Deportation to Riga
Most of the Jews, who at that time were still living in the Fulda/Huenfeld area
were deported on December 8, 1941 via Kassel to the Riga ”Reichsjudenghetto”
(ghetto for the Jews from the ‘Reich’ ). Among the deportees were 26 individuals
from the county of Huenfeld. From the city of Huenfeld they were: Joseph Strauss
and his wife, Lilly nee Wertheim; Lilly’s parents, Isaac Wertheim and Frieda nee
Wertheim as well as Isaak Würzburger and his wife, Klara nee Weinberger, who
used to live at Brunnenstrasse.
The travelling by train to Kassel occurred under police supervision. At several
stops numerous people boarded, so that the total of detainees came to more than
1000. In Kassel they had to spend the night in the gym of a school. The next day
they were loaded on slow trains of the German National Railway and shipped
eastward. After four days and nights on an unheated train they arrived during
bitter cold temperatures at the freight depot, Skirotava outside Riga. From there
they had to walk for several kilometers to the Ghetto.
Deportation to Theresienstadt
On September 5, 1942 the last Jewish people, 19 altogether, who at that time
were still living in the county of Huenfeld in dire straits and isolation, were deported
to the Theresienstadt Ghetto via Kassel. Subsequently all the towns within the
county of Huenfeld were ”judenrein” ( purged, or free of Jews ); that’s how the
Nazis’ despicable and cynical terminology called it.
At that time it was only the elderly couple, Julius Nussbaum and Ida nee Mann,
who lived in the attic of their formerly owned house at Bahnhofstrasse 188. Once
they were recognized and respected, having supplied Huenfeld and vicinity with
grain and assorted agricultural products, however, at the very end they were
abandoned and so destitute that they only called a bed and one table their own.