Amy Flecher

9 April 1923 | A German Jew, Sigmund Wolfgang Haberhauffe, was born in Kropp bei Schleswig. In #Auschwitz from 19 February 1943 No. 103757 He perished in the camp on 30 December 1943.

19 February 1936 | A French Jewish girl, Paulette Gotlib, was born in Paris. She arrived at #Auschwitz on 19 August 1942 in a transport of 997 Jews deported from Drancy. She was murdered after selection in a gas chamber with 896 other people.

7 February 1932 | A Dutch Jewish boy, Salomon Niekerk, was born in Rijswijk. On 20 January 1944 he was deported from Westerbork to the Theresienstadt ghetto and on 16 May 1944 sent in a transport to #Auschwitz. He did not survive. --- Children at Auschwitz 📖 Lesson: lekcja.auschwitz.org/dzieci_EN/ 🎧 Podcast: youtu.be/aYKx_zpLSqA

5 February 1938 | A French Jewish girl, Therese Erdberg, was born in Paris. In December 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz and, after selection, murdered in a gas chamber. --- 🎧 Listen about the development of the mass murder infrastructure at Auschwitz: auschwitz.org/en/education/e…

February 5, 1943 | A transport of Poles and Jews from the Zamosc region arrives in Auschwitz with 1000 people. Following the selection process by the SS, 417 of these women and men are killed in the gas chambers.

5 February 1940 | A French Jewish boy, Gerard Partouche, was born in Chamalieres. He arrived at #Auschwitz on 22 January 1944 in a transport of 1,155 Jews deported from Drancy. After selection, he was murdered in the gas chamber. --- ▶ A short video about gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz camp: youtu.be/-A05i25j9Ck

In the autumn of 1942, a slight, 32-year-old Polish social worker named Irena Sendler passed through the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto with a carpenter’s toolbox in her arms. Beneath the hammers and nails lay a drugged six-month-old infant, breathing softly, utterly silent. One cry would have meant instant death for both of them. Irena smiled at the guards; they waved her through. They never suspected that this quiet woman would repeat the journey 2,499 more times. The ghetto was a slow-motion extermination. Starvation, disease, and random murder stalked every street. Jewish parents faced a choice no human being should ever have to make: keep their child and watch them waste away, or hand them to a stranger who promised a chance—however thin—at life. Irena came officially to inspect for typhus. In reality, she came to steal children from death. Babies left in toolboxes or ambulances under false bottoms. Toddlers sedated and tucked into potato sacks. Older children led by the hand through the stinking, lightless sewers while German boots marched overhead. “Not a sound,” she whispered as rats scurried past their feet. She knew that the rescued children would be given new names, new religions, new families. Their pasts would vanish unless someone remembered. So, on fragile scraps of tissue paper, Irena wrote each child’s real name, their parents’ names, and their new hiding place. She rolled the papers tight, slipped them into glass jars, and buried them beneath an apple tree in a neighbor’s garden. If she were caught and killed, the truth might still survive. She was caught. On October 20, 1943, the Gestapo kicked in her door. They took her to Pawiak Prison and demanded the list. When she refused, they smashed both her legs with iron bars. Then her feet. Then her arms. For weeks the beatings continued. She never spoke. They scheduled her execution. On the appointed morning, guards dragged the broken woman from her cell. Instead of a firing squad, she found herself outside the prison walls—alive. The Polish underground council Żegota had bribed a guard to mark her file “shot while trying to escape.” Officially dead, Irena Sendler limped back into the shadows to keep working.When the war finally ended, the first thing she did was dig up the jars under the apple tree. She spent years trying to return the children—now scattered across convents, farms, and foster homes—to whatever family might remain. Almost no parents had survived. But the children had. Because of her, 2,500 Jewish boys and girls lived to grow up, to marry, to have children and grandchildren of their own—an entire secret branch of the human family tree that the Nazis never managed to cut down.For decades her story stayed buried deeper than the jars themselves. Then, in 1999, four high-school girls in rural Kansas stumbled across a brief mention of her name. They found the old woman still living quietly in Warsaw and brought her courage back into the light. Journalists called her the greatest rescuer of the Holocaust. Irena only shook her head.“I could have saved more,” she said. “That regret follows me to the grave.”Irena Sendler—armed with nothing but a ghetto work permit, a toolbox, and a refusal to look away—proved that even in the heart of the worst evil humanity has ever devised, one determined person can still keep the darkness from winning completely.

26 January 1942 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Alida Baruch, was born in Amsterdam. In July 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. --- 📖 Learn about the fate of Jews deported from the German-occupied Netherlands to Auschwitz: lekcja.auschwitz.org/32_en/

22 January 1938 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Vera Matteman, was born in Amsterdam. In September 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after selection. --- ▶ A short video about gas chambers and crematoria of the Auschwitz camp: youtu.be/-A05i25j9Ck

14 December 1934 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Martha Doof, was born in Amsterdam. She arrived at #Auschwitz on 11 February 1943 in a transport of 1,184 Jews deported from Westerbork. She was among 1,005 of the murdered in gas chambers after the selection.

December 14, 1942 | The Polish prisoner Franciszek Dembiniok (Nº 7295), born July 2, 1916, is captured while escaping and sent to the bunker of Block 11. He is probably shot on Dec. 17, 1942, after a selection in the bunker. #AuschwitzExhibition #NotLongAgoNotFarAway

26 November 1937 | French Jewish boy, Samek Erlich, was born in Paris. He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Drancy on 16 August 1942. He was murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection.

Mania Halef, a five-year-old Jewish girl murdered during the mass execution in Babi Yar, September 30th 1941.

25 November 1938 | French Jewish boy, Henri Herszhorn, was born in Paris. In 1942, he was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after arrival selection. --- Video about the first two gas chambers created near Auschwitz II-Birkenau: youtu.be/Rr6lF75fDmU

16 September 1933 | Dutch Jewish girl, Silvia Juliette Basch, was born in Amsterdam. She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in September 1943. She was murdered in a gas chamber after the arrival selection.

September 15, 1941 | German Nazi government issues a decree stating Jewish children above the age of six living in #Germany must wear the yellow star badge visible anytime they are in public. 📷 Litzmannstadt (Lodz), occupied Poland, a Jewish child from the ghetto.

16 September 1908 | A Polish Jewish woman, Fanny Cukier, was born in Radom. She emigrated to France. In August 1942, she was deported to #Auschwitz with her daughters Ginette and Irene. After the selection, they were murdered in a gas chamber. --- Learn about the first two gas chambers created near Auschwitz II-Birkenau - Bunkers I & II: youtu.be/Rr6lF75fDmU

20 May 1938 | A Belgian Jewish boy, Maurice Vieyra, was born in Antwerp. In September 1942 he was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber.

19 May 1938 | A Polish Jewish girl, Debora Klementynowska, was born in Białystok. In 1943 she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber.

14 May 1928 | A Czech Jewish girl, Hana Kosinerová, was born in Prague. She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt Ghetto on 1 February 1943. She did not survive.