Josef Soffer

This is a prewar photograph of my husband, Josef Soffer. But I don't know any more than that about the photo. My husband was named Josef Soffer. That's a Hebrew name. Soffer means scribe. He was quite a bit older than I; he was born in 1907 in Kravsko, which is here, a little ways away from Znojmo. His native tongue was Czech, and he always considered himself to be a Czech; he was a big patriot. He had moved to Znojmo with his parents as a kid and attended school here. He only had public school, but maybe then had some sort of mercantile school, the kind that shop assistants had. Before the war he had worked as a sales rep for a large company. He sold shirts and ties and was relatively successful. Well, and then he went to the concentration camp. He was in several camps, in Terezin, in Auschwitz. There he lost his first wife and child. His first wife was named Herta, the same as his sister. She was quite petite. His son Robert was only ten years younger than I. Herta wasn't old when she went into the gas, but mothers with children had no chance. From Auschwitz my husband then went to Germany to do work. I think that he was liberated while in Buchenwald.