Alfred Ament papers

Alfred Ament was born on September 15, 1927 in Vienna, Austria to Max Ament (6/28/1895-and Ernestina Ament. His brother, Hans Ament (1934-1944) was born in 1934. In December 1938 or early 1939, the Ament family fled to Belgium. They applied for and received visas for the United States in 1940. The family was placed on waiting lists for passage on a ship. In May 1940, Max Ament was arrested and sent to an internment camp in the south of France. In the spring 1941, the rest of the family received a postcard ordering them to report for deportation. They fled to Marseilles, France. In spring 1942, Ernestina Ament was hospitalized. Alfred was sent to a home for teenagers and his brother Hans was sent to a children’s home. In 1943, the Nazis began raiding the children’s home. Alfred was sent to hide on a farm with two other children. In March 1944, Alfred and 30 other children escaped to Switzerland with false identification cards. Alfred spent the rest of the wars in a refugee camp, and later in a boarding school in Switzerland. He was able to correspond with his mother until she died of tuberculosis. In May 1945, Alfred learned that his father had been killed in either Sobibor concentration camp or Majdanek concentration camp. His grandparents and younger brother Hans were killed at Auschwitz concentration camp.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Alfred Ament

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

Alfred Ament donated the Alfred Ament papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1996.