Werner Teitz

From US Holocaust Museum’s Instagram:

Werner Teitz was a bright boy who loved collecting stamps and writing letters to his Parents and Relatives. At age six in 1931, he was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy and was admitted to a Medical Facility in Munich. Shortly after a rise in Antisemitic violence in 1938, the facility informed Werner’s Parents, Emil and Sophie Teitz, that it would no longer care for Jewish Patients.

While the Family managed to move Werner to a Facility in the Netherlands, the rest of the Family, including their younger son, Walter, eventually found refuge in England. They left Werner behind, believing he would be out of harm’s way in the Netherlands.

When their Visas arrived, Emil, Sophie, and Walter immigrated to the United States in April 1940. US and UK Immigration laws forbade entry to People who were likely to become dependent on Government Support. Werner likely would not have received Visas for either Country due to his Physical Disability.

Germany invaded the Netherlands just one month later in May 1940.

“I hope that I will be able to go home next year,” Werner wrote in a letter to his Parents in 1942. “I so would like to be at home next year for our dear Walter’s Bar Mitzvah. How is father’s business? Does Mother still knit mittens? Where is Grandmother now? I wait with anticipation on a letter from my Parents … .”

Werner, however, never made it home. A year after he wrote this letter, Werner was removed from his Facility because he was Jewish and taken to the Westerbork Transit Camp. From there, he was deported to the Sobibor Killing Center, where he was murdered in May 1943.