Werner and Trudy Coppel papers

Werner Coppel (1925- ) was born in Moers, Germany, to Karl and Gudula Coppel. He was sent to the labor camp at Neuendorf in 1941 and then in 1943 to Auschwitz where he worked in a munitions factory. He escaped during a death march to Germany in January 1945 and found his way to an apartment house in Gleiwitz where Jews had being protected during the war by their non-Jewish spouses or parents. There he met his future wife Trudy (1921- ), who was born Traute Silbermann to Jakob and Elizabeth Silbermann in Gleiwitz. Elizabeth Silbermann had been a convert to Judaism from Christianity and was classified as an Aryan by the German government. Werner and Trudy went to Berlin in August 1945 and were married in 1946. He worked at the displaced persons camp in the French sector of Berlin in Wittenau, helping Jewish refugees from eastern Europe reach Schlachtensee in the American sector. The couple had their first child in 1948 and immigrated to America in August 1949, joining Trudy’s family in Cincinnati. Werner Coppel’s parents and brother Günther were deported in December 1941 and killed in Riga.