The Rein Family

The Rein Family

The Rein Family
Lodz, Poland
In August 1944, Stella-Esther and her two daughters were deported to Auschwitz

The Rein family – Maurycy-Artur, Stella Esther née Morgenstern and their daughters, Wanda (b. 1923) and Marta (b. 1925) – lived in Lodz, Poland. Stella had been teaching German and Latin at the Gymnazjum Aba, a well-known high school for girls, since 1921. From 1933 until the outbreak of World War II, Stella was the school principal, and her daughters both studied there. Maurycy passed away in 1936, and he is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lodz.
In 1940, Stella and her girls moved to the ghetto that was established in Lodz. Stella taught at the Rumkowski high school in the ghetto, and ran the school until it was closed. Wanda and Marta studied at the school. Wanda completed her high school studies and received a matriculation certificate signed by her mother, the school principal. After the ghetto school’s closure, Stella continued to teach, first in the slipper factory, and then in the orphanage in Marysin, the agricultural area of the ghetto. Active in one of the ghetto’s youth movements, Wanda was one of the founders of the quasi-training collective kibbutzim that were set up in Marysin.
On 17 August 1944, during the period of the ghetto’s liquidation, Wanda married her fellow collective member, Mordechai-Motek Folman, in the hope that they would be able to continue to live together as a married couple after the deportation. Their wedding was the last to take place in the Lodz ghetto.
On 27 August 1944, Stella and Marta Rein, Wanda (Rein) and Mordechai Folman, and Mordechai’s mother Ita-Leah Folman were all deported from the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz. The two elderly women, Stella and Ita, were murdered in the gas chambers on arrival. Marta, Wanda and Mordechai passed the selection and were assigned to forced labor in the camp. Several weeks after their arrival at Auschwitz, Marta was sent to the gas chambers of Birkenau. In late October 1944, Wanda was sent to a forced labor camp in the Sudetenland, and survived.
One year after they were separated at Auschwitz, Wanda and Mordechai Folman were reunited. In 1950, they immigrated to Israel.

Stella Rein (wearing scarf), teacher and principal of the Rumkowski high school in the Lodz ghetto, with her pupils in Marysin (the agricultural area of the ghetto), 1941-1942.
Identified in the photograph: Felitzya Ferster.
In late August 1944, Stella Rein was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was murdered.
Felitzya perished at age 14.?

Wanda Rein (later Folman), Lodz, 1939.
On the reverse of the photograph is a dedication to her partner, Mordechai-Motek Folman:
Where you are Caius
There I am Caia

Stella-Esther Morgenstern (later Rein), a volunteer nurse in the military hospital in Vienna, Austria in World War I.
First from right: Stella. The wounded soldier is her brother, Yishayahu Morgenstern.
The photograph/postcard was sent to the family on 9 October 1918.
Courtesy of Wanda Folman

Certificate from the University of Lvov, dated August 1920, in the name of Esther (Stella) Morgenstern (later Rein), philosophy student.
Stella (Esther) Morgenstern was born in a village in Eastern Galicia to Frida and Leon, who was an estate manager. She had two brothers and three sisters. The family moved to Lvov in order to ensure that the children received a good education. After completing her studies at the Gymnasium, Stella, her mother and her sisters moved to Vienna, where they lived during World War I. Stella studied philosophy, German, Latin and ancient Greek at the University of Vienna, and was considered an excellent student. While studying, she also volunteered as a nurse at the hospital in Vienna, where she took care of the wounded. After the war, the family returned to Lvov, where Stella completed her university studies.
Courtesty of Wanda Folman

Photographs from the children’s home in the Lodz ghetto.
Bottom center: Stella Rein.
A page from a 90-page album that forms part of a series of albums found on the site of the ghetto after the liberation of Lodz. The albums were prepared by the Judenrat’s Statistics Department.
Yad Vashem Photo Archives FA 75/71