Renata Laqueur

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Renata Liselotte Margarethe Laqueur Weiss (born November 3, 1919 in Brieg , Lower Silesia; † June 4, 2011 in New York City ) was a linguist and literary scholar.

Life

The daughter of the physician Ernst Laqueur was born in her grandfather's house, grew up in the Netherlands and graduated from the humanistic grammar school in Amsterdam. Her parents of Jewish descent had themselves and the children baptized Protestants. She wanted to become a fashion designer or study literature, but at her father's request she attended an international secretary school from 1939, where, in addition to shorthand , she learned German, English, French and Dutch. During this time she wrote articles for a Dutch women's magazine. Her older brother Peter worked in Buenos Aires from 1939 .

As a Jew, she was arrested for the first time on February 18, 1943, first in the Herzogenbusch concentration camp , then in the Westerbork transit camp . In November she was imprisoned together with her husband Paul Goldschmidt , came back to Westerbork and was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on March 15, 1944 . Here she began to secretly keep a diary. At the instigation of SS-Hauptsturmführer Ernst Moes (1898–1945), she left Bergen-Belsen on April 10, 1945 with an evacuation transport (see Lost Train ). A journey of four days was expected. Her husband had finished his provisions the first evening. After a long odyssey, the train was liberated by the Red Army on April 23 at Tröbitz . Then she fell ill with typhus, as did her sister Gerda and her husband Felix Oestreicher, who died of it in May and June respectively. On July 9, 1945, Renata and Paul left the Meissen community in Zeithain . After spending a week in a DP camp in Kassel , they returned home on trucks until July 22, 1945.

After returning to the Netherlands, she met the Hungarian doctor and speech therapist Dezső A. Weiß, with whom she emigrated to the USA via Canada. Since 1953 she lived on York Avenue in Manhattan, where she initially worked as a secretary in a cancer research institute.

In 1960 she began studying English and Spanish language and literature at New York University and later switched to comparative literature. She compiled 13 other diaries of concentration camp inmates and wrote her doctoral thesis Writing in Defiance: Concentration Camp Diaries in Dutch, French and German, 1940-1945 , from 1969 to 1971 . Their investigations confirmed the results of Michał Borwicz . In 1994 she lectured at the United Nations International School (UNIS).

Publications

  • Dagboek uit Bergen-Belsen: May 1944-April 1945 ; 1965, Amsterdam
  • Bergen-Belsen diary: 1944, 1945 ; Translated by Peter Wiebke (* 1944 in Bergen), Fackelträger-Verlag, 1983
  • Writing in the concentration camp: diaries 1940 to 1945 ; (Arr. By Martina Dreisbach)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.ancientfaces.com/person/renata-laqueur/16701164
  2. ↑ http://www.exilarchiv.de/DE/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1380%3Alaqueur-renata&catid=53&lang=de
  3. ↑ http://www.kz-zuege.de/pdf/kapitel_04.pdf
  4. ↑ http://brabosh.com/2009/04/15/renata-laqueur-weg-uit-bergen-belsen-terug-naar-amsterdam/
  5. ↑ Diaries of: Florian Bakels, Karl Adolf Gross, Abel Herzberg, Heinrich Eduard vom Holt, David Koker, Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, Jacques Lamy, Hanna Levy-Hass, Philip Mechanicus, Nico Rost, Simon Saint-Clair, Gerty Spies, Loden bird
  6. ↑ http://www.werkstattgeschichte.de/werkstatt_site/archiv/WG4_086-087_NIEDEN_SCHREIBEN.pdf
  7. ↑ Heather over it and a cross . In: The time . No. 52/1985 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Laqueur, Renata
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laqueur, Renata L .; Laqueur, Renata Liselotte Margarethe; Weiss, Renata Laqueur; Laqueur, Renate Liselotte Margarethe; Laqueur-White, Renata
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Linguist and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Brieg
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 2011
Place of death New York City