Neufeld family papers

Rita Neufeld is originally from northeastern Poland. She had three daughters: Nina Crovetti settled in Milan, Italy; Sofia Pevsner initially settled in the Soviet Union, and then in Italy and later the United States (Washington, DC); and Helena Mowszowicz settled in Warsaw, Poland. Correspondence between various members of the extended family of Helena Mowszowicz (née Neufeld), including to and from sisters in Washington, DC and in Milan, Italy, in their attempts to help her emigrate from German-occupied Poland, 1939-1943. Includes correspondence from Helena’s husband, David Mowszowicz, who had escaped Poland and settled in Palestine, in the hope that his wife and young son would be permitted to legally immigrate and join him there. The most extensive correspondence is from Helena Mowszowicz to her sister, Nina Crovetti, who lived in Milan, Italy, and who was trying to obtain a visa for her to travel there with her son. Other correspondence from Mozes Ginzburg and David Mowszowicz, first from Lithuania and then from Palestine, details further efforts to assist in the emigration of Helena and Jules (Jurek) Mowszowicz, and also contain letters from David in 1939 and 1973 explaining how and why he left his wife and son behind in Warsaw after the German invasion and fled to the Soviet Union and then Lithuania. The third Neufeld sister, Sofia (Zofia) Pevsner, who along with the sisters’ mother, Rita Neufeld, lived in Washington, DC, sent money orders to Helena and sought assistance from aid organizations in the United States, and her file contains documentation of both activities. The file for the sisters’ uncle, Hermann Rabinowicz, contains postcards that they had sent to him in Łódż, shortly after the German invasion, which were returned to them as he was no longer at that address. He wrote to them four years later from the Soviet Union, from a town near Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg).