Alice and Otto Weidt

Time Line

Alice And Family arrested

In October 1943 they arrested alice Licht and her family and deported them to Theresienstadt Ghetto on November 15, 1943.Shortly after the family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where Alice's parents were murdered in early 1944.Alice Licht was then deported to Christianstadt, the subsidiary camp of Groß-Rosen concentration camp.

In the summer of 1946 she succcessfully received a visa to move to the United States.

Upon learning that Alice is in Auschwitz, Otto travels to find and assist her. Returning to Berlin without having seen her. Alice eventually makes her own way back to Berlin in January 1945 and spent the end of the war with the Weidt family in their apartment in Zehlendorf.

Otto Weidt helps protect his Jewish employees from deportation to concentration camps for several years, insisting that they are essential for his factory, which produced war material.

Alice Licht escaped

1946

After 1947

Alice Emigrates to the USA

1941-43

Working with Otto Weidt

1941

Alice Licht and Otto Weidt Meet in Berlin

In June of 1941, Alice Licht took a job at Otto Weidt's factory in Berlin-Mitte. The workshop employed blind and deaf workers, mostly Jews.

Otto Weidt died in Germany a year later in 1947. Alice Licht went on to later immigrate to Israel, dying there in 1987.

May 1945

WAR ENDS

1939

WAR BEGINS

The war is destroying Berlin. Allied air-attacks kill tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.

Nearly all Jews in Berlin have been deported and the war is beginning to fall apart for Germany. This is the beginning of the end.

Mid 1944-January 1945

End of 1943

As agreed, the US, UK, France and Soviet Union divide Germany and Berlin into 4 occupation zones. Berlin eventually becomes divided between East and West.

From Oktober 1941 about 130,000 German Jews were sent to ghettos or extermenation camps. Trains from Berlin started removing the cities Jewish residents.

Berlin is taken by the Soviets, and Germany surrenders to the Allies in early May 1945. The worst war in human history comes to an end.

Second World War begins. Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invades Poland on September 1, 1939.

Berlin

Otto Weidt