United States Holocaust Memorial Museum;Ilse Sakheim's childhood was marked by gradually increasing antisemitism in Germany—beginning with schoolyard taunts and escalating to state-sponsored violence.

 

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

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Ilse Sakheim's childhood was marked by gradually increasing antisemitism in Germany—beginning with schoolyard taunts and escalating to state-sponsored violence.

“They were starting to not let Jews go to the swimming pool, not let Jews go to the skating rink, not to allow you to sit on certain park benches,” remembered Ilse (pictured, left). “They had signs up in the stores, which said ‘Aryan’ … . Pretty soon after that, the stores didn't just say ‘Aryan,’ but they said ‘Jews not wanted.’”

On April 1, 1933, when she was seven years old, armed Nazi Storm Troopers stood outside her father’s retail store, prohibiting customers from entering. Her father, Kurt, had to close the store shortly thereafter. In the years that followed, Ilse watched her classmates join the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls. They began taunting her, calling her a “bloody Jew.”

When she was 13, Ilse came home from school only to learn that her father had been arrested in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, a night of widespread violence against Jews in November 1938. He remained in the Buchenwald concentration camp for three grueling months.

Understanding the gravity of their situation, Ilse’s parents worked desperately to get Ilse out of Germany. In April 1939, Kurt and Sophie, Ilse’s mother, said goodbye to their only child as Ilse boarded a Kindertransport train bound for England. After the war, Ilse learned that her parents had been murdered at Auschwitz.

“I think people really need to be aware that … they have to take action, and that they can't just sit and allow masses of people to be tortured and slaughtered and treated in this terrible, terrible way. And I remember that my father said to me, you have to go to the world, and you have to tell people what happened. And I think that I'm really following what he said.”

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Ilse Sakheim

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=antisemitism&utm_content=antisemitism:ilsesakheim20231031

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