Gertrude Chandler
Name at birth
Gertrude Hirsch
Date of birth
12/03/1929
Where did you grow up?
Vienna, Austria
Name of father, occupation
Andreas Gustav Hirsch
Maiden name of mother, occupation
Angela Hirsch
Immediate family (names, birth order)
Parents Andreas and Angela, children Hildegard, Albert and Gertrude
Who survived the Holocaust?
Gertrude and her father survived
Steffanie, as she preferred to be called, was born December 3, 1929, in Vienna, Austria to Gustav Andreas Vrana and Angela Hirsch Vrana. In 1938, at the age of nine, she, along with her father, mother and two siblings were torn from their home and taken to a police station for interrogation, jailing, and removal to Nazi
concentration camps along with other Austrian Jews. She and her mother were separated from the rest of her family and never saw her siblings again. She was sent to the Treblinka concentration camp in northeastern Poland where she was forced to watch her mother dig her own grave and then shot into it. Steffanie
remained as a prisoner with other children working daily at cleaning bricks until Russian soldiers liberated the surviving inmates in 1944. The fifteen-year-old teenager somehow made her way back to Vienna where she
was eventually reunited with her father, who had been sent to fight for the Nazis on the Russian front, then captured by Russians and imprisoned in a Soviet gulag. In 1950 she met the love of her life, Henry Hernandez, 20, a handsome young American Army tank commander in American-occupied Salzburg, with whom she
had her only child, Henry, born in 1951. Marrying another American soldier, the family transferred back and forth to the United States and around Europe, eventually landing her in Spring Lake, Michigan to be near her son. There in 1996, she proudly became an American citizen. In 1998, she broke her silence about her war experiences to be interviewed by Steven Spielberg's USC Shoah, so that her Holocaust stories would be preserved, saying "I really believe that God wanted me to live. I appreciate freedom. Some people don't understand what they have. I want people to know it really happened, so it doesn't happen again."
concentration camps along with other Austrian Jews. She and her mother were separated from the rest of her family and never saw her siblings again. She was sent to the Treblinka concentration camp in northeastern Poland where she was forced to watch her mother dig her own grave and then shot into it. Steffanie
remained as a prisoner with other children working daily at cleaning bricks until Russian soldiers liberated the surviving inmates in 1944. The fifteen-year-old teenager somehow made her way back to Vienna where she
was eventually reunited with her father, who had been sent to fight for the Nazis on the Russian front, then captured by Russians and imprisoned in a Soviet gulag. In 1950 she met the love of her life, Henry Hernandez, 20, a handsome young American Army tank commander in American-occupied Salzburg, with whom she
had her only child, Henry, born in 1951. Marrying another American soldier, the family transferred back and forth to the United States and around Europe, eventually landing her in Spring Lake, Michigan to be near her son. There in 1996, she proudly became an American citizen. In 1998, she broke her silence about her war experiences to be interviewed by Steven Spielberg's USC Shoah, so that her Holocaust stories would be preserved, saying "I really believe that God wanted me to live. I appreciate freedom. Some people don't understand what they have. I want people to know it really happened, so it doesn't happen again."
Where did you go after being liberated?
Back to Vienna
Where did you settle?
Spring Lake, Michigan
How is it that you came to Michigan?
Husband was in the army and transferred to Spring Lake.
Spouse
Henry James Matthews
Children
Henry (Anne), John Garner (adopted)
Grandchildren
Granddaughter Amalia Mahar and her husband Scott, and great granddaughters Layla and Josie.
Interviewer:
Information obtained from USC Shoah Foundation
Interview date:
04/19/1998
