Ella Spiegler papers

Ella Spiegler Goldstein was born in Vienna, Austria on 29 September 1928, the daughter of Wilhelm and Clara (née Bromberger) Spiegler. Following the Nazi-led German annexation of Austria in 1938, the Spiegler family began making plans to emigrate. When the family heard about the efforts of an American couple, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, to sponsor fifty Jewish children from Vienna for immigration to the United States, they applied to have their daughter included, which she was. Ella left Europe in May 1939, with the other "50 children" selected by the Krauses, on the S.S. President Harding, which arrived in New York on 3 June 1939. She, with the other children, initially was sent to the Brith Sholomville childrens home, in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. While other children were soon reunited with their parents, Ella was not able to rejoin her parents, who had immigrated to England, and were not able to immigrate to the United States in 1948. In 1941, she moved to Newark, New Jersey, and after she finished her schooling, went to work in various clerical positions, at the RCA Corporation and later at a department store in Newark. In 1948 she met Benjamin Goldstein (born 21 April 1917), a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and the two were married the following year in Newark.