User talk:David Matzdorf

Kurt Matzdorf
Hello! Thank you for making edits to his article. I noticed you added the following text to his article: "His mother died in Chelmno (Cholm) labour camp near Ljublin on 20 April 1941. His father died in Sachsenhausen labour camp on 28 January 1942." I was wondering if you could offer some clarification or references on two points: Chełmno extermination camp is near Łódź, while Chełm (German: Cholm) is about 70 km from Lublin; Chełmno and Chełm are ~370 km apart. Secondly, if she was murdered in Chełmno extermination camp (which I'm not clear on), the date might not be right, as Chełmno started operating eight months later in December 1941. I found Wilhelm Matzdorf in Yad Vashem's database which matches the above, but Alice Matzdorf nee Frank is listed as having been murdered at Hadamar Euthanasia Centre on 11 February 1941. I'm happy to update the article but if there's other sources I'd like to research and reconcile them.-Ich (talk) 00:31, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello. I'm not sure how to post a reply to your questions, as I am new to this Wikipedia editing thing, so I hope it works just to add it it to your thread. I'm just guessing at the syntax required and at how to manage the reply. I have two sources for this information. Primarily, it comes from my notes on my own interview, on 23 April 2005, with my aunt, Kurt's sister Elizabeth Duff (née Elisabeth Matzdorf). My notes read as follows "[Tante] Heinie rushed to Bonn to collect her [my grandmother Alice] and go into hiding, but was too late. Alice was killed quite quickly after being taken to the death camp (not a forced labour camp) at Chelmno (Cholm) near Ljublin, where her death was registered on 20 April 1941. Elizabeth doesn’t know how she died – there may be some details in ‘They Were Our Neighbours’ [there are no further details there]. The Cholm/Chelmno extermination camp was a common destination for people with mental health problems [my grandmother had been in a private mental institution, clinic or 'sanitarium' after having a breakdown]." My secondary source is the book mentioned in those notes: or "They were our neighbours" (ISBN 3-931656-02-0) on page 39. I have the German language book, but I cannot read German. I also have an English translation of the book, which was written by my late cousin Lilli Lowental (of New York City and Wengen, Switzerland). I have two copies of her original typewritten translation, which also includes paragraphs that deal with Wilhelm, Kurt and Elizabeth. The German text of the book and Lilli's translation read that Alice died on "20 April 1941 in Cholm". I am in contact with the town historian of Stadtoldendorf, Jens Meier, via Facebook, and I can contact him for further details if necessary. I can also scan the two relevant pages of Lilli's translation and pages 38-40 of "Sie waren unsere Nachbarn" and send them to you, if you or someone else can tell me how to do it! David Matzdorf (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the detailed response! Formatting for Wikipedia is a little tricky but you'll get the hang of it quickly. There's a thicket of policies, guidelines, style manuals etc. that you'll learn as you go; don't let them discourage you as you're starting out. (I've taken the liberty of re-formatting your edit.) I found Sie waren unsere Nachbarn on Google books but it doesn't have a preview for me to check the contents; I do speak German. Wikipedia does not require the source to be freely accessible online to use for attribution, though, so I think the book is fine as a source. It is against Wikipedia policy to use Original Research in articles; everything needs to be published by a reliable source, so before we could cite the interview, it would need to be evaluated by a scholar and included in some other publication. (It's also discouraged to make edits about family members yourself; the "proper" course of action is discussing suggested changes with an uninvolved editor who doesn't have a COI and let her or him make the changes, as we're doing here.) I've edited the article to list the two possible sources for the date and place of her murder. Thanks again for your interest and help on building a better encyclopedia! If you have other questions, feel free to tag me or review some of the tutorials at WP:I or WP:CTW. Glad to have you here!-Ich (talk) 12:32, 10 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I could send you a scan of the relevant page of Sie waren unsere Nachbarn if there is away to do that.'David Matzdorf'