73135 research outputs found
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AHC interview with Eva Kollisch
No full textDigital recordingFebruary 10, 2014Eva Kollisch was born on Aug. 17, 1925, in Vienna, Austria. She, her parents, Margarete and Otto Kollisch, and her two brothers, Stephan and Peter, lived in Baden bei Wien until the three children were sent to England on a "Kindertransport" in July of 1939. In 1940, the family reunited in Staten Island, New York. She became affiliated with Trotskyism and worked in various factories during WWII to show her solidarism with the workers and recruit people for the party. After the war Eva Kollisch continued her education and became a professor for German, English and Comparative Literature at Sarah Lawrence College. She eventually settled with her companion, the poet Naomi Replansky.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with George L. Stafford
No full textDigital recordingApril 29, 2014George Stafford was born as Georg Steuermann in Drohobycz, Poland on August 1st, 1930. He spent his childhood in Vienna with his grandparents. In 1938 his father bribed a Turkish consular official, who took Georg to Prague; then he flew to England were he was taken care of by a Reverend Davidson and his wife in Chislehurst. During his eight years in England, George Stafford attended school in Bromley. After finishing high school in 1947 he rejoined his father in Morocco and got his first job in a bank. In 1950 he took the MS Vulcania to New York. Eventually, George Stafford retired in Rockville Centre.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Ernest D. Lapp
No full textDigital recordingJune 11, 2014Ernest David Lapp was born on August 20th, 1931 in Vienna’s General Hospital AKH, "Allgemeines Krankenhaus". His father, Peisach Lapp was a glazier, and his mother was a housewife, working occasionally in odd jobs. Ernest attended an Orthodox Jewish school in Malzgasse; when the Nazis took over, he had to find another school that was gathering Jewish students after June 1938. During the Kristallnacht pogrom, his father was forced to scrub the streets, but when his aunt in America sent all necessary papers, the family was able to emigrate. On December 24th, 1939 they left Vienna for Trieste, where they embarked on the MS Vulcania and reached New York on January 17th, 1940. After receiving proper education he studied at Yeshiva University and went to rabbinical seminary until 1957. After his ordination as a rabbi he became an army chaplain; in 1982 he retired with the rank of full colonel.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Thea Rothenstein
No full textJuly 17, 2014Digital recordingThea Rothenstein née Wagschal was born Feb. 20, 1930, in Vienna, Austria, where the family lived on Lange Gasse 25 in Vienna’s 8th District (Josefstadt), in a house belonging to her uncle, Isaak Nattl. Looking out from Thea's bedroom behind a big courtyard, one could see the Neudegger Tempel synagogue, which she saw being blown up during the November Pogrom. In December of 1938, after only three years at the Rudolf Steiner private school, Thea and her parents escaped to Belgium, where they lived with her father's aunt in Antwerp before moving to Brussels, where Thea continued her schooling. From 1942 to 1944, she was hidden under a false name, Jeanine Jeanson, in a convent near Louvain (Leuven), together with five other children. After the war, Thea lived with her parents in Brussels. She continued her education at a trade school, learning fashion design, and they immigrated to New York in December of 1948. Later in her life she owned a mom and pop candy store with her husband, who died in 1985.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Helga Pamm.
No full textJanuary 27, 2014Helga Pamm née Pollak was born on October 25th 1929 in Vienna, Austria. Her father was in the fur business and decided to leave Vienna with his wife and their two children in August 1937. They went on a ship from Marseille to New York and lived in the Bronx. Helga went to High School and to Chaplain College in Vermont. She met her husband and they had two children. Helga got a master’s degree in social work and remained in this field until her retirement.Austrian Heritage CollectionAnnaberg ; Marseille ; Style Fur Compan
AHC interview with Herta Tishcoff
No full textDigital recordingJanuary 23, 2014Herta Tishcoff, née Brueckner was born on Oct. 22, 1928 in Vienna, Austria, where her family lived in Rahlgasse in the city’s 6th District (Mariahilf). They were the only Jewish family in the building. The family stayed in Vienna until very late in August 1939, which they finally received their visas to Great Britain. Arriving in London, Herta's father was soon sent to the Isle of Man. Only a few weeks after she started school, Herta and all the other pupils were evacuated from London. Her weak English at that time was the reason for difficulties to find a family outside of London who would take her in. Eventually, the whole family was reunited in London and moved to Staines in 1941 where she continued her education. After a couple of years at Chiswick Polytechnic, the family immigrated to the USA in 1948, and Herta attended evening school while working as a secretary for a law firm. Eventually she worked as an administrative manager of a division at a large hospital in New York City.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Ines Mandl
No full textDigital recordingMay 13, 2014 and March 19, 2014Ines Mandl, née Hochmuth, was born on April 4th 1917 in Vienna, Austria, where she grew up in her parents’ house in Pötzleinsdorf. She went to a public elementary school and then to Gymnasium (high school), but she did not move on to university; she got married instead and 1936-1939 she lived in London with her husband, who was in business with his father. At the beginning of World War II the couple moved to Dublin, where Ines started to enjoy science and got a diploma in chemical technology. She continued her studies in the U.S., earning a master’s degree in 1947 and a PhD in 1949 at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. From 1949 until she retired in 1986 she worked as a chemist at Columbia University and excelled in her field of biochemistry.Ines Mandl’s parents left Austria after Anschluss, escaping to Paris and then to Africa, where her father died of leukemia. Ines’s mother joined her daughter in the U.S.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Erika Potasinski
No full textDigital recordingJanuary 28, 2014Erika Potasinski, née Zimet, was born to Polish parents on May 8th 1933 in Vienna, Austria, where the family owned a grocery store. The family was kicked out of their apartment after Anschluss and found shelter in an empty store, dependent on provisions by their maid. Aunts of Erika had emigrated to Caracas, Venezuela earlier, and one of them worked in the house of an interim president of the country. He got visas for Erika, her parents and her paternal grandmother and let them stay in his house when they arrived in Caracas in 1939. Erika’s father worked first at a factory and then for the Jewish community; her mother found work at a store, which she eventually bought. Erika went to college in the US, where she stayed with an aunt. She met her husband, who was a Holocaust survivor. They got married in 1955 and had three children. In 1964 Erika and her family moved from Venezuela to Fresh Meadows in Queens. Erika's husband bought a chocolate factory and worked there for three years before he sold it. In New York, Erika Potasinski was president of her synagogue and the sisterhood.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Curt Stahl
No full textDigital recordingMay 14, 2014Curt Stahl was born to Kalman and Sabine Stahl on June 10, 1930 in Vienna, Austria, where they lived, surrounded by a big family in the 16th District, Ottakring. The day after Anschluss, “brown shirts” threatened them in the father's grocery store. His father and Curt's older brother, Julius, left immediately; Curt and his mother left for England in May 1938. At first Curt lived in a hostel in Croydon, London. When the war broke out he was evacuated with many other children to the countryside. As soon as their immigration papers came through, the whole Stahl family moved to the US., settling first in the Bronx, as long as Curt’s father worked in a factory. After six months, the family moved to Brooklyn, where the father opened a grocery store. At the age of 16, Curt already worked on the memory section of UNIVAC I, one of the first commercial computers produced in the United States. After graduating high school, he went to the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and embarked on a long and successful career in engineering, computers and finally medical technology, working, amongst others, at Columbia University and NYU. Until 1961, when he underwent successful heart surgery, he suffered from cardiac disease.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Susanne Simon
No full textSeptember 9, 2014Digital recordingSusanne Simon née Ziegler was born 3/4/1938 in Vienna, Austria. Her father was a well-known architect and a student of Adolf Loos. Her paternal grandfather owned an extremely successful shoe store; he was the first one to introduce mail order in Austria. Susanne Simon was born in the night of the Anschluss, and her mother recalled seeing out of the hospital's window the marching Nazis. Susanne Simon has no memories about Austria, everything she knows was being told to her afterwards. Her father’s niece went on a "Kindertransport" to England, and the family followed, before embarking on a ship to America, where they arrived in 1941 in Ellis Island. They stayed with an aunt for the first few months. Subsequently, they moved to Queens into a non-Jewish neighborhood, where her parents felt really isolated. After graduating from high school, Susanne Simon went to a college in Boston and studied languages and finances, but due to her three boys, she never worked in a job. Her husband, a Holocaust survivor like herself, was born 1932 in Cologne, Germany. They both settled in Scarsdale, New York.Austrian Heritage CollectionObersturmbannfuehrer Kraus