Death and Love in the Holocaust: The Story of Sonja and Kurt Messerschmidt

by Steve Hochstadt

Overview

Kurt and Sonja Messerschmidt were among the last Jews deported from Nazi Berlin. They were among a handful of couples who were married in Theresienstadt, and are possibly the only pair who lived to describe their wedding. They survived Auschwitz, and unimaginable slave labor in other camps. Kurt was one of two survivors of a group of death marchers in southern Germany. They found each other again after liberation, and eventually emigrated to the United States. As told to Steve Hochstadt as part of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine's project to record and preserve individual experiences of Holocaust survivors, this book captures Kurt’s and Sonja’s separate but always intertwined stories. Their accounts, as improbable as they are moving, tell from both sides how a loving relationship formed in persecution became an element of survival in the Holocaust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644696941
Publisher:	Academic Studies Press
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Pages:	110
Sales rank:	700,932
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steve Hochstadt taught history at Illinois College 2006-2016, after teaching at Bates College in Maine for 27 years. His research has focused on the Holocaust. Sources of the Holocaust is a documents collection widely used in Holocaust courses. Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich tells the story of the flight of Jewish refugees from Central Europe to China. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and treasurer of the Sino-Judaic Institute, a pioneer in education about Chinese-Jewish relations for the past 30 years. Many of his weekly columns for the Jacksonville (IL) Journal-Courier appear in Freedom of the Press in Small-Town America: My Opinions.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface, by Sarah Cushman

Introduction
Berlin
Theresienstadt/Terezin
Auschwitz
Slave Labor
Death March
Liberation
Munich
Maine
Conclusion

Bibliography
Study Guide
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This superb text integrates the remarkable memoirs of two Holocaust survivors, who are also lovers, with exceptionally well-written historical context. Sonja and Kurt Messerschmidt’s stories are harrowing, taking them from Berlin to Terezin to Auschwitz and on to liberation. Strongly recommended for use in the classroom at the high school or college level.”

—Dr. Elizabeth R. Baer, Gustavus Adolphus College, author of The Genocidal Gaze: From German Southwest Africa to the Third Reich