Celia and Arthur Stern papers

Celia Spitz was born on November 11, 1910 to Esther and Gustav Spitz in Svätý-Beňedik, Czechoslovakia (now Hronský Beňadik, Czech Republic). Her parents managed an inn in the town, and her father passed away when Celia was three years old. Celia went to school in Vienna, Austria, living with a friend of her mothers’ and would come back home to Svätý-Beňedik in the summer. Her mother, Esther, pushed her into learning a trade, so Celia became an apprentice at a dressmaker’s shop. While she was living in Vienna, she met Chaim Arthur Stern, and in 1932 the couple were married. For several years they lived in Vienna, until the Kristallnacht in 1938, when SS officers came into their home and stole her jewelry and smashed her windows. Soon after that event, Arthur and Celia went to the American consulate to obtain visas. Both had family in the United States, and were able to get affidavits to immigrate. The couple traveled to England in 1939 and moved to New York in 1940, before settling in Los Angeles, California in 1944.