Hildegard Reinhardt (married Franz) – “I came back without children, without anything ...”

Hildegard Reinhardt was twenty-two when she and her family were deported from Ravensburg to the “gypsy family camp” in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The conditions there were disastrous. All three of her little daughters died very soon of disease and hunger; she herself contracted typhus. Following the camp’s dissolution, the SS transferred her to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and from there to the armaments factories in the Schlieben and Altenburg subcamps. After her liberation she returned to her native Württemberg, where she learned of her husband’s death. She applied for restitution, but received only 4,200 Deutschmarks, including 150 Deutschmarks for each of her children who had died in Auschwitz.