Leather wallet with 6 pockets used by a German Jewish refugee to hold wartime documents

Erna Landau was born on January 8, 1915, in Rhede Germany, to Jewish parents, Arthur and Bertha Stern Landau. Bertha was born in 1887. Arthur’s family had lived in the area since the mid-1800s. Erna had a younger sister, Ruth, born on May 15, 1917. In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor and repressive anti-Jewish measures were put into practice all over Germany. The girl's parents decided to send Erna and Ruth out of the country for safety. On June 15, 1938, they were sent to London, England. Erna worked as a seamstress. The war ended in May 1945. In July, Erna was employed by the United States Forces Civil Censorship Division, European Theater and worked in the occupied zones in Germany. Her parents had been deported from Germany in the early 1940s to Riga, Latvia, where they were murdered.
Erna and Ruth left for the United States, and arrived in New York at the end of June 1947. Erna married Herman Meyer in New York City in 1948. Herman had also fled Nazi Germany, first for Holland, and then to Kenya with his extended family, before emigrating to the US in 1947. The couple settled in New Jersey and operated a chicken farm. Ruth, age 82, passed away on January 7, 1999. Erna died, age 97, on February 23, 2012.