Werner Epstein (M / Germany, 1923), Holocaust survivor

Werner Epstein (M / Germany, 1923), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Children of La Hille> -- <Germany> -- <Refugees, Belgium> <Home Speyer> -- <Refugees, France> <Seyre> <Chateau de La Hille> <Hidden Children, France> -- <Deportees> <Auschwitz> <Perished>

Biography

Werner Epstein (Eppstein) was born Dec 14, 1923 in Berlin, Germany. Having experienced Nazi persecution of Jews, he went as refugees to Belgium at Home Speyer and from there in 1940 to France where they were hosted at Seyre and at the Chateau de La Hille.

From August 1942 the situation became precarious as the Nazi ordered the arrest of all Jewish boys and girls over 15 years of age.

In 1943 Werner (with Karl Blumenfeld, Kurt Moser, and Fritz Wertheimer) was arrested while trying to cross the border with Spain. He was deported to Auschwitz and other camps. He was the only of the group to survive.

USHMM

Werner Epstein discusses his childhood in Berlin, Germany; the anti-Jewish regulations he and his family encountered when the Nazis rose to power; his decision to leave Germany after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing by bicycle to Belgium, where he prospered until the war began in September 1939; being arrested as an enemy alien; his experiences in a series of detention camps in southern France; his arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz; volunteering to work in a coal mine in Silesia, where he remained until December 1944; being ill with malaria, which he contracted while in French detention camps; the death march he endured after the camp’s evacuation in advance of the Soviet Army’s approach; being liberated by Russian Mongol soldiers; journeying to a transit camp in Magdeburg, Germany; reuniting with his fiancee; returning with her to Paris, France, where they settled and he became a chef; and immigrating to California in 1962.