User:Cbye/Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild

Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild (born 1931 in Kaiserslautern, died 29 December 2020 in Basel ) was a German survivor and Holocaust witness. She survived two internment camps in France.

Life
Her father Richard Schwarzschild, born 12 December 1898 in Kaiserslautern, was of Jewish heritage, her mother Aloisia, called „Luise“, nee Keim, was Catholic. She had a sister: Hannelore Schwarzschild (1929–2014). The family celebrated both Christian and Jewish Holy days. The family lived in Steinstraße 30 in Kaiserslautern. In 1938 her father was transported to the Dachau concentration camp for six weeks. When he returned, he was not allowed to discuss what had happened to him there. When Margot was seven years old she was expelled from the school. The Synagogue of Kaiserslautern, where her father regularly played the organ was destroyed in September or October 1938.

In the early morning of October 22, 1940, the Gestapo deported the entire family to the French Camp de Gurs in the Pyrenees in the so-called Wagner-Bürckel campaign. "Hunger, lice, bugs, fleas and rats were just as much a part of everyday life as the omnipresent mud." In 1941 Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild was transferred to Camp de Rivesaltes with her mother and sister. In November of the same year, the two sisters came to a home run by the Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross in Pringy in Haute-Savoie. Her father was able to rent a small apartment near Carcassonne in semi-freedom and brought the family home. But in 1942 they were again deported to Rivesaltes, where the family was separated. Her father was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 and murdered there. With the help of Friedel Bohny-Reiter, a sister of the Swiss Red Cross, and with a photograph of her communion, her mother was able to save herself and her daughters from deportation. Bohny-Reiter, who had exceeded the requirements of the Red Cross regarding neutrality in order to save human lives, was named Righteous Among the Nations in 1990 by Yad Vashem. An article by Sister Hannelore about the conditions in the camp was sent to a Jewish newspaper in Switzerland. A Swiss teacher read this report and then sent the family food parcels. Schwarzschild also names Elsa Lüthi-Ruth in Rivesaltes and Ruth von Wild in Pringy as further saviours.

After the fall of the Nazi regime, Margot, her mother and sister went back to Kaiserslautern. The sisters would have preferred to stay in France as they hardly spoke any German. They went to the boy scouts and their stories impressed the young Erhard Roy Wiehn so much that he decided to study sociology and research the fate of survival. After leaving school, Margot Schwarzschild trained as a translator and interpreter. She found work at the American headquarters, then in a Jewish agency in Geneva. She married Josef Wicki (her sister married his brother). The couple have children and grandchildren. In 1961 they moved to Reinach where Margot Wicki was socially committed. She began to report on her experiences in schools and became a Holocaust witness. She also accompanied school classes on trips to Gurs, together with other contemporary witnesses such as Eva Mendelsson and Paul Niedermann. Margot Wicki-Schwarzschild also published a number of memorial texts.