The following day 1st September, the nine Carlebach children would visit my family on board the “Arandora Star”, a visit which Desmond entitled “The happiest event of their lives”. The Children were laughing and enjoying the ships entertainment. Some of the children are pictured participating in amusement events on board the ship. They are just ordinary happy children enjoying a summers day out with some foreign visitors on their luxury cruise ship. One can not sense the horror that will befall these children within a matter of months and years.
It was whilst looking at these particular photographs of the Carlebach family that I knew I had to try to trace any of the children, or failing this to establish what happened to them during the years that would follow. My research, via the internet led me to many stories of the Jews of Hamburg, including a “History of the Jews of Hamburg”. It was here that I learnt that Rabbi Joseph Carlebach, his wife and four of their children were deported in 1941 to Riga, where Rabbi Carlebach, Lotte Carlebach and the three youngest children, Ruth-Rosa, Noemi and Sara-Stella would tragically be murdered by the Nazis.
I now could not help but to think I was in possession of pictures which could be extremely precious to any of the surviving family, if indeed there were to be any.
All together near the Bathing-Pool
Time was perhaps going to be against me in tracing any of the older children who may have survived. Yet I knew that I had to find out what had happened to the other five children and I hoped that if any were alive they would want to see these pictures.
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