Nachmias family papers

Jacob Nachmias was born in Athens, Greece on 9 June 1928, the son of Vitali (Haim) and Gracia (née De Taranto) Nachmias, Bulgarian Jews who at the time were living in Athens, where Vitali was employed by a wholesale paper business. The Nachmias family lived in Athens until 1931, when Vitali was forced to take over his brother-in-law's paper business following the latter's death, and the family returned to Bulgaria, moving to Sofia, where Jacob's sister, Rachel, was born. Due to his concerns about rising anti-Semitism and fascism in Europe during the 1930s, Vitali decided that it would be best to emigrate. Having met an American who befriended him during a business trip to Sweden in 1937, and who subsequently offered to sponsor his immigration, Vitali decided to move to the United States, and after obtaining a visa, he left in early 1939, to establish a business and make preparations for his wife and two children to join him. Gracia and the two children left Sofia by train on 23 August 1939, and after travelling through Yugoslavia and Germany, reached France two days later, and sailed from Le Havre for New York on 2 September, arriving in New York a week later. The family settled in New York, and Jacob subsequently attended college at City College of New York (1946-1947) before earning a bachelor's degree in psychology at Cornell, and subsequent degrees at Swarthmore, Cambridge, and Harvard, earning a doctorate in psychology from the latter in 1956. He served on the faculties of Swarthmore College (1957-1961), Cambridge University (1968-1969), Harvard (1978-1979), and Stanford (1986), but his longest affiliation was with the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of psychology from 1966-1995, and has been a professor emeritus since then. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1984. Benjamin Nachmias (1823-1910), the paternal great-grandfather of Jacob Nachmias, was born in Rusçuk, in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Ruse, Bulgaria), in October 1823, the son of Rafael and Esther (née Ventura) Nachmias. He married Rachel Elias, and had four sons: Rafael (1860-1948), Jacob (1862?-1949), Moise (1871-1943), and Solomon (1877-1953). At the time of the Russo-Turkish war in 1877-1878, Benjamin was credited with preventing the destruction of Rusçuk, when the Turkish forces threatened to destroy it as they fled the advancing Russian forces. During this period, Benjamin retained Greek citizenship, and had to have residence permits renewed annually by the Greek consulate in Rusçuk/Ruse. Jacob Nachmias’s paternal grandfather, also named Jacob (1862?-1949) was born in Rusçuk (Ruse), in the Ottoman Empire. Documents show that he married Rachel Graciani (1876-1938), who was originally from Nikopol, in 1894, and he had at various times also been listed as a resident of the island of Corfu, in Greece, as well as in Athens, and most of his residence and travel documents show him to have been a Greek citizen. Between 1894 and 1903, the couple had five children: Vital (Haim), Lisa, Charles (Isaiah), Erna, and Benjamin. In 1925, Jacob and Rachel Nachmias moved from Ruse to Sofia, Bulgaria. Rachel died there of pneumonia in 1938, and in the following year, the first of their children began to emigrate, with Vitali and his family leaving for the United States, following by Benjamin and his family, who settled in Boston, in 1940, and after that Charles, who arrived in Palestine in 1944, and then subsequently left for the United States. Jacob Nachmias remained in Sofia with his two daughters, Lisa and Erna, and their families, until 1943. In November 1943 he left Bulgaria for Istanbul, and from there, to Cyprus, arriving in Palestine in January 1944, and settling in Tel Aviv. He was followed by his daughter Lisa and her children in August 1944. Jacob Nachmias remained in Tel Aviv, and died there in 1949. Jacob and Rachel Nachmias’ first-born son, Vitali (1895-1965), was born in Ruse on 30 June 1895. With the outbreak of World War I, he travelled to Greece and subsequently joined the Greek Army in 1916. After the war, he returned to Ruse in 1920, and after moving with his parents to Sofia in 1925, met Gracia De Taranto (1903-1989), who was originally from Edirne, Turkey, and the two married in 1926. Shortly after their wedding, they moved to Athens, where Vitali worked in a wholesale paper business. Upon the suicide of Vitali’s brother-in-law, Avram Shemtov, in 1931, he returned with his family to Sofia, so he could take over the management of the family’s paper business there. Vitali felt out of place in Sofia, both due to his socialist political leanings, and the fact the unlike many other Jews there, he was more secular and was not a Zionist. He was also concerned about the rise of fascism in Europe during the 1930s, so when he met and befriended an American couple, Charles and Sylvia Dilbert, during a business trip to Sweden in 1937, and they invited him to visit them in New York, he took them up on the offer. Subsequently they encouraged him and his family to immigrate, and provided affidavits for them to do so. The family settled in Brooklyn, and Vitali worked in an import-export business in New York, until his retirement following a heart attack in 1956. He died in New York in 1965, and his widow, Gracia, continued to live in their Forest Hills apartment until her own death in 1989.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jacob Nachmias

Jacob Nachmias donated the Nachmias family papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016.