Auguste Spitz

Date of birth 25 August 1901
Place of birth Vienna, Austria
Deported from Guernsey
Deportation date 21 April 1942
Address when deported Country Hospital, Castel, Guernsey

By Gilly Carr

Auguste ‘Gusti’ Spitz was born in Vienna, Austria, on 25 August 1901 to Annette Spitz née Hauser and Herman Spitz.

Her file in the Aliens’ register at Guernsey Archives shows that she arrived in the island on 30 August 1937, just after her 36th birthday, to be employed as a ‘cook general’. Spitz was Jewish.

From 4 to 25 June 1940, Spitz was interned in Guernsey under the Home Office ‘enemy aliens’ regulations, just before the Germans arrived to occupy the island.  Spitz subsequently registered as a Jew in accordance with the First Order relating to Measures against the Jews, registered in the Royal Court of Guernsey on 23 October 1940. At this time she was working as a maid at the Castel Country Hospital, the same place of employment as Therese Steiner. On 17 March 1941, the Bailiff of Guernsey received instructions that the registration cards of Jews be marked with a large red J and a red cross-strip; Auguste Spitz’ card was marked in this way.

In April 1942, on the orders of the German occupying authorities, the Guernsey police instructed the Jewish women to pack their bags and report to the designated German authority. On the night before her deportation, Therese Steiner and Auguste Spitz went to visit their fellow Viennese Jewish friend, Elisabet Duquemin, who had acquired British nationality after marrying a local man. Elisabet lent them a suitcase, reporting later that ‘they were in a terrible state of anxiety … I never saw the poor girls again.’

Therese Steiner, Auguste Spitz and Marianne Grunfeld were deported to France on 21 April 1942. On their arrival they were expected to find their own accommodation. There is some confusion and competing accounts as to what happened to the three Jewish women before they were rounded up, but it seems that by 4 June 1942 they were all living in Laval (c. 140km from St Malo, where they had arrived in France), at the Hospice Saint-Louis, run by an order of nuns. Steiner found employment with the nuns as a nurse, but Grunfeld and Spitz were unemployed and in the care of the nuns.

The Jewish Star Order came into effect on 7 June 1942 and all three women were compelled to wear them. On 15 July, Therese Steiner and Auguste Spitz were arrested in Laval; Marianne Grunfeld was arrested the following day. They were taken first to Angers where the testimony of a survivor recalled that those rounded up were deprived of their possessions and herded into the small rooms of a seminary, 25 to 30 to a room, and locked in. On the day of their deportation, 20 July 1942, they were taken by lorry to the railway station. At 8.35pm, the three Jewish women were among the 824 Jews loaded into the cattle trucks of convoy No. 8. Therese was number 76 on the transport list; Auguste Spitz was 75. The train was routed via Drancy, where 28 Jews were unloaded due to complications over establishing their nationality, and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp on 23 July. We do not know how long Therese, Auguste and Marianne survived; eyewitness testimony regarding the occupants of convoy No. 8 varies.

Neither Therese Steiner, Marianne Grunfeld nor Auguste Spitz survived the war. Of convoy No. 8, 18 men and two women survived.

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day in 2016, a radio documentary was made by BBC Radio Guernsey to commemorate the three Jewish woman deported from the Island. It can be listened to here.

Sources

Auguste Spitz, Occupation Registration Form, Guernsey Archives.

Auguste Spitz, Aliens’ file, Guernsey Archives.

Cohen, F. 2000. The Jews in the Channel Islands during the German Occupation 1940-1945. Jersey: Jersey Heritage Trust.

ITS files from the Wiener Library for the study of the Holocaust and Genocide, references: 112188160, 38564278, 50755696, 11179855.

Map

  • Concentration camp
  • Forced labour camp
  • Internment camp
  • Prison
  • Other