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Inventory of the Jacques Benbassat Papers, 1906-1942, 1998
Inventory of the Jacques Benbassat Papers, 1906-1942, 1998
Descriptive Summary
| Abstract: | The collection consists of a photograph album, memoir, passports, and other papers of Jacques Benbassat, a native of Austria who immigrated to the United States in 1949. Materials mostly relate to the Feuerstein family, including identification cards used by Adela Feuerstein, his maternal grandmother, and photographs of Feuerstein family members traveling in Austria and Poland before 1938, when they fled Austria in fear of Nazi persecution. |
| Title: | Jacques Benbassat papers |
| Creator: | Benbassat, Jacques, 1929-2010 |
| Date(s): | 1906-1942, 1998 |
| Extent: | 0.25 linear feet (5 folders, 1 videocassette) |
| Repository: | Jewish Heritage Collection, Special Collections, College of Charleston Libraries 66 George Street Charleston, SC 29424 Phone: (843) 953-8016 Fax: (843) 953-6319 URL: http://archives.library.cofc.edu |
| Call Number: | Mss 1065-002 |
| Language of Material: | Materials in French, Hebrew, German, and Polish |
Biographical Note
Jacques Benbassat (1929-2010) was born in Vienna, Austria. His parents, Ella Feuerstein and Edouard Goldman, were Polish citizens who moved to Austria after World War I. They divorced in 1931. Ella Goldman remarried Albert Benbassat, a Sephardic Jew from Bulgaria who held Turkish citizenship, as his parents were born in Turkey. Benbassat was a banker and owned property in Vienna.
In 1938, after Nazi Germany annexed Austria during the Anschluss, the Benbassats left Vienna and went to Poland. Jacques Benbassat spent the 1938-1939 school year with his father before he joined his mother and stepfather in Romania, which was considered relatively safe by Albert Benbassat because the king was anti-Nazi. The Benbassats lived in Romania from 1939 until 1942, by which time Romania had joined the Axis powers and the family again felt threatened.
Albert Benbassat successfully bribed Romanian authorities to prevent the family's deportation, and he secured a family passport which allowed them to apply for visas to travel to Spain, then hopefully to the United States. In September 1942, as Spanish citizens, the family began traveling to Spain, moving from Romania to Venice, Italy, then Geneva, Switzerland. The family then planned to travel through France to reach Spain, but they were forced to remain in Geneva after the Germans took over southern France. They stayed in Geneva throughout the rest of the war and, in 1946, moved to Paris. In 1949, Jacques Benbassat emigrated to the United States with the assistance of his father, who was already an American citizen.
Collection Overview
The collection consists of a photograph album, memoir, passports, and other papers of Jacques Benbassat, a native of Austria who immigrated to the United States in 1949. Materials mostly relate to the Feuerstein family, including identification cards used by Adela Feuerstein, his maternal grandmother, and photographs of Feuerstein family members traveling in Austria and Poland before 1938, when they fled Austria in fear of Nazi persecution.
Collection Arrangement
Materials are described at the folder level.
Search Terms
The following terms have been used to index this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person, family, or organization, by topical subject, by place, and by types of material.Names
- Benbassat, Jacques, 1929-2010
- Feuerstein, Adela
- Benbassat family
- Feuerstein family
Subjects
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
- Holocaust survivors--Austria
- World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities
Places
- United States--Emigration and immigration
- Poland
- Austria
Types of Material
- Black-and-white negatives
- Black-and-white photographs
- Color slides
- Memoirs
- Obituaries
- Passports
- Photograph albums
- Prayer books
- Videocassettes
Inventory
Photographs show Ella Feuerstein and other members of the Feuerstein family horseback riding, at the beach, and traveling in Vienna, Salzburg, Venice, and Pisa. Other photographs show Edouard Goldman, Ella Feuerstein's first husband and father of Jacques Benbassat.
Includes Adela Feuerstein's 1940 Polish refugee card and 1942 German travel pass, two Jewish prayer booklets, and an obituary for Jakob Feuerstein, Adela's husband.
Copy negatives and slides of photographs in photograph album and other loose photographs, including portraits of Ella Feuerstein, Adela Feuerstein (Ella's mother), and Edouard Goldman. Also includes copy negatives and slides of Adela Feuerstein's false 1938 Portuguese passport, 1940 Polish refugee card, and 1942 German travel pass. Images on DVD are included.
Jacques Benbassat's memoir, written for his great-niece and detailing his family's history. Memoir is written in French.
Two copies of a BBC documentary about Albert Goering, brother of Hermann Goering, who used his influence to assist Jews during Nazi rule. Goering helped Albert Benbassat and his family travel through Italy in 1942.
Administrative Information
Access Restrictions
This collection is open for research.
Copyright Notice
The nature of the College of Charleston's archival holdings means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. Special Collections claims only physical ownership of most archival materials.
The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. copyright law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Jacques Benbassat papers, College of Charleston Libraries, Charleston, SC, USA.
Acquisitions Information
Materials were donated in 2005 by Jacques Benbassat and in 2011 by Dan Benbassat.
Processing Information
Processed by Rebecca McClure, February 2013.
Encoded by Rebecca McClure, June 2013.
Reviewed and uploaded by Martha McTear, July 2013.
Funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources supported the processing of this collection and encoding of the finding aid.
