Claire Ester (Chaja bzw. Clara) Felsenburg (geb. Genauer)

Claire Ester Genauer, actually Clara or Chaja, was born in Lemberg as the illegitimate daughter of the Jewish employee Maurycy Sontag and the Jewish seamstress Ite Beile 'Jetty' Genauer. Her son Nathan (who died in 1914) was born in 1912 and her son Heinrich in 1914.

Ite Beile Genauer, Maurycy Sontag and the children fled via Budapest to Vienna in a stinking cattle car in 1914 after the outbreak of the First World War and the approach of the Russian army. There the family initially lived in shanty towns in Vienna's 2nd district, often without heating. On April 27, 1916, Ite Beile marries 'Jetty', more precisely Maurycy Sontag. During the First World War, she set up a soup kitchen in Vienna and later a tailor's workshop.

After finishing school, Claire Genauer began working for the law firm Dr. Fürth in 1927. In 1936, she married Walter Felsenburg and subsequently became the mother of a daughter.

On March 12, 1938, Claire Felsenburg witnessed the demise of a free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. With the occupation of Austria, German legislation is adopted and with it the 'Nuremberg Race Laws', according to which Claire Felsenburg is considered a 'full Jew'.

After her father-in-law, the journalist Adalbert Felsenburg is arrested by the Gestapo on the evening of the occupation of Austria and deported to the Dachau concentration camp on the so-called 'Prominent Transport', Clara and Walter Felsenburg decide to leave Austria. They want to take Ite Beile 'Jetty' Sontag, who lives in the same house, with them, but she does not want to leave Vienna.