United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Charles Albert Weingarten was born on January 13, 1941, in Nice, France, to Margarethe Weingarten, an actress, and Rudolf Gelb. Margarethe was born in 1904 in Leipzig, Germany, to a family of Belarusian and Polish furriers. She and her first husband, Karl Albert Foerst, left Germany for South America in the early 1930s, but Margarethe became ill and they moved to Paris, France. On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish youth walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat, who died two days. Nazi Party officials claimed it was the act of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and used it as a pretext for Kristallnacht, the violent anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany on November 9-10. Margarethe and Karl, who were active in left-wing politics, were arrested by the French police and deported to Germany. Karl was shot in Buchenwald on January 20, 1939. Margaret was able to return to Paris, accompanied by her mother, Glika Chaya Weingarten. In May 1940, Germany invaded France and Margarethe fled to Nice where she met Rudolf Gelb. Rudolf was a married Austrian Jew who had escaped from Dachau concentration camp in Germany and was in France as a foreign worker. In 1940, not long after Margarethe became pregnant, she was were sent to Gurs internment camp. Her mother was able to bribe someone in the camp and she was soon released. They returned to Nice and settled in the Italian occupied section where Charles was born. In 1943, the Germans occupied southern France. Margarethe hid with Charles in a basement. In July, she obtained false papers for them as Catholics and moved with Charles to the grounds of a villa owned by the Matteudi family. Rudolf escaped to Switzerland. Glika was given a hiding place in the convent of the Sisters of the Poor in Nice. Margarethe made canvas shoes to sell, but she made very little. They often had little to eat and Charles suffered from severe malnutrition and chronic bronchitis. Nice was liberated in late August 1944 and the war ended in May 1945. Charles was sent to recuperate in a Jewish children’s home in Switzerland. Rudolf survived the war in Switzerland and returned to Austria. Margarethe married Karl Ferdinand Delius, a photographer and journalist originally from Berlin. Margarethe, 65, passed away in 1969. Charles immigrated to the United States in the late 1960s, but returned to France in the 1990s.
boxes oversize folders 15 13
The Charles Weingarten papers are arranged as six series: Series 1: Biographical materials, 1930-2014, Series 2: Correspondence, 1920-1995, Series 3: Delius family papers, approximately 1898-2002, Series 4: Photographs, approximately 1900-1975, Series 5: Printed materials, 1943-1992, Series 6: Restitution, 1933-2009
The Charles Weingarten papers include biographical materials, correspondence (some illustrated), photographs, printed materials, and restitution files documenting Weingarten’s extended family, hiding with his mother under a false identity in Nice, France, during World War II, their postwar lives, and Weingarten’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain compensation for Holocaust-era claims. The collection also includes records documenting the family of Weingarten’s stepfather, Karl Delius. Biographical materials include real and falsified identification papers for Charles and Margarethe Weingarten, Charles Weingarten’s medical records and membership cards, a certificate documenting Margarethe Weingarten’s liberation from Gurs in 1940, and records documenting her artistic career and her health. This series also includes electronic files containing extensive genealogical research and family trees compiled by Charles Weingarten. The correspondence series consists of extensive postwar correspondence from Margaret Weingarten and her mother and sisters, Paula and Charlotte, as well as postwar correspondence among Weingarten family members and friends. Additional correspondence documents aid that Margarethe and Charles Weingarten received after the war from individuals and relief organizations, Rudolf Gelb’s experiences as a volunteer foreign worker in France in 1940, and Charles’ experiences recuperating in children’s homes in Switzerland after the war and with Jewish youth groups in France in the 1960s. This series also includes illustrated holiday cards created by Charles Weingarten after the war for his mother. These cards include pencil, ink, and crayon drawings and watercolors by Weingarten, and some include photographs of Weingarten and his mother. Delius family papers consist of correspondence, photographs, and business records documenting the family of Charles Weingarten’s stepfather, Karl Ferdinand Delius, and their photography studio. Photographs include pictures of Weingarten, his mother, his biological father, his kindergarten class, and locations in Nice including the home where they hid during the last few years of the war. Three photograph albums include pictures of Charles Weingarten’s extended family in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Paraguay. Printed materials include a 1944 pamphlet describing Nazi persecution of Jews in Nice, reproductions of a letter written to Maréchal Pétain by a French woman describing her horror at the roundup of Jews in the Nice area for deportation, clippings about wartime and postwar France, the antifascist poetry pamphlet Deutschland muss leben…!,, a postwar publication about Jewish organizations in France, a booklet of cartoon drawings by Simon Haimovici, publications by survivor groups, and programs from postwar cultural events in France. Restitution files document Weingarten’s unsuccessful efforts in the 1990s and 2000s to obtain compensation for Holocaust-era claims related to issues such as bank accounts, mortgages, forced labor, and insurance policies. This series also includes wartime and postwar records documenting his mother’s and grandmother’s efforts to pursue restitution claims in the 1950s and 1960s.
Charles Weingarten papers