Detention in the concentration camp

„The arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau was a shock, of which we did not recover for a long time. The daily routine was devastating, with hours of appeals, counting, and punishment. After about a week, transports were assembled, classified according to certain occupations, carpenters, locksmiths, welders, metalworkers - so I was with a group of these skilled workers in the K.Z. Gliwice I, where we were immediately used for repair work on cargo wagons damaged by bomb attacks. Looking back on the first days in such a "labor camp," conducted by two bestial and insidious SS men, there was much despair, much strikes, especially for those who were not immediately able to work so hard on hard physical work. They were only there to humiliate us, to condescend, harass and harass us. So some broke together, not only physically but also mentally.“ (Ernst Wulkan)

Only a few people returned from the concentration camps. Leo Holzer, Elly Kohn and Valerie Nagl survived Theresienstadt. Oskar Groß was imprisoned in Auschwitz from May 1944 onwards. In February 1945, he managed to escape from the concentration camp Groß-Rosen, the command post in the desert of Giersgiersdorf, and he could hide until the end of the war.

Kurt Sauerquell from the St. Pöltner family Hoffmann was one of the 18 survivors of a transport of 1,200 deportees to Riga. His mother was immediately shot on arrival. He survived the concentration camps of Kaiserwald, Stutthof and Buchenwald.

Ernst Wulkan and Walter Fantl Brumlik were deported to Auschwitz via Theresienstadt and returned from the Gliwice I camp. Herta and Leopoldine Maurer were imprisoned in Theresienstadt and died in 1946 and 1947, just over thirty years, at the late arrivals of the camp detention center.