Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild (born 1931 in

Kaiserslautern Kaiserslautern (; Palatinate German: ''Lautre'') is a city in southwest Germany, located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate Forest. The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is from Paris, from Frankfur ...

, died 29 December 2020 in Basel) was a German survivor and a Holocaust witness. She survived two internment camps in France.

Life

Her father Richard Jakob Schwarzschild, born 12 December 1898 in Kaiserslautern, was of Jewish heritage, and her mother Aloisia, "Luise", née Keim, born 3 January 1909 in

Passau Passau (; bar, label=Central Bavarian, Båssa) is a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany, also known as the Dreiflüssestadt ("City of Three Rivers") as the river Danube is joined by the Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north. Passau's popu ...

, was Catholic. She had a sister: Hannelore Schwarzschild (1929–2014). The family celebrated both Christian and Jewish holy days. The family lived in Steinstraße 30 in Kaiserslautern. In 1938 her father was transported to the

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

for six weeks under

protective custody Protective custody (PC) is a type of imprisonment (or care) to protect a person from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners. Many prison administrators believe the level of violence, or the underlying threat of violence within pri ...

. When he returned, he was not allowed to discuss what had happened to him there. Around the same time, the family had to move into a Judenhaus and Margot (seven years old) and her sister were expelled from their school. The Synagogue of

, where her father regularly played the organ was destroyed in September or October 1938. In the early morning of 22 October 1940, the Gestapo deported the entire family to the French Camp de Gurs in the Pyrenees. ''"Hunger, lice, bugs, fleas and rats were just as much a part of everyday life as the omnipresent mud."'' In 1941 Wicki-Schwarzschild was transferred to Camp de Rivesaltes with her mother and sister. In November of the same year, the two sisters came to a home run by the Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross in Pringy in Haute-Savoie. Her father was able to rent a small apartment near Carcassonne in semi-freedom and brought the family home. In 1942 they were again deported to Rivesaltes, where the family was separated. Her father was deported to the

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

concentration camp in 1943 and murdered there. With the help of Friedel Bohny-Reiter, a sister of the

Swiss Red Cross The Swiss Red Cross (German: ', French: ', Italian: ', Romansh: '), or SRC, is the national Red Cross society for Switzerland. The SRC was founded in 1866 in Bern, Switzerland. In accordance with the Geneva Red Cross Agreement and its r ...

, and with a photograph of her communion, her mother was able to save herself and her daughters from deportation. An article by Sister Hannelore about the conditions in the camp was sent to a Jewish newspaper in Switzerland. A Swiss teacher read this report and sent the family food parcels. After the fall of the Nazi regime, Margot, her mother and sister went back to Kaiserslautern. The sisters would have preferred to stay in France as they hardly spoke any German. They went to the boy scouts and their stories impressed the young Erhard Roy Wiehn so much that he decided to study sociology and research the fate of survival. After leaving school, Wicki-Schwarzschild trained as a translator and interpreter. She found work at the American headquarters, then in a Jewish agency in Geneva. She married Josef Wicki. The couple had children and grandchildren. In 1961 they moved to Reinach where Wicki-Schwarzschild began to report on her experiences in schools and became a Holocaust witness. She also accompanied school classes on trips to Gurs, together with other contemporary witnesses such as Eva Mendelsson and Paul Niedermann. Wicki-Schwarzschild also published a number of memorial texts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wicki-Schwarzschild, Margot People from Kaiserslautern Holocaust survivors 1931 births 2020 deaths