters. "Heinz left, but then he came back!" she writes. "It was a miracle. We don't know how it happened." Meaning: a friend of hers was picked up by the Gestapo, but then released, which is indeed amazing, since most people who get arrested by the Gestapo are never seen again. She writes that her "illness" is getting worse and she may need one of the girls to come live with her. Meaning: the persecutions against the Jews are horrible and she fears being deported, and she needs the protection of a half-Aryan daughter living in her household.

Hertha was deported in early 1943. Knowing what her fate would be, she took poison en route to Auschwitz. I'm not sure how all these letters were saved, since it says her daughters never got some of them. This book is really not my kind of thing, but it does reveal a lot about German-Jewish life during this time period, as well as German-Jewish parenting. Certainly it is a worthy historical document.
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Gemarkeerd
meggyweg | Feb 11, 2011 |

Statistieken

Werken
2
Leden
8
Populariteit
#1,038,911
Waardering
3.0
Besprekingen
1
ISBNs
3
Talen
2
Favoriet
1