Menschenjagd : [1942-1945].

The memoir was written 1946 in Austria, shortly after her liberation. Minna recalls her deportation in February 1942. She was taken to Riga together with her parents and her husband. Her mother was killed upon their arrival. Her father and her husband were taken to Salaspils for forced labor, where the later perished. Minna, who was pregnant with her first child, was forced to undergo an abortion. She describes her experiences of Nazi sadism in the Ghetto of Riga, especially by the Ghetto commanders Krause and Roschmann. In 1943 Minna was taken for peat cutting labor to Olaine. In November 1943 Minna and her father were reunited at the concentration camp Kaiserwald near Riga. From there both were taken to Spilve - a labor camp at a German air base, which was under worse conditions than the first camp. They worked in the cold without appropriate shoes and in thin clothes. Due to the exhausting conditions Minna's father Wilhelm was getting weaker and eventually was deported to Auschwitz in April 1944. Minna was taken to Stutthof, which was overcrowded and in primitive conditions. They were taken to an exterior labor camp, where they had to build trenches for the German defense in the rain and cold. They suffered of constant hunger. In January 1945 the camp was dissolved and all sick and disabled were killed. They were marched under exhausting conditions in the snow and cold. For all missing women ten others were chosen randomly to be killed. After a week Minna was finally too exhausted to continue walking and stayed behind. The guard who was supposed to kill her fired the bullet over her head and left her for dead in the snow. She was rescued and brought to a house, where she was given food and a place to sleep. She was discovered by a German police officer, who was about to shoot her along with other Jewish fugitives. Minna was saved by her Viennese accent, which convinced him that she was a gentile woman.She was taken to a mobile army hospital and treated for her frozen feet. In March 1945 Minna was liberated in Lauenburg, Prussia, where she was sent by German hospitals as an unidentified Jewish patient.Also included is Nini Ungar's questionnaire with the Austrian Heritage Collection, AHC 1536.The author was born as Minna Tepper 1917 in Vienna. In 1941 she got married to Harry von Sonnenthal. Minna von Sonnenthal was taken together with her parents and her husband to a concentration camp in Riga in 1942. She emigrated to the United States in 1949.Synopsis in fileSee also: ME 306 (English translation)Sonnenthal, Minna vonSonnenthal, Harry von, 1906-1942Concentration or internment camps, KaiserwaldConcentration or internment camps, OlaineConcentration or internment camps, SpilveDeath marchRighteous Gentiles in the Holocaus