Joseph (Lipe) Laufer arrives in Belgium on 29 December 1910, coming from Krakow (Poland). He was born in Podgórze (Krakow) on 19 March 1894, the son of Salomon Jacob Laufer and Henie Majersdorf. He starts working in the diamond industry as a cutter. On 6 March 1923, Joseph married Fanny (Frymet) Mandelbaum. Fanny was born on 15 September 1894 in Trzebinia (Poland) and came to Antwerp in 1906 with her parents, Chaïm Shmuel and Chana Marjem Mandelbaum. The Mandelbaum family had four daughters and one son. Fanny's eldest sister Bertha emigrated to Germany with her husband. Her younger sister Rosa, who married David Seifter a year later, her brother Henri, who remained unmarried, and her youngest sister Henriette, married to Maurice Wolf, all lived close to each other and to their parents. They maintained a close and warm family life, sharing Jewish holidays, important events and joint holidays in the countryside or at the coast. The Laufer family settled at 8 Morpheusstraat in Berchem.
Abraham Laufer, affectionately known as Aby, was born on 20 November 1924. He attended primary school at the Jewish school Tachkemoni in Antwerp and secondary school at the atheneum in Berchem. He was a talented boy with a keen sense of humour. In the summer of 1942, Joseph and Fanny were arrested during one of the large raids in Antwerp. Joseph was deported to Auschwitz on convoy no. 6 (25 August 1942) and Fanny on convoy no. 8 (29 August 1942). Due to his Belgian nationality, Aby was initially protected from deportation, but he was interned in the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen. There he saw his grandparents leave in October. In June 1943, Aby was released, along with two groups of one hundred Belgian Jews. These releases came about under pressure from prominent Belgian figures, including Queen Elisabeth. Nevertheless, Aby was re-arrested ten weeks later and deported on Monday 20 September 1943 with convoy 12B. From the train carriage, he managed to pass on a letter of despair and farewell, which reached its destination with a loyal non-Jewish friend of the family.
The place of his death is unknown: it is possible that he was sent to Warsaw with a group of prisoners to clear the ruins of the ghetto destroyed by the Germans. The Mandelbaum family in Antwerp will know only one surviving couple: Rosa, who, together with her husband David Seifter and their daughters Edith and Noémi, lived in hiding for two years in a small flat on the outskirts of Antwerp. After the war, they rebuilt their lives in Antwerp, while keeping alive the memory of their family, who were gone forever.
