1,720,969 research outputs found
AHC interview with Harry Scher
No full textDigital recordingJanuary 14, 2014See also Scher, Harry, 1921- : A short history of the (Eisen) Scher family. Englishtown, NJ, 1989. ME 1473.Harry Scher was born on Nov. 17, 1921 as Harry Eisenscher in Vienna, Austria, where he lived with his parents and his sister in the 2nd District (Leopoldstadt), in the same building as the grandparents. The father was an umbrella salesman. The parents first started to worry when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated in 1934, but did not take any action for emigration; but when the Nazis marched in, the family registered for visas. Harry's uncle, also named Harry Scher, made it possible for Harry and a cousin to leave Austria: they took the train to Paris, then went to Le Havre from where they took a ship to the U.S. Harry’s sister, who was only 14 years old when Harry left, followed one and a half years later. His uncle got him a job in a rag factory. A year and a half later he worked as a shipping clerk in a garment factory. In 1942, Harry was drafted into the army. After the basic training his unit was shipped to Ireland. Four weeks after D-Day they landed in Normandy. His division worked its way through France to the German border. In the woods by the German border he got a bad rash and was sent to a hospital in Scotland, where they proved an allergy to wool. As a result, he was reassigned to a Civil Censorship Division. When the war was over he was transferred to Munich, where he learned that his parents had been deported from Vienna to the Ghetto in Lodz. In 1999/2000, he contacted the USHMM and finally found out that they were subsequently sent to Chelmno. This fact led Harry Scher to write down his family history. After his wedding Harry Scher worked as a taxi driver and went to TV school, eventually working as a technician at Wells Televisioning. Four years later he became head of the company. Later he worked as a tutor for English as a second language.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Mirjam Horowitz
No full textDigital recordingFebruary 18, 2014Mirjam Horowitz, née Tempelmann was born in Vienna on June 12th, 1923. The family lived in Adalbert-Stifter-Strasse 12 in the 20th District, Brigittenau. Her father was arrested during "Kristallnacht" and released ten days later after having promised to leave the country. Mirjam’s mother had eight siblings in the U.S. who provided the family with the necessary papers for their immigration. They took the train to Paris and arrived in New York on December 24th, 1938. Mirjam stayed with her aunt and uncle in Washington Heights, while her parents settled with relatives in Boston. She graduated with honors and worked as a bookkeeper. 1951 - 1954 she lived in Israel, where she met her future husband, who served in the army at the time; she worked for the Joint Distribution Committee as a tourist guide. After the birth of her first daughter she took up painting, continuing to work as a bookkeeper.Austrian Heritage Collectio
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 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 Hedy Bertan
No full textDigital recordingApril 1, 2014Hedy Bertan (née Hedwig Einig) was born on June 2nd, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, where the family lived in the 2nd District (Leopoldstadt) on Praterstrasse. In the summer of 1938 her parents managed to obtaine US immigration visas for the end of October, but when her father was told by a Nazi patient of his that he would be on the deportation list to Dachau the next day, he left right away for London, with his wife and daughter following a week later. Hedy started school in London but later was evacuated. After a year and a half in England, the family went to the U.S., where she eventually became a pharmacist.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 Egon Schwarz
No full textDigital recordingOctober 22-23, 2013Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Morris Lewinter
No full textDigital recordingFebruary 9, 2014Morris (Moses) Lewinter was born on March 21, 1923 in Vienna, Austria, where he lived with his parents and his sister in Universumstrasse 40 in Vienna’s 20th District, Brigittenau. His parents had a grocery store. Moses studied at Chajes Realgymnasium and at the Polnische Schul synagogue, and after Anschluss he went for a short time to a school in Staudingergasse. On Dec. 10, 1938 he was sent via Kindertransport to England and temporarily accommodated in a summer camp in Lowestoft, which was unsuitable for winter occupation. Later he was brought to a kind of hostel with a young leader in Leeds. He eventually received his visa for the U.S. thanks to an uncle’s affidavit, and he arrived in New York on April 1st, 1940. He found shelter with his former Viennese neighbors, who got him a job cutting ladies' undergarments. The next summer he learned diamond cutting. Morris Lewinter studied shortly at a U.S. high school and graduated City College with a Bachelor of Business Administration.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Ruth Hecht.
No full textMay 22, 2014Ruth Hecht, née Pollak was born in 1931 in Brigittenau, Vienna’s 20th District, where the family lived on Wallensteinstrasse. Ruth's father, Oskar Gellmann, worked for his uncle in a burlap bag business. Ruth went to the Chajes-Gymnasium high school from 1937 to 1938. After ‘Anschluss’ Ruth's aunt and her family lived with them in their small apartment. When officials were looking for Oskar Gellmann, he and his brother escaped to Switzerland, leaving the family behind. Ruth and her mother tried to go to Belgium, but they were stopped in Cologne. In a second attempt, Ruth made it in a "Kindertransport" to Brussels, where Jenny Fink from the organization "Protection des enfants" referred her to the family of Lotte and Benno Sender in Antwerp. In the meantime, Oskar Gellmann was held in Aargau in a Swiss camp for refugees, but he could obtain a visa for his wife - still back in Vienna – to go to England as a domestic servant: three family members were dispersed into three different countries. Ruth went to elementary school in Antwerp for one and a half years. When the Germans marched into Belgium in May 1940, Benno Sender was interned, and the rest of them fled to Ostend where Ruth was injured by a bomb splinter on May 31, 1940. Her upper lip, right cheek and right eye had to be restored in several operations. In September Ruth was hiding in a monastery, before she joined her father in Switzerland, where she lived with two families until the war was over. Ruth finished secondary school in 1947, before she became a pharmacist's assistant. In 1949, at the age of 18, Ruth, together with her father and his new partner, Rosie, moved to Israel, where Ruth became a baby-nurse at Hadassah Hospital in Ramat Gan. Eventually, they all immigrated to the US, arriving in New York on Ruth's 21st birthday, and she started working as a nurse at Beth Israel Hospital. She got married in 1957 and moved to Plainview, NY in 1963.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Robert Roper
No full textDigital recordingOctober 16, 2013Robert Roper was born in Vienna, Austria near Hundsturm, where he lived at Diehlgasse 19/3. His father, who had been born in Rzeszów, Poland and had learned the men's clothing trade there, opened a shop in Vienna. He then went back to Poland for an arranged marriage with Robert’s mother. They survived Kristallnacht in an apartment on Neubauguertel, which was ransacked by SA troopers and their wives; then they were forced to move to Leopoldstadt, where they lived with another family. A few days before the war broke out the family fled to London. His father was taken to the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, but he joined the family shortly before they embarked for America. In the U.S. Robert continued his education at City College and then at NYU where he earned his Ph.D. in 1957. He worked as a chemist.Austrian Heritage Collectio
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