Etching of a sad young boy in an internment camp created postwar by a Swiss Aid nurse/rescuer

Friedel Reiter was born in 1912 in Vienna, Austria. Her father died in the First World War (1914-1918) and her mother was unable to care for her. As a result, she was sent to Switzerland by a Red Cross children's transport and placed in the care of a Swiss family. Friedel received training as a pediatric nurse in Zurich. War spread across Europe in 1939, and in 1941, she joined the Secours Suisse aux Enfants (Swiss Aid to Children), an organization affiliated with the Red Cross that was founded to care for children displaced during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). On November 12, 1941, Friedel was sent to the Rivesaltes internment camp in the unoccupied zone of France, which was governed by the collaborationist Vichy regime. The Vichy government had enacted anti-Jewish legislation, including the appropriation of Jewish-owned property. Refugees from German occupied countries had flooded France and French authorities interned thousands of Jews under deplorable conditions in French-administered detention camps such as Rivesaltes. Friedel lived in the camp barracks and suffered the same harsh conditions as the inmates, except that she had enough food to eat. Resources were extremely limited, but she did her best to provide medical care, clothing, and food for the interned refugee children, at first chiefly Jewish, Romani, and Spanish children. By the spring of 1942, the round-up and deportation of Jews to killing centers was frequent in both German-occupied and Vichy ruled France. Rivesaltes became a central transit point. The situation in the camp was rapidly deteriorating and Friedel realized the necessity of removing as many of the children as possible before they were deported. She and other rescuers were secretly aided by the commander of the camp who left lists of inmates who were to be deported on his desk in plain view. Nearly 600 children would be removed from Rivesaltes; most escaped deportation. It was during her search to find institutions in France to shelter the children that she met her future husband, August Bohny. He had established an orphanage for Secours Suisse near Lyon, Chateau Montiuel, and they met in 1942 when Friedel brought a group of children there. When he returned to the Chambon orphanage a short time later, Friedel continued to send groups of children to him. Rivesaltes was closed in November 1942, after deporting most of the Jewish internees to Auschwitz. In January 1943, Friedel was sent to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon to work as a director of an orphanage with August Bohny, and they lived there until the end of 1944. In 1990, both were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Friedel recorded her experiences at Rivesaltes in a wartime diary that was published in 1993. She passed away, age 89, in 2001.

Margot Schwarzschild was born on November 20, 1931, in Kaiserslautern, Germany, to a Jewish father, Richard, born on December 12, 1898, in Kaiserslautern, and a Catholic mother, Aloisia (Luisi) Keim. She had an older sister, Hannelore, born on March 21, 1929. They lived a comfortable middle class life. In 1938, the sisters were no longer allowed to attend their public school because they were Jewish. During the Kristallnacht pogrom that November 8-9, her father was arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp, though eventually he was released. On October 22, 1940, the Gestapo came to the home and told the family that they could each pack one suitcase; they were being deported. The family, which also included her eighty year old paternal grandmother, Settchen Schwarzschild, was sent to Gurs internment camp in France. The family was separated, as men were housed apart from the women and children. The barracks were overcrowded and infested with vermin, and Margot remembers always being hungry. When some teenagers were caught smuggling food into the camp, her father was accused of being involved and sent to prison in Pau. He was released in March 1941 and the family was sent to Rivesaltes camp near Perpignan. In November, relief workers with the Red Cross affiliated Secours Suisse aux Enfants [Swiss Aid to Children] arranged to have the girls sent to the Pringy children’s home, but they had to return to Rivesaltes that summer. Following the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, the camps began the systematic deportation of Jews from France. On September 4, 1942, Margot’s father was deported on convoy 29 to Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Their grandmother was sent to Noe internment camp near Toulouse. Margot, Hannelore, and Luisi were to be deported as well. But Luisi had packed the family photograph album in her suitcase and she was able to use the photograph of her Catholic communion ceremony to prove to the camp authorities that she was not Jewish. One of the nurses with Secours Suisse, Friedel Reiter (later Bohny-Reiter) was able to get the girls and their mother released. The girls were sent back to the children’s home in Pringy and their mother was given a job at a nearby Secours Suisse home in Cruseilles. Margot and Hannelore joined her there the following year. Their grandmother was transferred to La Guiche, a sanatorium/concentration camp and died soon after her arrival on March 7, 1944. After the end of the war in May 1945, Luisi and her daughters moved to Switzerland. She and her husband had selected the Secours Suisse office in Bern as their rendezvous point before his deportation. It became clear that he was not coming to meet them and they later learned that he had been killed at Auschwitz. On October 22, 1946, they returned to Kaiserslautern. The sisters finished their schooling: Margot became an interpreter and Hannelore, a kindergarten teacher. In 1952, Hannelore married Franz Wicki. In 1956, Margot married his brother, Josef, and they settled in his native Switzerland.

The etching was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006 by Margot Schwarzschild Wicki.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Margot Schwarzschild Wicki

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