The Blum family in Thuringia, Germany, circa 1932/33. Pictured are the parents Antonie, née Richter (1893–1968, left), and Aloysius Blum (1891–1982, right) with nine of their ten children. Standing in front is Willy Blum (1928–1944), whose youngest brother Rudolf was born in 1934. The family ran a puppet theatre and settled in Hoyerswerda in 1938; under the terms of the Immobilisation Decree they were no longer allowed to leave the town after October 1939.
Aloysius Blum was arrested in 1942 after the family attempted to flee Germany and was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, as were the rest of the family members from March 1943 onwards. At least four of the siblings were subjected to medical experiments there. The girls and women, as well as the older sons, were transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in August 1944, while Aloysius Blum and his sons Willy and Rudolf were sent to Buchenwald. The two boys, aged 16 and 10, were sent back to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 26 September 1944 and murdered there.
The photograph comes from the private collection of the Elsner family of puppeteers from Thuringia. A descendant gave it to the author Annette Leo, who published a book about the Blum family in 2018.
