We are pleased to announce that on Thursday 25 November 2021 the Library will be launching a new online Refugee Map resource. Supported by Arts Council England funding, this new digital resource will highlight the Library’s rich collections of Family Papers, making our archival material related to refugee stories more accessible.

A screenshot from the Library’s new digital Refugee Map

Drawn from the Library’s valuable refugee family papers, each collection on this digital resource traces a refugee family or family member’s journey, with individual records related to a specific location and period within their travels. Each record includes material such as handwritten diaries, photograph albums, identity and emigration papers, Red Cross letters and audio-visual recorded interviews.

These documents reveal and preserve the stories of the individuals and families that fled Nazi antisemitism and persecution in the years before, during and after the Second World War.

A photograph of Fanny Walter in the Civil Censorship Division of the European Command of the US Armed Forces, 1946.
Fanny Walter (nee Pilpel) in uniform, c.1946. She worked as an interpreter for the Civil Censorship Division of the European Command of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
A black and white pre-WWII photograph taken in Austria, 1937
Gertrud Tausinger (nee Weinreich) strolling in St Gilgen, Austria, in 1937, likely with her then-husband Emil Glaser.
Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.
Jewish identity card, 1939.
Jewish identity card of Ruth Bergmann, with photograph c.1939. In September 1939, Ruth and her family fled from Leipzig to the UK.
Wiener Holocaust Library Collections.

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Ludwig Neumann served and was wounded during the First World War (for which he was decorated). In 1938, having been forced to sell the company, Ludwig was interned in Dachau for a number of weeks, and released on the understanding that he would leave the country immediately. 

Ludwig travelled to Great Britain where he was briefly interned as an enemy alien. Following his release, however, he served as an anti-aircraft gunner for the British.

Ludwig Neumann received this anonymous hate mail (featured left) around the time of his naturalisation as a British citizen in 1947.