Jona Spiegel / Jackie Young (M / Austria, 1941), Holocaust survivor
Jona Spiegel / Jackie Young (M / Austria, 1941), Holocaust survivor.
- KEYWORDS : <Austria> <Theresienstadt> / <Liberation of Theresienstadt> / <England> <Windermere Children>
Biography
NOTES: Jona Spiegel was born in Vienna on Dec 18, 1941. Only the name of the mother is indicated in the birth certificate. In the summer 1942, Jona's mother was sent to die, while Jona was taken alone on Sept 24, 1942 and deported to Theresienstadt when he was only nine months old. He was three years old at the time of liberation, and was sent with the other toddlers to Bulldogs Bank after his arrival in England. A Jewish family in London adopted him when he was five, and he became Jackie Young. Like many adoptive parents of the era, Jackie’s new mother and father did not tell him about his past, and so he learned the truth through a series of shocking, accidental revelations. When he was around ten years old, a schoolmate revealed that Jackie was adopted; a few years later, Jackie learned that he had not been born in Britain. Most shocking of all, he learned only when he was 20 that he had survived a Nazi concentration camp and that his real name was Jona Spiegel. He has worked for decades to learn more about his birth mother, Elsa, and his family of origin, all of whom the Nazis murdered.
Missing Identity
On Dec 18th 1941 Jona Spiegel was born in the Rothschild Hospital in Wien. On his birth certificate only the name of his mother is mentioned. On September 24th 1942 Jona was deported to Theresienstadt, without his mother. On the same deportation were several other unaccompanied children. His mother Elsa Spiegel had been deported three months earlier to Minsk. She was probably murdered in Maly Trostenets near Minsk. Under circumstances still not clear, Jona managed to stay alive in Theresienstadt for two and a half years. He was one of the around hundred or hundred and fifty children who survived Theresienstadt. In August 1945 Jona and some of the other children were sent by airplane from Czeckioslovakia to England. For one year Jona and five other young children stayed in a special Children’s Home called Bulldogs Bank. In 1946 Jona was transferred to another Children’s Home, Weir Courtney, in Lingfield where he spent the next six months. In 1946 he was taken in by a Jewish couple and grew up in their home, being officially adopted in 1950.
Sources
- USHMM Database (Jonah Jakob Spiegel, 18 Dec 41) -- YES
- 45aid.org (Jona Spiegel, 1941) -- YES