Jaffe, Alexander

Alexander (Sascha)Jaffe was born in Berlin on October 4, 1931, the son of Russian citizen Boris Jaffe and his wife Ida née Poschumenski, followed by his sister Tamara on October 22, 1932, and his brother Jakob (Jascha) on December 4, 1934. The family lived at Hauptstraße 110. The father Boris Jaffe was a film traveler and, when the Warner Brothers company left Germany, lost most of his income, and the family lived in poor circumstances. In 1938, his father Boris Jaffe, as a Russian citizen, received a request to leave the country. He managed to obtain a visa for the USA and was able to travel to the USA via Denmark on a cargo ship. His wife and children were supposed to join him, but due to the beginning of the Second World War this did not happen. On June 22, 1941, the SS took the family out of the apartment and brought them via a police station to Groß-Ziethen, from there on July 2, 1941, by train to Prague, then to the Bulgarian border, and when there was no further way, to Serbia and the Bulgarian-Turkish border. From there, a transport train with more than 1000 people headed for Moscow. In Ukraine in the small village of Berlotserkovka Ida Jaffe and her children had to vegetate in miserable conditions, because of frostbite both feet of Alexander and his mother were amputated, Ida died shortly after the amputation, Alexander in 1944 from pneumonia, as well as the youngest son Jakob. Tamara also had some toes amputated, she survived typhoid fever, but managed to survive thanks to the help of a woman. After the end of the Second World War she was able to leave for her father in the USA.