Terezie Alazraky

Memorial: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/185356232/terezie-alazraky

Terezie Alazraky nee Lowy was born on 18 July 1892, in Plzen, Czechoslovakia. She was the daughter of Richard and Emma Lowy nee Steiner. Prior to World War II, Terezi married Rudolf Alazraky in Vienna, Austria on 10 May 1929. She lived with her younger sister Josefa at Korumni 33 and they were both deported from Prague on Transport Cc, on 20 November 1942. They were sent to Terezin ghetto where they both stayed for 9 months and 17 days. On 6 September 1943, Terezie and her sister were deported from Terezin on Transport Dl. This transport, designated “Dl”, left Theresienstadt on September 6, 1943, and was one of first two transports to the Family Camp, the other being “Dm” which departed on the same day. On board were 2,479 men, women and children, most of them under the age of 60. It arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau two days later, on September 8.

The trains from Theresienstadts to Auschwitz went north to Dresden, and then east to Breslau (Wroclaw) and Kattowitz (Katowice). Upon the arrival of the transport in Auschwitz, Jakob Edelstein was separated from the rest of the deportees and was imprisoned in the penal confinement facility of Block 11 under the pretext of having facilitated the escape of prisoners from Theresienstadt. The rest of the inmates were taken to the newly-built Family Camp. In the camp records, they were listed as being sent for “SB [Sonderbehandlung, ‘special treatment’, Nazi euphemism for murder] with 6-month quarantine”.

In the next six months, many of the inmates who had arrived on this transport died of hunger and disease. During the night of March 8 and 9, 1944 the surviving members of this transport and transport “Dm”, except for several medical personnel, the terminally ill, and twins taken for medical experiments, were ordered to write post-dated postcards to their relatives stating that they were all well. The inmates were then taken to the Birkenau gas chambers where they were all murdered. The report composed by two Auschwitz escapees, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, attests that the inmates of the Family Camp were fully aware of their coming fate. This is also confirmed in the diaries of Zalman Gradowski, member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz who witnessed the death of the Czech inmates and described it in detail. He writes that they went to the gas chambers singing the Czech and Zionist Anthems and the International. Josefa was only 51-years-old when she was murdered in Auschwitz.

Birth record: PLZEŇ (o. Plzeň-město) 1546 N 1874-1900 (191/282)