Werner Goldschmidt

Werner Goldschmidt / Werner Goldschmith (M / Germany, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Biography

Werner Goldschmidt was born November 13, 1928 in Erfurt, Germany. After the death of his father in 1938, he was placed in the Auerbach Orphanage in Berlin, Germany. On July 3, 1939, only months before the outbreak of World War II, he was sent to France on a Kindertransport, while his mother went to England.

He went first to the Chateau de Quincy. In September 1941 he emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Serpa Pinto. He lived in Jewish foster homes until he reunited with his mother in 1946.

USHMM

Werner Goldsmith, born in Erfurt, Germany on November 13, 1928, describes his family; the expulsion of Jewish children from German schools in 1938; the death of his father in 1938 and moving with his mother to Berlin, Germany; his mother placing him in the Auerbach Orphanage while she lived with another Jewish woman in West Berlin; his mother arranging for him to be placed in a transport to France while she traveled to England; living in the home of a French count until the invasion of France in 1940; the count being taken prisoner in Germany in 1940 and going into the care of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; unsuccessfully attempting to flee to southern France and getting separated from the other children when he was placed in the Rothschild orphanage, where he remained for nine months; moving to Marseilles, France in the spring of 1941; receiving an emergency visa in September 1941 to immigrate to the United States because he had relatives there; getting on a transport from Marseilles to Portugal and then embarking on a Portuguese freighter and sailing to the United States; and living in Jewish foster homes until he reunited with his mother in 1946.

Sources

• SS Serpa Pinto (September 1941) -- confirmed (the name is on the list of passengers)