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Survivors Answer Classroom Questions: Robert Wagemann

During the 2009 school year tenth-grade students from Northrop High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana asked Robert Wagemann the following questions regarding his personal experiences during the Holocaust.

Question #1 : Did you or your family have second thoughts about your faith and whether there was a god?

Question #2 : Faith played the biggest role in helping you and your family to survive, but did you also rely on your wits or something more?

Robert Wagemann

was born in 1937 in Mannheim, Germany. His mother, Lotte, was arrested and briefly imprisoned for her activities as a Jehovah’s Witness. She gave birth shortly after her release. Due to the stress of imprisonment and insufficient medical care, Robert’s hip was injured during delivery, resulting in a permanent disability.

Robert was classified as disabled under the T4 Program. In 1943, Lotte was ordered to bring five-year old Robert for a medical examination to confirm his condition. She overheard the doctors discuss plans to give him a lethal injection after lunch. Robert’s mother waited for the doctors to leave for lunch, took Robert and his clothes, and escaped. They spent the remainder of the war hiding with Robert’s grandparents.

The family survived the war. In 1963, Robert emigrated to the United States and lives with his wife in New Jersey.