Nathan Hauptman was born on February 7, 1909 in Petrikau, Poland and was the oldest of eight children. At the age of 13, Nathan was sent to Belgium to learn a trade with his cousin, Mocha, a tailor. Due to the severe pogroms in the country, Nathan’s father, Moisha Hauptman, was secretly transporting people out of Poland to friendlier European countries.
While living in Brussels, Nathan courted Sara Rozen, and, in 1938, they eloped to Antwerp, where they were married by a Rabbi.
When Poland fell to the Germany army in September 1939, Nathan was drafted into the Polish army by the government-in-exile. He served until the fall of Paris in June 1940. After the arrest of his wife, he took their son, Guy, to safety in Brussels. They later reunited with Sara after her release months later. Sara gave birth to their daughter, Monique, on October 6, 1942. Eight days later, Nathan was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Malines, a holding camp in Belgium. He was later transported to Auschwitz and tattooed with the number 70442.
Nathan was put into a slave labor battalion to clean up the Warsaw Ghetto. He also worked in the coal mines at Auschwitz and eventually as a tailor, once his trade was known. On one occasion, Nathan was sent to the gas chamber in Auschwitz, but a Polish soldier he knew rescued him and arranged for a transfer to a sub-camp of Dachau, called Mühldorf. There Nathan delivered bread until American forces liberated the camp. Nathan was reunited with his wife, Sara, in Dachau, where she had also been sent. They returned to Brussels and were reunited with their two children. They immigrated to the United States in 1951. Nathan was a successful tailor in El Paso and later in Colorado Springs. He died on October 6, 1989 in Colorado Springs.
Connecting Stories: Guy Hauptman, Monique Hauptman, Sara Hauptman