Henry Knepler papers

Henry Knepler papers 

Henry Knepler (1922‐1999) was born Heinrich Wilhelm Knepler in Vienna to Hugo Knepler (1872‐1944) and Hedwig Moser Knepler (1888‐1962). Hugo Knepler owned the Guttmann Concert Management, one of the prominent concert agencies in Vienna, and later directed the Casino A.G. Hugo fled Vienna in 1939 to Monte Carlo where his cousin Hilda Lorant lived. He was arrested in 1944 and transported to Drancy and then Auschwitz. He did not survive. Henry Knepler traveled to England in February 1939 on a Kindertransport. He spent time in London and Portsmouth before being arrested as an enemy alien in May 1940. He was interned in Huyton and then on the Isle of Man before being transported to Canada in August 1940 aboard the MS Sobieski. In Canada he was interned in Trois Rivierès, New Brunswick, and Sherbrook. He obtained a BA and an MA in English literature before immigrating to the United States in 1946, where he completed his PhD in Chicago. He became a citizen in 1956. Hedwig Knepler survived the war in hiding in Vienna under a false identity with the help of Mela Deutsch‐Brady and others. She immigrated to the United States in 1947. Her sister, Alice (Lisl) Moser, died at Maly Trostinec in 1942, and her mother, Rosa Moser, died in Theresienstadt in 1943. 

Henry Knepler papers