Herzel and Rosa Spira

Leaving Berlin
Leaving Brussels
Rounded up

In Berlin in October 1919 at the age of 27, Herzel Spira was married to Rosa Kisrschen, four years his senior. The couple, who respectively hailed from Baligrod in Poland and from Stryj in what is today Ukraine, brought up their four children in the Jewish tradition. Toni, Gisela, Siegmund and Felix were all enrolled in a religious school, Adas Ysroel, in Berlin.
Rosa, as was the case with many women of her day, did not work, whilst her husband was a drapery traveling salesman.

Leaving Berlin

Several weeks after the Night of Broken Glasses the family managed to flee Berlin and its anti-Semitic persecutions.
The family’s arrival was staggered in time, with the children arriving by the Kindertransport at the end of December 1938. Herzel followed shortly afterwards and reached Belgian territory on 5^th January, with Rosa and the girls arriving on 31^st January. The whole family was prompt to declare themselves to the authorities.

herzelid

Herzel and Rosa had two different addresses in Brussels at the beginning of their stay, were they living in two separate refugee centres? Was Herzel waiting to obtain a larger apartment that could house everyone? We don’t have an answer. Eventually the family moved to Van der Haegen street after the danger of Herzel being interned at Merxplas camp had lifted.

Photography: dorot 2006

Leaving Brussels

When the German army invaded Berlin on May 10^th 1940, the Spira family joined the exodus of the populations of refugees who had managed to escape the first roundups and fled in the direction of France.
Their status of nationals of an enemy nation quickly caught up with them and they were arrested and sent to the camp in Bram on 3^rd of June 1940. Men and women were separated; Herzel and Siegmund were in section I barrack 147; Rosa, Felix and the girls were in section H barrack 135.
They were freed on June 30^th and assigned to residence in the Salleles d’Aude. There, Gisela Spira met her future husband, Bertold Linder.
bram_bar135 At Salleles d’Aude, Herzel and his son Siegmund were requisitioned to work as part of a GTE (group of foreign workers), firstly in a salt mine and then in a pesticide factory. When Herzel learned that young people the age of Siegmund were being sent to work camps in Germany he asked his son to flee; Siegmund accordingly left his family order to survive.

Photography : dorot 2006

Rounded up

Herzel was asigned to a Group of foreign workers in La Peyrade while the rest of the family remained at Salleles d’Aude until the major roundups of 26 August 1942. Herzel at the time of the round up was on leave of absence from his group of foreign workers in La Peyrade and volonteered to remain with his family.He was arrested with Rosa, Felix and Toni and transferred to Rivesaltes where the family remained for several days.
On September 4^th 1942 Rosa, Toni, Felix and Herzel Spira were deported to Drancy; on the 11^th they were part of convoy number 31 for Auschwitz. The CICR report drawn up in Arolsen on January 3^rd 1958 does not state the date of the death of the Spira family.

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