Moses Schorr - Schorr's Family

Schorr's Family

After the German attack of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa—June 1941), Schorr's wife, daughter Felicia, and grandchildren, left Lviv for Warsaw. They endured internment in the Warsaw ghetto, but obtained Costa Rican and Nicaraguan passports (from daughter Sonia). They were next interned at Warsaw's Pawiak Prison on 19 June 1942 as citizens of a neutral state. After several months, they were transferred to the French town of Vittel in Alsace, where they arrived on 20 October 1943, to be exchanged for German prisoners of war. In Vittel, they were held in a special hotel guarded by the Gestapo along with 300 other Jews with foreign passports.

After more than a year of waiting, it became clear that the next day they would all be deported to the Drancy internment camp, from where detainees were transported to Auschwitz. Tamara Schorr and her daughter Felicia Kon decided to commit suicide on 17 April 1944 so that Felicia's children, as orphans, could avoid transfer. Tamara Schorr died after consuming poison. Her daughter Felicia was wounded after she jumped out a window, and was taken to hospital. Their other daughter, Sonia, managed to reach New York with her husband Arthur Miller toward the end of 1940.