Letter
1 image
- Held by
- Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)
- Dates
- October 29, 1941 (indexed as 1941)
- Level
- item
- Scope & content
- One page. Narrative: In the 1920’s Serge and Sophie Philipson (nee Orbach) left Berlin for Paris due to rising antisemitism. On July 15, 1930 their daughter Rachel was born. Serge, Sophie and Rachel were Polish citizen, they never got either the German or the French citizenship. In Paris, Serge worked for Les Modes Modernes, the hat factory of his brother-in-law, Henri. When an opportunity to expand the business in Ireland arose, Serge moved to Galway. The new factory opened in July 1938. In August 1939, Sophie, Rachel, and 4 other family members (Rachel’s cousin Stéphane, his maternal grandmother Néné, Serge’s sister Esther and Serge’s sister-in-law Choura) left for Cabourg, in Normandy. After the winter 1939-1940 it became difficult to communicate with Ireland but Rachel and Sophie could still send and receive letter from Serge. At the end of winter 1940, the group moved to Néris and in July 1940, after the occupation of France by Germany, they settled in the zone libre in the village of Cauterets, on the border with Spain. They were reunited with Robert, Serge’s brother. In August 1942, 4 family members (Sophie’s sister Ella and her husband Ernest, their daughter Ruth, Serge’s siblings Robert and Esther) were arrested by local police and deported. They were not seen again. At the beginning of 1943, Sophie, her mother Augusta and Rachel moved to Maubourguet. In April 1943, they moved to Cannes in Hotel Victoria with Henri, Stéphane and Néné. Henri, Sophie and Augusta went into hiding together while cousins Stéphane and Rachel were taken care of by Néné and returned to Maubourguet. In January 1944, Henri, Sophie and Augusta were denounced and arrested. They were transferred to Marseille before being sent by train to Drancy transit camp from where they were deported. It is believed they were killed in a Polish killing centre. In 1944, Rachel moved from one place to another – under a non-Jewish identity - and continued to correspond with her father. In June 1945, she reunited with her father Ireland. They had not seen each other for 6 years. In 1951, Rachel got married. In 1954, she immigrated to Montreal.
- In the picture
- DocumentFactoryHatLetterLetterheadMontrealSignatureTelegramTypewrittenTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.
- Location
No place found in this description yet.
Where
More details
- Extent
- Letter : Paper : Beige, black ; Ht: 26,6 cm x W: 20,9 cm
- Genre / form
- textual record
- Format
- Document
- Text in the image
- 29thOct.'41J.Wilczur,Esq.,2064 Mansfield St.,Montreal, Canada.My dear Mr.Wilczur,YoursIt gave me great relief and pleasure to receive your letter and to hear that you are now safe in Canada with your family and that you have even got a job already.Now I have noted all your remarks concerning the Hat Trade bit it is impossible in these difficult times to introduce new things in our Factory as we have great difficulty trying to carry on with the old. I might tell you that we are still going strong and have sufficient supplies for another twelve months and our actual production is 3,000 per day so really from a business point of view we have no complaints although we have a great fight to get supplies of all the thousand and one things a Hat Factory needs.There is something, however, that you could do for us and that is to send us Fashion Books and new ideas, if you have any, about hats. Of course, we shall pay any expenses which you may incur.Also there is one great problem which affects our Factory very much and this is the carton question. We did order from Canada a year ago 45 tons of cardboard which we would have made up in cartons ourselves as we have a plant for making cartons. However, owing to shipping difficulties we cannot get in the stuff so if you could do anything about this you would be doing us a great favour.Now in regards to my family, I receive news sometimes by telegram and they are all well. It is still a question as to whether or not they will be able to come over and I do not know how it will turn out.I wish you and your family all the best and remain,Read automatically; may contain mistakes.
- Language
- English
- Harvested
- 2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot
Digital objects at the source
- imageOpen original at source ↗2002_08_102.jpg