Gordon family papers

The collection contains papers created and collected by Alfred and Lore Gordon, two German-Jewish refugees from Elberfeld (Wuppertal). Alfred Gordon né Auerbach (1916-2003) came to Britain in 1939 with the help of a relative who was already in the country. With Lore Heimann (1923-2020), whom he knew from the Jewish Sports Club in Elberfeld (Wuppertal), he arranged for several children to escape to Britain, including Lore and her sister Ursula. Alfred and Lore maintained contact in Britain and married in July 1942. They had three children: Richard (b. 1947), Margaret (b. 1952) and Barrie (b. 1954).

In addition to the papers of the immediate Gordon family, the collection contains materials on Alfred’s and Lore’s extended family, the Auerbachs and the Heimanns respectively. The Auerbachs were Alfred’s parents, Max (1866-1919) and Paula (1877-1950), and brothers, Eugen (1898-1944) and Rudolf (1900-1960). Max Auerbach had owned a business selling flour and animal feed; after he died, Alfred's brother Rudolf took over Max’s role. Paula, Rudolf and Claire, Rudolf's wife, came to Britain with Alfred’s help, while Eugen fought in the French Foreign Legion before being captured and sent to Auschwitz.

The Heimanns were Josef (1893-1961) and Carla (1891-1954), Lore’s parents, her brother Albert (1921-1995) and her sister Ursula (1926-2015). Josef and Carla had met at the Heimann family store, Gebrüder Kaufmann, where Carla was head of the workroom. The Heimann children came to Britain before the outbreak of war, while the older generation remained in Germany: Carla was a Christian, and this may have helped delay Josef, who was Jewish, being deported before 1944, when he was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Both Carla and Josef survived the war.

The collection also contains documents belonging to the Buchans, the family Lore stayed with as a child refugee. These include the papers of Gertrude (1882-1950), with whom Lore first lived when she arrived, and Harry (1874-1956) and Ethel (1876-1956), who took her in after Gertrude was called up to serve in a hospital, as well as Harry and Ethel’s daughter Joy (1917-1988), with whom Lore remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Lore Gordon kept the collection at her home. The first set of materials came to the Wiener Holocaust Library from there in October 2016. The bulk of this tranche was letters and telegrams from Josef and Carla Heimann in Germany to Lore and her family in England. Margaret Gordon, Alfred and Lore’s daughter, who arranged the donation, had placed these letters and other items in acetate, assigned them a number, digitised, transliterated and translated them, and captured their metadata in an Excel sheet. The number given by Margaret has been noted on the documents.

Margaret donated the main body of the collection, which had been moved to her home after her mother’s death, in May 2021. This accrual included the long set of correspondence between Alfred and Lore, as well as much of the family history material, official documents and photographs.

Another set of materials came to the library from Stephen Patterson, son of Ursula, Lore’s younger sister, in June 2021. These documents belonging to Ursula represent most of the materials under the reference number 2129/3/3, but they also included some letters to Albert Heimann from Carla and Joseph. Margaret Gordon had included them in her list of documents, and their former reference numbers have been noted.

In July 2021, Margaret made a further small donation of two bags of material.

Throughout the period, Margaret supplied the library with electronic documents. Most of these were scans of the physical items, although they also included Margaret’s transliterations and translations of the original set of letters and the versions of Lore’s and Alfred’s memoirs which she hoped to have printed. These electronic documents are also available.

Donated 31.10.2016

Donor: Margaret Gordon