The collection consists of notebooks, written by Joseph Polzer, in 1940 and 1941 in Chateau du Chaumont, France in a children’s home, and sketchbook also used in France with detached and additional drawings. Photographs of pre-war Austria, where Joseph was born in 1929. Along with his mother Mirrha, Jewish and originally Russian and father Karl Polzer, non-Jewish and Austrian, the family fled to France in 1938. By 1940, Joseph was placed at Chateau du Chaumont, a chateau used by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants that housed thousands of Jewish children. The Polzer family was able to leave by 1941 and came to the United States.
Joseph Polzer collection