Judith, nicknamed Julie, was one of five children born to religious Hungarian-Jewish parents in the Burgenland, the eastern province of Austria that was part of Hungary until 1921. She married Tobias Dichter, a traveling salesman from Vienna who had sold merchandise to her father. The Dichters moved to an apartment in Vienna's Jewish Leopoldstadt district, where they raised two children.

1933-39: The Germans have annexed Austria. One week after the annexation, Germans came to our apartment to take my husband and son but left after no one answered the door. Several months later, the Germans confiscated my husband's drugstore and all of its contents ("Aryanization"). We have urged our children to leave Austria, but my husband and I are too old to emigrate. Anyway, the Germans will probably leave old people like us alone.

1940-42: My husband and I have been deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto inCzechoslovakia. Last June, for the second time in two years, we were forced to move out of our apartment in Vienna. We were ordered to leave our personal property behind and were put on a transport of 1,000 Jews, many of whom were elderly like us and many of whom we knew. At least our children are safe abroad, and Tobias and I are still together. Now, the Germans are telling us that we are to be moved to a work camp.

On September 19, 1942, Julie and her husband were deported to Maly Trostinets, a German extermination site near Minsk. They were killed on arrival.

Judith Gabriel Dichter