Inmate number from Ravensbruck
Object numberM1995/002:003
TitleInmate number from Ravensbruck
DescriptionPrisoner identification registration number issued to Irene Weiss (Maityn at the time), Ravensbruck, January 1945. The white rectangle patch of cloth has the number 105523 stamped on it.
Irene Weiss (nee Berger, widowed Maityn) was born in Slovakia in the village of Ardanovce on 31 October 1914. She was the eldest of five children to Adolf and Cecilia Berger. There were only two Jewish families and growing up she experienced little antisemitism. In February 1942 she married her childhood sweetheart Eugen (Jeno) Maityn.
She was deported to Auschwitz in March 1942, and registered as a number - 2654. Office skills and the German language, learned as a young girl, helped her survive - she worked in the office of the Politishe Abteilung (political department) in Auschwitz, together with her sister Janka (Jana, now Jeanette Nagel), as a secretary, recording the gruesome statistics of the murder of the Hungarian transports. After a process of selection, the majority were murdered in the gas chambers. This earned such secretaries the title “secretaries of death.” Irene recalls that the Hungarian arrivals were instructed to write to their relatives with the address ‘Waldsee’, not Auschwitz, so as to deceive them. One of the other girls working there was Berta Weisz, from Vienna; she gave Irene a fabric pouch as a gift, something that Irene smuggled with her from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck in January 1945, and then in early March 1945, on the ‘death march’ to Neustadt-Glewe, in Mecklenburg, Germany.
After liberation the sisters found out their sister Helen was still alive, but the rest of the family, including Irene’s husband, suffered the same fate as Slovakian Jews in the mass round ups. In 1947 Irene met Maurice Weiss, and they married in 1948. In 1949, they moved to Australia, where Janka was already living.
Irene Weiss (nee Berger, widowed Maityn) was born in Slovakia in the village of Ardanovce on 31 October 1914. She was the eldest of five children to Adolf and Cecilia Berger. There were only two Jewish families and growing up she experienced little antisemitism. In February 1942 she married her childhood sweetheart Eugen (Jeno) Maityn.
She was deported to Auschwitz in March 1942, and registered as a number - 2654. Office skills and the German language, learned as a young girl, helped her survive - she worked in the office of the Politishe Abteilung (political department) in Auschwitz, together with her sister Janka (Jana, now Jeanette Nagel), as a secretary, recording the gruesome statistics of the murder of the Hungarian transports. After a process of selection, the majority were murdered in the gas chambers. This earned such secretaries the title “secretaries of death.” Irene recalls that the Hungarian arrivals were instructed to write to their relatives with the address ‘Waldsee’, not Auschwitz, so as to deceive them. One of the other girls working there was Berta Weisz, from Vienna; she gave Irene a fabric pouch as a gift, something that Irene smuggled with her from Auschwitz to Ravensbruck in January 1945, and then in early March 1945, on the ‘death march’ to Neustadt-Glewe, in Mecklenburg, Germany.
After liberation the sisters found out their sister Helen was still alive, but the rest of the family, including Irene’s husband, suffered the same fate as Slovakian Jews in the mass round ups. In 1947 Irene met Maurice Weiss, and they married in 1948. In 1949, they moved to Australia, where Janka was already living.
Object nameidentification numbers
Materialfibres (fabrics)
Dimensions
- width: 128.00 mm
height: 58.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Mrs. Irene Weiss