Hanka Weingarten / Chana Wertheimer (F / Czechia, 1929-2018), Holocaust survivor
Hanka Weingarten / Chana Wertheimer (F / Czechia, 1929-2018), Holocaust survivor
- One of the Girls of Room 28
- KEYWORDS : <Theresienstadt> <Auschwitz> <Hamburg> <Bergen-Belsen> <Liberation of Bergen-Belsen>
Biography
12.12.1929 - 1.6.2018 - Hanka spent her childhood in her birth-town Znaim/Znojmo in the Czech Republic. When the Nazis occupied the "Sudetenland" in October 1938, her family escaped to Prague, her town of refuge. They were interned in the Ghetto and Concentration-Camp Theresienstadt till May 1944 and then, from May to July 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Together with her mother she was then sent to work in the bombed City of Hamburg clearing rubble. She ended up in April 1945 in Bergen-Belsen, was close to death, when the Americans liberated the camp. A few days after liberation her beloved mother Lily Wertheimer died.
Hanka is one of the Girls of Room 28 featured in 2004 in Hannelore Brenner's book.
Memory of Nations
Hana Weingarten was born as Hana Wertheimerová in 1929 in Znojmo in southern Moravia. Her grandfather was an owner of a factory which produced pickled gherkins and candied fruits, and her father was in charge of purchasing for the factory. In 1938 the Nazi threat forced the family to flee from Znojmo due to their ethnicity. At first they went to their relatives in Jihlava, then to Prostějov and eventually to Prague. Hana’s father was arrested already while in Brno as the first person from the family. Hana and her mother left Prague on March 6, 1943 in the transport Cv to Terezín. There she lived in a girls’ home L410 in room n. 28. In mid-May 1944 she boarded a transport bound for Auschwitz. In Auschwitz-Birkenau she lived in a so-called family camp for two months, after which she and her mother were selected to go to work to Hamburg, In March 1945 they were transported to the Bergen-Belsen camp. Hana Wertheimerová was liberated by the British army. Seriously ill, she remained in the camp for two more moths. Her mother died of a disease after liberation in 1945. In 1946-1948 Hana underwent a rehabilitation stay in Switzerland, and after her return she worked for the emigration office for Palestine (Israel). During 1949 she was one of the last people who legally emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Israel. Together with her husband, who was from Poland, she raised three sons. Her husband worked in a number of countries, and the family thus lived and worked in the USA, Italy, India, Bulgaria, and Singapore. Hana Weingarten lived in a Tel Aviv suburb. She passed away on June, the 1st, 2018.