Teitz family papers

Emil Teitz (1895-1953) was born on 18 February 1895 in Fürth, Germany to Abraham David (1855-1936) and Klara (née Ichenhauser 1866-1947) Teitz. He had two brothers, Leo (b. 1891) and Max (1897-1943), and one sister, Betty (later Betty Goldsmith, b. 1893). His father worked as a doctor.

Sofie Luise Ollesheimer (1901-1996) was born on 7 March 1901 in Fürth to Mathilde Aal (1871-1927) and Theobald Ollesheimer (1863-1957).

Emil was a veteran of World War I and worked as a traveling salesman for L. Auerbach and Company, a company that manufactured powders for printing inks. He and Sofie married in Fürth in 1923. They had two sons, Arthur Werner (1925-1943) and Walter Irving (1930-1987). Werner was born with physical disabilities, possibly cerebral palsy, and spent from 1931-1938 in a medical facility in Munich.

The Jewish owners of Emil’s company were forced to sell their business by the Nazis in 1936, and Emil was fired from his job for being Jewish in 1938. After Kristallnacht, the family began making plans to emigrate from Germany. The same year, the medical facility in Munich halted care of Werner because he was Jewish. Emil and Sofie managed to get him out of Germany in December 1938 and into a facility in the Hillegersberg neighborhood of Rotterdam, Netherlands. In January 1939 Walter went on a Kindertransport to Amsterdam. While his parents were waiting for their American visas, they were able to get to England. Walter joined his parents in London in June 1939, but Werner remained in the Netherlands. They received their visas in March 1940 and Emil, Sophie, and Walter sailed to the United States aboard the SS Volendam.

The family settled in New York where Sophie sewed gloves and Emil worked as a salesman. After he arrived in the United States, Emil worked to help other relatives emigrate from Germany, including his mother Klara. By 1942 his brother Leo and sister Betty had both immigrated to the United States, but his brother Max and his wife Isabel perished at Auschwitz. Sofie’s father Theobald survived the Holocaust in Sweden and immigrated to the United States in 1945. Emil and Sofie were unsuccessful at rescuing their son Werner, however, and learned after the war that he was deported from Westerbork to the Sobibór extermination camp in May 1943 where he perished.

Walter married Marian Solleridge (b. 1933) and they had three children: Warren (b. 1964), Jean (b. 1965), and Susan (b. 1969).