Elisabeth Polach

Elisabeth Polach (born September 28, 1902 in Brno , Austria-Hungary ; died June 29, 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp ) was a victim of the Holocaust .

Life

Elisabeth Adler was born in Brno to Jewish parents. She also spent her childhood and school days in Brno. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia , she earned her living as a secretary. In 1927, at the age of 25, she married the lawyer Hans Polach, who also came from a Jewish family. They moved to Prague because Hans Polach had received an attractive job offer there. In 1929 they had their daughter Edith, called Dita.

On November 20, 1942, Hans and Elisabeth Polach were deported to Theresienstadt with their 13-year-old daughter Dita , which was hopelessly overcrowded at the time. Polach and her family had to leave Theresienstadt on December 18, 1943. After the two-day long journey, they arrived in Auschwitz , where they were accommodated in the Theresienstadt family camp . Conditions at first were better.

The prisoners who were housed there were treated better, they were allowed to keep their belongings, were not shaved, could write postcards and receive parcels. This served propaganda and was intended to counteract rumors that were circulating in the world about the extermination of the Jews. In addition, the inmates were able to stay with their families and had better food. In July 1944 Elisabeth and Dita Polach were sent to Hamburg. Elisabeth's husband, Hans Polach, had already died at this point. The 1000 women were housed in the Neuengamme concentration camp , which they initially transferred to the Dessauer Ufer subcamp in Hamburg.

Stumbling block in Hamburg

There the women had to do heavy clean-up work. Seven weeks later they came to the subcamp on Falkenbergsweg in Neugraben . They were used in the manufacture of prefabricated components and in the construction of makeshift homes. Occasionally the women in Harburg and Moorburg also had to help clearing up rubble or digging the anti-tank ditch. Elisabeth Polach and the other women were transferred to the Tiefsack subcamp on February 8, 1945 and transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp two months later as part of the evacuation of the Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps. British troops reached this camp a week later. They immediately put a relief effort into effect for the survivors. But Elisabeth Polach was far too weak and died on June 29, 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 42. There she was buried in a grave that has no name.

swell

• Klaus Möller: Elisabeth Polach (nee Adler) * 1902 , State Center for Political Education Hamburg
• Yad Vashem, Quarterly Magazine , Volume 41, Jerusalem 2006.
• Alwin Meyer: Don't forget your name: The children of Auschwitz , Steidl, 2015, p. 125 ff.
• Karl Heinz Schultz: The Neugraben subcamp . In: Jürgen Ellermeyer, Klaus Richter, Dirk Stegmann (Eds.): Harburg. From the castle to the industrial city . Hamburg-Harburg 1988, p. 493ff.
• Herbert Diercks : The Port of Hamburg under National Socialism . Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, 2009, p. 54f.
• Danuta Czech: Calendar of the events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. 1939-1945 . Rowohlt, 1989, pp. 603, 684, 811, 820 ff.