Introductory Remarks
Max Martin “Israel“ Baruch and Erna “Sara” Baruch lived for several months in our house in Berlin Charlottenburg. In the summer of 1942 they moved into the ground floor apartment with a balcony facing the backyard. They did not move there voluntarily. They were forcibly admitted to the “Judenhaus” which Gervinusstrasse 20 had become at that time. When they lived here, Erna’s daughter Edith was already in Great Britain.
Edith had come to Scotland with a child transport. She survived the Shoah in the safety of Britain. Her mother Erna and her second husband Max Martin died in Auschwitz. What we know about her I have written down below.
I would like to thank everyone who helped me with this research. I would like to mention Robert Herrmann in Los Angeles, Claire and Howard Singerman in Glasgow and the organization “Gathering The Voices”, Myrna Bernard, the journal of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) for information about child transport in Great Britain, Peter Lobbenberg in London, Sabine Hank from the archive of the Centrum Judaicum Berlin, Manfred Schroeter, an expert on the history of the Jewish population of Nordhausen, Iga Bunalska in Oswiemcin from the Auschwitz Study Group, Frank Wittendorfer from the Siemens-Archiv Berlin, Thomas Ulbrich from the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam, Roderick Miller and his colleagues from “Tracing The Past” in Berlin, numerous historians including Jani Pietsch and Marie Roelshoven from “Denk Mal Am Ort”, who helped me find other useful sources of information.