Lieselotte Kohls, born on 18 January 1922, grew up in Bodenfelde as the daughter of Adolf and Elsa Kohls, née Cahn. She had a sister named Edith who was two years older. The family lived in difficult financial circumstances. In 1933, the father went to Aachen, while Elsa Kohls stayed behind in Bodenfelde with her two daughters. In July 1935, Elsa Kohls and her two daughters were baptised Evangelical Lutherans. However, their conversion did not save them from racist persecution by the Nazi state. According to the ‘Reich Citizenship Act’, they were still considered Jewish. Edith Kohls moved to Hamburg shortly afterwards, while Elsa and Lieselotte Kohls were accommodated in a communal flat in Westercelle in 1937. In November 1939, the two women also moved to Hamburg. One month later, the then 17-year-old Liselotte Kohls went into the care of the ‘Isenburg’ home, where she remained until shortly before the institution was forced to close in spring 1942. From there, she returned to Hamburg.

On 11 July 1942, Lieselotte Kohls was deported from Hamburg to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. There her trace is lost. Her father and sister were also deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz and murdered there, her mother in the Lodz ghetto.

Sources: Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; http://www.celle-im-ns.de/ (opens in a new tab); Gedenkbuch des Bundesarchivs für die Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933 – 1945