Browse Items (1206 total)

Susan received this hymnal with an image of Jesus Christ. She carried the book to "hide in plain sight." She does not recall when she wrote her name on the interior cover.

The interior and exterior of the Lutheran Church in Trnava, Slovakia, where Susan was taken to be baptized in 1943. The family hoped baptism would protect her from the Nazis and their collaborators. She also received baptismal papers as evidence of…

After German and Slovak pressures, Czechoslovakia became Czech-Slovakia in 1938 after the Munich Pact, meaning the country had to surrender its border and defenses to Nazi Germany. On March 15, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Czech provinces under the…

Ilonka and Ludovit Sturc pictured together in 1938. Ludovit owned a print shop, which made the family exempt from deportation. However, in 1941, his business was "Aryanized."

The Reich Family (maternal side) circa 1920. Susan's mother, Ilonka, is…

Map showing the bombings directed at England during World War II by the Nazis.

A photograph of Doris's parents, Gertrude and Julius, in London, circa 1950.

Postcards circa 1910 and 1932 showing Klagenfurt's Neuer Platz (city hall). Before the annexation of Austria, the Klagenfurt Neuer Platz was known as an example of the German Renaissance era. Two famous monuments, the Dragon (Lindwurm) (created to…

Doris’s husband, Alfred (Fred) Schneider, was also a child in Austria in the 1930s. In 1934 he made his own Waffen Pass (Weapons Permit). The handmade pass represents how Fred processed the growing tensions in Austria, from the 1934 February…

In December 1938, Doris received a passport, issued by the Third Reich, so she and her mother could join her father in England. The Nazis stamped the letter “J” for Jude (Jew) (not pictured) on the first page of the passport.

Doris was holding her doll (pictured) when the Nazis entered her family's apartment flat during Kristallnacht. One Nazi swung an axe at Doris, but the doll head received the brunt of the impact, shattering it. Gertrude replaced the doll's head in…