Ullrich Remak was the son of Ludwig Remak (1895-1938) and Nanni (née Loewe) Remak (born 8 August, 1900, Osterode, East Prussia), who were married in Breslau in April 1925. Ullrich was born in Breslau on 21 April 1926, and a sister, Marianne, was born in 1934. Following a lengthy illness, Ludwig Remak died in December 1938. None of the extant documents explain when or how Ullrich Remak arrived in Scotland on a Kindertransport, but it appears that he had arrived in London in either July or August 1939, and went to Glasgow shortly thereafter, where he found his sister Marianne as well. After her children were sent to Britain, Nanni Remak continued her efforts to emigrate from Germany, initialing applying for a visa to immigrate to the United States, but eventually turning her efforts toward immigrating to Palestine, which she succeeded in doing, settling in Haifa and working there as a nurse from 1941 onward. Nanni’s father and Ullrich’s maternal grandfather, Max Loewe (1868-1942?), was sent to the ghetto in Theresienstadt, and according to a search conducted by the International Tracing Service, was deported from there on 29 September 1942 to Maly Trostinec, where he was presumably killed. Based on the documents in the present collection, in particular a letter that Remak sent to a former school administrator many years later, Remak appeared to have lived at the Birkenward Hostel in Skelmorlie until 1948, when he would have been 22 years old, and to have immigrated to Israel around 1951.
Ullrich Remak papers
Correspondence, personal identification documents, immigration documents, newsletters, and other documents related to the immigration of Ullrich Remak from Breslau, Germany to Scotland on a Kindertransport in 1939, his subsequent life at the Birkenward Hostel in Skelmorlie, Scotland, and efforts by his mother, Nanni Remak, to emigrate from Germany to Palestine. The collection largely consists of material created or collected by Remak in relation to his time at the Birkenward Hostel, with the bulk of this material dating from 1939 to 1942. Although there are government-issued identification cards and correspondence from the Refugee Children’s Aid Committee in Glasgow, most of the materials consist of games and newsletters compiled by Remak and his classmates at the Birkenward Hostel, who belonged to a self-designated “Refugee Club.” Documents related to the club include a booklet with samples of fictitious currency for use by club members, and a handwritten newsletter, circulated among club members (with instructions on each issue to sign off after use and to keep the newsletter clean for the next reader), containing adventure stories, poems, drawings, games, jokes, and news stories, written by club members in either German or English. Other materials related to Remak’s time at Birkenward include a series of file cards with trivia questions and answers, possibly used as a quiz game, and a booklet with his report cards from 1936 to 1939, when he attended the Jüdisches Reform-Realgymnasium, a Jewish school in his native Breslau. The correspondence in this series includes two postcards that he received from his mother in 1939, shortly after his arrival in Britain; two letters from the Refugee Children’s Aid Committee, including one from 1948 congratulating Remak on his success and announcing the closing of Birkenward Hostel; a letter from an aunt (Mrs. Michaelis) in New York dated 1947 and a letter that Remak sent to a former administrator of Birkenward Hostel, hoping to draw up a directory of former residents in order to facilitate meetings and reunions, in 1966. The second series of documents, relating to Remak’s mother, Nanni, documents her efforts to emigrate from Germany following the departure of her son for Britain. This portion of the collection consists primarily of identification documents, letters of reference, birth and death certificates, and similar items that help sketch the outlines of Nanni Remak’s life in Breslau and then in Palestine, but offer no further information about her activities or the path of immigration. Also included is a letter from the International Tracing Service in response to inquiries about the fate of Nanni’s father, Max Loewe, and the death certificate for Ludwig Remak.
The collection is arranged into two series: 1. Ullrich Remak, 1936-1966, 2. Nanni Remak, 1924-1973, with materials arranged alphabetically by file folder title.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
box 1