Levi, Kronthal, and Eis families papers
The Levi, Kronthal, and Eis family papers document the family of Sali Levi, last rabbi of the old Jewish community of Mainz, as well as the families of his wife Margarete Levi, nee Weissmann, his sister-in-law Rosa Kronthal, his son Hans Levi, and his son-in-law Max Eis. The collection contains biographical materials, correspondence, subject files, photographs, sermons, writings, speeches, and books documenting the lives of the Kronthal, Levi, and Eis families as they were forced to flee Germany and immigrate to the United States during the Holocaust.
Biographical materials date from 1867-circa 2010 and include birth, marriage, and death certificates; identification and membership cards; school records; awards; military papers; engagement and marriage announcements; immigration and naturalization records; employment records; wills; death notices and obituaries; mourning books; personal and family histories; vaccination records; and clippings.
Correspondence files date from 1918-1997 and include letters among family members, friends, and professional and social contacts. Subjects include Kristallnacht, immigration efforts, and life in Germany, Theresienstadt, Deggendorf, and America. The files include Hans Levi’s objections to the American Consul in Switzerland’s lack of attention to Rosa Kronthal’s immigration efforts, photocopies of Sali Levi’s 1933 objections to the way his son’s high school was treating Jewish students as “guests,” correspondence between Albert Eis and the wife of the man who assaulted him during Kristallnacht, and letters of thanks and praise for Rosa Kronthal from Eleanor Roosevelt, Leo Baeck, and Joachim Prinz.
Subject files date from 1934-2010 and include information about the families’ immigration efforts, the Jüdische Bezirksschule Mainz, the Jüdische Selbstverwaltung Theresienstadt, Walldorf, and restitution claims pursued by various family members for confiscated goods, taxes and fees, bank accounts, pensions, insurance policies, and lost income.
Photographs date from 1911-2000 and include family members; the synagogue, Jewish museum, and Jüdische Bezirksschule in Mainz; Rosa Kronthal's and Sali Levi's gravestones; Wilhelm and Johanna Levi's house; and photographs related to one of Max Eis' employers.
Sali Levi’s writings and speeches date from circa 1906-1941 and cover religious topics and personal experiences. They include eulogies and descriptions of old Jewish gravestones in Mainz, Jews in Russian Poland, and prayer books used by soldiers in the field during World War I.
Sali Levi’s sermons date from 1908-1941 and are accompanied by computer disks and printed draft English transcriptions of some of the sermons.
Books in the collection date from 1880-1994 and include religious and prayer books owned by Sali Levi, works on the Holocaust and Jewish communities in Germany, a prayer book belonging to Jakob Eis, and a book of sermons by Seligmann Meyer.
- Date
-
inclusive:
1867-2010
- Genre/Form
-
Photographs.
- Extent
-
3 negatives.
4 diskette.
- Extent
-
6 boxes
1 oversize box
1 oversize folder
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Regina Lackner
-
Record last modified: 2021-11-16 13:06:07
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn61049
Also in Max and Ruth Levi Eis family and the Kronthal family collection
The collection consists of a wreath, correspondence, documents, photographs, and publications relating to the experiences of Max Eis and his family in Mainz, Germany, before the Holocaust, in Theresienstadt labor camp-ghetto during the Holocaust, and after their respective immigrations to the United States and also to the experiences of the Levi and Kronthal families in Mainz and Breslau, Germany, before the Holocaust, in several concentration camps during the Holocaust, and after their respective immigrations to the United States.
Oak leaf wreath separated into sections awarded prewar to a Jewish youth for swimming across the Rhine River
Object
Oak leaf wreath with acorns, now in several pieces, awarded to Max Eis in the mid-1930’s for swimming across the Rhine River near the town of Mainz, Germany, where he lived with his parents, Jakob and Regina, and his brother, Albert. Max and Alfred participated in athletic competitions as members of the Mainz chapter of the Jewish sports club, Schild, which was associated with Reichsbund Juedischer Frontsoldaten (The Organization of Jewish Front-line Soldiers), an organization founded by Jewish veterans in 1919 to counter anti-Semitic accusations that Jewish soldiers had been weak and cowardly during World War I. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and many laws were enacted to restrict the lives of Jews. On August 16, 1938, 21 year old Max left Mainz for London, where, on September 2, he boarded a ship to the United States. In March 1939, Max helped Albert, 36, immigrate to the US. In September 1942, Max’s parents were deported to Theresienstadt labor camp-ghetto in German occupied Czechoslovakia, where Regina died in March 1943. Jakob was liberated at the camp May 1945 by Soviet forces. He joined his sons in the US in May 1946.