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Leipzig: Wednesday, 30.04.2025

The reading rooms in the main building of the German National Library in Leipzig will close at 14:00 due to an event. The museum reading room, the music reading room and the service area are open until 18.00. The exhibitions of the German Museum of Books and Writing will open from 10:00 to 18:00.

More on Inge Auerbacher

Biografie

Inge Auerbacher c. 1940 Photo: private

  • 31 December 1934: born in Kippenheim (Baden) to Berthold and Regina Auerbacher
  • 1938: on the night of the November pogrom, Inge’s father and grandfather are deported to Dachau, where they are imprisoned for several weeks.
  • In 1939, the family are forced to sell their house in Kippenheim; they move to Jebenhausen to live with Inge’s grandparents, Betty and Max Lauchheimer
  • From 1940, Inge attends the Jewish school in Stuttgart
  • 1 December 1941: Inge’s grandmother is deported to Riga, where she is murdered
  • 1941: shortly after the grandmother’s deportation, the family has to leave Inge’s grandparents’ house and move to quarters in a so-called Judenhaus (“Jew’s house”)
  • On 22 August 1942, Inge and her parents are deported to Theresienstadt. They are imprisoned there until the camp is liberated by the Red Army on 8 May 1945.
  • After a brief stay at a camp in Stuttgart, the Auerbacher family return to Jebenhausen. Shortly afterwards, they move to Göppingen, where they live until May 1946.
  • 1946: the family emigrates to the USA
  • Shortly after her arrival in New York, Inge Auerbacher falls ill with tuberculosis, a legacy of her incarceration in Theresienstadt.
  • From 1948: discharge from hospital; education initially at home, then locally; interrupted by health setbacks
  • 1950: completion of junior high school, graduation in 1953, Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1958. Inge Auerbacher works as a chemist from then on.
  • Inge Auerbacher is granted U.S. citizenship in 1953.
  • 1966: first return visit to her former home in Kippenheim
  • In 1986, she publishes her childhood memoirs under the title “I am a Star”; a German translation is published in 1990. Other publications follow, including “Beyond the Yellow Star” in 2005
  • Inge Auerbacher is still active as a contemporary witness today and pays special attention to young people when telling her life story.
  • Inge Auerbacher has received several awards in Germany and the USA for her work as a contemporary witness and a promoter of German-Jewish understanding; these include the German Federal Cross of Merit.
  • On Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January 2022, she was speaking in the German Bundestag. In her speech, she appealed to the people of Germany to oppose anti-Semitism.
  • October 2022: Inge Auerbacher is interviewed in New York, D.C. for Dimensions in Testimony

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