My name is Kyra Schuster, and I'm a curator in the department of Art and Artifacts at
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Today we will be talking about the Weilheimer family collection. The Weilheimer family consisted
of parents Max and Lilly and their two children, Richard and Ernst,
The family was originally from Ludwigshafen, Germany, and ended up in a French internment
camp.
The collection contains a variety of materials including family correspondence, family photographs,
photo albums, documents, legal documents that were issued to the family during the war,
and family keepsakes such as a baby book and a family history book.
The Museum acquired this collection a few years ago. We first met Richard Weilheimer
at a Museum event in Boca Raton, Florida, and Richard had brought a copy of his autobiography
with him.
The first thing I noticed when I read through this book, there was a photograph of Max Weilheimer
lighting Hannukah candles in Camp de Gurs in France in 1941. And that really stood out
to me because we have virtually no documentation of religious life in the camps. Here was a
man lighting Hanukkah candles, there's a very visible Star of David hanging on a banner
on the wall behind him, and it really struck me, this perfectly documents they were still
trying to maintain their religious life even while living in terrible conditions in this
internment camp.
When I went down to south Florida on an acquisitions trip and I met with Richard Weilheimer in
When I took a look at the collection in its entirety, what was really unique about it
in addition to this one Hanukkah photograph was the entire scope of their experience was
documented within these papers. You had the papers from the very beginning of Richard's
life, documenting his birth and then his brother's birth, and their life before the war, and
then you had his father's, Max Weilheimer's documents issued to him after Kristallnacht.
You had a family photo album that was damaged during Kristallnacht. You had letters and
papers relating to their life in Camp de Gurs, the internment camp in France, after their
deportation. And then you also had all these family letters after the family was separated,
between the parents and the children, as well as from the children back to the parents.
Richard's grandmother was in the camp with them and she was able to get a visa out to
the United States, so when she left France she took everything with her, which is how
the photo albums and the children's letters, survived. The children obviously kept the
letters from their parents, which is how those letters survived, and all of those materials
were reunited once the children made it to the United States to rejoin the rest of their
family.
The evening of Kristallnacht, the Weilheimers were awoken by all the noise and chaos outside.
Max was actually arrested in the family home and sent to the Dachau concentration camp
the next day.
About five weeks after his arrest, Max was returned home as well, and he was released
partially because of his service with the German army in World War I. Max was actually
issued a document by the Germans, kind of a change of address form, that specifically
and clearly states that he is relocating back to his home in Ludwigshafen, which I thought
was really interesting.
October 22, 1940, the Weilheimer family was rounded up with other Jews who were in Ludwigshafen.
They were each allowed to take one suitcase with them. First they were sent to Mannheim,
Germany, which was nearby, and they were reunited with other extended family member.After a
three-day train ride they arrived in Vichy France, where they were met by members of
the American Friends Service Committee, or the Quakers, who provided all of these families
with food and water. The Weilheimers and everybody else were taken to Camp de Gurs, and the conditions
in that camp were very very poor.
The Quakers, along with OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; Children's Aid Society), made
arrangements to transfer 50 children out of Gurs and to an orphanage nearby.
Lilly Weilheimer was very sick. Unbeknownst to her children, she had breast cancer, and
Max and Lilly really lobbied hard to have their children placed into this orphanage.
Eventually Richard and Ernst were taken as part of this group of children.And the children
would remain in contact with their parents in Gurs through letters and packages. There's
a lovely series of letters back and forth between Richard and his father where the boys
are writing about their day, sometimes they would send pictures or drawings that they
had done.
In one letter Max writes to his children about sending them information about the family
names, and their Hebrew names, so that they knew his name, their own names, their mother's
name, their grandparents' names, so that information wouldn't be lost, so that the boys wouldn't
forget.
Richard and Ernst again did not know the seriousness of their mother's illness and she actually
passed away in the camp of Gurs on July 17, 1941. Lilly was very well respected and well
known in the camp. Max estimated that over five hundred mourners were in attendance at
her funeral. Many of them gave eulogies, and fellow prisoners created a handmade certificate
that Max filled in the information for, in memory of Lilly.
A few months after Lilly passed away, with the assistance of OSE and the Quakers, Richard
and Ernst were issued safe conduct passes in lieu of visas to allow them travel to the
United States.
When the group of children went to Marseilles to catch the ship to the United States, Max
Weilheimer along with some of the other parents who were still in Gurs were given a one-day
pass out of the camp so that they could see their children off. Max gave Richard this
small address book in which he wrote his address as well as contact information for other family
members and family friends.
The boys set sail for the United States on June 25, 1942. Max did go to the dock to see
them off but unfortunately it was so crowded and chaotic that they were not able to find
each other in the large crowds. Max and the other parents were not allowed even near the
ship to hug their children goodbye. So the day before when Max gave Richard this little
address book, it was the last day that Richard ever saw his father.
What's amazing is, this one photo then led us to this wealth of information about this
single family that was really torn apart by the Holocaust. For us just being able to tell
that story, no matter how it's documented -- with either one item or hundreds of items
-- helps us tell and teach the story of the Holocaust in a more personal m