Sophie Cahn was a German Jewish refugee whose father and mother, died at Minsk, Belarus and Theresienstadt, respectively, having failed to escape the Nazis.
This letter of the school inspector (Bezirksschulrat) of Munich concerning the school-building of the Jewish community (Juedische Kultusgemeinde), written on the 12th of November 1938, to the government of Bavaria/Munich reports the destruction of the school-building caused by a fire in the attached Synagogue.
Considering the date of the letter it can be assumed that the fire was a result of the pogroms on the 9th November 1939. Moreover, the school inspector reports that of six male teachers three are in prison, one is ill and that the whereabouts of the fifth teacher is unclear. Therefore he orders the closure of the school.
A handwritten comment on the third page indicates that the leaflet was dropped by the RAF in 1943 or 1944.
The Rhoden family were a Jewish family from Vienna who came to Great Britain in 1939. The father, Dr Edgar Rhoden was arrested by the State Police (Stapo), Vienna, May 31, 1938 and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp from where he wrote to his daughter, Eva. There are passport visa stamps for the UK (15 August 1939) and the USA (5 November 1940). Nothing further is known about the family.
The Central Council for Jewish Refugees was originally called the Council for German Jewry. This was a British Jewish organisation established in 1936 with the goal of aiding German Jews to leave Germany in co-ordinated emigration. Organisationally, the CFGJ succeeded and absorbed the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF), established in May 1933. In reaction to the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, British Jewish leaders, in consultation with German Jewish leaders, formulated an emigration plan for 100,000 German Jews aged 17-35. Half of the immigrants would settle in Palestine, and half in other countries. It was hoped another 100,000 would emigrate without assistance. The council's founders sought to forge a partnership in this endeavour with American Jewry. Personal and organisational differences nearly prevented the formation of the council. Its first meeting was held in London on March 15, 1936, but the two major American groups, the Joint Distribution Committee and the United Palestine Appeal, joined formally only in August. The council never assumed the stature its founders had hoped it would. It was hampered by British immigration policies in Palestine, emigration obstacles in Germany, the growing impoverishment of German Jewry, and the exacerbation of the situation following the Anschluss. Yet, the council did manage to help nearly 100,000 Jews emigrate by the outbreak of World War Two, and it also funded numerous vocational training programs in Germany and elsewhere.
With the outbreak of the war, the council was forced to limit its activities to refugees in Britain, and its name was changed to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees. Following the war, the needs of displaced persons and refugees brought another reorganisation and name change, to the Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation. This organisation still exists in the CBF's original offices in Woburn House, London.
Helmut Strauss was born in Othfresen, Lower Saxony, Germany in 1919.
The Dokumentationszentrum des Bundes Juedischer Verfolgter des Naziregimes (Documentation Centre for the League of Jews Persecuted by the Nazis) was founded in October 1961 by Simon Wiesenthal with a staff initially of 2 people. Its aims were to identify and evaluate the vast and growing corpus of material on the subject of the Holocaust; to locate witnesses for war crimes trials; to support the judiciary and police authorities through contact with other documentation centres throughout the world in the prosecution of war criminals; and to observe and collect material on neo-Nazi organisations.
World Media Forum is a platform for the discussion of a variety of international news topics attended by members of the world's media and held (annually ?) in different parts of the world. This particular event was held in Zurich in 1999.
Little is known about the subjects of these two facsimile identity card applications, other than the information contained within the documents themselves, namely that Ewa and Henryk Fischler were Polish-Jewish residents of Krakau, and that they had 2 children, Janina and Stanislaw, born in 1930 and 1933 respectively.
These statements of Deputy Secretary Stuart Eizenstadt and Ambassador Ernst Sucharipa were delivered on the occasion of the conclusion of negotiations about a comprehensive compensation package for property aryanised during the Nazi era in Austria.
The Kulturbund Deutscher Juden, later the Reichsverband der Juedischen Kulturbuende in Deutschland was an organisation engaged in promoting culture and the arts among the Jews of Germany between 1933 and 1941. Its purposes were to enable the Jewish population to maintain the cultural life to which they were accustomed, and to alleviate the distress of the thousands of Jewish theatrical artists and musicians who had been thrown out of their jobs when the Nazis came to power.
The protest meeting to which this flyer refers took place some time in 1938 after Reichskristallnacht, at The Hippodrome, Golders Green. Among those attending were representatives from the Federation of Peace Councils, the Jewish People's Council and the Society of Friends.
The papers in this collection pertain to a competition organised by W Marmorek to create the best English translation of a poem originally written in German concerning life in Buchenwald concentration camp.
Marmorek was originally asked to help out with the translation by a friend and former inmate of Buchenwald. He placed an advertisement in the AJR Newsletter offering a prize for the best translation.
Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the largest in Germany with its 130 satellite camps and units, was situated 5 miles north of Weimar in Thüringen. It was established in July 1937 when the first group of 149 mostly political prisoners and criminals was received. Some 238,980 prisoners passed through Buchenwald from 30 countries. 43,005 were killed or perished there.
This release permit belonged to Erich Marmorek, born Vienna, 1907, architect.
Unknown
Wilfrid Israel, born in London in 1899 to an English Jewess and a German Jew, enjoyed a very privileged existence growing up in Berlin, where he inherited the family business, the famous N Israel department store, with its 2000 employees. Whilst conforming to family expectations, he entertained interests in socialist Zionism, pacifism and internationalism.
During the war years he became a secret intermediary, the confidant of such major figures as Chaim Weizmann and Albert Einstein, as well as hundreds of others, for whom he was able to arrange escapes, on account of his dual nationality and familiarity with Gestapo extortion techniques.
On a return flight from Portugal in 1943, where he was effecting the rescue of more Jewish refugees, he died when his plane was shot down by German fighters.
Juedische Winterhilfe (Jewish winter aid) was a Jewish organisation activated in the autumn of 1935 by the National Representation (Reichsvertretung) and the Central Committee of German Jews for Relief and Reconstruction to help needy Jews get through the winter, by providing food, medicines, and heating assistance. Winter Aid had been a general German enterprise during the winter of 1931/32, but Jews were excluded after the Nuremberg Laws, prompting Jewish organisations to establish the Jewish equivalent. Juedische Winterhilfe funded its activities by means of donations from Jews in Germany and elsewhere.
Gunter Wittenberg was a former German Jewish refugee from Berlin.
The Dresner family were a Jewish family resident in Leipzig during the Nazi era, some of whose members perished in the Holocaust, others escaping to Great Britain.
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, commonly known as Albert Speer, was born 19 March 1905, was an architect, author and high-ranking Nazi German government official, sometimes called the first architect of the Third Reich.
Speer was Hitler's chief architect before becoming his Minister for Armaments during the war. He reformed Germany's war production to the extent that it continued to increase for over a year despite increasingly intensive Allied bombing. After the war, he was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for his role in the Third Reich. He was the only senior Nazi figure to admit guilt and express remorse. Following his release in 1966, he became an author, writing two bestselling autobiographical works, and a third about the Third Reich. His two autobiographical works, Inside the Third Reich and Spandau: the Secret Diaries detailed his often close personal relationship with German dictator Adolf Hitler, and have provided readers and historians with an unequalled personal view inside the workings of the Third Reich. Speer died of natural causes in 1981, in London, England.
Selig Hecht, American biophysicist, was born in Glogow, Austria (now Poland) in 1892. He moved to the United States in 1898 and graduated from the College of the City of New York (BS, 1913) and from Harvard (PhD, 1917). After organising the laboratory of biophysics at Columbia University, he was Professor of Biophysics there from 1926. He pioneered the application of physiochemical principles to sensory physiology and is known for his determination of minimal quantal requirements at the threshold of vision and for his successful laboratory regeneration of visual purple. An advocate of popular scientific education, he wrote Explaining the Atom, 1947 and died in the same year.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief was founded in the early months of 1933 by a group of Anglo-Jewish community leaders, in response to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on a political platform of anti-Semitism. Among the founders were Anthony de Rothschild, Leonard G. Montefiore and Otto Schiff.
The fund has been through many name changes in its lifetime. It started out as the Central British Fund for German Jewry, then became part of the new Council for German Jewry in 1936 along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American United Palestine Appeal. On the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 the fund changed its name to the Central Council for Jewish Refugees, and in 1944 changed again to the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation. After many years as the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, the organisation is now known as World Jewish Relief.
The Fund's mission, according to its Memorandum of Association, was 'to relieve or assist Jewish Refugees in any part of the world in such manner and on such terms and conditions (if any) as may be thought fit'. In this work the fund was aided by various organisations, including the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC) which was founded by Otto Schiff in 1933, the Children's Refugee Movement (established by the JRC and the Inter-Aid Committee), and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, which was established in 1943 and financed by the Central Council for Jewish Refugees (as the Central British Fund (CBF) was then known).
Adolf Frankl was born in 1903, the son of a Jewish businessman in Bratislava. Having shown an aptitude for art at an early age, he was discouraged from making a career out of his talent and went to work in his father's business from 1920. He married Renee Nachmias in 1933 and founded his own interior decoration business in 1937. The advent of the Nazis and, in particular, the establishment of the puppet Tiso-regime in Slovakia, resulted in pogroms against the country's Jewish population. Frankl's business was aryanised in 1941 and he was forced to live in a ghetto with his family.
Frankl was sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where he survived. It was only after the war that the full horror began to trouble him in the form of recurrent nightmares. It was suggested that he paint as a way of working through his horrific experiences. The paintings which were used in the exhibition entitled Visionen aus dem Inferno were the result. Material relating to this exhibition is described below.
After the war Frankl lived in Vienna and New York then, from the 1960s, in Germany. He died in 1983.
Eva Manes was the daughter of Philip Manes, a German Jewish fur-trader, who was transported to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz where he perished with his wife. See GB 1556 WL 1346 for more background information on the family.
The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, 2000, brought together presidents, prime ministers and other high-ranking ministers and officials from 40 countries to discuss how to keep Holocaust remembrance alive; the lessons to be drawn; and how best to pass on the knowledge of the fact to future generations.
This collection of correspondence and papers relates to the experience of a former Jewish pupil of a secondary school in Stade, Lower Saxony. The papers relate to three separate projects: an invitation by the city of Stade to Dinah Ruth Curtis, the former school pupil, along with all other surviving Jewish former residents of the city for a special reunion; a request by a historian at the city archives for biographical information relating to her persecution by the Nazis and a request by her former school to contribute material towards an exhibition on the subject of girls' education in Stade to mark the 125th anniversary of the school.
Little is known about the subject of this collection. It appears that Henni Lesley, formerly Lewin, formerly a Jewish resident of Berlin, was at one time imprisoned at Lichtenburg Concentration Camp (1541/1); that she probably emigrated to Great Britain shortly after her release (circa 1938-1939); and that her parents were deported East in March 1943, never to be seen again (1541/4).
Edith Stein was born in October 12, 1891 and was a German philosopher, a Carmelite nun, martyr, and saint of the Catholic Church, who died at Auschwitz. In 1922, she converted to Christianity from Judaism, was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church and was received into the Discalced Carmelite Order in 1934. She was canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite monastic name) by Pope John Paul II in 1998; however, she is still often referred to, and churches named for her as, Saint Edith Stein. Stein died August 9, 1942.
The depositor is her niece.
Walter Manes was born in Berlin in 1911, one of four children of Philipp and Gertrude Manes, a Jewish family. He managed to escape Nazi Germany through employment opportunities as a musician in Shanghai in 1938 and 1939. He remained with his wife in China until 1948 when he emigrated to USA. (See 1548/1 for an autobiographical account).
Eva Manes was the daughter of Philip Manes, a German Jewish fur-trader, who was transported to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz where he perished with his wife. See GB 1556 WL 1346 for more background information on the family.
Ruth Dina Curtis was born into an orthodox Jewish family in 1920 in North Germany. Her father was a banker who provided services for the farming community in Stade. The advent of the Nazis in 1933 brought discrimination, a move to Hamburg and ultimately death and separation. Ruth’s parents (Adolf and Therese Heidemann) were deported by the SS from Hamburg to Riga in December 1941, whereupon they ‘disappeared’ presumed murdered having been unable to obtain visas for the United States due to the strict quota system. Aged 19 Ruth was granted an entry permit for the UK and arrived in August 1939.
This notebook had been the property of Kitty Fehr, sister of the depositor, who collected it and smuggled it to Great Britain as a 15 year old girl in 1939. She added a few more during the war in England.
Frank Bright, formerly Frantisek Brichta, was born in Berlin, the son of a Czech Jew. The family moved to Prague just before the Nazis in 1938. They were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp and thence to Auschwitz. Frank remained in Auschwitz only for a short while and survived the Second World War in a small concentration camp in Silesia, KZ Friedland. The rest of the family perished. Frank had relations in London to whom he was sent as a displaced person after the war.
This collection contains papers relating to Hans Schwarz, founder of the organisation Komitee Ehemaliger Politischer Gefangener, and general secretary of its successor, Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes.
Hans Schwarz was born in Vienna in 1904. He had already been imprisoned well before 1933 along with Bruno Kreisky and other Austrian Marxists. He was a political prisoner in Dachau from 1934-1944 and from October 1944 to April 1945 in Neuengamme. A committed opponent of the Nazis, he was a member of illegal prisoner organisations in both concentration camps. He died in 1970.
Markus Gruenebaum, the grandfather of the depositor, died on 11 December 1912 age 89.
This letter is from a former friend of Philip Manes and his wife, addressed to Eva Manes and written in 1957. For the main Manes collection see WL document collection 1346.
Kartell Conventus is the generic name for German Jewish student fraternities which were established in the 1880s as a result of increasing anti-Semitism. After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 and the annexation of Austria in 1938 these fraternities were banned. However after the war many former members joined re-formed student fraternities in their adopted countries. These new organisations produced newsletters and held regular meetings.
Unzer Styme (Our Voice) was a monthly paper written in Yiddish and published by the Central Committee for Liberated Jews in the British Zone betwen 1945 and 1947. The articles covered here are contained in issues held at the Wiener Library.
Esther Brunstein, the author is a survivor of Bergen Belsen.
The copies of correspondence from Harold Fraser in Hamburg, provide an insight into the economic, social and political conditions of that city and of Germany in general covering the period of rampant inflation, record unemployment and the polarisation of political parties. Mention is made in the first letter of the strong presence in Germany of their competitor J. Henry Schroeder, another London- based merchant bank. The two companies happened to merge in 1962, now both have been subsumed under Citigroup, the European and American bank.
Klappholttal Youth camp, Schleswig-Holstein was founded in 1919 to provide for the spiritual and intellectual as well as the physical needs of young people.
Eleanor Hess was born in Munich on 20 December 1923 into a middle class Jewish family. Her father, Julius, was a cavalry officer in the First World War. He died in 1932. Eleanor came to Great Britain with her mother, Trude, in 1939. Her brother, Herbert, emigrated to Brazil where he spent the rest of his life. For a brief period Eleanor went to live with her brother in the early 1950s. She died in London c1999.
This collection of family papers consists primarily of letters from the Jewish parents, Franz and Hertha Kuhn in Berlin, to their daughter, Hannele or Hannah, who had managed to find refuge in Great Britain, having come out on one of the Kindertransporte in 1939. The letters give a very moving account of the trials and tribulations of a very close-knit, loving family split asunder by the Nazis and ultimately condemned to death.
Otto Bondy was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, 5 Aug 1892. He served in the First World War with distinction. He completed his engineering studies in Vienna in 1921 and went to Berlin to become an assistant to the Professor of Engineering structures, German industry (c 1926-1931). He emigrated to London, c 1933 and died in Surrey, May 1986.
Joyce Rozendaal Haldinstein, born in Norfolk, the daughter of a Jewish businessman, met and married a Dutch national and was caught up in the turmoil visited upon the Netherlands when the Germans invaded during World War Two.
Lodz ghetto or the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was the second-largest ghetto established for Jews and Roma in German-occupied Poland. It was originally intended as a temporary gathering point for Jews but the ghetto became a major industrial centre, providing much needed supplies for Nazi Germany. Because of its remarkable productivity, the ghetto managed to survive until August 1944, when the remaining population was transported to Auschwitz. It was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated.
Heinz and Lucie Frank were the parents of the depositor's husband. Heinz Frank was a lawyer and the family lived in Cologne. The family was affected by the rise of the Nazis. The Frank family had originated in Holland where there remained some distant cousins. So Heinz and Lucie Frank, with their sons, Hermann and Hans (now John), transferred to Amsterdam. Hermann had just received his doctorate in dentistry. Despite all his efforts the best he could achieve was to work clandestinely in a friendly dental practice. In 1936 he came to England. Hans left Holland only after the occupation, and with the help of the underground, made his way to Portugal and then, via a year or more in Cuba, to the USA.
Dr Richard Michels was born in 1873 in Essen and settled in Duesseldorf in 1899. He spent his first few years in Duesseldorf as a ship's doctor on a number of vessels, sailing all over the world. Thus the bulk of this collection contains letters sent to his mother and journals whilst travelling. He came to London in 1939 where he became a doctor specializing in mental disorders and nervous diseases. He made a name for himself by developing the anti-depressant Lubrokal, which was also used for epilepsy. He was married late in life to the famous pianist, Irma Pulvermann, also from Duesseldorf, with whom he visited her home city every year.
The Inow family were a Jewish family from Wuppertal, North Rhine Westfalia. The two daughters, Renate and Margalit escaped Nazi Germany to Great Britain and Sweden respectively, whilst their parents remained and were eventually deported to the Lodz Ghetto where they were killed.