Thomas Gabelin

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Thomas Gabelin was born on 21 December 1944 in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto—a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. His parents, Lore and Werner Gabelin, had been deported from their hometown of Krefeld, Germany, earlier that year. Their journey took them through the Düsseldorf slaughterhouse, used as an assembly point for deportations, and a forced-labour camp before reaching Theresienstadt.

While imprisoned, his pregnant mother was forced to split mica, while his father worked on constructing barracks. When Lore went into labour, she made her way to the Hohenelbe barracks, which housed the ghetto’s hospital. With no infant formula available, Thomas depended on his malnourished mother’s breast milk to survive. His parents initially had to name him Denny, choosing from an imposed list; he received the name Thomas only after liberation.

Thomas and both parents survived until liberation in May 1945. In August, they returned to Krefeld, where his older brother Richard had survived in the care of an acquaintance. Although the immediate family reunited, 65 members of their extended family were murdered in the Holocaust, while the fate of others remained unresolved.

Growing up in postwar Germany, Thomas continued to encounter antisemitism. He later studied in Bonn, earned a doctorate in psychology and became a psychotherapist.