Overview
- Description
- The collection documents the Holocaust experiences of the Morgenstern family of Barycz, Poland and Vienna, Austria, and the Merkur family of Vienna. The Morgenstern family materials include identification papers of Regina Morgenstern, who took a Kindertransport from Vienna to England in 1938; letters from her parents Taube and Mendel Morgenstern to her in London; and her diary from 1945. Also included are photographs of the Morgenstern family, including a photograph of Regina, Bernhard, and Helli Morgenstern reunited in Vienna after the war. The Merkur family materials include a book and loose sheet music of William’s father Herman Merkur, who was a musician in Austria; a prayer book belonging to Herman; William’s refugee identity card and post-war writings.
- Date
-
inclusive:
1913-1995
bulk: 1913-1949
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Janet Merkur
- Collection Creator
- Morgenstern family
Merkur family - Biography
-
Berel Morgenstern was married to Helena Steinberger, and they had six children, Mendel (1891-1942), Ischu, Leo, Hella, Chaskel, and Bronya. They lived in Zręcin, Poland. Their son Mendel married Taube Weinberger (1893-1942). Taube was the youngest of sixteen children, whose siblings include Helena (later Helena Lipiner), Antonia, Jakob, Malka, Golda, Pessy, and Mendel.
Mendel and Taube lived in Barycz, Poland where Mendel worked as a merchant. Regina Morgenstern (b. 1924) was born was born on 15 August 1924 in Barycz. She had two sisters, Erna (Later Erna Isaac, b. 1920) and Helli (b. 1921), and three brothers, Max (b. 1923), Bernhard (b. 1926), and Joseph (1928-1944). In 1931, the family moved to Vienna, Austria where Mendel opened a kitchenware store with the assistance of his brother Chaskel. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Mendel was arrested, and only released with the assistance of a neighbor. During Kristallnacht on 11 November 1938, the family’s store was robbed.
Her father had applied for visas to the United States, but did not receive them. Mendel and Taube decided to go back to Poland and went to Warsaw in 1939. They later returned to Barycz. In 1942 they were murdered in the forest near Jasienisca, Poland.
Erna, her boyfriend Leopold, his sister and her brother Max left Vienna around the end of 1938 or early 1939. They went to Frankfurt, Germany and then tried to walk to the Polish border. While Leopold and his sister had passports, Erna and Max did not. Max fled and Erna was arrested and jailed for two months. Max was never heard from again and presumed killed. After Erna was released, she returned to Vienna where she worked briefly before going to Poland. She stayed briefly with an aunt, and then joined her parents in Warsaw. After the start of World War II, Erna went to Lwów, Poland (present day Lviv, Ukraine) and then Kopeysk, Russia. She worked in a coal mine, and met her future husband, Nat. They then went to Fergana, Russia (present day Fergana, Uzbekistan) where they worked on a farm. Their daughter Anne was born, and they remained there for the duration of the war. After the war, they returned to Vienna and were reunited with Erma’s brother Bernhard, her sister Helli, and Helli’s husband Bertl Wagner. Erna, Nat, and Anne then immigrated to Israel. The immigrated to Sydney, Australia in 1954.
On 11 December 1938, her parents put Regina Morgenstern on a children’s transport (Kindertransport) in Vienna and she went to England. She lived with a foster family. During the war, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and also worked as a translator for German codes. After the war, she returned to Vienna. She met William Merkur in 1945. They immigrated to Australia in 1951, settling in Sydney. They had one son, Harry, and one daughter, Janet.
After their parents left Vienna in 1939, Bernhard and Joseph, and were put in an orphanage. In 1942, they avoided being deported from the orphanage, and stayed with their sister Helli. They were deported to Theresienstadt. In 1944, Bernhard, Joseph, and Helli and her husband Bertl were deported to Auschwitz. Joseph was killed upon arrival. Bernhard and Bertl were deported to the Landsberg concentration camp and then the Dachau concentration camp. On 24 April 1945 they were sent on a death march from Dachau. Bernhard and Bertl managed to escape. They were arrested, but subsequently let go. Helli was deported to a factory, and then Dachau where she was liberated. After the war, Bernhard, Helli, and Bertl returned to Vienna.
William Adolf Merkur (born Adolf Merkur, b. 1922) was born on 3 May 1922 in Vienna to Mina Fendel and Herschel Herman Merkur. His parents were both from Galicia. He had three brothers, Bernhard, Isaak, and Sigmund and three sisters, Lisa, Nettie, and Augustina. His father was a musician.
In October 1942, his family was deported to Theresienstadt. One of his sisters went to France and then Switzerland. While in Theresienstadt, William was a forced-laborer making suits, and he and his brother Sigmund played music. In November 1944, William and Sigmund were deported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. They performed the same forced-labor there as in Theresienstadt. They were then sent to the Kaufering subcamp of the Dachau concentration camp where they were sent to a Messerschmitt airplane factory. Shortly after the camp was liberated, Sigmund died of illness on 2 May 1945. William returned to Vienna. His mother died of dysentery while in Theresienstadt, and his father perished at Auschwitz.
Physical Details
- Genre/Form
- Photographs. Prayer books. Diaries.
- Extent
-
12 folders
1 oversize box
1 oversize box
- System of Arrangement
- The collection has been arranged as two series by family: Series 1: Morgenstern family, circa 1914-1949 and undated;
Series 2: Merkur family, 1913-1995 and undated
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Material(s) in this collection may be protected by copyright and/or related rights. You do not require further permission from the Museum to use this material. The user is solely responsible for making a determination as to if and how the material may be used.
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2017 by Janet Merkur, daughter of Regina Morgenstern and Adolf William "Bill" Merkur.
- Funding Note
- The accessibility of this collection was made possible by the generous donors to our crowdfunded Save Their Stories campaign.
- Special Collection
-
Save Their Stories
- Record last modified:
- 2024-04-11 13:18:47
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn555298
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-
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Also in Morgenstern and Merkur families collection
The collection consists of a prayer book, correspondence, documents, photographs, and sheet music relating to the experiences of the Morgenstern and Merkur families in Austria, England, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Switzerland before the war, in those nations, Czechoslovakia, and many concentration camps during the Holocaust, and in Austria and Australia after World War II.
Date: 1913-1995
Prayer book owned by a Jewish Austrian musician and concentration camp inmate
Object
A 1913 compilation prayer book (Seder Tefillat Yisrael) owned by Herschel Herman Merkur in Vienna, Austria, before the Holocaust and brought with Adolf (later William), one of his 7 children, when he immigrated to Australia postwar. On March 13, 1938, Germany annexed Austria. New legislation was created that quickly restricted Jewish life. Two of Herman’s older children, Lise and Isak, emigrated. In November, following the Kristallnacht pogrom, Herman’s son Bernhard was arrested and imprisoned in Germany, and later emigrated. In fall 1939, Herman and his family were moved into the ghetto and he was forced to brush tar onto the asphalt streets. His daughter, Franzi, escaped to France not long before Herman, his wife, Mina, and their youngest sons, Sigi and Adolf, were deported to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, in October 1942. In November, Mina died of dysentery. On September 28, 1944, Adolf and Sigi, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland. In October, Herman was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was sent to the gas chamber and killed on October 9, 1944. In May 1945, Sigi died in Kaufering VII, a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp. After the war, 6 of Herman’s 7 children were still alive, three having survived imprisonment in several transit, labor, and concentration camps.