Ilse Bauer was born on November 4, 1937 at the Jewish Hospital in Frankfurt at Gagernstrasse. At 36 her mother, Ida Bauer from Neckarzimmern was unmarried. She gave her daughter up for adoption and thus saved her life.

As little as two weeks old, she was transferred from the hospital in the Neu-Isenburg to the Home of the Jewish Women's Association. She remained there until after her second birthday.

On November 13, 1939, a few months after the beginning of World War II, Ilse Bauer was brought to the Netherlands. From there, they exited through London from a German-born Jewish couple to the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, where Ilse was adopted. This trip took a lot of luck to be successful because the ship that took them to England hit a mine and sank. Ilse Bauer was seriously injured and had to be rescued; she was nursed for months back in a London hospital.

In early May 1940 Ilse returned to the Netherlands and finally arrived in France then to Portugal and Aruba. She barely just escaped the Nazis, because a day after Ilse had left the Netherlands, the German military fell over the neutral country.

When the Second World War was over, Ilse moved to Venezuela with their adoptive parents and took the first name that Isabel had. Later she studied in the US and Canada as an interior designer. In 1959 Isabel married Roger Langdorf. Today the widowed Isabel Langdorf lives in the US.

Ilse’s (Isabel’s) real mother, Ida Bauer, was deported in the so-called “Wagner-Bürckel-Aktion” against Baden, Palatinate and Saarland Jews on October 22, 1942, to the southern French internment camp of Gurs and from August 10, 1942 via the Drancy internment camp in Paris, to the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. There, her trail disappears.

Sources: Die Geschichte einer Familie aus Neckarzimmern. Niederschrift Julie Langsdorf, 2005; Silke Rummel: Ilse Langdorf had survived. As a baby, she spent two years in Bertha Pappenheim House, Frankfurter Rundschau in 04.08.200