Adolf (Abraham) Mendelsohn

A Jewish Family living in the Leopoldstadt  district of Vienna in the 1930’s. Adolf Mendelsohn was the brother of my grandmother, Jetty Katz Mendelsohn Bock. It is the story of a family running for their lives from the Nazis. 

Adolf (Abraham) Mendelsohn, also known as Abraham Mendelsohn, was born on 25 September 1887 in Vienna, Austria. Abraham lived in the second district of Vienna known as Leopoldstadt. In May 1912 Abraham married Elsa Semo, (born 16 February 1890). Elsa Semo came from a long line of Sephardic Jews. Her family migrated from Turkey to Vienna.  Elsa and Abraham had a daughter, Alice Valerie.  Abraham was a chemical engineer and worked as a leather dyer in the first district.

At that time of the Anschluss in March 1938 Abraham was 51 years old, Elsa 48, and Alice 25. The family made plans to seek asylum in Belgium. Alice and her future husband Friedrich Markus left first in September 1938. Abraham and Elsa then followed in December.  Both families survived in Belgium until the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940. Soon after they all fled to the southern Unoccupied Zone of Vichy France.

The two families separated. By October 1940 Abraham and Elsa were arrested and interned in Camp de Gurs, a concentration camp for Jews near the Spanish border. They remained there for 14 months until November 1941 when they were part of a group of 51 families sent to the Chansaye Reception Center.

The Chansaye Reception Center was located in a former hotel, the Auberge de la Roch d’Ajoux in Department Rhône. The Center, opened by Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, Archbishop of Lyon, was created to rescue internees from concentration camps and to put them in more normal living conditions. Abraham and Elsa remained in Chansaye for 9 months. In August 1942 there was a Vichy Police Directive stating that all Jews who had arrived in France after January 1, 1936 were subject to arrest and deportation. That September, informed about an impending raid, the 87 people living in the center were dispersed into the local area. Of the 87 people living at the center, just five were caught. Included in the five were Abraham and Elsa  Mendelsohn. 

 

On 24 September 1942 Elsa and Abraham Mendelsohn were transported to Rivesaltes and from there to  Drancy. On 27 September 1942 Elsa and Abraham arrived in Auschwitz where they were sent to the gas chambers and were murdered.

 

Elsa was 52 years old and Abraham 55. 

 

In 2012 a plaque was placed in front of the Chansaye Reception Center, to remember those caught in the September 1942 raid. Included in the list of names are Elsa and Adolf Mendelsohn with the plaque “paying tribute to the memory of the six victims of racial hatred by the Nazis and their accomplices because they were born Jewish.” The sixth name is that of 24 year old David Donoff, the Director of the Center who was executed by the Gestapo in Lyon in June 1944.

 

Find more information about Elsa Mendelsohn, Alice Markus, and Friedrich Markus.

Geoffrey Buck, Los Angeles.