Ruth Wiener collection
Extent and Medium
1 folder
Biographical History
Ruth Wiener (b. 1927) was the eldest daughter of Alfred Wiener, founder of the Wiener Library, formerly Jewish Central Information Office, and Margerete Wiener née Saulmann. She was born in Berlin and had two sisters, Eva and Miriam. From 1934 the family lived in Amsterdam where her father ran the Jewish Central Information Office, until she and her siblings and mother were eventually deported to Westerbork and then Bergen Belsen. They failed to escape to freedom by a narrow margin. They managed to survive the war, though her mother succumbed to Typhus, which she contracted in the camps, shortly after they were freed on a prisoner exchange programme.
After the war Ruth met and married Paul Klemens, a refugee from Austria, and then settled in the US in 1959 after first residing in Australia.
Acquisition
Donated 14.1.2014
Donor: Michael Klemens
Scope and Content
The papers include pre-war documents and correspondence while Ruth lived in Amsterdam; material documenting life in Westerbork and Bergen Belsen camps including diary and plan of Westerbork; postwar correspondence from her father, who treated her as head of the family in his absence and after her mother's death; also papers of the Klemens family.
In addition readers need to book a reading room terminal to view digital content including video interviews with Ruth and Paul Klemens, c1980s
Conditions Governing Access
Open
People
- Wiener, Margarete
- Klemens, Ida
- Wiener, Ruth
- Wiener, Alfred
- Klemens, Walter
- Klemens, Paul
Places
- Shanghai
- Amsterdam
- Berlin
- United States
- Great Britain