It is stories like Gideon’s that make me want to give up doing blogs on the Holocaust, but paradoxically, it also encourages me to continue with it. The reason why I want to stop is apparent. Every time when I see a picture of a beautiful innocent infant, knowing that child was murdered by an evil regime, I feel physical and mental pain. However, that is also the reason why I have to continue, to make sure it never happens again, although I feel like I and others are failing in that task.
There is not much to say about Gideon; how could there be he was only 1. He was born in the Hague, Netherlands, on June 4, 1942. On February 28, 1944, he was transported to Westerbork, but from there, he was deported to Auschwitz on March 6,1944, together with 661 other men, women and children. Gideon was murdered in Auschwitz on March 6,1944.
There is more information about his family, especially about his mother and her family.
Fany Feingersch came as a German refugee from Celle to Zevenaar on March 9, 1939. She lived from March 9, 1939, to November 22, 1939, at the Jewish Youth Farm in Gouda, the villa Catharinahoeve, which had over two hectares of land. On April 1, 1940, she left for Rotterdam.
Fany’s parents, Isaak (Yitzkhak) and Rebekka (Rivka) Feingersch-Aswolinskaya, left Odesa, Ukraine, for Germany in 1912. Because they had Russian nationality, they were interned separately in Holzminden during the First World War. Once out of the camp, they moved to Ovelgönne near Celle. There, Fany was born in 1918. She was the fourth child; after her, a sister and five brothers were born.
Fany managed to reach the Netherlands together with her sisters Marie and Rosa. As a so-called Palestine Pioneer, she had an agricultural education and lived in different places. Four of her brothers went to British-mandated Palestine. Her parents and two youngest brothers remained behind in Celle.
On August 30, 1939, Fany addressed a personal, handwritten letter to Princess Juliana, the Crown princess and future Queen of the Netherlands, pleading for her parents and youngest brothers to temporarily stay in a refugee camp in the Netherlands, The request was denied.
Fany married Wilhelm (Willy) Prager on December 3, 1941.
They lived above the pastry shop on Korte Poten in The Hague. Their son Gideon was born on June 4, 1942.
Fany was pregnant with their second child when she arrived in Westerbork on 28 February 1944, together with her husband, their son Gideon and Gerda Klein, her husband’s niece who lived with them at the time. On March 3, 1944, they were deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz (transport no. 89). Fany was murdered simultaneously with Gideon and Gerda on March 6, 1944.
Fany was 25, Gideon was 1, and Gerda was 9. Willy Prager survived the war and was liberated in Dachau on April 29, 1945.
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/144723/gideon-prager
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Gideon-Prager/01/20001
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