Marthe Weiss, née Berditschewsky was born in Fürth on November 7, 1919 as the first child of Michael Berditschewsky and his wife Anna (Chana Eichle). Her father was from Mariupol/ Ukraine and her mother was born in Swienciany near Wilna/ Vilnius (which belonged to the Czar’s Empire in those days). Her mother Anna had emigrated to Germany with her parents and siblings and at times lived in Würzburg and Bad Kissingen. She married the goldsmith and watchmaker Michael Berditschewsky who came from Ukraine and first lived with him in Fürth where Marthe was born. Marthe’s younger brother Rolf was born in Bad Kissingen in 1925 where his mother temporarily lived in Salinenstrasse.

At the end of June 1933, the Berditschewskys moved from Fürth to Straßburg/ Strasbourg where they lived in the following years and were registered as “Russian refugees”. In February 1939, Marthe Berditschewsky married Eric Weiss, who was 15 years her senior and had been born in Gera in 1904. She first moved to Saint-Dié/ Vosges with him. Supposedly at the time of the German invasion of Alsace, they fled on to western France and lived in the Departements Charente and Dordogne. The couple had a visa for the Dominican Republic, but it is not known why their plan of leaving France wasn’t realised. In the following years, their two children Diane and Robert were born. In 1943, Eric Weiss joined a Resistance group. He was arrested in March 1944 when he was on his way to Toulouse on a conspirational mission and was executed by the “Division Brehmer” in Montignac/ Dordogne. In the spring of 1944, the “Division Brehmer” chased resistance fighters as well as Jewish refugees gone underground and carried out massacres of civilians. Marthe and the two children survived the Nazi Era and returned to Alsace after the liberation. Marthe Weiss died in Geispolsheim/ Alsace in April 2001 at the age of 81.

Her parents survived the Nazi Era in Perigueux and returned to Strasbourg. Marthe’s father Michael died in Strasbourg in December 1957 at the age of 53, her mother lived on till 1968.

Marthe’s brother also survived the Nazi Era. The 20-year-old young man left Marseilles in June 1945 on board the ship “SS Ascanius” and emigrated to Palestine. Only a short time later he returned to France.