Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Ink sketch of a canal lock by a German Jewish female designer

Object | Accession Number: 2005.546.105

Ink drawing a canal lock and house created by Nelly Rossmann circa 1935. There is a sketch of a seated figure on the reverse. Nelly was a graphic designer for the Frankfurter Zeitung, a progressive newspaper in Frankfurt, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Following the Reichstag Fire in February, Germany became a police state and Jews were targeted for persecution. Nelly was a Quaker, but she had been born Jewish and, in 1935, she was fired from her job due to a government decree that Jews could not work in the publishing industry. After the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, her parents left for England, but Nelly still had strong pro-German feelings and was not ready to leave. In 1939, she and her nine year old son, Michael, went to England to visit her family; while they were there, Germany invaded Poland and war broke out. They remained in England, and after the war ended in May 1945 became British citizens.

Artwork Title
Canal Lock
Date
creation:  approximately 1935
Geography
creation: Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
Classification
Art
Category
Drawings
Object Type
Ink drawings (tgm)
Credit Line
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Michael G. Rossmann
 
Record last modified: 2023-09-15 10:16:47
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn518039