New demands of an old man | DECEMBER 19
While Dr. Hermann Mansbach and his wife, Selma, had left their home in Mannheim and relocated to Haifa in September 1938, their son, Herbert, a dentist like his father, was stuck in Switzerland, trying to join his parents. The young man had left Germany following a Nazi decree according to which the conferment of doctorates to Jews was to cease immediately. Obtaining a certificate for entry into Palestine proved to be difficult, and to make things worse, Herbert had been defrauded of all his money. On December 19th, Hermann Mansbach gave an account of his new life in Palestine to the Frank family in Zurich, who were helping his son, and to Herbert himself. He describes the difficulty of starting over poor as a result of Nazi regulations and his struggle to learn English and Hebrew and to make money. As if that weren’t enough, political unrest was simmering in the background. Mrs. Mansbach adds that she and her husband never leave home at the same time in order to avoid missing a patient. Things are hard, but, as Dr. Mansbach says, their lot is certainly better than being in a concentration camp.
Merciless bureaucracy | DECEMBER 6
Otto Neubauer was worried that his efforts to facilitate his relatives’ emigration would come to naught. With the US intent on denying entry to refugees “likely to become a public charge,” he knew his developmentally disabled 34-year-old brother, Ernst, might be denied entry. He had no doubt that his father, Maximilian, a resident of Mannheim, would never leave Germany without his other son. On December 6th, 1938, Otto assured Herbert Reich, who had expressed his willingness to help the Neubauers immigrate to the US, that Ern(e)st was “harmless” and that his needs were minimal. To increase his brother’s chances to be admitted, Otto reasoned that it would be helpful to procure two affidavits.
Fluch der Bürokratie | OCTOBER 18
Dr. Herbert Mansbach, a young dentist from Mannheim, had gone to Switzerland after his studies in Germany in order to obtain his DDS and specialize in orthodontics. This, he believed, would be a sought-after skill in Palestine, where he wished to emigrate. However, immigration to Palestine had been curtailed drastically by the British: Dr. Mansbach’s friend Alfred Rothschild, a retired lawyer, informed him that there were no preferential immigration certificates to be had at the moment and that the qualification procedure for a “capitalist certificate” (a type of certificate the awarding of which was dependent on the applicant’s ability to produce at least £1000 and not subject to quotation) was still under way. The matter was of great urgency, since in mid-October, Dr. Mansbach’s residence permit for Switzerland had expired. Rothschild assumed that if the application for a regular certificate was going to go through, the Swiss authorities would allow his friend to stay in the country for the time being.
Correspondence across the ocean | JANUARY 2
This letter was written by Otto Neubauer, who had recently arrived in America from Mannheim, to his father Maximilian and his brother Ernst back home. Since the rest of the family was unable to emigrate despite years of trying, Otto wrote them regularly. The rich exchange of letters between the members of the Neubauer family reflects, as in the case of many other German Jewish emigrants in the 1930s, deep longing and attempts to describe every aspect of the new life in America.