Deported

Sometime around Christmas, 1941, Hansgeorg and his family were deported - sent away - to a ghetto in the capital of Latvia, Riga. In November, the previous inhabitants, 30,000 Latvian  Jews, had been murdered by the Nazis to make room for the German Jews. Hansgeorg was 15 years old when he was sent to Riga. Conditions in the Riga ghetto were horrible! There was precious little food and water, and the Germans shut down most sanitary facilities. Eventually, the ghetto was emptied of its inhabitants. Most of the Jews were horribly murdered by the Germans, while others were sent to labor camps where they died. Nothing is known about Hansgeorg after he was deported to the Riga ghetto, since he was never heard from again.

Denied

After the Nazis passed even more laws hostile to Jews, Hansgeorg's father tried to get his family out of the country. In January 1939, he wrote a letter to a woman living in England. She was placing Jewish children in homes and boarding schools throughout England. Because their father wasn't able to pay monthly maintenance fees, the children's application was denied. After October 1941, a law was passed that forbid the Jews of Germany from leaving their country. The children were hopelessly trapped in a country that was hostile to them! They still held on to a distant hope, however - a hope that the war would end, and the Nazi party would be destroyed This dream would eventually come true... but would Hansgeorg live to see it?

Hansgeorg's Early Life

As I said in my last blog, Hansgeorg was only seven years old when the Nazi's came into power. His parents were divorced, and they sent him to a Jewish Boarding school. The Nazi's began making life hard for the Jews when Hansgeorg was around eight years old. All Jews were forced to wear a yellow star. Jews could not marry non-Jews. Many businesses owned by Jews were confiscated, and Jewish children could not go to the same schools as non-Jewish kids. All this made life harder for Hansgeorg, who grew very close to his younger sister, Eva, as times grew tougher.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog, which I created in remembrance of Hansgeorg Isaac, who was a young victim of the Holocaust. Hansgeorg was born in Berlin, Germany, on December 17, 1926. He was an energetic young boy, even when his divorced parents placed him in a Jewish boarding school. His father was a writer, who wrote under the surname of Victor. Hansgeorg and his family lived in Berlin, a large, highly sophisticated city. The Jews of Berlin were highly assimilated and well-integrated into the social and cultural fabric of the city. Hansgeorg was a seven year-old schoolboy when the Nazis came to power. They immediately began passing antisemitic measures. Hansgeorg was being swept up into WWII. Click this link for a picture of the young Hansgeorg Isaac!