Schloss family papers

Max Schloss (1907-1988) was born January 1, 1907 in Hofheim in Unterfranken, Germany. His wife, Johanna Schloss (née Sterzelbach, 1916-2003), was born June 19, 1916 in Weiden, Germany. Max worked in the iron and diamond business, moved to Paris, and Johanna followed in 1935. Their daughter Henriette (later Henrietta Barkey, 1937-2016) was born in Paris in 1937. When Germany invaded France in 1940, Johanna and Henriette moved south and lived in Pau and other places. Max joined the French Foreign Legion and after his discharge in 1941 rejoined his family in the south of France. Throughout that time, a business associate in Sweden supported the Schloss family financially. Max’s sister Martha Light and her husband Sally (Lichtenstetter) Light had immigrated to the United States in 1938 and helped secure visas for the family to emigrate from Marseilles. That route was closed when America entered the war in December 1941. The family instead managed to receive visas to travel from Lisbon to Cuba and sailed to Havana in January 1942 aboard the SS Nyassa. Sally and Martha Light helped them secure visas to come to America in September. The Schloss family took a Pan American flight to Florida in November 1942, settled in New York, and became naturalized American citizens in 1948.