Edith Wornian family papers

Edith Wornian (1929-2014) was born in Leipzig, Germany, on 11 October 1929, the daughter of Israel Affenkraut and Reisel Dwora (née Unger) Affenkraut, both of whom were originally from Poland. By the late 1930s, the Affenkraut family decided that in order to emigrate from Germany, they would have their best chances if they separated. Israel took Edith and one other daughter to Belgium, while some of the other children immigrated to Palestine and the United States. Reisel and one other daughter remained in Leipzig, and unable to leave Germany, were eventually deported to a camp and did not survive. Following the German occupation of Belgium, Edith was sent to a succession of camps in France, before being placed in a children's home there. When the home was dissolved in 1943, she was hidden by Catholic nuns until the time when she was smuggled into Spain, and eventually, Portugal. She had hoped to go to Palestine to rejoin two of her siblings there, but instead left on the ship "Nyassa" from Lisbon for New York in September 1944, and rejoined one of her sisters who had settled in Philadelphia. It was there that she later met another Holocaust survivor, Jack (Jakob) Wornian (1925-1975), originally from Wilno (Vilnius), and the two married in 1950, and became citizens of the United States in 1951.