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Anna Kapplebaum (Earth-616) from Captain America Vol 1 237 0001

Anna at Diebenwald, 1945

Anna Kapplebaum was born in Germany in the year 1926. On November 9th, 1938, Nazi Germany initiated a pogrom which became known as Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). SS soldiers rioted the streets, collecting Jewish families and herding them into freight trains. Anna’s family was loaded on board and told that they were being taken to a distant work camp “for their own protection”. They remained in a cramped train cabin for three days until they reached Diebenwald. Anna soon learned that Diebenwald was not a work center, but a death camp. The old and infirm were executed immediately, and the able-bodied were put to work. The commandant of the camp was a fierce soldier named Colonel Steiger. Anna's parents were executed and she was separated from her brothers and sisters.[1]

In the Spring of 1945, Germany realized that the war was nearly lost, and the Allied Forces would soon liberate the concentration camps. Colonel Steiger ordered all records destroyed and all witnesses executed. Before such a task could be met, however, the patriotic hero Captain America stormed the gates of Diebenwald and attacked the Nazis. Colonel Steiger grabbed Anna Kapplebaum as a hostage and held a gun to her head. Cap flung his shield, disarming Steiger, then punched him until he fell unconscious. He took nineteen-year-old Anna in his arms and told her that the war was over.[1]

Years later Anna immigrated to the United States. As an elderly woman, she took up residence in a first level apartment at 569 Leaman Place in Brooklyn Heights. She became somewhat of a surrogate mother to many of the other tenants including Josh Cooper and Steve Rogers. Upon meeting Rogers, Anna felt a close kinship with him, little realizing that he was the same man who rescued her from the Nazi death camps nearly half a century earlier.[1]

At a butcher shop, Anna ran into Doctor Mendelhaus, one of the Nazis who had tortured her when she was in Diebenwald. She fainted at his sight and later woke up in a hospital bed. There she was visited by Aaron Heller and his daughter Marie, a Nazi hunter who was after Mendelhaus. After she left the hospital, Anna was kidnapped by a group of Nazis who worked together with Mendelhaus and brought her to him before she could assist in his capture. Luckily, she was saved just in time by Captain America and Aaron and Marie Heller.[2]

Attributes

Abilities

Anna is a kind-hearted and caring woman, can play the violin and is a gifted cook.

Notes

  • As a youth, Anna's hair was brown. Her hair turned grey as she advanced in age.
  • Anna herself said that after the war she married.
  • Anna's Death Camp number, permanently tattooed on her arm, is 3456011.[1]

See Also

Links and References

References

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