Pair of toddler's well used black and white leather lace-up boots worn in Theresienstadt ghetto/labor camp

Judis Baehr (now Urbanova) was born on October 2, 1940, in Berlin, Germany. Her mother, who was Jewish and possibly named Mimi, died six days after her birth from unknown causes. Her father, possibly named Alfred, had no involvement with the child and nothing is known about his background or his relationship with Judis’s mother. Judis was taken in by her mother's sister, Regina Heitmann, and her husband Hans, who was not Jewish. Hitler and the Nazi Party dictatorship had controlled Germany since 1933. The government pursued a harsh anti-Jewish policy from the start, and by 1942, it was too dangerous for Regina to keep the child at home. Judis was placed in hiding in a Jewish nursing home for the elderly in Oranienburg. On May 28, 1943, nearly three-year-old Judis was deported from a Jewish children’s home in Oranienburg to Theresienstadt ghetto/labor camp in German occupied Czechoslovakia. When the train arrived at the station in Celle, which was a few miles from the camp, Judis was left on the train. She was discovered in the corner of a car under a blanket by a man she remembers as Mr. Winterstein, but may been named Jermarov, a young Jew who worked on the station platform. Winterstein brought Judis to the camp ghetto where he and Elizabete (Elly) Winterstein Jermarova adopted her. Elly, possibly born in Uhersky Brod, Czechoslovakia, on November 19, 1921, was deported from Prague and incarcerated in Theresienstadt since December 1941. As Judis grew, Elly, her “Meine Pflege Mutter” [nurturing or taking-care-of-me mother] found a pair of ankle boots for her. They were too big and had to be stuffed with newspaper at first. In 1943 or 1944, Mr. Winterstein was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp and presumably killed. Elly may have been deported to Auschwitz as well, though according to one record, she may have remained in the camp until it was liberated on May 5. Judis was in the camp when it was liberated the first week of May 1945. As she remembers it, she and Elly were separated in the ghetto, but reunited after the war in Prague when Elly returned from Auschwitz. After liberation, Judis and Elizabete were together in Prague. Judis’s Aunt Regina, still In Berlin, wanted to take Judis back, but Elly would not relinquish her. She kept her and raised her as her own. It was not until Judis was fifteen that she was told of her mother’s death so soon after her birth. Elizabete married Frantisek Leiner, born November 29, 1917, who had also been a prisoner in Theresienstadt. They settled in Czechoslovakia. Judis later married Frantisek Urban and the couple had a daughter.

Georg Weiss was born on August 12, 1935, possibly in Brno, Czechoslovakia. The region was occupied by Nazi Germany in March 1939. Georg was deported from Brno in 1942 to Thereseinstadt ghetto/labor camp north of Prague. On October 19, 1944, he was transported to Auschwitz concentration camp and presumably murdered.

The boots were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2002 by Judis Urbanova.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Judis Urbanova

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.