Thomas Rey papers

Thomas Rey (1918-1991) was born Thomas Julius Rehfisch on January 31, 1918 to Hans José (Joseph) Rehfisch (April 10, 1891-1960) and Lilli Dora Stadthagen Rehfisch (September 29, 1891-1941). He had one sister, Beate Susanna (later Beata Duncan, August 3, 1921-2015). The family lived in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin. Hans was trained as a lawyer but became a playwright and scriptwriter. Lilli was a psychoanalyst who studied in the Adler school. Her uncle Arthur Stadthagen had served in the Reichstag. Lilli had two siblings: Toni (July 8, 1887-August 10, 1942) and Paul (August 19, 1893-February 6, 1943), a decorated bomber pilot for Germany in World War I.

Hans’s parents were Eugen (1862-1937) and Hedwig Rehfisch (b. 1866). Eugen, a noted cardiologist, died of natural causes in 1937, and Hedwig immigrated to Palestine to join their daughter and son-in-law, Käthe and Otto Wassertrudinger. Lilli’s parents were Julius Stadthagen (1865-1912) and Agnes Jacobi Stadthagen (1864-1938).

After Hitler came to power in January 1933, Thomas’s father Hans was mistaken for his friend and colleague Erwin Piskator and arrested in Dresden. He was released on condition that he leave Germany immediately. He fled to Vienna and then to England. In January 1934, Lilli brought their children, Thomas and Beate, to England after obtaining visas through a cousin. The children first attended Bunce Court School in Kent and then settled in north London. Lilli lived briefly in London but returned to Berlin in the mid-1930s; she visited her children regularly as long as it was possible. Hans remained in England and was interned on the Isle of Man as an “enemy alien” in 1940. He returned to Germany in 1950 and died in Switzerland in 1960.

On November 29, 1941, Lilli was deported from Nuremburg to Riga, where she was killed. Her sister Toni Salomon and her disabled daughter Eva Marie (September 18, 1924-August 10, 1942) were deported to Auschwitz on July 11, 1942 and murdered there on August 10, 1942. Lilli’s brother Paul was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on September 23, 1942, where he died of an infection on February 6, 1943. Other members of the extended family also perished in the Holocaust.

Thomas continued his education in England, studying mathematics and electrical engineering at the University of London. He changed his surname from Rehfisch to Rey in the 1940s. In 1955 he immigrated to the United States with his British-born wife to work for Westinghouse Electric Corporation. After living briefly in Baltimore, he moved to the Boston area, where he worked for Lincoln Laboratories and other engineering companies. Thomas Rey died on September 19, 1991, at his home in Bedford, Massachusetts. He is succeeded by one son, Julian (b. February 26, 1949); three daughters, Pamela (b. December 8, 1956), Lilli (b. December 1, 1958), and Toni (b. December 1, 1958); and 12 grandchildren. Thomas’s sister Beata was a literary researcher and poet in London until her death on April 23, 2015. Beata is succeeded by her one son and three grandchildren.