Inge-Ransenberg-Way

Inge Ransenberg was born on 12.03.1935 in Wennemen in the Sauerland region. At the age of just nine, the Jewish girl was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in October 1944. The story of the Ransenberg family shows in particular the different experiences of persecution that the Jewish population in rural Germany had during the National Socialist era. Inge's oldest brother Rolf Ransenberg was given the chance to emigrate to the USA in 1938 at the age of 14. The other children in the family were placed in children's homes, schools and similar educational institutions. Inge spent several years in the Jüdisches Kinderheim in Paderborn. In 1942, Inge's brother Günther, who had to do forced labor, was arrested for hitting a girl with a snowball. Such an „offense“ was described as „racial defilement“ and the 15-year-old was executed in the Niederhagen concentration camp in Wewelsburg. His mother could not bear the fate of her son and died of heart failure just 14 days later. Initially, seven-year-old Inge, her brother Alfred and their father were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where they had to live for more than two years in inhumane conditions and suffered above all from hunger. In March 1943, Friedel Ransenberg and Karl-Heinz Ransenberg were arrested and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the transport, during the selection, Karl-Heinz was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau due to his age. Karl-Heinz's brother Friedel managed to deceive the SS man who carried out the selection about his age and thus survived. On October 1, 1944, Inge and Alfred were also sent to Auschwitz. They were no longer accompanied by their father, who had already been murdered a few days earlier. Inge was murdered in Auschwitz at the age of nine, Alfred at the age of twelve.