Fania Abel (1931 - 1943)

Born 1931 in Białystok, Poland

Died 7 Oct 1943 at about age 12 in Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bielitz, Oberschlesien, Preußen, Deutsches Reich

Biography

Fania Abel has Jewish Roots.

Fania Abel died as a result of persecution during the Holocaust.

Fania Abel was born in 1931 in Białystok, Poland. Parents are listed as Szyja Abel and Perle Abel.

This child was named on the BIALYSTOK CHILDREN'S TRANSPORT LIST FROM THERESENSTADT [SIC] TO AUSCHWITZ, DN/A 10/05/43.

See: Transport of_Białystok_children

The list contains the names of children aged six to twelve sent from Bialystok to Theresienstadt, and then to Auschwitz by order of Adolf Eichmann; the children were killed on the Erev Yom Kippur, 7 October 1943. ^[1]

Fania died on October 7, 1943 in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Oświęcim, Biała County, Kraków, Polska, aged 11.

Transport of Białystok Children

On August 16, 1943, the Nazis entered the Bialystok Ghetto and with the help of tanks and artillery started the ultimate annihilation of the remaining 40,000 Jews.

On Tuesday, 17th of August 1943, the Bialystok Ghetto was in flames after an uprising was started by the Jews who were being deported out of the Ghetto to their annihilation in Treblinka. The SS selected 2,000 children, tearing them away from their parents.

On Friday August 20th, 1943, after the Germans suppressed the uprising, the children were taken in trains out of Bialystok and taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp. They arrived in Theresienstadt about three days later. It is rumored the underground forces were negotiating for the release of these children along with others up to 10,000. But this deal required money and when it was not secured, the children were boarded on another train.

On 5 October, they were told that they would be sent to Switzerland in exchange for German prisoners of war. This was not the case since money was never given nor a prisoner exchange for the children. Instead, the train went to the Auschwitz concentration camp where all were murdered in gas chambers.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, October 7, 1943, 1,196 children from Bialystok Ghetto in Poland, and 53 doctors and nurses from the Terezin Ghetto in Czechoslovakia, who accompanied them to the end, were killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz the day they arrived.

Sources

1. ↑ We Remember the Children, oral history

• Fania Abel, entry in Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, United States Holocaust Museum (https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=4074727 : accessed 26 April 2024)