Gift of Ludwig Ehrenreich, Zachary Ehrenreich and Margaret E. Heching
Id no. 410.96, Photograph
Dina Kraus is pictured at about age seven wearing a long dress and pointed hat to celebrate Purim. Dina's Orthodox family came from a town in the Carpathian Mountains where she worked as a Jewish education teacher until the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944.
All the town's Jews were forced into a ghetto before being deported. From there Dina was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she managed to maintain contact with her brother. In September 1944 she was transferred to the Unterluss labor camp in Germany. Due to her fluency in German she was assigned the job of barrack clerk. Dina was transferred once more, to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated by the British army.
After being sent to a sanitarium in Sweden to recuperate, she received a telegram with the news that her father had survived the war. The pair immigrated to the USA in 1946, and Dina married Ludwig Ehrenreich in 1947.
Discover more about this artifact and other stories from the Museum's collection in, "To Life: 36 Stories of Memory and Hope"
http://www.pickmanmuseumshop.com/tolif36storo.html.