By June 1938, when the picture below was taken, Aryanization had deprived Dina and Julius Blumenfeld-Heiser of their butcher shop on Goethestrasse in Hannover. Dina, Julius, and their children, Ilse (21) and Werner (17), had been displaced to an apartment at Georgstrasse 51, where they were operating a kosher lunch table. The family was not blind as to what lay ahead. The oldest son, Werner, had emigrated to Israel in 1936. Now Julius’ brother Joseph Bloomfield in New York had agreed to sponsor Ilse’s entry into the United States.

The woman looking into the camera through the bus window is Dina. Next to her is Ilse. They are on board a bus chartered by the United States Lines that is taking them to the Hamburg harbor. There, Ilse will board the S.S. President Harding. They will wave goodbye to each other, not knowing if they will ever see each other again. The only certainty is that Ilse will be safe in America.

What was going through Dina’s mind as she looked out the bus window? Sadness mixed with a sense of relief that the second of her three children would be safe from the Nazi terror? Fear for herself, for Julius, and for their younger son Werner? Feelings of hope and at the same time hopelessness? Satisfaction with having done all that a mother can do for the safety of her child?

In November of that same year, Dina would write to the Jewish Refugee Committee in Amsterdam: “Since we are in great distress here, I would like to humbly request that you grant us permission to enter the Netherlands.” She was hoping to be able to flee to her sisters Mathilda and Bertha, who were living in the Netherlands. That door would not open, and, in any case, any security would have been short-lived.

At the last minute, Dina managed to get Werner out of Germany on a Kindertransport to Great Britain. Dina and Julius could find no bus, ship, or train that would take them to safety. Both were deported from Hannover in September 1941 to the ghetto in Riga, where Dina died of an untreated heart condition. After the war, her daughter Ilse received a letter from the Red Cross stating that Julius Blumenfeld had been shot in Poland.