Joan Inge Maas collection

Inge (later "Joan") Maas, the youngest daughter of Ferdinand Maas and Stephanie Westheimer, was born on December 19, 1932. Her family was from Mannheim and her older sister Lotte was born on March 31, 1923.

Inge's grandmother, Klara Westheimer, was a passenger on the "St. Louis" and disembarked in Holland. Klara then immigrated to Chicago in 1939. The family had U.S. visas provided by relatives in St. Louis, but the family never used them. Ferdinand Maas was taken by Nazis in 1939 and killed at Sachsenhausen in May 1940. In October 1940, Stephanie Westheimer and her two daughters, Inge and Lotte, were taken from Baden as part of the mass deportation to Gurs internment camp in France. While at the internment camp, eight-year-old Inge created a haggadah.

A relative in St. Louis used an influential connection with President Franklin Roosevelt to procure the release of Stephanie and her daughters. They went to Marseille for a few months, and lived on a farm. From there, they traveled to Lisbon and then arrived in the New York on December 8, 1941. From New York, they joined Klara and an uncle in Chicago. While her mother and sister worked, Joan (Inge) stayed with her grandmother Klara. Joan's mother passed away when she was 15 and Joan lived with her grandmother until she was married at age 18. Klara died circa 1957.