"One day they packed me a small suitcase with a cardboard name-tag; only one change of clothing was permitted."
Anna was born in Vienna in 1929 to Rebeka and Oskar Nussbaum, a younger sister for Klara.
The Kristallnacht pogrom and a series of incidents that the family experienced in its wake – Oskar's arrest, the expulsion from school of Klara and Anna and the family's receipt of an eviction notice – led to Oskar and Rebeka's decision to send their elder daughter Klara to Ireland on a Kindertransport.
Anna remained with her parents. The three were evicted from their home and found shelter in a dilapidated shack infested with fleas. The difficult living conditions convinced Oskar and Rebeka that they had no choice but to send their younger daughter to Ireland as well.
"Father took me to the train. Mother couldn't face another parting. She couldn't stop crying over the fact that I, her second daughter was leaving. When we reached the train, the Gestapo soldiers checked the suitcases to make sure that we hadn't taken anything that we weren't supposed to. At the station I started to cry and refused to board the train. Father went to one of the stalls there and bought me the brooch… that’s how he convinced me to get on the train."
The brooch in the shape of a puppy was the last gift that ten-year-old Anna ever received from her father. Anna's parents were deported from Austria and murdered.
After the war Anna Nussbaum immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine). She joined Kibbutz Ein Hashofet and married Benjamin Gross.
On the first page of the autograph book that Anna took with her to Ireland, her father wrote the following dedication:
"Flowers wither but a father's love always blooms. Vienna 9.1.1939"
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Donated by Chana Gross (Anna Nussbaum), Kibbutz Ein Hashofet, Israel
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