A distant relative
FRIDAY
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“I appeal to your human sentiment and feeling for blood relations if I take the liberty of asking you to help me to emigrate to the States and procure the necessary affidavit for me.”
VIENNA/NEW YORK
It must have taken quite an effort for Eva Metzger-Hohenberg to write an imploring letter to her distant relative in Manhattan, Leo Klauber, a complete stranger to her. Her situation was precarious. There was no place for Jews in Germany anymore. Maria Metzger-Hohenberg appealed to Leo Klauber’s “humanity” and his “sense of a blood bond” and begged him to issue affidavits to her and her family. This letter from Vienna shows not only the desperate measures to which Jewish families had to resort, in order to make their emigration possible, but also drew a vivid picture of the situation in which many Jews found themselves in the Fall of 1938. Maria’s parents and her brother had to give up their butcher shop. Her husband’s wholesale business, which employed more than 140 staff members, was “aryanized.” In actuality, that meant it had to be sold for much less than its value. The fate of the Metzger-Hohenbergs was also that of countless other Jewish families during this time.
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SOURCE
Institution:
Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin
Collection:
Laura and Leonard Yaffe Correspondence, AR 11921
Original:
Source available in English
on the days before
Curated by Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin © 2018 Leo Baeck Institute
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