Henny Wenkart papers

Henny (Henriette) Wenkart was born in Vienna, Austria on 5 July 1928, the daughter of Hermann (b. 1896) and Rose (b. 1904, nee Stein) Wenkart. In 1939, she was chosen to be one of the "50 children" who immigrated to the United States as part of a transport organized by Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus in June 1939. After her own immigration, Henny was reunited with her parents and sister Elenore, who arrived in New York on September 1, 1939. The Wenkart family lived in Brooklyn, then moved to Baltimore, and eventually, Providence, Rhode Island, where Henny later earned a bachelor's degree from Pembroke College. She subsequently earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard, where she also taught philosophy and writing. Of her extended family, her paternal grandmother, Drorah Chaya Wenkart, was able to escape to Switzerland via Italy, where she took refuge in a convent during the war, and after the war joined Henny's uncle, Ignaz Wenkart, who had immigrated to New York in 1938. On her mother's side, an uncle, Leo Stein, was killed at Buchenwald, and an aunt, Marie, managed to escape to Palestine, via Latvia, with her husband and son.