H. Frank Brull papers

Identifier
irn60571
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2013.377.1
Dates
1 Jan 1921 - 31 Dec 1947
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • English
  • German
Source
EHRI Partner

Extent and Medium

box

oversize box

1

1

Creator(s)

Biographical History

H. Frank Brull (1921-2011) was born Hans Franz Bruell in Berlin to Victor and Ellen Bruell, and lived with his parents in that city until the age of 12. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 and began implementing anti-Jewish measures, his parents sent him to live with a relative in New York, with a cousin of his mother's. When that arrangement did not work out, and he was on the verge of being sent back to Germany, the wife of Rabbi Stephen Wise arranged for Brull to live with a foster parent in New York. Brull's father was arrested after Kristallnacht and sent to Dachau, but following his release, he and Brull's mother obtained visas for Australia and emigrated there, where Brull did not see them again until the late 1940s. By that time, he had trained at Camp Ritchie and served in the U.S. Army in military intelligence, interrogating captured German prisoners-of-war. Following the war, he remained in Europe, serving as an aid worker with UNRRA. Upon returning to the United States, he attended City College in New York, earning a bachelor's degree, and then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a master's degree in social work. His career as a social worker took him first to Minneapolis, and then Chicago, where he worked at Jewish Children's Services, and then for thirty years as a social worker at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois.

Archival History

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Acquisition

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ellen Brull

Brull, Ellen. Gift, 2013.

Scope and Content

Correspondence, photographs, maps, travel brochures, printed materials, documenting the immigration of Hans Frans Brull (later H. Frank Brull) to the United States as a child, correspondence from his parents in Berlin, travel itineraries and brochures from the cruise ship line on which he traveled to the United States; photographs of Brull as a child, his parents, and classmates in Berlin; and booklets and printed material from his military career, as well as a transcript of opening statements at one of the Allied military tribunals held in Nuremberg, 1947.

System of Arrangement

The collection is divided into three series: I. Correspondence, II. Miscellaneous, III. Photographs, and the contents are arranged alphabetically within them by folder title.

People

Corporate Bodies

Subjects

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.