Joseph and Margaret Weiss family papers

Joseph and Margaret Weiss family papers 

Joseph and Margaret Weiss family papers 

boxes 3 

The Joseph and Margaret Weiss family papers include correspondence, writings, genealogical materials, newspaper clippings, cardboard tags, and photographs documenting Joseph and Margaret Weiss’s immigration to the United States from Vienna via Czechoslovakia, France, and England in 1939 and their efforts to help their mothers emigrate from Prague and Vienna. Most of the correspondence is between the Weisses and their mothers Mathilde Goldstein in Vienna and Olga Weiss in Prague. Correspondence with Mathilde Goldstein sometimes includes Mathilde’s niece Bertha Reichmann, and correspondence with Olga Weiss sometimes includes the family of Olga’s brother in law Arnošt Pachner. The files include photographs of Olga Weiss’s last letters to Arnošt and Artur Pachner from Theresienstadt and Izbica. Additional correspondents include family members and friends. The correspondence describes life in America, Czechoslovakia, and Austria, documents immigration efforts, and traces the travel plans, welfare, and fates of relatives and friends. Writings include autobiographical narratives by Joseph and Margaret Weiss as well as unattributed essays, poems, and notes that were probably also written by the Weisses. Genealogical materials include family trees and family history. Clippings from American, Austrian, and Czech newspapers document anti-Jewish regulations imposed in Czechoslovakia and deportations of Jews from Austria. The collection also includes two cardboard tags bearing Joseph Weiss’s name. Photographs include three black and white snapshots of two memorial stones for Alfred and Moritz Goldstein and Sophie and Max Weiss, who died before the war, and Mathilde Goldstein and Olga Weiss, who perished in the Holocaust. 

The Joseph and Margaret Weiss family papers are arranged as four series: I. Correspondence, 1934-1978, II. Writings, approximately 1951-1978, III. Genealogy, clippings, and tags, approximately 1938-1977, IV. Photographs, approximately 1940s-1950s