Robert Mandler, a refugee from Austria, and his 16-year-old daughter, Rita, were living in this house, subletting a room from Mrs Weiss. When she was not undergoing treatment, Mrs. Mandler, who had been suffering from tremors and was unable to walk since WWI due to Spanish brain flu, also lived with them. Her treatment was very expensive.
According to a police report from October 1939, the family fled to Prague in January of that year. Robert Mandler was a German citizen "from former Austria, of Jewish religion, of Semitic race, employed as a clerk in the Jewish emigration office on Lutzow Street". He was awaiting the emigration of his family to Palestine. In later documents, his citizenship is already listed as "questionable", because Germany stripped Jews of citizenship. The police investigated Mandler for sale of spots on illegal emigration transports after one of the customers reported that Mandler had embezzled the deposit paid.
Robert Mandler, Marta Mandler. The photograph of Rita Mandler has not been preserved.
Robert Mandler never left the Protectorate. He later applied his experience in assembling illegal emigration transports to Palestine while preparing the mass deportation transports to Terezín. Because of this, he was a universally hated figure after the war.
He was deported to Terezín by a special transport on 29 January 1943; his wife Marta and daughter Rita were deported by another special transport a day later. Marta Mandler died in Terezín six months later, of pneumonia. Robert Mandler and his daughter were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 28 October 1944. Robert was murdered in the gas chamber two days later. Nothing is known about the fate of his daughter Rita, other than the fact that she did not live to see the liberation.
Source: the National Archives (hereinafter referred to as NA), Police Directorate Prague II - general file room (hereinafter referred to as PŘ II), NA, PŘ II, 1941 - 1950, sign. M 794/10, card 7009, NA, PŘ II, 1941 - 1950, sign. M 795/7, card 7009. Digitised by the Terezín Initiative Institute as part of the Terezín Album project.