Sam Kornhauser papers
Extent and Medium
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Creator(s)
- Sam Kornhauser
Biographical History
Sam Kornhauser was born Isadore Kornhauser in Belgium in 1947 to Polish Holocaust survivors Stephen (Salomon) (1912-?) and Amalia (Ament) Kornhauser (1911-1989), who were born in Krakow. Amalia’s family was confined to the Bochnia ghetto in 1941, and Amalia and Stephen were married in 1942. Using a truck with a secret compartment, Stephen helped Amalia and several of her relatives, including her sisters Sophie and Rose, Rose’s husband and son, her brother, her sister-in-law Manya Ament, and her baby niece Jeanine escape the Bochnia ghetto. They fled through Czechoslovakia to Hungary, where they survived the rest of the war. Stephen, Amalia, and Stephen’s sisters, Ursula and Fela, adopted false identities under the name Wizniewski. Stephen and Amalia moved to Belgium after the war and immigrated to the United States with their young son Sam in 1952. Amalia’s mother was shot dead during an raid in the Bochnia ghetto in August 1942. Manya Ament’s sister Hanyia was sent to Szebnia and then Auschwitz when the Bochnia ghetto was liquidated and died of typhoid in 1944. Sophie’s husband, Dr. Arthur Haber, fought in the army of Polish expatriate soldiers led by Gen. Władysław Anders, and the couple settled in England after the war. Stephen’s brother Chaim (Leon) Kornhauser survived Plaszow, was liberated at Dachau, moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1952, and worked as a chemist specializing in crystal and glass coatings. Ursula Kornhauser and her husband, Berek Goldkorn, also immigrated to Brazil after the war.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sam Kornhauser
Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Sam Kornhauser donated his papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005.
Scope and Content
The Sam Kornhauser papers documents the experiences of the Kornhauser and Ament families in German-occupied Poland during World War II and consist of biographical materials and photographs documenting his parents, Stephen and Amalia Kornhauser, and members of the Kornhauser and Ament families who survived the Holocaust in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Belgium before immigrating to the United States and Brazil. Biographical materials document Stephen and Amalia Kornhauser; Stephen’s siblings Leon Kornhauser, Fela Kornhauser, and Ursula Kornhauser Goldkorn and her husband Berek; his father Israel Kornhauser; and Amalia’s sister-in-law Manya Ament. Stephen and Amalia Kornhauser materials primarily consist of false identification papers in the name Wizniewski, but they also include two 1938 patent documents in Stephen’s name (Salomon) for xylolite floors, one authentic 1950 travel document for Amalia, and the 1952 passenger list for the steamship Liberté bearing the names of the Kornhauser family (Salomon, Amalia, and Isidora). Leon Kornhauser materials include a 1945 identification certificate; a 1952 passenger list showing his immigration to Brazil and a map of the port of Genoa; records documenting his crystal and glass coating business in Brazil in the 1950s; 1960s and 1970s correspondence from friends and relatives in Israel; and a 1998 letter about Kornhauser’s chance encounter with Pope John Paul II in the 1930s. Ursula and Berek Goldkorn materials include identification papers from Poland, Germany, Belgium, and Brazil and a false certificate using the name Wizniewski. There is a similar false certificate for Fela Kornhauser. This series also includes the personal narrative of Amalia Kornhauser’s sister-in-law, Manya Ament, describing the outbreak of war in Poland, the German occupation, the birth of Manya’s daughter Jeanine in the Bochnia ghetto, their escape to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and liberation. Photographs depict Kornhauser and Ament family members and friends in Poland, Belgium, and Germany, the opening ceremony of the Jewish Committee in Selb, Germany, in 1946, and the folding camp chair patented by Israel Kornhauser. This series also includes a photograph of four men in striped prisoner uniforms that is believed to represent Leon Kornhauser upon his liberation at Dachau.
System of Arrangement
The Sam Kornhauser papers are arranged as two series: I. Biographical materials, 1935-1998, and II. Photographs, 1930-1965
People
- Sam Kornhauser
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- Ixelles (Belgium)
- Bochnia (Poland)
- Jewish ghettos--Poland--Bochnia.
- São Paulo (Brazil)
- Selb (Germany)
- Jews--Poland--Kraków.
- Identification cards--Forgeries--Poland.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Kraków (Poland)
Genre
- Document
- Photographs.