Edith Friedlander Family Collection

Edith Friedlander, nee Kauefler, was born in Vienna on January 8, 1922. Because the family had Czech passports, it was easier for them to leave Austria immediately after the Nazi's rise to power in Austria in 1938. They went to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and lived there with a gentile family until the Nazis invaded the Czech Republic. In 1940 Karl Kaeufler died and in May 1942 Edith and her mother Elisabeth were deported to the ghetto Theresienstadt. In 1944 the two women were deported to Auschwitz, where Elisabeth was murdered. Edith was deported in 1944 to the labor camp Oderan, Germany, where she had to work in the war industry. Shortly before the war ended, Edith was brought to Theresienstadt where she could escape to Prague. There she stayed until May 1947, when she immigrated to the USA. Then Edith got married and worked as an editor for a publishing company.

Robert Friedlander was born on June 17, 1909 in Olomouc, Czech Republic (Olmütz, Moravia) to Otto and Gisela Friedlaender. He lived in Prague before emigrating to Guayaquil, Ecuador and immigrating to the United States in 1941. He joined the US Army in July 1942, fighting in 1945 in Italy, France and Germany. Robert Friedlander got married to his second wife, Edith Kauefler in 1948(?).