Buchenwald Aussenkommando slave labor subcamp, scrip, 1 mark note

Buchenwald aussenkommando (outside unit) coupon with no overprint identifying the outside camp within the Buchenwald concentration camp system. Scrip was sometimes issued to forced laborers working in factories. Trudy (Gertrude) Blau may have been issued the scrip when she was imprisoned in Auschwitz and its various labor subcamps from 1944-1945. In 1942, Trudy and her family were deported by the Germans from Vienna, Austria, to the Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in Czechoslovakia. In 1944, Trudy volunteered to go to Auschwitz with some friends, and from there was sent to Kurzbach labor camp, where she worked digging ditches until she became ill with typhoid fever. In January 1945, the Germans decided to evacuate the camp because of advancing Soviet forces. While on a forced march, Trudy was liberated in Liegnitz, Germany, by the Soviets. She was reunited with her family in Theresienstadt in the spring of 1945. The family was transferred to the Deggendorf displaced persons camp in Germany where they lived until their emigration to the United States in 1948.