Elisabeth Kaufmann

Disaster survivor

1924 –

5

Who is Elisabeth Kaufmann?

It is evening, seven o'clock, and I am "celebrating" my birthday. I really never had such a sad birthday; I have never been alone on my birthday before. Dad is in the camp. …Peter has been in the camp for just as long and we have seen him just as little. …The grandparents are still in Vienna. The other grandmother along with Uncle Paul and Aunt Edith are in London, and Uncle Arthur, Aunt Annie, and Hederl are in San Francisco. Everyone is scattered around and no one is with me. …Today, I cooked my own birthday meal and, sitting in the kitchen, I am writing in my diary and I am sad. Today I am sixteen.

Elisabeth Kaufmann was born to a sophisticated and cultured Jewish family in Austria. In 1938, at the age of fourteen, Elisabeth and her family fled to France to escape the Nazis. Already a refugee for two years before beginning her diary, Elisabeth's entries reflect the struggles, hardships and complexities of life far from home in a hostile and alien world. Her immediate family was often separated for long periods of time, as her father and brother were held in French internment camps as "enemy aliens". At the same time, she did her best to adjust to her new life, attending art school, making friends, and bicycling around the city of Paris.

Beginning in May 1940, as the Germans prepared their attack on France, Elisabeth and her mother were uprooted once more. Elisabeth recorded all the details of their journey south as they tried desperately to stay ahead of the German army. A gifted artist, Elisabeth filled a sketchbook with illustrations that correspond to her diary entries about life as a refugee in France and their chaotic flight south. She and her family were eventually reunited and emigrated to America. Her brother Peter returned to France in 1944 as a soldier in the American Army. He lost his life in battle at age nineteen fighting the Germans.

Elisabeth's diary and her sketchbook are now in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

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Born
Mar 7, 1924
Vienna
Also known as
  • Elizabeth Kaufmann
Siblings
Nationality
  • United States of America

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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