I.D. Card 13037 or "The Sword of Damocles" (30" x 40")
Docent Guide
The identification card was valid for only 30 days. If another 30 day renewal was denied, the bearer was subjected to deportation or evacuation, the Nazi euphemism for extermination. The 30 day renewal threat, hung over the bearer of the ID, like the sword suspended by a hair over the head of Damocles.
After the closing of the Krakow Ghetto, Isidor Hirschberger was transferred to Plaszow Concentration Camp (depicted in Schindler's List). He was then deported to Auschwitz and from there to Dora in the German Harz Mountains. There, he was worked to death in underground factories as part of the German VI and VII Rocket programs. This program was under the direction of Dr. Werner Von Braun, who became a refugee in the United States, is regarded as the father of the US Space program, and has a convention center named after him in Huntsville, Alabama.
Isidor Hirschberger died on March 3, 1945. He was murdered in the Nazi Concentration and Labor camp at Dora.
During the 1960s, Fritz Hirschberger had the opportunity to meet Dr. Werner Van Braun at an engineering conference. He introduced himself to Von Braun by saying: "Dr. Von Braun, I want you to know that you killed my father."
The two then had a five-year correspondence about the relationship between the rocket scientists, the SS and Jewish slave labor. Werner Von Braun, a former member of the SS, has a convention center named after him in Huntsville, Alabama because of his work with the rocket program at the nearby Redstone Arsenal.