Ella Spiegler papers

Birth certificate, passport, autograph book, newsletter, photograph, and other documents related to the immigration of Ella Spiegler (later Goldstein), who left Austria for the United States in 1939 as one of the fifty children sponsored by Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus. The Stammbuch is a booklet that was given to Ella before her departure from Vienna in 1939, and in which friends and relatives wrote poetry, greetings, drew pictures, and left other expressions that wished her well as she prepared to leave her homeland. However, since her father, Wilhelm, was the first family member who was able to leave Vienna, he took the book with him, and since he was not able to be reunited with his daughter until 1948, he kept the book with him during those years. As a result, there are also a few pages containing his writings, including drafts of letters to immigration authorities, and notes about expenses. Ella Spiegler Goldstein was born in Vienna, Austria on 29 September 1928, the daughter of Wilhelm and Clara (née Bromberger) Spiegler. Following the Nazi-led German annexation of Austria in 1938, the Spiegler family began making plans to emigrate. When the family heard about the efforts of an American couple, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, to sponsor fifty Jewish children from Vienna for immigration to the United States, they applied to have their daughter included, which she was. Ella left Europe in May 1939, with the other "50 children" selected by the Krauses, on the S.S. President Harding, which arrived in New York on 3 June 1939. She, with the other children, initially was sent to the Brith Sholomville childrens home, in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. While other children were soon reunited with their parents, Ella was not able to rejoin her parents, who had immigrated to England, and were not able to immigrate to the United States in 1948. In 1941, she moved to Newark, New Jersey, and after she finished her schooling, went to work in various clerical positions, at the RCA Corporation and later at a department store in Newark. In 1948 she met Benjamin Goldstein (born 21 April 1917), a native of Hartford, Connecticut, and the two were married the following year in Newark.