BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Camilla's Purse

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Camilla's Purse:

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Description of Pictures: Camilla's Purse
January 24, 2014 – May 4, 2014
Holocaust survivor Camilla Gottlieb’s ordinary life in Vienna was upended by World War II into crisis, imprisonment, and ultimately a new life in the United States. Her purse, discovered by her family after her death in 1964, contained letters and papers that trace her trials and triumphs. These documents reveal a compelling story of captivity in the Theresienstadt concentration camp to eventual reunion with her daughter in New York. On view are the purse; her 1884 birth certificate; the suitcase, with her identification tag, that she carried during her journey to America; and various personal items collected from her time in the camp through her new life in America.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. PURSE_140325_014.JPG: An Ordinary Person, An Extraordinary Life: The story of America includes the history of those who have lived through extraordinary circumstances. Camilla Gottlieb's ordinary life in Vienna suddenly became endangered when the Germans invaded and annexed Austria in 1938. As a Jew, she confronted devastating changes. With their Jewish heritage reviled and their Austrian citizenship revoked, Camilla and her husband Hermann recognized their peril and attempted to come to the United States.
2. PURSE_140325_017.JPG: World War II and Migration: The documents Camilla Gottlieb secured in her purse tell the story of her crisis, imprisonment, and survival. Contemporary US immigration laws impeded the Gottliebs and other potential refugees with restrictive country-of-origin quotas and age limitations. Because Hermann's birthplace was Romania, both he and Camilla, as his wife, came under a small Romanian quota, and were refused entrance to America. The papers Camilla saved over the pre-war years, during World War II, and in the chaotic post-war period document a dark and turbulent time in Europe. They serve as a record of the events that she, and many victims like her, endured and witnessed.
3. PURSE_140325_021.JPG: A Family History: 1918-1938: Camilla kept her family's official papers, including her Heimatschein -- proof of residency record -- inside her purse to document their lives in Austria. Camilla Klaber, one of Vienna's 200,000 Jews, married Hermann Gottlieb in 1918 at the age of thirty-four. She was an accomplished seamstress and pianist and Hermann, a chemical engineer, held a prestigious civil service post as head of the Research Institute of the Austrian Mint. The Gottliebs enjoyed a secure and cultured home life in pre-World War II Vienna. Their only child Lony was born in 1919. Although respected Austrians, their citizenship was disregarded and their contributions dismissed when the Germans took control of the country in 1938. Eighteen-year-old Lony and Camilla's brother Felix and his wife escaped to America; the war left Camilla and Hermann stranded in Vienna.
4. PURSE_140325_029.JPG: Lived Interrupted: 1938-1941: Viennese Jews experienced the Nazi policies of anti-Semitism when the German army marched into Austria in March 1938. After the Anschluss (German-Austrian union) the new government barred Jews from schools and universities, closed their businesses, and looted and confiscated their homes, forcing them to leave or face deportation. Many Austrian Jews tried to emigrate, but the intricacies of this process were daunting, with complicated paper work and tight deadlines. Near the end of 1938 the Gottliebs finally succeeded in getting their daughter Lony to America. Once in the United States, Lony made vigorous efforts to save her parents. Her imploring letter to US government appointee Sidney Hillman in 1941 indicated her devotion.
5. PURSE_140325_033.JPG: Depotation: 1942: Camilla's train ticket to Theresienstadt gave her a new identity -- TR* 918 -- a designation that remained with her until liberation. Despite Lony's four-year effort to get her parents out of Austria, Camilla and Hermann, along with 1,000 other Viennese Jews, were deported to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, on August 20, 1942. Many were elderly Jewish war veterans or eminent members of the Jewish community. The Theresienstadt cocentration camp, a dismal fortress, had characteristics of a ghetto and served as a transit point to extermination camps. Soon after their arrival, officials notified the Gottliebs of their imminent deportation of Poland, a certain death. According to one of Camilla's letters, they were "saved by a relative of ours, Captain Klaber" and their names were removed from the transfer list.
6. PURSE_140325_041.JPG: December 6, 1939 Letter from Lony Gottlieb to the Immigration and Naturalization Service: To get her parents out of Austria, Lony went through the normal immigration channels in America. But because her father was born in a part of the old Austrian Empire recently ceded to Romania, both parents were subject to the small quotas assigned to that country. In this letter she petitioned -- unsuccessfully -- for their immigration on a preference quota visa.
7. PURSE_140325_042.JPG: Excerpted from a Letter to the Department of Labor, Immigration and Naturalization Division from Lony Gottlieb, December 6, 1939 Gentlemen: In connection with my request, submitted to the American consul in Vienna, Germany, to grant immigration visas to my parents, Hermann and Kamilla Gottlieb... ... Although not having become a citizen yet I should be utmost grateful if you would kindly permit my parents to immigrate into the United States on a preference-quota visa. The affidavit of support, submitted on behalf of my parents, shows that I am fully able to take care of and to support them... ... I see no other way to save them from deportation to Poland and, in consequence, from being exposed to inexpressible misery, unless you will give kind consideration to my application. Unfortunately, the German authorities are about to carry out their deportation projects in the very next [crossed out and "near" written in] future.
8. PURSE_140325_047.JPG: 1884: Geburts-Zeugnis: Camilla's birth certificate was one of the most important papers in her purse. With an official stamp, it documented her place of birth as Vienna, Austria, in December 1884. In April 1903 the Registration Bureau of the Vienna Jewish Cultural Community reconfirmed the date.
9. PURSE_140325_058.JPG: about 1930: Purse: Carried by Camilla to Theresienstadt, this purse contained records of her family's identity, heritage, and prewar life. Without these she was a nonentity. The purse traveled with Camilla to America. After her death, her family found it at the back of her closet with all the papers intact.
10. PURSE_140325_071.JPG: about 1938 Judenstern Badge: The Nazis in Vienna required Jews to wear a yellow Star of David to publicly identify them and single them out in their community.
11. PURSE_140325_073.JPG: Letter to Lony Gottlieb from Council of Jewish Communities, July 12, 1945 In reply to your cable concerning the searching for your relatives, which reached us some time ago, we beg to inform you, that we did not find any traces in our records nor in those of any competent office here. As at this time the postal connections with Vienna were not yet re-opened, we had to wait for a possibility to communicate with the Jewish community in Vienna. This change he have got only the other day. Answering to our inquiries the Jewish community in Vienna informed us, the searched persons are not present, resp. are missing. -- Council of Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia Excerpted from a Letter to Lony Gottlieb from Sgt. Erwin Geringer, United States Army, August 8, 1945 Dear Mrs. Bodansky, I am in receipt of your letter of August 1st, and I want to assure you that I shall gladly try to assist you in getting news from your mother in Vienna as soon as I get the chance... AS soon as I can I shall establish contact with the Kultusgemeinde and I shall let you know then about everything I have accomplished in your case. I hope most sincerely that I will soon be able to send you satisfactory news. I remain with sincerest regards and best wishes, yours, E. Geringer
12. PURSE_140325_079.JPG: about 1942 Identity Paper and Work Classification: Camilla was required to carry this identity paper that listed her name, residence, date of birth, and the rules of compliance. Her work classification indicated she was a "dressmaker" who made and repaired uniforms. The other segment recorded her illnesses, the result of rampant disease and malnutrition in the camp. She had scarlet fever in 1942.
13. PURSE_140325_087.JPG: about August 1942 Transport Document: This small train ticket stub documented a transforming moment in Camilla's life -- her forced transport from Vienna to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
14. PURSE_140325_094.JPG: about 1942 Ration Coupon: The Theresienstadt Jewish Council issued Camilla this ration coupon -- Bezugsschein -- signed by council chairman Jacob Edelstein. He was later deported to Auschwitz, Poland, and murdered.
15. PURSE_140325_099.JPG: June 1945 Western Union Telegraph: Russians liberated Theresienstadt in May 1945. On June 28 Camilla sent a Western Union telegram from Theresienstadt to her daughter Lony in New York.
16. PURSE_140325_107.JPG: 1942-1945 Surviving the Inhumanity: All of the scraps and pieces of paper Camilla held onto documented her life in the concentration camp, where friends constantly disappeared, and some 33,000 died. The Nazis used Camilla's skills as a seamstress in Theresienstadt: this may have ensured her survival. She worked more than eleven hours a day sewing German uniforms. Fear, severe restrictions, and deprivations characterized life in the camp. After Hermann died of a lung infection in 1943, Camilla suffered alone in cramped barracks on limited food rations.
17. PURSE_140325_112.JPG: about 1940 Suitcase: Camilla boarded the SS Marine Perch for New York with this suitcase in June 1946. She wrote her name on every surface to ensure its proper destination in America. The suitcase's hang tag noted the United States Lines, a transatlantic shipping and passenger company, and her daughter Lony's New York City address.
18. PURSE_140325_118.JPG: 1945-1952 Perseverance, Liberation, and Triumph: On May 8, 1945, Russian forces liberated the Theresienstadt camp survivors. Camilla returned to Vienna on July 7, 1945. Documents in in the purse trace Lony and Camilla's frantic efforts to locate one another through the Red Cross, the US military, and the Council of Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia. US Army Sgt. Erwin Geringer's August 8, 1945, letter reassured Lony that he would attempt to find her mother in Austria. Camilla in Vienna and Lony in New York assaulted the "paper wall" of US immigration policy to bring Camilla to America. Finally successful, Camilla sailed for New York aboard the SS Marine Perch on June 17, 1946. In the following years many others came, and by 1952 more than 137,000 Jewish refugees found a new life in the United States.
19. PURSE_140325_133.JPG: 1959 Letter from US Immigration Service to Camilla Gottlieb: In 1959 the Immigration Service notified Camilla that she was eligible to become a US citizen. A blank application for citizenship was found in her purse.
20. PURSE_140325_138.JPG: June 17, 1946 Embarkation Card: Camilla's vessel sailed from Bremen, Germany, to New York.
21. PURSE_140325_144.JPG: Summer 1945 Certificate: On July 7, 1945, Camilla returned to Vienna, Austria, and registered with the Office of Jewish Community. She joined thousands of displaced persons desperately seeking any surviving family or friends. Before the war around 200,000 Jews lived in Vienna. When Camilla returned home, only some 8,000 remained.
22. PURSE_140325_152.JPG: 1952-1964 Reunion and Renewal: Camilla kept mementoes of her new life, including a handmade card from her grandson Harvey and pictures of their time together in America. She had witnessed horrors, survived disease, escaped death, and endured. Like many Holocaust survivors, she tried to leave her past behind. Once united with her daughter and son-in-law in New York, she enjoyed family activities and the love of her grandchildren. Still active, she continued her work as a seamstress and embroiderer. Though eligible for US citizenship, she remained a displaced person. Lony's family only fully learned of Grandma Camilla's World War II Holocaust experience when they found her purse filled with documents of her past after her death in 1964. By saving the papers that outline her life, she provided a legacy to her family and her new country.
23. PURSE_140325_163.JPG: about 1950 Camilla's Hat Camilla Gottlieb in America wearing the hat seen on the mantle
24. PURSE_140325_182.JPG: Camilla's Purse
25. PURSE_140325_188.JPG: Camilla's Purse Camilla Gottlieb was a Holocaust survivor. Her purse, discovered by her family after her death, contained letters and papers that trace her trials and triumphs. These documents reveal a compelling story of imprisonment, pain of separation, and through emigration, a joyful uniting with family in America.
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2014 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Winchester, VA, Nashville, TN, and Atlanta, GA), Michigan to visit mom in the hospice before she died and then a return trip after she died, and my 9th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City, Sacramento, Oakland, and Los Angeles). Ego strokes: Paul Dickson used one of my photos as the author photo in his book "Aphorisms: Words Wrought by Writers". Number of photos taken this year: just over 470,000.
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