Alexander Schenker papers

Alexander Marian Schenker (1924-2019) was born on 20 December 1924 in Krakow, Poland to Oskar and Gizela Schenker. His father Oskar (1900-1986) was born on 15 May 1900 in Krakow and was a judge. His mother Gizela (1900-1993) was born Gizela Szaminski on 2 September 1900 in Lwów, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine) to Bernard Szaminski and Sabina Ehrenpreis. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the family fled from Krakow to Lwów. Oskar and his brother then went to Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) to obtain transit visas for Japan. Alexander, his mother, his grandmother Amalia, cousin Steven, and aunt Ernestyna were all arrested trying to cross the border into Lithuania. They were deported in spring 1940 to a Soviet labor camp in Siberia where Alexander worked as a lumberjack. He and his mother were released from the camp in November 1941 and then went to Stalinabad (Dushanbe, Tajikistan) where they survived the war.

Oskar received a transit visa stamped by the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara, in July 1940 and arrived in Japan in October 1940. He received an American visa and sailed out of Yokohama on 6 March 1941 aboard the M.S. Tatua Maru. Alexander and Gizela immigrated to the United States in 1947. Alexander became a naturalized citizen in 1952, and received his Ph.D in 1952. He went on to teach at Yale from 1953-1996, and helped establish the Slavic studies program there.