Elizabeth Kardos Langfelder Kux collection

Elizabeth Kardos (later Elizabeth Kardos Langfelder Kux, b. 1907) was born in Budapest, Hungary to Ernst Kardos and Julia Levry. Her family moved to Vienna, Austria when she was five. Elizabeth moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1928 and married Jakob Langfelder (1896-1945). They had two sons, Stephen (d. 1945), and Charles (b. 1945). In March 1944, Jakob was arrested by the Gestapo while on a business trip in Budapest. He was greatly injured by the time of his release several months later. Elizabeth’s parents, Ernst and Julia, attempted to commit suicide in Budapest in 1944 when soldiers came to take them to a concentration camp. Her father died, but her mother lived and was sent to the ghetto where she survived the war. In September 1944, Elizabeth, Jakob, and Stephen were sent to the Sered concentration camp, Slovakia. Elizabeth would then go on to be imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Bad Kudowa labor camp, Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria, and the Klein-Schönau labor camp. Her son, Stephen, froze to death on a transport to Mauthausen in1945. Jakob also died there in 1945. Her son, Charles, was born in the Klein-Schonau labor camp on May 7, 1945. In 1947, she moved to Žilina, Czechoslovakia and married Martin Kux. Later that year they immigrated to the United States.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Charles Kux-Kardos donated his mother's collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 26, 2007, with the help of Museum volunteer Margit Meissner.