I know it's coming to an end. They will take us east. I'm terribly afraid of what will happen to us there. But this vegetating here in Varel, which has been going on for months, is so dreadful that I hardly know what's worse, to stay here or having to leave. We were brought here from Emden in October 1941. We were allowed to take practically nothing with us. We were loaded like cattle, my husband Louis, me, and 21 other, often completely helpless and decrepit residents of the Emden old people´s home, most of them native East Frisians, that nowadays have to wear that yellow Jewish star. Because Louis led the Jewish community in Emden, he was made head of this accommodation here. There are 23 of us crammed together in 7 small run-down rooms. There is just one single toilet for all of us and we have to sleep on camp beds. Until we came here to the Schüttingstr. 13 the Weinberg siblings ran a small Jewish old people's home with 6 residents. Even that must have been terribly cramped. But no comparison to state of things as it is now. The Weinbergs are already gone. In the East. We still have a little last time left. Our old people mostly spend it in silence, sometimes crying quietly, simply giving in to their misery. Louis and I are really trying hard. But there is no consolation left. By now we have received the order for our next removal. They say we are going to Theresienstadt. Louis and I have sent another postcard to our children in Sweden. I hope it will arrive. Of course we couldn't write about what's really going on with us. Otherwise the card would have no chance of getting through the censorship. I'm so glad we sent our children well-timed abroad. Nevertheless, longing and worry almost drive me crazy every day. How I hope and pray they are all well.

Since the 17th century, Jews had lived in Varel as a matter of course and had enriched the city's social and economic life in many ways. There were shops like the Weiß department store where the residents of Varel enjoyed shopping, and there was the Schwabe leather goods factory, which offered many Varel workers an above-average living. Jewish fellow citizens had been elected to the city council, and Jewish entrepreneurs had founded social foundations in the city. And of course Varel had a synagogue, which had been in Osterstr. since 1848. It was robbed of its inventory and set on fire during the Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. Many Jews from Varel had already emigrated, for others the terrible events of that night were the signal to flee. But not everyone wanted or could separate from their homeland. Finally, all that was left was the Jewish old people´s home. With the deportation of the residents of the Weinberghaus on July 23, 1942, Jewish life in Varel was wiped out. Most of the deportees died shortly after their arrival in the Theresienstadt ghetto. The home directors Betti and Louis Wolff were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in the fall of 1944.