Bertha Edelstein née Gutwachs

Bertha Edelstein, née Gutwachs, was born on 7 August 1900 in Ryki (then part of the Russian empire, now Poland). Like her husband Abraham Edelstein, a shoemaker from Warsaw, she was a devout Jew. It is not known when or where they first met. In 1919 Bertha Edelstein gave birth to the couple’s first child, their daughter Rosa. At this time the young family lived in Warsaw. Their second child, Benno, was born in Osterode in the Harz region of Germany in 1921. Shortly after Benno’s birth, the Edelsteins moved again, this time to Berlin. Here they had two more children, Günther (born on 3 June 1926) and Erna (born on 7 March 1935).

From 1938 Bertha Edelstein shared a 1½ room apartment on the 3rd floor of the courtyard building at Oranien Strasse 198 in Kreuzberg with her husband and two youngest children. Abraham Edelstein and his son Günther performed forced labour. Bertha’s older children, Rosa and Benno, had managed to emigrate by this time and so survived the Nazi regime.

Bertha Edelstein was deported to Auschwitz on 3 March 1943, on the 33rd “transport to the East”, together with her husband Abraham and their seven year-old daughter Erna. Bertha’s son Günther had been sent there a day earlier, on the 32nd “transport to the East”. None of the deported members of the Edelstein family survived the extermination camp. Bertha Edelstein’s exact date of death is not known.