This collection contains documentation related to Elisabeth Koransky (nee Gudemann) and her experiences as a refugee after the Second World War. Her papers contain references to her claims for restitution from the German government, and her father, Otto Gudemann’s efforts to immigrate to South Africa in the late 1930s.
Elisabeth was born on 26 September 1910 in Hannover, Germany to Otto and Erna Gudemann. She attended the local school with her older brother, Hans Gudemann. When she completed her schooling, she studied to become a secretary, working first for the Tappen Banking Company and later for her uncle in his glue factory. She held strong anti-Communist views and, in 1935, she joined the Social Democratic Party. She was arrested in 1936 for political activity and detained in Hannover prison for fourteen months. On 9 November 1938, a day which would become known as ‘Kristallnacht’, Elisabeth married Waldemar Koransky. The couple stayed in Hannover until Waldemar was arrested along with thousands of Jewish men by the Gestapo in 1940 and sent to Dachau Concentration Camp. He was later moved to Sachsenhausen, and on 7 July 1942 he was moved to Buchenwald. Three months later he was sent to Schloss Hartheim, a killing centre in Austria, where he perished.
In December 1940 Elisabeth was deported and sent to Riga ghetto in Latvia. She spent the rest of the war incarcerated; she worked as a supervisor at the railway station in Riga; later, she was sent to an SS labour camp, where she worked as a cleaner. Thereafter she was moved to Keiserwald Concentration Camp, sorting recycled machine parts, and later to the Stutthoff Concentration Camp. In April 1945, the camp was evacuated by the Nazis. Elisabeth and her fellow prisoners were forced on a death march to the Baltic Sea, where they were liberated by the Russian Army. Elisabeth returned to Hannover via Poland. Later she went to Berlin and worked for the American Army as a cleaner. In 1951 she immigrated to South Africa to be closer to her brother.