Jenő's path between Auschwitz and Theresienstadt is documented at Yad Vashem (Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names record #4744989). The route is consistent with the wider record of Hungarian-Jewish men deported in May 1944: selected at Auschwitz for labor, transferred to Buchenwald as parent camp, and routed to the new Tröglitz/Rehmsdorf subcamp the SS had just opened on 4 June 1944.
The subcamp existed for one specific purpose: Allied bombing on 12 May 1944 had brought the Brabag synthetic-fuel plant in Tröglitz to a standstill, and the SS supplied ~5,000 men — mostly Hungarian Jews routed via Auschwitz and Buchenwald — to clear bomb damage and restart production. The future Nobel laureate in literature, Imre Kertész, was at the same camp; he later wrote about it in Fatelessness (1975). Working conditions were catastrophic: twelve-hour days, insufficient food, constant SS violence. After roughly four weeks most prisoners could no longer meet the demands; the SS continuously replaced them, sending the “unfit” back to Buchenwald and, in many cases, on to Auschwitz to be murdered. More than 5,800 of the approximately 8,600 prisoners who passed through Tröglitz/Rehmsdorf between June 1944 and April 1945 died.
On the night of 6–7 April 1945 the camp was hastily evacuated. The remaining ~3,000 prisoners were loaded into ten open coal wagons and sent toward Theresienstadt. About 900 died en route. The train ended at Reitzenhain, ninety kilometers short of Theresienstadt, after an American Air Force attack. SS members and local residents shot at least 380 prisoners who tried to escape. The rest were force-marched to Theresienstadt. Jenő was thirty-one years old. He was liberated at Theresienstadt on 8 May 1945. Of the five people in the Klein household twelve months earlier — Emanuel, Lina, Ilona, Jenő, Laci — only he and Laci were left.
Laci's older brother · Hebrew name Eliyahu (added v3.59 — confirmed via family photograph caption) · Kohen · liberated at Theresienstadt 8 May 1945 · returned to Hungary after the war · married Esti (known to Tatty's children and grandchildren as Esti néni) in Hungary · had six daughters · emigrated to America in 1959 (per Tatty's recollection — corrected v3.18) · settled in Boro Park, Brooklyn · owned a children's furniture store on New Utrecht Avenue · co-sponsor of the Tiszadob cemetery memorial with Laci · died 17 June 2006 in Brooklyn at age 92, sixteen years after Laci (date corrected v3.51 via Yitz Feig — earlier site copy said "before 1990" which was wrong; that misdating was inconsistent with Eli's own memory of visiting Jenő's store as a child) · the carriage and the candy in Eli's earliest memory came from this man · photograph of Jenő and Esti added to the site v3.59
Zeidy's older brother — the other Klein sibling who survived the war. His path was through Theresienstadt; liberated 8 May 1945. He returned to Hungary, married Esti, fathered six daughters, then fled with his family in the wake of the 1956 Revolution and reached Boro Park in 1959. He opened a children's furniture store on New Utrecht Avenue; every time Menachem and Fruma had a baby, Jenő sent something from the store for the new child. His granddaughter (Sara Gluck's eldest) is Rachel "Ruchie" Freier, the first Hasidic woman elected to a NY State Supreme Court judgeship. Source: Chapter 3.
From civil records, family memory, and primary sources. Empty rows are research targets.
Each card below is part of the documented record. Empty slots are open requests.
The generations they stood between.
The records, memories, and sources behind each claim.
The Klein × Weisz Archive is a multi-generational record of two Hungarian Jewish lines, joined by Bobby and Laci’s marriage in 1952.
