Bertha and Karl Weiss papers

Bertha (formerly Breindel) Weiss née Rubin was born 20 May 1890 in Tarnów, Poland. She moved to Berlin and worked as a seamstress. There she met and married Karl (formerly Kalman) Weiss (born 24 April 1883) who was a tailor. They founded two menswear stores. They had one daughter, Else, born 1 April 1914, who eventually managed  one of the stores. Her mother managed the other. The businesses were quite successful except for the period during the depression.
During the Nazi era Else along with her betrothed suffered anti-Semitic attacks in the street. The first resulted in hospitalisation of several weeks for her husband. The second  time they were saved from a more severe assault by one of their employees. Shortly thereafter the couple immigrated to Palestine. Their son Yehuda Erdman was born in Jerusalem. In 1957 the family immigrated to the UK. 
Bertha and Karl left Berlin in 1938. They had sufficient capital to buy a property and they made a living from letting it out. Karl died in 1949 in Jerusalem. In 1964 Bertha followed Else and family to the UK where she spent the rest of her life. Whilst she could speak Yiddish, Polish and German she never learnt English or Hebrew.
Bertha returned to Germany in the 1950s to pursue restitution and pension claims and after many years she was eventually successful. She died at the age of 94 in 1984.

family papers

Donated 14.7.2014

Donor: Erdman, Yehuda