Lilly Felddegen papers

Lilly Felddegen (1896-1996) helped secure visas to bring Jewish refugee children from Belgium to the United States during the Nazi years. Max Gottschalk, a prominent Jewish attorney and civic leader in Belgium, convinced a group of wealthy women to form a rescue committee, known as the Comité d'Assistance aux Enfants Refugiés Juifs (CAERJ), the Committee to rescue Jewish refugee children. This group of about ten to twelve dedicated women succeeded in persuading the Belgian government to grant asylum to some six hundred Jewish children until they could move on to other countries where they had relatives or where their parents might later find refuge. Mme. Marguerite Goldschmidt-Brodsky was the Committee President and her close collaborator and Comité Secretary was Mme. Lilly Felddegen, born in Switzerland and married to a prominent German born Belgian Jewish businessman. Mme. Lilly Felddegen from her HIAS office in New York began to contact every relative and friend in the United States of "her" Belgian children (now in France) to obtain affidavits of support and guarantees of ship passage payments. She then used these documents to harangue the State Department for the granting of individual immigration visas for the children to come to the United States.