Two weeks ago, on May 15, 2017, colleges from the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial and the Friends of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial celebrated the 90th birthday of Karla Raveh together with her and 140 guests in her hometown Lemgo of which Karla was honorary citizen. Last Saturday (May 27) Karla Raveh passed away unexpectedly. She will be laid to rest in Israel. We grieve together with Karla’s family and friends.

Born 1927 as the daughter of a Jewish family, Karla Raveh, née Frenkel, was deported via the Terezin Ghetto and the concentration camps Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen to Salzwedel, a satellite camp of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp. In spring 1945 she was liberated by the US-army as the only survivor of her family. She emigrated to Israel and started a family. In the 1980’s she contacted her hometown Lemgo and contributed significantly to the transformation of her family home in Lemgo into the memorial Frenkel-Haus. She often talked to young people about her fate, either in the Karla-Raveh-school in Lemgo which was named after her or in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Her warmth and her intensity will stay with those, who had the luck to meet her.