Irma Petrasek: copy eyewitness account of various Nazi concentration camps

This collection contains the witness account of Holocaust survivor Irma Petrasek describing her long journey through the labour and concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Irma Petrasek was deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp, labour and concentration camps in Estonia, Strutthof labour camp in Poland, a labour camp in Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She describes the conditions during transport and in the camps, the fate of some of her fellow prisoners and the hardship she had to endure.

Irma Petrsek lived in Büdesheim;, Rhineland-Palatinate, during the Second World War. Her son managed to emigrate to Palestine in 1939. In July 1942 Irma Petrasek was deported to Terezin concentration camp where she worked at the laundry service. One month later she was taken to Jügalla labour camp in Estonia via Riga. At the end of 1943 she was moved again. This time her train arrived at Kohtla-Järve train station in Estonia where they had to walk to a concentration camp nearby (possibly Vaivara?). In the Spring of 1944 she was taken to Danzig and from there to Strutthof labour camp in Poland. After three weeks in the camp she was selected for labour service and sent to an ammunition factory in Hamburg with 500 other women. There she also worked in the kitchen of the camp. At the end of the year she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she worked in the kitchen again. She caught typhoid fever but survived until the camp was liberated. She was reunited with her son after the Second World War.

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Donated by Marie Glaser

2006/60

Includes summary of her account in English.

Jewish Museum, Prague