Oregon Holocaust Memorial: Recent Episodes
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Paul Walter Lavender (born Lewandowski) was born on February 10, 1911 in Kassel, Germany. His parents, Jacob and Lina Lewandowski had three other children: Herbert, Irma, and Paul’s fraternal twin brother, Hans. His sister died when he was five years old, and his father died in 1936. Paul’s mother and his brother, Hans, died in … Continue reading "Paul Lavender – Panel 16"
Ruth Doctor Egert was born in Vienna, Austria on January 18, 1913. She grew up in a middle-class, observant family there and became a teacher for the city of Vienna in 1933. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938, she lost her job. The family saw that life was going to be very hard … Continue reading "Ruth Egert – Panel 10"
Diana Golden’s large Sephardic family included her father, a merchant who owned a dry goods store, her mother, two sisters, one brother, her grandmother, and an aunt, who was blind. They were part of a Sephardic Jewish community of about 10,000 living in one section of Rhodes. Diana’s older sister and brother lived in Morocco. … Continue reading "Diana Golden – Panel 4"
Leslie “Les” Aigner, one of three children, was born Ladislav Aigner in 1929 in Nové Zámky, Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s his family moved to Csepel, Hungary on the outskirts of Budapest in the hope of escaping oppressive Nazi discrimination against Jews. But in 1943, the Nazis forced Les’s father into a slave labor camp … Continue reading "Les Aigner – Panel 3"
Ella Ostroff was born in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary on June 4, 1932 to Henry and Helen Weiss. She had three older sisters (Magda, Lily, and Olga) and one brother. Ella lost both her parents and her brother in the Holocaust; her father was deported early on to a labor camp where he died, and her mother … Continue reading "Ella Weisz Ostroff – Panel 18"