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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.
Elsa Semo Mendelsohn was born on 16 February 1890 in Vienna Austria. Elsa came from a long line of Sephardic Jews. Her family had migrated from Turkey to Vienna. In May 1912 Elsa married Adolf (Abraham) Mendelsohn in Vienna. Elsa and Abraham had a daughter, Alice Valerie “Lizzy”, born on 21 November 1913. Abraham was a chemical engineer and worked as a leather dyer in the first district. Elsa was a seamstress and housewife. The family lived happily in the second district of Vienna at 2 Obere Donaustrasse 89 until the Anschluss in March 1938.
In December 1938 Elsa and Abraham fled to Antwerp, Belgium. They followed their daughter and future son-in-law Friedrich Markus, who had already arrived in Brussels. In Belgium Elsa and Abraham would be able to see the marriage of their daughter in a civil ceremony in Antwerp.
After the German invasion and occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Elsa, Abraham, Alice, and Friedrich fled to the southern zone of France. The two families did not stay together. Elsa and Abraham were arrested in October 1942 and interned at Camp de Gurs, a concentration camp for Jews living in France. They survived in Gurs under primitive conditions for 14 months.
In November 1941 she and Abraham were part of a group of 57 people sent to the Chansaye Reception Center in a former hotel, the Auberge de la Roch d’Ajoux in Department Rhône. Opened by Abbé Alexandre Glasberg, Archbishop of Lyon, Chansaye was created to rescue internees from concentration camps and to put them in more normal living conditions.
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. Informed about an impending raid in September 1942, 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 in the raid. Included in the five were Elsa and Abraham Mendelsohn.
After being arrested, Elsa and husband Abraham would be sent to Transit Camp Rivesaltes, before being transported to Drancy, outside of Paris. On September 27, 1942, Elsa and Abraham were deported on Transport 37 to Auschwitz and immediately sent to the gas chamber.
Elsa was 52 years old and husband Abraham, age 55, when they were murdered.
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 Adolf Mendelson, Alice Mendelsohn Markus and Friedrich Markus.
