Daughters in England send messages to their mother in Ravensbrück
“Don’t worry about us,” Sonja Feinkuchen wrote to her mother in 1941. She tried to reach her mother through the Red Cross – but her efforts were in vain
“The child is very worried about her parents,” wrote the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the German Red Cross in December 1940. In the letter, the ICRC asked the German Red Cross to search for Sonja Feinkuchen’s parents, a Jewish couple who had last lived in Cottbus. Sonja had been sent to England on a Kindertransport and had been separated from her parents ever since. She feared the worst – and her fears were justified. Shortly afterwards, she learned that her father had died and that her mother was imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Documents held by the Arolsen Archives make it possible to trace the path of their persecution.
The Feinkuchens had a good life in Cottbus. Jocheweth, known as Hedwig, was happily married to Judka, who went by Julius. In 1922, their daughter Sonja was born, followed a year later by little Betty. Recalling her childhood in a 1995 oral history interview, their daughter Sonja said, “I remember a very warm, close family life with very devoted parents.” The children had everything they needed. Their father was a well-respected textile merchant, and the family had many friends, most of them Jewish, as they were. Some of their relatives also lived in Cottbus, a city on the River Spree.
A good life in Cottbus
Hedwig’s daughters learned to swim in a pool by the Spree, joined the local sports club, and went to school with the neighborhood children. The father earned a good living, and they led a carefree life, even after the Nazi Party came to power. Only gradually did hatred of the Jews begin to affect everyday life in Cottbus. Julius was still allowed to sell his textiles, but his daughters lost some of their playmates and had to leave school. In June 1938, the family was finally forced to move into a small, makeshift apartment in a dusty warehouse.
Deportation of their Polish relatives
At the end of October 1938, Jewish families with Polish citizenship were rounded up, herded into cattle cars, and sent to Poland. This nationwide campaign was known as the “Polenaktion” or Polish Operation. In Cottbus, Hedwig’s brothers, their wives, and children were among those deported. Just a few days later, early one morning, there was a ring at the Feinkuchens’ doorbell. Their niece Lieschen was at the door. She stood there in tears, telling them that Jewish shops had been destroyed across the city — and that her young husband, Fritz, had been taken away by the Gestapo. It was November 9, 1938. Julius lost his business and his bank accounts were frozen.
Desperate attempts to emigrate
“By that time, we had realized that Germany was no place to stay,” recalled Sonja in the oral history interview. Julius desperately searched for a way to leave the German Reich as quickly as possible. The family had relatives in the USA, and Julius applied for visas, making frequent visits to the consulate in Berlin. But the waiting lists were long – and many Jewish families wanted to emigrate. The worried parents heard about child rescue transports to Denmark and England, organized by Jewish organizations.
Julius did everything he could to secure a place for his daughters on one of these transports to England – even for Sonja, who was already 17 and technically too old for the rescue operation: “He came home on Friday evening from Berlin and said, ‘Girls, you’re leaving on Tuesday.’ I was completely traumatized, the thought of leaving our parents was the worst thing for us. We packed, we cried, I think I was hysterical.”
Kindertransport to England
On a Tuesday morning in July 1939, Hedwig and her husband took the two girls to the train station in Berlin, said goodbye, and waved them off. “I can still see my parents in my mind’s eye. We never saw them again,” Sonja said in the interview she gave years later. Her parents stayed in Cottbus, still waiting for their visas. They planned to join their daughters in England as soon as possible and emigrate overseas together.
“If we had known that we would never see our parents again, I don’t think we would have left,” Sonja later recalled. When the war began, she and her sister managed to make ends meet by working as housemaids at a college in Kent. Later they started training as nannies in the south of England, as their hopes of making it to America with their parents faded. Their parents wrote to them every day. But one day, the letters simply stopped coming.
Last signs of life from a concentration camp
Full of worry, Sonja contacted the Red Cross in mid-1940. She hadn’t heard from her parents for almost a year. What had happened to them? The ICRC wrote to Germany twice on her behalf before they received a reply in April 1941. The girls in England learned that their father had died, supposedly of “kidney failure,” in Dachau concentration camp, but their mother was alive and “in very good nutritional and physical condition” in Ravensbrück.
News of their father’s death
Did Hedwig know that her husband had died? The sisters asked the Red Cross to inform their mother, sending a personal message to give her courage: “Don’t worry about us, we are healthy and well” – this was the message they wrote to their mother on a form. It is doubtful whether Hedwig ever received it. By 1941, the barracks in Ravensbrück concentration camp were already overcrowded. The women had to do hard labor, hunger and disease were part of their everyday lives. Hedwig, who was by then 49 years old, had been there since January 30, 1940
Correspondence between the ICRC, the German Red Cross, the Gestapo, and the concentration camps
Their mother’s murder
In 1942, Hedwig was transferred to Bernburg killing center, probably because she was no longer considered fit for work. She was murdered there on March 13, 1942. Altogether, around 14,000 people were killed in the gas chambers at Bernburg. The two sisters in England did not learn of her death until after the war. In May 1943, they contacted the ICRC once again, asking for news of their mother. Ravensbrück concentration camp reported her death to the German Red Cross. But the information never reached the sisters.
Last traces from the camps: Administrative documents
