Berta Landskroner, ca. 1939 • Berta Landskroner, shortly after she was repatriated in 1945 • Her husband, Leib Reig, ca. 1939
Berta Landskroner and Leib Reig were Jewish refugees expelled from the Reich in 1939 who settled in Brussels. They married on 8 April 1942 in the borough of Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode. She was a seamstress and he was a diamond broker. Both were arrested on 10 March 1943 in Brussels, and were taken to the Dossin Barracks the next day. Deported on 19 April 1943 on Transport 20, Berta Landskroner, 21, and Leib Reig, 33, were both accepted for the concentration camp. Leib, registered under number 117,661, was sent to work in Buna-Monowitz. He was sent to the Revier, the camp’s infirmary, on many occasions. Despite his weakened condition, he nonetheless survived and was repatriated on 13 June 1945.
Berta Landskroner, registration number 42,665, likewise survived despite being a victim of pseudo-scientific experimentation. She was part of the group of women from Transport 20 who were not put to work but used as human guinea pigs in the sinister Block X, where the ruthless SS doctor Karl Clauberg practised. All the 245 or so women on Transport 20 who were not executed upon arrival, 31% of the female deportees on the transport, were probably sent to Block X. Sixty-five of them survived. Berta Landskroner was evacuated in January 1945 and carried in an open truck to Ravensbrück. Her frozen toes had to be amputated upon arrival in there. Liberated by the Americans, she returned home on 30 April 1945.
