Langer family papers

Robert Langer and his parents Ignatz and Stefanie Langer emigrated from Vienna, Austria to Shanghai, China after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. They survived the Holocaust in Shanghai and later immigrated to the United States. Ignatz Langer (1893-1960) was born on 22 April 1893 in Lwów, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine) to Majlech Langer and Chane Rywe (née Klapp). He had three siblings, Sabine Steinhauser (nicknamed Salci, later Sabine Binder), Jakob Steinhauser (1902-1972), and Amalie (nicknamed Malci, later Amalie Müller). Stephanie Waldapfel (1896-1954) was born on 27 July 1896 in what is present-day Považská Bystrica, Slovakia to Edmund Waldapfel (1853-1935) and Martha Rosenberg (d. 1898). She had two siblings, Leopold (1894-1986) and Melanie (later Melanie Washkansky, 1898-1999). Ignatz and Stefanie married in Vienna in 1925. Their son Robert was born on 22 January 1929 in Vienna where Ignatz worked as a waiter and restauranteur. After the annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938, the Langer family was evicted from their apartment in December 1938. They moved in with relatives and left Austria on 23 January 1939 for Genoa, Italy. From there they sailed to Shanghai on the SS Conte Biancamano. After they arrived in Shanghai, Robert enrolled in a Jewish school and his father found a job as a waiter. After Ignatz’s brother arrived in Shanghai, they opened a restaurant called Delikat. Robert quit school in 1942 and worked in a weaving factory. He also took secretarial courses. After the war, Robert worked for the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee. In 1948 he received a student visa and scholarship funded by industrialist Lawrence Kadoorie to attend Brooklyn College in the United States. He graduated in 1952 and then attended Columbia University where he earned his Masters’ degree in social work in 1954. After a stint in the Army, he married Claire Katz (knowns as Betty, b. 1929) and pursued a career in social work. Robert and Claire later divorced and he married Elizabeth H. Levy in 1958. Robert’s parents left Shanghai by 1949 and immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1951. All of Ignatz and Stefanie’s siblings survived the Holocaust.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Barbara L. Landes.

Donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2017 by Barbara L. Landes, niece of Robert Langer.