Inge Schlesinger

1921 - 2017

Schlesinger, Inge
June 19, 2017
Inge Schlesinger, 95, died on June 19, at the Glenridge at Palmer Ranch in Sarasota, Florida.
She was born in 1921 in Berlin, Germany to Hans and Mary Kochmann. They gave Inge a wonderful childhood and she adored them. After graduating high school, she apprenticed at the Photostudio Binder-Berlin. Denied official working papers for being Jewish, Inge was paid in secret. She stayed at the studio until being drafted to work at the Zeiss Ikon Filmwerk. For 10.5 hours a day, with Sundays off, she developed 35 mm film in a darkroom.
On May 17, 1943, Inge and her parents were among the last Jews in Berlin to be deported to Birkenau (Auschwitz). They were immediately separated from Hans, who they never saw again.
Inge and her mother were tattooed and their heads shaved before being assigned to an overflowing barracks. After only a few days, the SS called for a photographer. Inge was selected and separated from her mother who was killed in the camp.
As a photographer, Inge worked with accomplished women scientists - chemists, botanists, and agricultural engineers - to establish a source of rubber. The material was critical to the German war effort and Auschwitz provided the perfect soil and slave labor.
On January 18, 1945, the SS marched surviving prisoners away from the advancing Russian Army. In April, outside of Leipzig, they were abandoned by the SS and discovered by Belgian POWs who gave them food and blankets.
Starving, cold, and in fear of capture, Inge found her way to the American headquarters in Grimma, Germany and asked for two things – a job and a place to sleep that was not in a camp. She became a liason between the Army and an employment agency. When the Americans left Grimma, Inge travelled to Bad Neuheim after a short stop in a Belgium prison for being a "German enemy."
It was in Bad Neuheim that Inge met and fell in love with a young Army officer, Lutz Schlesinger, a German-American who was also born in Berlin. Lutz proposed to Inge in 1946 but the wedding had to wait. Inge had contracted tuberculosis and required care and convalescence. They married in New York in 1948.
Just as she was among the last Jews to leave Berlin, Inge is one of the last Holocaust survivors to leave this world. It is essential to remember and share her story. It is just as important to remember that the war and Birkenau defined only a handful of her 95 years.
After marrying, Inge became a bookkeeper and helped Lutz in his business. They traveled together and with friends, doted on nieces and nephews, and loved their dachshunds including the incomparable Mady.
Inge became the bookkeeper for a neurology practice in Bronxville, New York and stayed on there well into her eighties. During winters in Florida, she volunteered many hours in the offices of Save Our Seabirds in Sarasota and in the office at Glenridge at the Palmer Ranch.
Inge found joy in a good book, concerts at the Marlboro Music Festival, and afternoons at the Clark Art Museum. She took long, lazy swims. She made friends wherever she went – Vermont, Connecticut, and on trans-Atlantic voyages. Her hazelnut cakes with whipped cream were a holiday staple, her hand knit baby blankets labelled "Made by Tante Inge" a treasure.
Inge is survived by her loving husband Lutz, nieces, nephews and dear friends all over the world.
Donations in her memory may be made to http://send.shiva.com/trees-for-israel.html.