War Memorabilia
Memories of dark days for our people.
Feldafing, a Memoir
Germany
Simon Schochet
"Feldafing" is a book written by my grandfather,Dr. Simon Schochet, based on his own personal experiences after being liberated by the Americans from the Dachau Concentration Camp. He was sent to Feldafing, where many Jewish survivors began to rehabilitate after their miserable experiences in the camps.
This artifact is very important to our family because it allows all of us to understand his life of survival and the extreme conditions of agony in the camps and afterwards looking back at the camps. This book is taught in many universities where students can learn what happened in this period of history through my grandfather's memoir.
Nazi Germany Passport
Vienna, Austria
Grandma Helen
This is my grandmother's passport to leave Austria and escape Hitler and the annihilation of the Jews in Europe. She traveled by herself from Vienna in 1939 at age 17. She was allowed to enter the U.S. because she was sponsored by a relative in Boston. Her older sister survived by hiding in Belgium, but the rest of her family died in the holocaust.
This is a German Passport even though my grandmother's country of origin was Austria. This was because Austria had been annexed by Germany, although my grandmother remembers that the "Nazis were welcomed with opened arms by the Austrians."
If my grandma had not been issued this passport our family would not exist.