Irene Sänger, geb. Lehmann

Irene Lehmann was born in Nuremberg on April 26, 1904, the daughter of Sigmund Lehmann and his wife Karoline, née Freund. She grew up with her brother Siegfried (later called Stephen), who was three years older. On August 23, 1932 Irene Lehmann married Siegfried Friedrich (Fritz) Sänger, who together with his family ran the construction and civil engineering firm Kleofaas & Knapp. The couple lived in Augsburg and had a daughter, Anneliese, who was born on July 27, 1933. It is told in my family how Irene Sänger was friendly and gentle; she was a dutiful daughter and a wonderful mother to her little daughter.

Irene Sänger’s brother Stephen Lehmann was able to emigrate to America in 1936 with the help of a cousin. Apparently, Irene Sänger was also offered the chance to emigrate, but she did not want to leave her blind, widowed mother, Karoline. Irene Sänger and her husband Fritz also hoped that his officer rank in the army reserves would protect his Jewish family from persecution. When Irene’s sister-in-law, Elsie, was able to emigrate to America in October 1938, she offered to take Anneliese with her. But Irene would not let her little daughter go. She could not guess that Fritz and his brother Alfred Sänger would be sent to Dachau concentration camp just a short while later, on November 11, 1938, in the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms. Irene’s husband was put under pressure there until he sold the family firm of Kleofaas & Knapp on November 30, 1938 and had a life insurance policy paid out to “aryanizers”. Family letters reveal that Irene and Fritz Sänger desperately tried after Fritz’s release from Dachau to leave Germany – but without success. It was by now almost impossible to obtain visas, an affidavit from an American guarantor and money for their ship passages. The Sängers were trapped. Irene Sänger’s brother Stephen was heartbroken that he was not able to bring his sister and her family to join him in America.
On April 4, 1942 Irene Sänger was deported with her family from Munich to Piaski ghetto. The conditions there were barbaric. People died of hunger, disease and heavy labor – or were murdered by the SS. When and where Irene Sänger died is not known to this day. Her husband, Fritz Sänger, and her daughter, Anneliese, her sisters-in-law Berta and Selma Sänger, and her brothers-in-law Alfred and Stephan Sänger did not survive the Shoah either. Her mother Karoline Lehmann was murdered in 1943 in Theresienstadt ghetto. (TExt Nanacy Freund-Heller, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)