Etta and Josef Kurz family papers
Extent and Medium
folders
3
Creator(s)
- Etta and Josef Kurz family
Biographical History
Etta Kurz was born on 24 December 1911 in Lemberg (Lwów), Galicia, the daughter of Mendel and Basia Pinkas. She married Josef Kurz in Lwów, Poland in 1937, and on 15 June 1938, their daughter, Helen, was born in the same city. Josef Kurz was born in Kalisz (later Poland), on 4 March 1894. Prior to World War II, he owned a textile factory in Lwów. Following the German invasion of this part of Poland in 1941, the family was forced to live in the Jewish ghetto in Lwów, from which Etta and her daughter escaped in December 1942. After initially sheltering with a farm family in Dunajow, she placed her daughter with another family, and obtaining false identity papers under the name Anna Kinal, she worked in various jobs, in Grodek and Tarnow, until the Soviets liberated that part of Poland in January 1945. She reunited with her daughter, and later her husband, and in the immediate post-war years, the family made their way to Kraków and then Vienna, where they lived until immigrating to the United States in 1947.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Helen Rothstein
Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2014 by Helen Rothstein
Scope and Content
Documents, correspondence, and photographs (65), related to the experiences of the family of Josef and Etta Kurz, and their daughter Helen (donor), in Lwów, Poland, prior to World War II, during the war, and in their immigration to the United States after the war. Includes pre-war financial and business records related to the family owned business and property in Lwów, false identification documents used by Etta Kurz during the German occupation of Poland, immigration and citizenship documents, pre-war family photographs, and post-war photographs of the Kurz family, and various friends they had met in displaced persons camps. Among the documents are those relating to military service of donor's stepfather; a false German identification card issued under the name Anna Kinal [real name: Etta Pinkas Roth] (donor's mother); a baptismal certificate issued under the name Anna Kinal, in Latin, c. March 22, 1943; a registration certificate stating that Anna Kinal lives in Tarnow, dated June 1945; a school certificate issued to Helena Kinal [real name: Felicja Roth] (donor), issued June 1945 in Tarnow; among others. The collection of photographs includes images of the Pincas family (donor's maternal family), the Roth family (donor's paternal family), and the Kurz family (donor's step-father's family) before the war; of Etta and Hela Roth in Tarnow, Poland, 1945-1946; Etta, Hela and Josef Kurz in Vienna, Austria, 1946-1947; on board the SS Ernie Pyle in February 1947 and in Brooklyn, NY in 1947-1950.
Genre
- Letters.
- Photographs.
- Document