In early 1939, the Dobkowskis managed to send fifteen-year-old Ursula to Scotland as part of the Kindertransport. Six months later, nine-year-old Marianne was sent to England.
In her parting letter to her daughter Ursula, Elsbeth wrote:
"Until we meet again in our land – Mother"
Elsbeth and Arno receive permits to immigrate to Eretz Israel, but after the Kristallnacht pogrom, they agreed to give them up in favor of Jews who were imprisoned during the pogrom and whose release from the concentration camps was dependent upon their leaving Germany immediately. "You'll receive new ones," they were promised.
A month after the optimistic letter that Ursula received from her parents, she received a second letter in which her mother let her know that they had lost all hope of leaving Germany:
"…and now my darling girl I must tell you something devastating. On Tuesday I was invited to the Palestine Office (for Aliyah matters) and there they told me in no uncertain terms, that there is no hope that we will receive a Certificate for [immigration to] Palestine. The whole matter has been dropped… My daughter what can I say, our fate is signed and sealed. I cried for days, night and day… our sole hope and dream was to be together with our children in our land."
When Arno and Elsbeth realized that they would not be reunited with their children, they sent a package to Ursula with their favorite books so that she would preserve them. Arno, an opera lover, sent her his opera guide and Elsbeth asked Ursula to keep her copy of Goethe's "Faust".
Arno and Elsbeth were deported to Terezin. Arno died there and in May 1943, Elsbeth was deported to Auschwitz where she was murdered.
After the war, Ursula-Esther immigrated to Eretz Israel, and joined the Palmach. She regarded the books that were sent to her as her parents' spiritual legacy.
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Donated by Esther Golan (Ursula Dobkowski), Jerusalem, Israel
