Members of various Jewish welfare organizations operating in Lisbon to rescue European Jewish refugees, are seated around a banquet table at a hotel in Lisbon.
Overview
- Caption
- Members of various Jewish welfare organizations operating in Lisbon to rescue European Jewish refugees, are seated around a banquet table at a hotel in Lisbon.
Among those pictured are Joseph Schwartz, Chairman of the European executive council of the American Joint Distribution Committee (at the head of the table) and Albert Nussbaum (standing between the windows on the right). - Date
-
1940 - 1942
- Locale
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Milton Koch
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Milton KochSource Record ID: Collections: 2003.285
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Albert Nussbaum (the uncle of donor Milton Koch) is the son of Gustave and Helaine (Kleinberg) Nussbaum. He was born February 4, 1898 in Monneren, Luxembourg. Albert had a brother, Rene (b. 1902), a sister Jeanne (b. 1900) and twin sisters, Margaretha (Martha) and Magdalena (b. 1907). Gustave Nussbaum owned a successful clothing factory called Palais de l'Habillement in Luxembourg. After his death in 1929, Albert took over the business. In addition to his business Albert played a prominent role in the Jewish community of Luxembourg. He served as treasurer of ESRA, the central Jewish welfare organization, from 1929 until his departure in the fall of 1940, and took a leading part in organizing assistance for Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria. In recognition of his contributions, Albert was elected to the Consistoire Israelite de Luxembourg (the representative Jewish body of the Duchy) in 1937. Albert's sister Margaretha fell in love with a Jewish refugee (originally from Poland) named Max (Moses) Koch. Max had been interned in Dachau for six months after Kristallnacht and was released only after his sister in Palestine (Miriam Serebrenik) used her familial connection to Robert Serebrenik, Grand Rabbi of the Duchy of Luxembourg, to secure him a place to go. Soon after his arrival in Luxembourg in April 1939, Max met Margaretha Nussbaum. The following year, in September 1940, the couple was wed and departed for Havana, Cuba, where their son Milton was born on December 28, 1944. Following the German invasion of Luxembourg on May 10, 1940, Albert became president of the Consistoire and began to devote all his time to the rescue of Jews under Nazi domination. When it became clear that the Jewish community had no alternative to deportation but emigration from Europe, Albert went to Lisbon, Portugal to organize their orderly emigration in cooperation with the American Joint Distribution Committee, the HICEM and the Portuguese Refugee Committee. To facilitate his task the Luxembourg government appointed him Commissioner of Emigration, an attache to the Minister of Justice. His most intense period of activity came between February and September of 1941. In February the American consulate in Luxembourg received authorization to issue immigration visas, and by June that consulate was closed down. During these months Albert worked tirelessly to arrange transportation for the thousands of refugees who had to depart from the last open port in Europe before their visas expired. In recognition of his abilities, Albert was appointed director of the JDC's new Transmigration Office in Lisbon on May 15, 1941. Albert continued in this capacity until he left Lisbon for the Dominican Republic in January 1942. He arrived in the U.S. on May 10, 1942. All his siblings were able to emigrate. Jeanne and her husband Joeph Nussbaum, togeteher with their two girls, escaped in Switzerland. Magdalena and her husband Fritz Fraenkel came to Cuba in 1940.
Joseph J. Schwartz (1899-1975), American rabbi and communal leader, who from 1940 to 1949 served as chief of European operations for the American Joint Distribution Committee. Born in the Ukraine, Schwarz immigrated to the US as a child in 1907. He studied for the rabbinate at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in New York and served as a congregational rabbi in New York from 1922 to 1925. Two years later he completed a Ph.D. at Yale in oriental studies and taught at universities in Egypt and the US for several years. In 1933 Schwartz became a social worker for the Brooklyn Jewish Federation, and in 1939, joined the staff of the JDC as an adjunct secretary. Soon after coming to the JDC, Schwartz was sent to Paris to be deputy director for European operations under Morris Troper. Just prior to the fall of Paris in June 1940 Troper and Schwartz transferred JDC headquarters to Lisbon. Troper returned to the US shortly afterwards and left Schwartz in charge of the European aid and rescue operations. Schwarz proceeded to reserve every available passenger berth on outgoing ships to insure that Jewish refugees arriving in Lisbon with visas for the U.S. or Latin America could travel to their destinations. He also sent relief parcels to Jews in French internment camps and channeled funds to Jewish relief and rescue organizations in France, as well as to the armed Jewish underground. Working in close cooperation with Saly Mayer, JDC representative in Switzerland, Schwarz provided funding which Mayer transmitted to Jewish communities throughout occupied Europe. Schwartz was also responsible for supplying funds for relief and resistance to Jews in the ghettos in Poland, for the shipment of relief parcels to Jewish refugees in the Soviet interior, for financing Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest, for underwriting illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine, and for providing money for Jewish institutions in Palestine. After the liberation Schwartz moved JDC headquarters back to Paris and began to send JDC teams to the newly established displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. He negotiated agreements with the new governments of Eastern Europe to send JDC workers to their countries and channeled large sums to sustain the survivors and reestablish businesses and community institutions. Schwartz also played a key role in facilitating the Bricha, the illegal movement of Jewish refugees from eastern to western and southern Europe in the period between 1945 and 1948. After the closure of most of the DP camps Schwartz returned to the U.S., where in 1950 he became chairman of the United Jewish Appeal. From 1955 until his retirement in 1970 he served as executive vice president of the State of Israel Bonds organization.
{Source: "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust," New York, MacMillan, 1990, pp. 1335-6/]
- Record last modified:
- 2004-04-16 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1149641
