honoring
They experienced terrible things, survived the Shoah and came back to Geislingen 70 years later - wonderful people.Regina (Rifka / Rebekka) Kaufmann, née Schneid
Married to Chaim Kaufmann
Born 06.09.1900 (?)/ 20572 (?)
Rifka came to Geislingen with her daughter Miryam to the labor camp and thus survived the Shoah. She had to work hard and survived also thanks to the food parcels Miryam secretly received and shared with her mother. Neither in Auschwitz nor in Geislingen was it allowed to become known that mother and daughter were together here, otherwise they would have been separated – following the harassment of the concentration camp system – never to be seen again.
Rifka had 6 children in total. The eldest son lived in Budapest and was not defamed because of his Jewish ancestors. However, his activity as a passport forger brought him into great difficulties – after his arrest he was condemned by the Hungarian side and publicly shot on the bank of the Danube. He lived to be only 21 years old.
Her husband Chaim was sent to Ebensee concentration camp in Austria – the prisoners had to dig tunnels for armament production. In the so-called death column, who were busy rebuilding the destroyed Attnang-Puchheim train station under inhumane conditions, he died from hard physical labor. Immediately after the selection in Ausschwitz by the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, the two youngest children, a boy of 10 and a girl of 13 were immediately murdered in the gas chamber.
Two other older daughters survived the Holocaust. In a photo showing Rebekka with her three surviving daughters shortly after the Shoa, she is badly marked. A broken and deeply sad woman. She lived in Israel and was still celebrating her 90th birthday with her family. In 1992 she passed away.