George Vulkan collection
The Vulkan family were descended from Nathan Wulkan (1834-1901), a manufacturer of clay pipes, who was born and lived in Oświęcim, Poland. He and his wife Sprince Wasserberg (1834-1932) had six children. One of these, Abraham (b. 1862), was a picture-frame maker who later went into the printing business. He married Amalie Tobias (1865-1941) from Milówka, Poland. Together they had 10 children: Rosa (Salomea), b. 28 September 1885, died in the Holocaust. Leopold (Loebl), b. 17 December 1887, died in the Holocaust. Augusta (Gusta) Kohn née Vulkan, b. 8 August 1889, died in the Holocaust. Marcel (Moshe), b. 20 July 1891, d. 16 October 1983. Regina (Regi), b. 20 July 1893, d. 5 September 1982. Aranka, b. 4 March 1895, d. 9 June 1979. Margit, b. 5 May 1897, d. 28 April 1968. Ernestine (Erna), b. 2 May 1899, died in the Holocaust. Ferdinand (Nandor; Nathan), b. 20 April 1901, d. 16 August 1975. Heinrich, b. 17 May 1905, d. 27 January 1950. In about 1896, they moved to Kassa (now Košice), then in Hungary. Four years later they relocated to Vienna’s Ninth District, where the Vulkan family settled until the arrival of the Nazis. Six of the Vulkan children were able to escape Vienna before the start of the war. The remaining members of the family were forced to move to Föstergasse in the Second District. Amalie died here on 14 December 1941. Abraham was deported to Theresienstadt on 24 September 1942, where he died. Their four children who could not leave Austria were also murdered in the Holocaust.
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The collection is arranged by family member. Each file contains the letters sent by that family member to their immediate family followed by letters sent to more distant relatives and non-family members, as well as letters received. George's notes on and rough translations of the letters have been collected at the end of each file.
The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence between Abraham and Amalie's children in England, Scotland and Austria, in particular letters to Marcel and his sister Regina (Regi). A major theme of the letters is the attempts to help the family members in Austria escape to Britain and the frustrations arising out of the difficulty of this. There are also materials on German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian refugees’ life in Britain in the 1940s, as well as notes and texts written by George Vulkan on his family history.
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George Vulkan wrote an <a href"https://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/12680">autobiography published by the AJR (class no. S3b). He also gave an <a href"https://wiener.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/7254">interview to Shalvata (acc. no. 2012/34).