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Richard Yashek was born Juergen Jaschek, February 15, 1929, in Lubeck, Germany. He had a younger brother, Jochen, and their parents were Eugen and Lucy Jaschek. At the age of 12, Richard and his family were deported to Latvia. He was the only one of the family to survive the war, having been held captive in two concentration camps, Riga and Stutthof. In the spring of 1945 he was liberated.
Richard then had no reason to stay in Lubeck, so he went to Stockholm, Sweden, where his cousin, Hans Krebs lived. He worked in a chandelier shop and for a metal supplier, but did not enjoy this type of work. He stayed with his cousin's family for only a few months, and in November 1949, went to America on the SS Stockholm.
He began a new life in the United States, where some of his mother's relatives lived. His uncle and aunt Arthur and Beatrice Hammel welcomed him. He later moved to Pottsville, Pennsylvania where he got employment with another uncle, Simon Hammel, in the J. C. Ehrlich Pest Control company.
Richard returned to Germany in 1997 and 2004 to help cope with what happened to him in the Holocaust. Richard wrote a book about his life and his trips to Germany, entitled The Story of My Life, with the help of the Holocaust Research Center, at Albright College. Richard died on April 15, 2005.
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