Mary Berg collection

Contains four photo albums, one scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and loose photographs relating to American diarist Mary Berg, survivor of the Łódź Ghetto, Warsaw Ghetto, and Vittel internment camp. Mary Berg was born Miriam Wattenberg on October 10, 1924. Her father was Shaya (Sruel, Stanley) Wattenberg, a local gallery owner in prewar Łódź, and her mother, Lena, was an American citizen. Mary and her sister qualified for American citizenship by virtue of their mother's nationality. After the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the family relocated to Warsaw, where they were later forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. Prior to the liquidation of the ghetto, the sisters and their parents were detained in prison in Pawiak in July 1942, before being transferred to the Vittel internment camp for British and American citizens in January 1943. They were sent to the United States aboard the Gripsholm as part of a prisoner exchange in 1944. Mary's diary was serialized in American newspapers in 1944, making it one of the earliest accounts of the Holocaust to be written in English. She later withdrew from public life, and died in April 2013.