Gerstle-Wertheimer, Eva

Last Auschwitz survivor from Wiesbaden until October 2015

Born: 20.04.1914 in Peine (Westphalia)

Died: 21.10.2015 in San Diego (USA)

Gerstle-Wertheimer moved to Wiesbaden with her family in 1927 and married the Jewish factory owner Ari Zwick in Berlin in 1934. When the couple's business was destroyed during the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 and her husband "disappeared", she returned to Wiesbaden and lived through the increasing harassment of Jews here with her parents: the family had to move into a so-called Jews' house in Herrengartenstraße and Gerstle-Wertheimer was forced to do forced labor at the Leo Petri chemical factory in Dotzheim. Due to the hard work, she suffered a hernia in her abdominal wall and was in hospital when the family received the news in June 1942 that they should "stand by" for the imminent deportation. The doctor deliberately operated on Gerstle-Wertheimer on the day she was to be deported and refused to release her.

She was then deported with her parents to Theresienstadt concentration camp on August 31. Her father died four months later, her mother the following year. Gerstle-Wertheimer was deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. She later reported: "The arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most terrible moment ... the selection, naked in front of the SS and Dr. Mengele ..." Gerstle-Wertheimer was sent to work in the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk and volunteered to dig tank trenches in winter. She was later sent on one of the so-called death marches and liberated by the Soviet army. But the danger was not yet over - she was mistaken for an SS guard and wanted to be shot. A Jewish officer recognized the mistake, Gerstle-Wertheimer returned to Wiesbaden, initially found no accommodation and had to fight for furniture from her parents' apartment by legal means.

She met the US soldier Julius Gerstle from Munich, who had escaped from Dachau concentration camp to Switzerland, and emigrated to the USA in 1947. She concealed her past from her children until they saw the movie "Holocaust" and asked about the number on her arm. She joined the "New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors" San Diego and began her eyewitness work. At the request of the Aktives Museum Spiegelgasse, Wiesbaden's last Auschwitz survivor spoke about her fate on several visits to Wiesbaden schools and answered the pupils' questions. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden Citizens' Medal of the City of Wiesbaden.