Ilona Klein · The Feig Family Archive

Laci's eldest sister · Hebrew name Devorah (דבורה) per Tatty (Menachem Feig) · Bas Kohen · firstborn of the four Klein siblings (Ilona 1912 → Jenő 1913 → Avrohom Chaim/Lajos 1914 → Laci 1922) · never married · her name appears on the granite memorial plaque set into the base of Zeidy's matzeiva in Brooklyn — recorded there as Devorah bas Menachem HaKohen. (v3.58: corrected per Eli Feig — earlier site copy had her as "Ilona Klein Büchler" deported with a husband Lajos. She did not marry; the Büchler surname has been removed and the narrative corrected.)

Zeidy's older sister. Never married. Murdered at Auschwitz with her parents Emanuel and Lina in May 1944. Source: Chapter 3.

Hungarian civil and Jewish-community registers, photographed by family researchers. Click any image to view full size.

— THE FACTS WE’VE GATHERED —

The shape of their life

From civil records, family memory, and primary sources. Empty rows are research targets.

Identity

Civil name

Ilona Klein

Hebrew name

דבורה · Devorah · bas Menachem HaKohen

Hungarian / nickname

— not yet documented — +

Religious lineage

Bas Kohen — eldest of Emanuel & Lina's four children

Birth

Born (civil)

7 August 1912 (registered 12 August 1912 in the Tiszadob civil register, entry 106)

Born (Hebrew)

— not yet documented — +

Place of birth

Tiszadob

Time of birth

— not yet documented — +

Birth-order

Eldest of Emanuel & Lina's four children (followed by Jenő 1913, Lajos 1914, and Laci 1922)

Family

Father

Emanuel Klein (Menachem HaKohen) — kereskedő (merchant), age 25 at her birth

Mother

Lina Goldstein Klein (Malka bas Pinchas HaKohen) — age 26 at her birth

Married

— not yet documented — +

Spouse

— not yet documented — +

Years married

— not yet documented — +

Children

— not yet documented — +

Life

Trade / occupation

— not yet documented — +

Lived in

Tiszadob, Hungary

Immigration

Arrived NYC

— not yet documented — +

Naturalized

— not yet documented — +

Petition number

— not yet documented — +

Alien Reg. No.

— not yet documented — +

Shoah

Camp survival

No — murdered at Auschwitz with her parents

Liberated

— not yet documented — +

Death

Died (civil)

15 June 1944 — Hungarian court-assigned date per Tiszalöki district court 1948, order Pk. 2061/1947-6 (retroactive registration). Family yahrzeit observed 6 Sivan (Shavuos) — Klein-side community date for Tiszadob deportees.

Time of death

— not yet documented — +

Yahrzeit (Hebrew)

— not yet documented — +

Place of death

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Cause of death

Murdered at Auschwitz — recorded as 'Erőszak utján való megsemmisítés' (annihilation by violent means) in the 1948 civil death registration

Age at death

31 (per 1886+1912 birth records; not yet 32 at the court-assigned June 1944 death date)

Place of burial

Auschwitz — no grave; commemorated on the granite memorial plaque at the base of Zeidy Laci's matzeiva at Washington Cemetery, Deans NJ

Grave inscription

Memorialized on the granite plaque at the base of her brother Zeidy's matzeiva in Deans, NJ

Photographed

— not yet documented — +

— PHOTOGRAPHS —

Photographs

F · family record Ilona Klein · birth record, 1912 Emanuel and Lina's eldest child, born 7 August 1912 in Tiszadob. Father Klein Emánuel, kereskedő (merchant), age 25; mother Goldstein Lina, age 26. Ilona is registered as "leány, izr." (female, Jewish). She would be murdered with her parents at Auschwitz in 1944, age 31.

F · family photograph Bobby and Zeidy at Menachem and Frumie's wedding Bobby (Irene Weisz Feig) and Zeidy (Sam · Laci ·. Bobby was the surviving daughter of Apagy — born to Lipot and Regina in 1926, taken to Auschwitz at 18, Bergen-Belsen after, recovery in Sweden, Brooklyn in 1950. Zeidy was the surviving son of Tiszadob — born to Emanuel and Lina (Milkah bas Pinchas) HaKohen on 25 December 1922, survived Auschwitz; his parents and his older sister Ilona were murdered on 6 Sivan 1944, married Bobby in Brooklyn in 1952. Their son's wedding. The second generation past the rupture, beginning a third.

F · family record Zeidy's matzeiva · with the memorial for those without graves The matzeiva of Zeidy Laci Klein — Morde. The granite plaque set into the base of the matzeiva names the members of his family from Hungary who were murdered in the Holocaust and have no grave: his father Emanuel (Menachem ben Yitzchak Yosef HaKohen), his mother Lina (Milkah bas Pinchas HaKohen), his brother Avrohom Chaim (lost on the Don River), and his sister Ilona — Devorah bas Menachem HaKohen — who never married. Their names rest at the base of his stone.

F · family photograph Tatty and Zeidy — Long Beach, late 1990 Tatty (Menachem Feig) on the left, beside his father Zeidy. Zeidy was 67 here — forty-six years after the Tiszadob deportation that killed his parents Emanuel and Lina (Milkah bas Pinchas) HaKohen on 6 Sivan 1944, and his sister Ilona. He had eight more years to live. The continuity of a Tiszadob Kohen line that almost ended in 1944, photographed in a Long Island living room.

The shape of their life

The paper trail

Family

Photographs