Metal identification tag used by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to the US
- Date
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approximately 1942
(use)
1938 (emigration)
- Geography
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use :
Chicago (Ill.)
- Language
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English
- Classification
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Identifying Artifacts
- Category
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Labels
- Object Type
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Name tags (lcsh)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Stefi Geisel
Identification tag that was owned by Stefi and Gustav Geisel. They had emigrated separately to the United States in 1938 to escape the harsh persecutions of Jews in Nazi Germany. They met in Chicago and married in 1942. Stefi had lived in Mosbach, Germany, with her parents and younger brother, Walter. In 1938, 18 year old Stefi Siegel was sent to live with relatives in Chicago. Her parents left for England that year and arrived in the US in 1943. Walter had been sent to the Netherlands; after Germany occupied the country in 1940, he was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, then to Bergen Belsen, where he died of typhus in March 1945. Gustav was from Rheinbach, Germany, and had left Germany in 1938 to live with relatives in Chicago. His brother, Albert, arrived in 1940 and their parents, Hermann and Sophie, were able to come to the US after both brothers were drafted into the US Army in 1942.
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Record last modified: 2018-01-11 14:24:46
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn517277
Also in Gustav and Stefi Geisel collection
The collection consists of artifacts, correspondence, documents, and photographs relating to the experience of Stefi Siegel and her family in Germany before and during the Holocaust and of Stefi and Gustav Geisel in the United States during and after the Holocaust.
Date: 1920-1942
Stefi Geisel papers
Document
The Stefi Geisel papers consist of biographical materials, correspondence, photographic materials, printed materials, and writings documenting the lives of the Siegel and Geisel families in Germany before the war, Stefi and Gus Geisel’s immigration to the United States, and Walter Siegel’s experiences in the Netherlands before his deportation and death at Bergen Belsen. The papers include the Franco-Prussian War military diary of a relative of Gus Geisel’s and Gus Geisel’s own brief immigration diary written as he sailed to America.
Leather wallet with flap closure carried by a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany to the US
Object
Leather wallet used by 18 year old Stefi Siegel when she emigrated to the United States in September 1938 from Mosbach, Germany. After Hitler came to power in 1933, policies were put in place that persecuted and excluded Jews from German society. In 1938, Stefi's parents, Siegfried and Friedel, managed to send her to the United States; her 15 year old brother, Walter, was sent to the Netherlands to learn a trade and possibly emigrate to Palestine. Her parents emigrated to England in 1939 and would get to the US in 1943. In spring 1940, Germany occupied the Netherlands. Walter eventually was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, then to Bergen Belsen, where he died of typhus in March 1945.