Luttinger-Ohrwaschel family. Collection

Cilli Ohrwaschel was born in Munich, Germany, on 7 November 1910, as the daughter of Ignaz Ohrwaschel and Henriette Lichting. She married the non-Jewish Richard Singer, with whom she had a daughter. Lea Singer was born on 14 May 1930 in Munich, Germany. However, in February 1937 Cilli divorced Richard Singer and on 14 April 1938 she married the Jewish merchant Wolfgang Luttinger, born in Cologne, Germany, on 14 August 1901. It is likely that Wolfgang was the father of Cilli’s second child, a son named Max, who was born in Munich, Germany, on 27 June 1937. In January 1939, the Luttinger-Ohrwaschel family fled to Antwerp, Belgium, out of fear of arrest by the Gestapo. Wolfgang and Cilli planned their emigration to Paraguay, receiving support from the EZRA and HICEM aid committees. The family still lived in Antwerp when Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940. In February 1941, Wolfgang, Cilli and the children were expelled from Antwerp and sent to Limburg, as were 3,000 other non-Belgians living in Antwerp. The family was first housed in Stokkem, but in the summer of 1941 Wolfgang Luttinger found a job in the coal mines in Eisden, also in Limburg. In September 1941 the Luttinger-Ohrwaschel family resettled in Liège. From that point onwards, both Lea and Max were registered as children of Cilli Ohrwaschel and her non-Jewish first husband Richard Singer. This might have been an attempt made by Cilli to protect both her son and daughter from deportation. Nonetheless, the complete Luttinger-Ohrwaschel family was arrested in November 1942 in the heart of the Jewish district of Liège, at Rue Lairesse, and sent to the Dossin barracks. Post-war, Cilli’s first husband Richard Singer told her sister that he had tried to save his daughter Lea Singer, but to no avail. None of the Luttinger-Ohrwaschel family members survived deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XVIII on 15 January 1943.

In 2014, Johanna Goldfarb, granddaughter of Cilli Ohrwaschel's sister, reached out to Kazerne Dossin in search of information regarding the deportation of her great-aunt. When research results showed that the portraits of Cilli’s children Lea and Max Singer were still missing on the commemoration wall at the Kazerne Dossin museum, misses Goldfarb very kindly provided digital copies of several family photos to add to the memorial.

Johanna Goldfarb, granddaughter of Cilli Ohrwaschel's sister, 2014