Georg Michelsohn (1876-1968) was a Jewish poet and dentist from Dessau. His literary pseudonym was Eli Elkana. He was a socialist who wrote lyric poems and published them in Dessau and later in Tel Aviv. He got married to Margarete Sittenfeld (1888-1981) in 1912 with whom he had two sons and one daughter, Ilse-Edna (later Irene White, born in 1917). In his works he opposed National Socialism even before the Nazis took over power in Germany and was attacked by party members several times in 1932/33. He emigrated to Palestine in 1933 where he lived until his death in 1968. His wife followed him in the same year.
In 1934, his daughter also fled Nazi persecution and emigrated to Israel. She initially worked on a kibbutz and later trained to become a nurse. In 1938, she moved to England and got a post as a trainee nurse at St Mary's Hospital in London where she was working during the Blitz. Irene got married to Allan White in 1943 with whom she had two children. Allan was a refugee himself whose family perished at Auschwitz concentration camp. Irene's mother moved to London in 1945 where she stayed until her death in 1981. After Allan White's death in 1982 Irene dedicated herself to her work for the Association of Jewish Refugees. She was particularly involved in caring for elderly Jewish survivors.
From the guide to the Irene White: papers relating to Eli Elkana and the Holocaust in Luckenwalde, 1941-1991, (Wiener Library)
