Walter and Elizabeth Richards family papers

Walter and Elizabeth Richards family papers 

Walter Richards (1901‐1953) was born Walter Reich on the outskirts of Poznań (Posen). He married Elizabeth Lewin (1906‐1994) who was born in Poznań to Heinrich (1869‐1943) and Elsa Lewin (nee Lesser, 1881‐1944). Elsa’s father, Hermann Lesser, owned a successful iron wares and farm machinery business. The Lewin family had moved to Breslau (Wrocław) after World War I and then to Berlin. Walter and Elizabeth Reich moved to Buenos Aires in the mid‐1930s and immigrated to the United States in 1938. They lived in Columbus, Ohio with Walter’s brother Hans and had son Thomas in 1939 before moving to San Francisco and changing their last name to Richards. Walter Reich worked in the banking industry and then in the film industry. Elizabeth Lewin had two sisters, Anne (born 1904) and Eva (born 1913). Anne married Hungarian Gyuri Olah and moved to Birmingham, England, before the outbreak of war and then to West Ealing. Eva never married and initially stayed with her parents in Berlin before joining the Olahs in Birmingham and West Ealing. Heinrich and Elsa Lewin were deported to Theresienstadt, where Heinrich Lewin died and from where Elsa Lewin was sent to her death at Auschwitz. Walter’s siblings were Arthur, Ellie, Charlotte, and Hans. Hans Reich immigrated to the United States in 1937 with his Catholic wife and settled first in Ohio and then in New Hampshire. Charlotte immigrated to the United States in 1940 and lived in Binghamton, working for the Agfa subsidiary Ansco, and then Brookline. Ellie emigrated to Palestine, and Arthur emigrated to India although he returned to Germany with his family after the war. 

Walter and Elizabeth Richards family papers