United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Elise Schapira (1920-1998) was born in Bad Brückenau, Germany to Max Goldschmidt (1892-?) and Sibylla Goldschmidt (nee Klein, 1891-?). When Jews were forced to go to segregated schools, her family sent her to Würzburg. In 1939 they sent her to London where she worked as a maid. In 1940 she received her United States immigration quota number and arrived in New York in April. Meanwhile her parents and her brother were deported to Riga and perished.
The Elise Schapira papers include correspondence to Elise in New York from her parents in Frankfurt, photographs of her parents and brother before the Holocaust and of her family in the United States, and two versions of her brief testimony recounting her family life in Germany, her escape to England, her immigration to the United States, and the loss of her brother and parents in the Holocaust.
Elise Schapira papers
The Elise Schapira papers are arranged as a single series: I. Elise Schapira papers, 1939-1991
folders 3