Interview with Ruth Dräger, née Geistlich, conducted by Linde Apel, on September 13, 2007 [in excerpts].

English Translation
    Portrait of Ruth Dräger, 2001. FZH/WdE 89.

    []
    D: Yes, and then af­ter­wards the five, I think, five, uh, these, uh, sol­dier wag­ons came af­ter­wards and they had us [], in Sep­tem­ber that was when I came back again, Sep­tem­ber that was. Came back again on wag­ons. There was my grandma, my two aunts, and me. We were in a wagon, in a, uh, uh, raid­ing party car­rier, and my aunt and my mother, they had al­ready been home the day be­fore. And then there was Marie-​Luisen-Straße, there was such a big, there is such a school, we ar­rived there on Sun­day morn­ing.
    A: Mhm
    D: Yes. And then we were dis­trib­uted, and then my grand­fa­ther came and took us home. My grand­fa­ther had to di­vorce my grand­mother, oth­er­wise she would have gone to Auschwitz, and, yes. How­ever, all of us, uh, all six of us first slept under the table, dur­ing the night from Sun­day to Mon­day. And on Mon­day it con­tin­ued in such a way that we then found some­where, uh, and that, that is, that we found ac­com­mo­da­tion some­where, be­cause we had no apart­ment. That lasted, I think, nearly a month there, then we got the house from the Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tion on Kielor­tallee.
    A: Mh. Mh.
    D: There had been SS men there. And there they [threw] the fur­ni­ture, there were sev­eral ad­di­tional Jews who also came to Kielort-​, um, Kielor­tallee. And, uh, they threw the fur­ni­ture out of the, uh, rooms from up­stairs. Hehe. Into, what’s it called, onto the, onto the ground. But out­side it was, ne, al­ready. We had such a U-​shaped house, and they sim­ply threw out the fur­ni­ture of the SS peo­ple. And then the Jews moved in. But sev­eral of them, ne.
    A: Mhm.
    D: That was af­ter­wards a real, such a, half-, where the half-​Jews are.
    A: Mhm.
    D: Yes. And down there was still the syn­a­gogue, sec­ond floor and down­stairs ground floor. That used to be a, a Jew­ish re­tire­ment home.
    A: Mhm.
    D: Well, an old folks’ res­i­den­tial home, let’s say, ne. They had their apart­ments, but it was for older peo­ple, ne. Be­fore, be­fore the war.
    A: Mhm.
    D: Yes, and then, I don’t know....
    A: You lived there for quite a long time, ne, in the, in Kielor­tallee.
    D: Yes, I lived there from ’45 to ’78.
    A: Mh.
    D: I lived there until 1978. In ’78 I moved in here. The Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tion sold the houses. [] Abridged from the man­u­script: tape change
    A: When you were back in Ham­burg did you con­sider, uh, leav­ing Ger­many?
    D: Nope. Not at all. I was only 17 then.
    A: Mhm.
    D: In my eigh­teenth year, uh, age. Not at all. We were glad to be back.
    A: Mhm.
    D: Well, we all al­ways lived to­gether. Also my mother and my aunts, they have all, we have all al­ways worked together-​uh, lived to­gether in one apart­ment.
    A: Mhm.
    D: All of us. Until we even­tu­ally sep­a­rated af­ter­wards, right, my mother then lived with my aunt then in Al­ster­chaussee and with my sis­ters, and I stayed then with my grand­par­ents. [] Abridged from the man­u­script: About child­hood in Ham­burg, per­se­cu­tion as a Jew, life in There­sien­stadt
    D: Yes. But we were glad to be back home.
    A: Yes. Mh, I be­lieve so.
    D: The first night we all slept under the bed, under the table. We were then, my grand­fa­ther, yes, we were there six heads of us, oh. He only had one room.
    A: Mhm.
    D: Af­ter­wards, by po­lice force, he, they also, uh, the peo­ple with whom he lived as a sub­tenant, they had to give up an­other room.
    A: Mhm.
    D: They didn’t want that.
    A: Mhm.
    D: But they had to.
    A: Ja.
    D: Right, and they had a cat, so the toi­let door had to stay open all the time. I’m just notic­ing that now. I al­ways have my toi­let door open, too. But she lit­er­ally went to the toi­let.
    A: To an ac­tual toi­let, a real one?
    D: She re­ally went to the ac­tual toi­let.
    A: Great!
    D: Yes. So that, that also sur­prised me, ne.
    A: Mhm.
    D: But af­ter­ward they had to, ...
    A: Mhm.
    D: … they had to give up their best, um, room and then we had two rooms.
    A: That was prob­a­bly quite dif­fer­ent to be back in Ham­burg and sud­denly be able to walk around with­out a star and to go where...
    D: Yes. Yes. Yes.
    A: …you wanted to.
    D: Yes. That was first, at first quite strange. Free, I rec­og­nized every­thing. I thought, you are going to come back again. That was some­how, uh, I don’t know my­self what I thought. Af­ter­wards, when I went with Mrs. Guth to Karolinenstraße to my home, to Lauf­graben, we went to all of these places. I went every­where with Mrs. Guth. I thought, I can’t be­lieve you’re com­ing back here. In There­sien­stadt, I some­times thought, it’s al­ways on my mind at night: How will you ever get out of here? Yes, do we have to stay here for­ever? That’s the way it is, those were my thoughts through­out. After all, you do think about things, don’t you?
    A: Yes, of course.
    D: That’s quite nor­mal.
    A: That is nor­mal.
    D: And then how we came back home with five, uh, au­to­mo­biles.
    []

    Source Description

    Ruth Dräger, née Geistlich, was born in Ham­burg in 1928 and she ini­tially grew up in the Jew­ish Pauli­nen­s­tift girls's or­phan­age on Lauf­graben. After the Tal­mud Tora School was closed in 1941, she had to do forced labor in a gun­pow­der fac­tory at the age of 13. In 1943, she was de­ported to There­sien­stadt along with her mother, her sis­ter and an aunt. All four sur­vived and re­turned to Ham­burg in Au­gust 1945, where they lived from then on. In the 2007 in­ter­view with the Work­shop of Mem­ory Werk­statt der Erin­nerung, she talks about her im­pres­sions and ex­pe­ri­ences upon her re­turn to Ham­burg. Fur­ther in­ter­views from the Work­shop of Mem­ory Werk­statt der Erin­nerung can be found here.

    Recommended Citation

    Interview with Ruth Dräger, née Geistlich, conducted by Linde Apel, on September 13, 2007 [in excerpts]. (translated by Erwin Fink), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://keydocuments.net/source/jgo:source-268> [March 14, 2025].