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Bio of Ursula Lenneberg Pawel

Ursula was born on April 24, 1926 in Dormund, Germany as a daughter of a ‘mixed marriage’. Her father Otto was Jewish and her mother Caroline was Christian. Her mother converted to Judiasm in 1926. In 1925, Otto became a general manager of the Karstadt department store and her mother became the buyer for children and ladies’ clothing. They lived in a beautiful apartment and led a very nice life surrounded by many relatives. Ursula’s brother Walter was born in September of 1930.

In 1932, Ursula started school in Aplerbeck. Her life changed drastically when Hitler came to power in January of 1933 as Chancellor of Germany and immediately put changes into effect concerning the Jews. Jewish stores and businesses were boycotted and, by 1935, the Germans enacted the infamous Nuremberg Laws. These laws made anti-Semitism official policy and affected 500,000 Jews by depriving them of their German citizenship and placing all kinds of restrictions on them. One restriction forbade Jews to marry Gentiles. In 1934, Ursula was forced to leave her school and entered a Jewish elementary school in Dortmund. She had to travel a half hour by tram to get to school. Ursula was seven years when she experienced the hatred of anti-Semitism when two playmates told her that they could not play with her anymore because she was a Jew. As the result of the persecutions an boycotts, Ursula and her family were forced to move to Dusseldorf in 1936, the birth place of her father and where they had other relatives. Her father opened another dry goods business and Ursula attended a private Jewish school.

On November 9, 1938, her school and synagogue were burned. Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) changed her life even further. Jews had to adopt Sara and Israel in front of their names; identification papers were stamped with J for Jew in red and, eventually they were forced to wear a yellow star. By 1941-42, the State Secret Police (Gestapo) confiscated everything of value that Jews possessed. Her mother received an order to appear at the police station and was told to divorce her Jewish husband. She simply refused.

In July of 1942, Ursula received an order to present herself for deportation to a labor camp. Her family wanted to go with her. Her father Otto and brother Walter were able to join her. Each person brought a suitcase along with clothing that the Germans later confiscated for their own use. She was sent to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, a labor camp situated in an old army fortress. This camp was a transit camp to Auschwitz, a death camp located in Poland. In Terezin, she became a youth leader of her block L414 and was placed in charge of teaching them. Her father was a talented carpenter and he managed to get extra rations for them. Her mother also arrange for her to receive packages, which she shared with her charges.

In the spring of 1944, Terezin was undergoing a “beautification” program because they were expecting the Red Cross to come to visit. A bank was opened and ghetto money was printed. Stores were opened, gardens were grown, a library was built and they even had a theater. Children were playing on the pavilion, a choir was singing; only healthy looking Jews were permitted outside. As soon as the Red Cross departed, most of the inmates were sent to gas chambers to die.

In Terezin, the Jews managed to run many cultural events for themselves. They had many talented artists, musicians, painters and professional who used their talents to boost the morale of the prisoners.

On September 30, 1944, her father and brother were shipped to Auschwitz and murdered in October of 1944. Ursula ended up in Camp c of Birkenau, which was part of the Auschwitz complex. The Germans shaved her head, stripped her of her clothes, and issued a prisoner’s suit – no underwear, no soap, and no towel or utensils. She was stripped of all human dignity. Chimneys were spewing out human ashes; a horrible smell permeated the air. She was eventually selected to do work and was put with non-Jews. There she met other girls and made life long friends.

In the beginning of 1945, Ursula was sent to work in an airplane factory in Silseia. The forman did not like people with glasses and selected Ursula and three of her friends to be shipped back to Auschwitz. The transport was mostly filled with sick prisoners. One soldier put them in the last car and locked the door. Hours later, soldiers joined Ursula and her friends and gave them food. At the train station of Merzdorf/Riesengebirge, the soldiers told them to jump out and follow them. They were handed over to a factory where prisoners were mostly Polish and Hungarian Jews. This saved her life.

In May of 1945, they were liberated by the Russians. Ursula and Bushchi, her good friend from Holland and fellow camp survivor, made a 500-mile bike trek across Germany to a village near the Dutch border where her mother was staying. They traveled asking for shelter and food along the way. Most people responded with kindness. After a struggle to leave Germany and, with the help of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), American Joint Distribution (AJDC) and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), she and her mother were able to obtain and affidavit and come to America in 1947. It was easier to come to America if you were a German citizen than a citizen of other countries because of the unfilled German quotas. With the help of AJDC, Ursula and her mother settled in Boston. Ursula was helped by a very kind and famous radiologist, Dr Alice Ettinger, Chief Radiologist in Pratt Diagnostic Hospital, and she became an x-ray technician.

Ursula met her husband Hans Pawel and they were married in 1948. Her mother remarried a week later to Siegmund Bruenell. Ursula and Hans have two children. Her husband Hans passed away in 1999. Ursula wrote a book about her experience, My Child is Back, published as part of Holocaust testimonies. She is very actively involved in telling the story of her teenage years and what happened during the Holocaust as a lesson for young people. Today Ursula lives in Bedminster, New Jersey.