Mount Kisco resident donates priceless heirlooms to US Holocaust Memorial Museum
The images and heirlooms donated tell a living history of her Jewish grandparents' lives before World War II and their stories as European refugees.
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Mount Kisco resident Ann Goodman is cementing her family's history after donating priceless heirlooms to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The images and heirlooms donated tell a living history of her Jewish grandparents' lives before World War II and their stories as European refugees.
At the center of it all is her step-grandfather, Paul Salomon Schoenfeld, who was born in 1885 in Hannover, Germany.
He had a successful opera career, preserved in striking headshots, theatrical costumes, and stylized wigs.
This is where he met his first wife, who was Catholic and a singer.
However, because Schoenfeld was Jewish, he divorced his first wife to protect her after the two were labeled as race defilers.
As the Nazis grew in power, approximately 10,000 to 20,000 Jewish refugees immigrated to Bolivia between 1938 and 1941.
Schoenfeld was one of them, packing dozens of photographs, newspaper clippings and more from his career in the Opera and life in Germany.
"This incredible career. This man who took the trouble to shlep all of it to Bolivia, to pack a suitcase with all of these things that were so important to him. I felt like it was a shame that they should all stay in boxes," said Goodman.
It was in Bolivia where he met Goodman's grandmother, Rose Guttmann Schoenfeld, also a European Refugee.
On Aug. 11, 1941, the two married in Cochabamba, Bolivia. They later left Bolivia in 1943 due to a right-wing coup and antisemitism.
While they attempted to go to the United Kingdom, they finally immigrated to the United States in the late 1940s.
The Schoenfelds became U.S. citizens on May 18th, 1954.
"There are so many stories and if we can keep all of these going and share them with people and provide the proof, the pictures, the ephemera, all of that. It helps," said Goodman.
