Portrait of a woman drawn by another inmate when both were interned in Theresienstadt

Marie Kleinova was born on December 3, 1901, to Leopold and Bedrishka Dubska Klein. She was the youngest child, and may have had three sisters, Erna, Ruda, and Verushka, and a brother Rudolf. By age fifteen, she had left school and was doing office work. In March 1939, Germany annexed the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, which included Prague, which were ruled by a Reich Protector. Other regions were absorbed by German allies and Czechoslovakia ceased to exist. Jews were banned from professions and organizations and later, any economic activity. in September 1941, Heydrich, SS Chief of RSHA, became Reich Protector, and prioritized the expulsion of Jews to concentration camps. Jews were required to wear a yellow Star of David badge at all times to make them easy to ident her naaae to Klanova becaue she did not want to have a German sounding syrname.ify. Transports were announced daily in the papers. Around May 15, 1942, Marie, with the identification numbefr AU1-813, was transported to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp about 30 miles north of Prague. She was in Theresienstadt when Soviet forces entered the camp on May 9, 1945. She later changed her name to Klanova because she did not want to have a German sounding surname.

Alfred Bergel was born in Olmütz, Czechoslovakia (Olomouc, Czech Republic), on January 4, 1902. He earned a medical degree in the 1920s. He was a talented artist and taught at the primary school in the Jewish community of Vienna, Austria. In March 1938, Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. Anti-Jewish legislation was enacted and the civil rights of Jews were dissolved. On October 9, 1942, Alfred and his wife were deported by the Germans to Theresienstadt concentration camp in German occupied Czechoslovakia. Alfred was housed in the male artist house, where he worked for the Germans. When he was not doing official work, he created portraits of fellow prisoners and of daily life in the camp. On October 12, 1944, he and his wife were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where they were murdered.

The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1989 by Mark Talisman.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Mark Talisman

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