Renée Schwalb Fritz collection

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn515186
• English
• overall: Height: 30.000 inches (76.2 cm) | Width: 28.500 inches (72.39 cm) | Depth: 20.000 inches (50.8 cm)
• Updated 7 months ago

Boxlike trunk used by Renee and Sima Schwalb when they emigrated in 1949 to the United States from Belgium. In 1939, Sima and 2 year old Renee fled Vienna, Austria, with eleven other family members. They traveled by foot and Sima had to carry Renee most of the way. They reached Brussels, Belgium, where a Catholic couple, the Degalas, gave them refuge. After Germany occupied Belgium in spring 1940, it became too dangerous to stay together. Renee was sent to a convent for two years, and then moved to other hiding places. She was in an orphanage in Namur when Belgium was liberated in January 1...

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn521964
• English
• overall: Height: 18.000 inches (45.72 cm) | Width: 19.625 inches (49.848 cm) | Depth: 12.250 inches (31.115 cm)
• Updated 7 months ago

Small, trunk cube with front and side openings used by Renee and Sima Schwalb when they emigrated in 1949 to the United States from Belgium. When Renee was nearly a year old, Austria, where she lived in Vienna with her parents, Sima and Nicholas, was annexed by Nazi Germany in March 1938. Anti-Jewish legislation to persecute and disenfranchise the Jewish population was soon enacted. Nicholas's clothing store was confiscated and all valuables were seized. In early 1939, Nicholas left for the US to make arrangements for the rest of the family, for whom visas could not be obtained, to join him...