What We Know:
Family name: Köstner
Given name: Leopold Rudolf
Date of birth/Place of birth:  3 November 1920. Coburg/Bavaria
Date of death/Place of death: 6 December 1999. Norwalk, Connecticut, USA
Age:  22 years old at deportation on 10 May 1942

Leopold, “called Rudolf” Köstner (later Rudolph L Köstner) was born 3 November 1920 in Coburg, Bavaria. Leopold‘s birth parents were Josef Goldberg and Regine Steinfeld, both Jews. An entry on Leopold’s 1945 marriage certificate identifies Regine Steinfeld as “ledig” — that is, unmarried — and this may be why Leopold was adopted. Michael Köstner and  Elisabeth. geb Schaller, residents of Sonneberg, a town in Thuringia, adopted Leopold, when is not known. The Köstner family lived at Coburger Straße 21. Michael and Elisabeth were catholic and protestant. Leopold worked as a general labourer.

Under the 1935 Nazi Nuremberg Laws, Leopold was considered  Jewish despite being adopted into a catholic and protestant household. On Kristallnacht, 9/10 November 1938,  the Jewish men in Sonneberg were rounded up and forced to walk around the town holding antisemitic signs. Leopold and two other Jewish men — Karol Gramowsky (owner of a fashion store in Bahnhofstrasse) and Bernhard Grünspan (owner of a men’s clothing store) — were arrested and taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. After his release — on an unknown date — he returned to Sonneberg. It was probably then that he applied to emigrate, identifying Spain as his destination.

In 1939, 13 Jews remained in Sonneberg. By 1942, when the deportations from Thuringia took place, the number had dropped to three. Leopold, the youngest at 22 years old, was the only Jew deported from Sonneberg to Belzyce Ghetto on 10 May 1942. (Rosalie Bibo, b. 1876 and Karol Gramowsky, b. 1878, were both too old for this deportation, which was deemed a ‘work resettlement’ by the Nazi Regime.

The evidence about Leopold Köstner’s life after the train left Weimar for the Belzyce Ghetto paints a complicated narrative. One fact is clear: Leopold Rudolf Köstner survived the deportation of 10 May 1942 from Weimar to Lublin/Belzyce Ghetto. An additional element may also be true, namely, that Leopold was never in Belzyce Ghetto. More detailed analysis of this transport is revealing its layers; for example, that some of the men, women, and children may have remained in Lublin for significant periods of time before being moved to Belzyce, or like Leopold, may not have gone there at all.

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Here is what we know: Leopold arrived in Lublin Ghetto 12 May 1942 and was registered in Majdan Tatarski Ghetto, a suburban industrial district of Lublin closely connected to Majdanek concentration camp. During this time only those deemed fit to work and in possession of a J-Ausweis were able to settle within the ghetto. Leopold Rudolph Köstner is recorded in the “Index of persons with J-Ausweis residing in the ghetto in Majdan Tatarski (1942)” as J-Ausweis number 3452. Selections to reduce the amount of people in the ghetto were carried out on a regular basis. The Majdan Tatarski Ghetto was gradually terminated through various liquidation efforts between April (that is, before the Thuringia transport arrived) and 9 November 1942, when the final “resettlement” was carried out. The remaining Jews in the ghetto were either murdered on the spot, sent to Majdanek concentration camp, the work camp in Lipowa Street, or the Gestapo prison in the Lublin castle.

Where was Leopold after the liquidation of the Majdan Tatarski Ghetto? The most likely answer is Majdanek KZ at least until 1944 if not longer. A post-war registration file for displaced people inside and outside of camps, Includes a file for Rudolph Köstner, b. 1920, identifying Majdanek, Lublin as his last concentration camp.  Majdanek was finaliquidated in 1944 where the majority of the remaining prisoners were either shot or brought on a death march headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some estimated 300 prisoners were left behind and were later liberated by Soviet soldiers.

On 21 July 1945 in Munich, Leopold married Anastasia Ilasch at the Evangelical Lutheran Parish Office of Munich, a little over 2 months from when Germany surrendered. From this point on. Leopold is referred to by the name Rudolph L Köstner.

A year later, in 1946, Anastasia and Leopold welcomed a baby girl, Traudl, into their family. They emigrated to the US on 12 March 1948 from Bremerhaven Germany on the MARINE TIGER, and arrived in New York on 23 March 1948.

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After their arrival in the United States, Rudolph and Anatasia spent many years living in both Naples, Florida and Norwalk, Connecticut. Rudolph was the founder and president of Trudy Toy Co., Inc. located in Norwalk.

In 1957 they had a son named Rudolph Leopold Köstner Jr. They had a daughter Elizabeth, later Elizabeth A Thyssen.  There is no mention of Rudolph and Anatasia’s daughter Traudl past her registration on the passengers list when they emigrated from Germany to the USA  in 1948. It is possible that Traudl changed her name to Elizabeth in the United States, but this cannot be confirmed.

Rudolph L Köstner died 6 December 1999 in Norwalk, Connecticut, survived by his wife, two children and four granddaughters.  He is buried in Montana, USA. Anatasia was buried in the same location in 2010.

There are no stolpersteine laid for Rudolph Leopold Köstner in Coburg or Sonneberg.

Based on the very little information we have about Rudolph’s birth parents, it is hard to determine their fate. As per the 1939 minority census, Josef Goldberg born 18 October 1871 was deported from Berlin and murdered in Theresienstadt. However, it cannot be confirmed if this is Leopold’s father as his birthdate is unknown and cannot  be verified. The fate of Regina Steinfeld is unknown.

Information regarding his adoptive parents is unknown as their birthdates are unconfirmed in any of the documents found about Leopold Rudolph Köstner. They are referred to in Rudolph’s obituary as his late parents.