Josephine Weiss, née Zarnowitzki was born in Wien/ Vienna on June 10, 1898 as the oldest child of Hermann Zarnowitzki and his wife Berta, née Wexberg. After her brother Philipp had been born in Auschwitz/ Oświęcim, her father’s hometown, the parents decided to leave the poor and depressing conditions in their home region and look for better living conditions in the West. In December 1902, the family moved from Würzburg to Bad Kissingen, Weingasse. Here, Josephine’s younger sister Jetty (Jeanette) was born. The family lived in Bad Kissingen for only a short time. As early as in February 1904, they left the Franconian spa town again and moved to Nuremberg. The other places of residence of the family can often only be deduced from the birth certificates of the children that were to follow.

Their stay in Nuremberg can’t have been very long as Josephine’s sister Anna was already born in Ludwigshafen in June 1905. Rosa, the next sister, was born in Fürth in 1909, and Lenchen, the youngest sister, was given birth again in Ludwigshafen in 1914. Maybe the restless life of the family also had to do with their father’s profession who is registered as a “travelling salesman” in the files at that time.

Around 1919, Josephine Zarnowitzki stayed in Zurich where she met Markus Weiss. They moved to Worms in June 1919 and married there in June 1922. One year later their daughter Ruth was born. In addition to his being a baker, Markus Weiss also traded with furs. He had a warehouse for furs together with Isaak Israel Spatz, Leo Senkowitz and Pinkus Horowitz. 

In October 1933 the family was met by a heavy blow: As Markus Weiss and his daughter Ruth were Polish citizens, they were expelled as “annoying foreigners”. Because of that, the whole family went to Auschwitz/ Oświęcim, the former hometown of their parents. There, two more children, Abraham and Leah were born. It was very difficult for Markus Weiss, whose command of Polish was very bad, to find a job in Poland. The ten-year-old daughter Ruth initially had great problems finding a convenient school to take her. Josephine’s husband died in 1936 and left her with three children who were unprovided for.

In 1941, the family was violently separated. Josephine Weiss was sent to a death camp with her two younger children. All the three of them have vanished without leaving a trace and didn’t survive. Josephine’s daughter Ruth, who was 18 at the time, was sent into a textile and ammunition factory to work there. That way, she got into Sudetenland and was liberated in Krazan Concentration Camp that belonged to the main camp of Groß-Rosen. She went back to Poland in the hope of finding anyone of her family there, but in vain.

Then she joined the Zionist youth movement and got to know Max Krochmal. They married and went to Israel in 1948. The Krochmal couple had two children, the family lived in Kiriat Motzkin near Haifa (information derived from: Wormser Juden, Biografien, Josefine Weiß/ a lot of information from Josephine’s daughter Ruth, m. Krochmal).

Three of Josphine’s siblings survived the Shoa: Philipp, who had emigrated to Palestine in 1933, and Rosa and Lenchen who could emigrate to London in 1939. Their siblings Jetty and Anna were deported and murdered just like their parents.