Mini Chazen papers

Mini Chazen (1930-2009) was born Mini Oppenheimer in Bensheim, Germany, on 13 July 1930 to Hermann and Frieda Rosenberg Oppenheimer. She had three siblings: Myra (Miriam) (b. 1931), Karl (b. 1932), and Eli (b. 1938). Hermann worked as a salesman and Frieda was a homemaker. The family lived in Frankfurt am Main from 1930-1939. Mini attended the Jüdische Folkschule from 1936 to 1939. In 1938 the Gestapo arrested Mini’s uncle, Moritz Oppenheimer, who lived with the family. They initially also intended to arrest Hermann, but he was spared due to an illness that confined him to his bed. In 1939, Mini, Myra, and Karl were sent by their parents to France to live with a Swiss family. The siblings stayed with the family until 1941 when Germany invaded France. They moved constantly throughout France, staying for a short period in an orphanage in Bergerac, and then relocating to Château Montintin with the assistance of Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE). From Montintin, the Oppenheimer siblings departed for Marseille where they boarded a ship, the Marshal Petain, and sailed to Casablanca, Morocco. They waited for two weeks in Morocco before boarding the Serpa Pinto, a Portuguese ship bound for New York, along with two hundred other children. Upon arrival in the United States, the siblings were sent to live with a foster family, the Freudenheims, in Buffalo, New York. Mini lived with the Freudenheims for six years. Myra and Karl lived with the family for five years and were then sent to live with the Lichtenstein family who later adopted Karl. The Oppenheimer siblings eventually learned that their parents and youngest brother, Eli, perished in a concentration camp in Minsk, Russia. Mini married Boris Chazen in 1950 and they had two children: Barbara and David.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Mini Chazen

The papers were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Mini Chazen in 2002.