By Plimun Web Design
We need your help in locating Jewish refugees who came to San Francisco in the late 1930s and 1940 and their descendants. As restrictions tightened against Jewish people under Nazi rule in Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, several hundred Jews applied for entrance to the United States. They had the good fortune to have relatives and sponsors in the U.S. After traveling across Russia to China and Japan, they boarded ships for San Francisco. Dozens of families and individuals ended up at the Angel Island Immigration Station, underwent medical inspection and were detained for weeks because they did not have sufficient funds to reach their eventual destinations.Erika Lee and Judy Yung recounted the perilous journeys of Alice Edelstein, Alfred and Klara Marill, Hans Singer and Isaak Adler in Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Recently, AIISF interviewed Eva Schott Berek, Lotte Loebl Frank, and Harry Gluckman, whose stories are posted at www.aiisf.org/immigrant-voices. The database you see below was compiled by volunteers who reviewed files at the National Archives in San Bruno, California. Please contact AIISF by writing to info@aiisf.org or call 415 262.4429 if you recognize any of the individuals listed below. We would like to interview the descendants in order to get the full story on these brave and fortunate people who fled the Nazi regime. Most of these refugees lost their entire families in the Holocaust. Their stories remind us of that genocide must never be allowed to happen again to any group of people. This database also contains names and short profiles of Jewish refugees who came to Angel Island prior to 1939. After 1915, large numbers of Jews from Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. Many of them were men who had left their homelands to avoid military conscription. Families also fled because of anti-Jewish violence. Many families were able to enter the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
photos: Eva Schott Berek’s passport; Lotte Loeble Frank’s parents; Harry Gluckman’s father
