Picturing Mum and Dad

Photograph of Stefan and Alice Löffler (nee Meisel) sitting on a bench near the Otava River in Susice, Czechoslovakia. The Löffler family – Ludmila (Mila), Gertrude (Trudi) and Wilhelm (Willi), Stefan’s children through his previous marriage to Maria Anna Cvetlerova, as well as Stefan and Alice’s daughter Susan (Susi) – lived in the small industrial town of Susice, in Southwestern Bohemia. The Jewish population in Susice was very small; roughly 112 people in 1930. There had been a pogrom in 1866 and most Jews moved to bigger towns in the second half of the 19th century.

This photo was taken in 1937. Just two years later, by 15 March 1939, Mila, Trudi and Willi had escaped to England. Susi left Czechoslovakia from Wilson Station, Prague, in July 1939 (aged 15), roughly six weeks before the war broke out. She worked as a nurse and maid in London.

Stefan and Alice were deported to Terezin on 30 November 1942 and later, on 28 October 1944, sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Their daughter Susan treasured this photograph as a memory of the 'world that was'.