Ilie Wacs family papers

Ilie Wacs (1927- ) was born in Vienna, Austria to tailor Moritz Wacs (1895-1957) and his wife Henia Fach (1900-1972). Ilie's younger sister Deborah (Debra) was born in 1935. After the Nazi annexation of Austria, Moritz's successful tailor shop was "aryanized." In August 1939, the family sailed from Genoa to Shanghai. They lived in Hongkew, Moritz worked as a custom tailor, and Ilie and Deborah attended school. Conditions deteriorated after the United States entered the war, and in 1943 the Wacs were forced by the Japanese occupiers into a Shanghai ghetto. Following their liberation in 1945, they learned that nearly all of their family who had remained in Europe had perished. In 1949, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, offered Ilie a scholarship to study at art in Paris. His parents and sister immigrated to the United States in 1950, Ilie joined them, and he was naturalized in 1956.