Anneliese Sänger

Anneliese Sänger was born in Augsburg on July 27, 1933, the daughter of Siegfried Friedrich (Fritz) Sänger and his wife Irene, née Lehmann. Her father ran with his family the construction and civil engineering firm Kleofaas & Knapp. It is related in my family how Anneliese was a happy child and a good pupil who loved school.

In October 1938, Anneliese’s aunt, Elsie Götz, my great-grandmother, was able to flee to the USA. She offered to take Anneliese with her, but Irene Sänger did not want to let her little daughter go. A few weeks later, Anneliese had to witness her father Fritz and her uncle Alfred being sent to Dachau concentration camp on November 11, 1938 in the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms. In this way, the Nazis put pressure on Fritz Sänger to force him to sell the family firm Kleofaas & Knapp and pay out a life insurance policy in favour of “aryanizers”. After Fritz Sänger’s release from Dachau concentration camp, Anneliese moved with her parents from Augsburg to Munich in 1939, and lived at Maria-Einsiedel-Straße 4. Her aunt, Berta Sänger, and her uncle, Alfred Sänger, lived there with them as well. Family letters reveal that Anneliese’s parents were desperately trying to emigrate to America, but it was by now almost impossible to obtain a guarantee from a US citizen and other documents needed for a visa as well as money for their ship passages. The Sängers were trapped. Anneliese’s uncle, Stephan Lehmann, was heartbroken that he was not able to organise emigration to America for his little niece and her family.
On April 4, 1942 Anneliese was deported with her parents and her aunt Berta to Piaski ghetto. She was eight years old when she was deported. The conditions in the Piaski ghetto were barbaric; people died of hunger, disease and being overworked, or were murdered by the SS. When in the autumn of 1942 Fritz Sänger was sent to the nearby Sawin forced labor camp, where he was put to work draining marshes, his wife and Anneliese were able to go with him. Every trace of Anneliese gets lost there. It is to this day not known when and where she was murdered. Of the 773 Jewish men, women and children who were deported to Piaski from Munich in 1942, there are no known survivors.
The Nazis murdered almost the whole of Anneliese Sänger’s family: her parents Irene and Fritz Sänger, her uncles Alfred and Stephan Sänger, her aunts Berta and Selma Sänger and her grandmother Karoline Lehmann.(Text Nancy Freund-Heller, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)