Erna de Vries

Erna de Vries (; née Erna Korn; 21 October 1923 – 24 October 2021) was a German Holocaust survivor.

After the war she remained in Germany.

In her later years she told her life story in countless schools, other places of learning, in interviews and on television. For her accomplishments, the Federal Republic of Germany awarded her the Order of Merit in 2014.

Biography Born in 1923, Erna was the daughter of Jakob Korn, a Protestant, and Jeannette Löwenstein, a Jew. According to the Nuremberg Laws, she was considered to be a "half-Jew." Her parents ran a transportation company and she grew up in financial stability. After the death of her father in 1931, her mother ran the company, but was forced to cede it following Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Korn later stated that she became independent of her mother in that moment, because she realized her mother could no longer help her in the rising tensions. She learned that her mother would soon be sent to Auschwitz, but still joined her mother. She was sent to work on the waterfront and developed fibrosis. However, on the day she was to be executed, she and 83 other "half-Jews" were sent to Ravensbrück.

At Ravensbrück, Korn found another prisoner she had met at Auschwitz. While working in the kitchen, she offered him extra rations of bread so that he would not starve. In 1944, she began working in a Siemens factory, where she learned from other deportees that her mother had been killed on 8 November 1943. In 1998, she gave her testimony at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In February 2016, she travelled to Detmold to testify against SS guard Reinhold Hanning, who worked at Auschwitz. She made her last public appearance on 12 February 2020 at a Protestant church in Emlichheim.

Erna de Vries died in Lathen on 24 October 2021, three days after her 98th birthday.

Distinctions Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Books Der Auftrag meiner Mutter: Eine Überlebende der Shoah erzählt (2011)