Frans Laufer

Frans Laufer was born on 14 August 1925 in Kattowicz.  It is a town 80 kilometres west of Krakow. Franz’s mother went on a transport from Breslau to Lithuania on 25 November 1941 and was killed four days later in Kaunas. The fate of Franz’s father is unknown. Franz came to the Netherlands together with his elder sister Lotte (1923). Through the first shelter in Rotterdam, the Jewish Youth Farm in Gouda, Frans went to the Werkdorp. He arrived there in February 1940. He was 14 years old at the time. Franz was not a Zionist and worked as a farmer in the Werkdorp.  
After the Werkdorp was evacuated on 20 March 1941 he was initially received by the Schrijver family in Amsterdam. He moved to the Youth Home of the Jewish Council as soon as the doors opened there on 11 November 1941. He is on the list for the first transport on 15 July 1942 to Auschwitz. Within three months of arrival he was murdered. His sister, who was with him in the Werkdorp and also stayed in the Youth Home, met the same fateful fate, taken on the first transport to Auschwitz and then murdered within three months.