The Karl Peter and Victor Federer Archive (1937-1950)

Karl Peter Federer was born into a Jewish Czechoslovakian family in Prague in 1932, and was due to the German occupation sent to Norway at the age of seven with the Nansen Aid. He was placed with Meyer family in Bergen, where he lived until March 1941. His parents then insisted on their son being sent back to Prague due to the Nazi occupation of Norway. After about a year of the family living in Prague, they were deported to the Theresienstadt in 1942, and then in 1944 to Auschwitz. Here, Karl Peter and his mother Kathe were taken directly to the gas chambers, whilst his father survived the Holocaust. He remarried, fathered a son and eventually moved to Paraguay, but he kept in touch with the Meyers for several years. The archive does mainly consist of the letters from the Federer family to the Meyer couple during 1940-1945, both during their sons stay, his travel back to Prague and their deportation. Some of the later letters are also written by Karl Peter himself. After the war, the letters are written from Victor Federer, among other things to tell the Meyers about his wife and sons fate. There are also some photographs of the family, dating prewar and pre-deportation. The archive gives insight to the fate of one family, and a clear picture into the evacuation of Jewish children, the Norwegian foster homes care and the workings of the Nansen Aid. The letters dating immediate post war from Victor Federer also show the fate of the concentration camp survivors.