H-DIARIES BLOG

Finding Erna – the search for an anonymous author of a Holocaust diary

Anonymous? - Searching for Erna

Soon after I arrived at the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History for my internship, I received my first assignment. For the H-Diaries project, I was tasked with investigating whether the collection from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), titled “Anonymous diaries from a Hungarian woman”, met the criteria for inclusion in the project. As the analysis only includes the parts of diaries written during the period of direct persecution, this collection had to be read carefully to determine at what point the diarist’s persecution began.

“Anonymous diaries from a Hungarian woman” – the collection

The three surviving notebooks offer an insight into the life of a young Jewish woman living in Budapest, who began writing in the spring of 1943 upon receiving the news that her husband had been taken prisoner. She addresses all her entries to him and begins writing with the intention that, upon his return, he would be able to read in detail what life was like without him and what she had been doing. She writes about her work, her social life, and her hopes for the time after his return. She works particularly hard so that, once he finally returns, she can afford to take them both on a short vacation.

In October 1943, she moved from Budapest to Subotica/Szabadka, where she initially believed herself to be safe from Nazi persecution. However, this was not the case, and she was eventually deported from there. In the last of the three notebooks, she records her experiences during her persecution and deportation. She describes the various locations she was taken to, her work as a forced laborer on a farm, and the horrors of the camps.

Reading these entries moved me deeply, as they give insight into how the persecution slowly took everything from her. In the beginning, one gets to know her as a young woman full of drive, optimism, and longing for her husband. After her deportation, one encounters a side of her that is trying to find a coping strategy – and succeeds in doing so, even whilst she is forced to perform hard labor. Ultimately, it becomes clear that everything she had been before the persecution, along with all her hope, was completely shattered by the conditions in Bergen-Belsen.

A sense of unease – the search for Erna

As is often the case, this investigation began with a sense of unease. After reading her story, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it must be possible to identify the woman. So, I wrote down everything that could be concluded about her from the text as established facts: her first name was Erna, she named Brno as her place of origin, and she was deported from Szabadka. Her husband’s name is written somewhat vaguely but can be read as Joranku or Jovanku. Furthermore, she was deported with a woman called Maria, whom she already knew and who, judging by one entry, must have had some connection to her husband. There was also someone in Szabadka whom she refers to as ‘Mama’; however, this could not have been her own mother, as she describes not having seen her for a long time. Presumably, this ‘Mama’ was her mother-in-law. From the stories and concerns she wrote down, one could also guess that she must have been quite young.

At the end of her diary, she keeps a list of names of people she presumably met during her various stations. Among them is “Erna Steiner, Brno”. In the pages appended to the diary, the USHMM considers whether this might have been the diarist herself and raises the question of why she would have included her own name on this list.

Based on her first name and the last place where she wrote in her diary (Bergen-Belsen), the USHMM database lists over 100 women named Erna – one of whom is Erna Hochwaldova, born on 4 August 1918 in Brno. The age could be roughly correct, and the place of birth also matches. However, the search did not end there, as this information is not specific enough to identify the diarist as Erna Hochwaldova.

A search in the Yad Vashem database for “Erna Steiner” in combination with the location “Bergen-Belsen” yields a record for Erna Steiner Hirsch, born in 1916 in Ungarisch Ostrau, a town about 70 km from Brno. Could this be the Erna I was looking for? Strasshof is listed as the point of departure for her deportation, and Bergen-Belsen is given as her wartime place of residence. Although the diarist was not deported from Strasshof, she did pass through the camp with the same destination as this Erna Steiner Hirsch. Furthermore, she stated that her place of birth was close to Brno, and the age could also be roughly correct. However, I was still missing some information to be completely certain.

I selected the place of deportation as my next search criterion. Once again, the USHMM database contained only one Erna: Erna Steiner. She is listed there on a 1944 list of “Requests for Palestine Certificates for people in Hungarian-speaking lands” as the daughter-in-law of Gizi Steiner, who also had a daughter, Maria, and a granddaughter. The address given is Szabadka, Bem utca 17, Hungary.

It was clear, then, that I was on the right track – the place of deportation and the name matched. This would also explain the previously unclear connection to Marie/Maria, with whom she was deported. Because the date of birth didn’t quite match the previous record of 1916, I was not ready to give up just yet and continued looking for further clues.

The only person still missing to complete this search for clues was, of course, the diary’s intended recipient. To get closer to finding him, I first looked for the supposed sister, Maria Steiner. A search for the name Maria Stajner yielded a result in the Arolsen Archives: a registration record for displaced persons (DPs) that contained two helpful details. She is listed as the daughter of a woman named Gizella, and her place of birth is given as Petrovac in Yugoslavia.

Returning to the Yad Vashem database, a search combining the surname with the place of birth, Petrovac, revealed a Jovan Steiner, born in 1911. The source for this is a Page of Testimony, which brought my search to a satisfactory conclusion. This page also lists Gisela as his mother – just like the previous source for Maria Stajner – and his wife: Erna Saraf-Steiner. She signed the document as Erna Saraf but also listed Steiner and Hirsch among her former surnames. It can therefore be assumed that her maiden name was Hirsch, that she married Jovan Steiner, and that she later remarried and took the name Saraf. Learning that Jovan had died in Russia, and that she therefore never saw him again, was deeply moving.

In search of further information, I looked up Subotica in Eleonore Lappin-Eppel’s book about Hungarian Jewish forced laborers in Austria. She describes how the Jews from Subotica were rounded up in the Bácsalmás ghetto and notes that “their train left Bácsalmás on 25 June, bound for Auschwitz. In Szeged, however, several carriages carrying around 700 people […] were coupled to the train, which was eventually diverted to Strasshof.” Erna Steiner must have been on this transport.

Following this research, I received a reply to an inquiry I had made to the Arolsen Archives. The attached document confirms all these theories: “Search and Certification File No. 453.232 for SARAF, ERNA, born 25 December 1916 or 25 December 1914”. This record lists all the stations Erna Steiner passed through – perfectly matching her diary entries – and explicitly mentions her marriage to the addressee, Jovan.

Results of the search

Based on these findings, we can also make a reasonable assumption as to why she immortalized herself on the list. As she repeatedly changes her pen in the later entries, the name can be attributed with a fair degree of certainty to the entry dated 6 March 1945. In this entry, she recounts her suffering during the journey to Bergen-Belsen and her arrival at the camp. “When we got off the train, we thought we were at the end of the world,” she writes, going on to describing life there – particularly the hunger – and the many dead. Perhaps it is here that she realizes for the first time just how life-threatening her situation truly is. Faced with death, she writes down her name for the very first time across all three books, as, wanting to leave behind something that can be definitively identified as hers.

This report shows how the pieces of the puzzle gradually fell into place – but have we actually made any progress at all? One might object that the name ‘Erna Steiner’ already appears in the diary as it is. I acknowledge that objection, but I believe we have made progress, nonetheless. These documents have enabled us to turn an uncertain assumption into a fairly certain one, allowing us to reconstruct an individual story in far greater detail.

This research was a wonderful start to my internship, and I’m looking forward to the coming weeks and the next tasks I’ll be working on for the H-Diaries project. It has also highlighted just how important the Holocaust Research Infrastructure is – the fact that a question like this can be resolved entirely from a desk is truly something special.

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