Auschwitz via Riebnig: unravelling the family record

My very earliest attempts to understand something of the fate of my great-grandparents led me to JewishGen.org and the misconception that they were murdered at Theriesenstadt concentration camp, in modern-day Czechia, having passed through a transit camp at "Riebnig".

Documents in the Arolsen Archive relating to my grandfather's search for his parents further muddied the water, with references to Theriesenstadt (again) and even Latvia. Letters in the Archive show that at some point in the mid-1950s my grandfather was assisted in his search by a friend in Munich – an E. G. von Reinhart – but her efforts seem to have been in vain.

The record on the JewishGen website has subsequently been updated with references to the Bundesarchiv's Gedenkbuch and Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, which state that Georg and Else Kornicker were in fact deported to Auschwitz in March 1943.

I believe it was research conducted by Alfred Konieczny that led to this change, specifically the records he discovered in the State Archive in Wrocław that show categorically that my great-grandparents were deported from Augustusstraße 77 to Riebnig in November 1941, then onto Auschwitz via Breslau in March 1943. Konieczny's research was published in two articles: The transit camp for Breslau Jews at Riebnig in Lower Silesia (1941-1943) in 1996, and Tormersdorf, Grüssau, Riebnig: obozy przejsciowe dla Zydow Dolnego Slaska z lat 1941-1943 in 1997.

"VII" adjacent to my grandparents' names in his 1997 article references a table in the 1996 article with a deportation date of 5 March 1943. Yad Vashem have the date as 4 March and the discrepancy likely reflects whether this denotes the transfer from Riebnig to Breslau, or from Breslau to Auschwitz. It's not important.

Thank you to Jenna Grams at Leeds Arts University Library and staff at The Mitchell Library in Glasgow for helping me confirm this by sharing scans of the published research in question. I've since been able to read the full document at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, another institution I'd like to thank for their support.

I’ll be travelling to Riebnig (Rybna) in the coming weeks. The building where my grandparents were imprisoned still stands. One section has been converted for use as a church, the other used to store agricultural equipment.