- Document ID: do_vQwqwkEDg8bRqheS1BXu8
- Document Collection: 7-14-1 Documentation of the CLI
- Link to Online Archive: https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/document/132419125
#austria POB: Vienna
#holland POR; deported from
#jew
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/202159/else-blumenstein-frankenstein
Elsa Blumenstein (1905 - c.1943) - Genealogy (geni.com)
Franz Blumenstein operated a successful business in Vienna before his family’s voyage on the St. Louis. When the Nazis unleashed the violent pogroms on Kristallnacht („Night of Broken Glass“), he was arrested along with more than 3,000 other Viennese Jews and taken to the Dachau concentration camp. His wife Else obtained his release with a sizeable bribe and on the condition that he soon emigrate. Franz left shortly thereafter for Venezuela and eventually made his way to Cuba. There he purchased landing certificates for his wife, their 3-year-old son Heinz Georg, and his mother Regina.
Heinz and Else Blumenstein in Heijplaat Quarantine Center in Rotterdam, summer 1939.
When the St. Louis was forced to return to Europe, the Blumensteins disembarked in the Netherlands. In November 1940, Else and Heinz received entry visas for the Dominican Republic, where her husband Franz had joined an agricultural colony. But they could not obtain exit visas from the Netherlands, by now under German occupation.
During the height of the deportations from Holland, Regina hid young Heinz from the police who arrested her. Else and Heinz fled to northern Holland, where the Dutch resistance provided them with separate safe hiding. Else was nevertheless arrested and, on September 24, 1943, deported to Auschwitz.
Heinz survived the war in hiding and later rejoined his father in the United States.
2019Individual_Profile_cards.pdf (ushmm.org)
EHRI - Henry Blumenstein family papers (ehri-project.eu)