Erna Kolbova with her mother-in-law

This is a picture of my aunt Erna Kolbova and her mother-in-law. The photo was probably taken in Prague at the end of the 1930s. Erna's husband's parents were both Jewish. My mother had a sister, Erna, and a brother, Rudolf. Erna was two years younger, was childless but married, her husband was named Oskar Kolb. Oskar was a Jew and worked as the director of a distillery. Aunt Erna was a housewife. Each Sunday my grandfather and I would pick up my Uncle Oskar and go to the cemetery to visit my grandmother, and on the way back we would have a mid-morning snack at my aunt's and would then continue on home for dinner. I remember that Aunt Erna had a dog. I don't think that Erna and Oskar were particularly religious, but for sure they at least went to synagogue for the high holidays. Oskar died before the transports; Erna was transported to Terezin in the fall of 1942, and that same year further on, to the concentration camp Maly Trostinec, where she was shot.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

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Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).