Eva Müller lived with her parents and siblings in Prešov, Czechoslovakia. The Jewish family moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1928. Due to the increasing persecution after 1933, members of the six-person family fled abroad, but Eva and her sister Berta remained in Frankfurt.
While performing forced labor in a mattress factory, Eva Müller met Robert Eisenstädt in 1941, and the couple became engaged. In May 1942 he was deported to Lublin with his family. Two months later, he escaped from Majdanek concentration camp. Eva Müller hid him in her apartment on his return to Frankfurt.
At the end of 1942, Eva Müller feared being deported herself. She asked her non-Jewish doctor Fritz Kahl for help. He advised her to get pregnant and flee to Switzerland, where she would have a chance for residence as an expectant mother. He gave her a forged identity card for the train journey. On February 21, 1943, Robert Eisenstädt and the pregnant Eva Müller managed to escape. Their daughter Maria Adina was born in Basel in July 1943.
The family emigrated to New York in 1947.
Maja (Maria Adina) Eisenstädt, Switzerland, around 1946. Source: Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv Bern, E4264, 1985/196, Nr. 12239
Robert and Eva Eisenstädt with their daughter Maja (Maria Adina), New York City, 1950. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
