Because the German authorities added the mandatory designation for Jews, "Sara", to her name, Judita Halberstamová appears in her application for a residence permit in Prague as Judita Sára. This Nazi-introduced name was also associated with the unfortunate claim that she had no citizenship and that her nationality had yet to be determined.
Judita attempted to emigrate to the USA, but she did not have any citizenship. As a Jew from Austrian Galicia, i.e. Poland, she was not entitled to Reich German citizenship. The Czechoslovak authorities refused to recognize her citizenship, citing the fact that she came from the Sudetenland and was therefore a German of Polish origin, and the Polish authorities did not want to issue new passports to Jews. Thus, only Jindřich, whom his mother sent to England as part of the Kinderstransport program, was saved.
Jindřich enlisted in the Czechoslovak Army in 1944 and later became a world-famous American mathematician.
Photograph of Judita Halberstamová after her escape from Most, on the balcony of apartment in Veletržní street No 6. Photographed by her son Jindřich. Halberstam family archive
Judita Halberstamová was deported from Prague on a little-known transport directly to the village of Ujazdów in occupied eastern Poland, near the Sobibór death camp. Of the thousand deportees, only one boy survived, who after the war lived in a psychiatric hospital in Bohnice. Two other possible survivors remain unverified.
You won't find Rabbi Halberstam's tombstone in the Most cemetery today either.