Gunther Rice memoir
Extent and Medium
folder
1
Creator(s)
- Gunther Rice
Biographical History
Gunther Rice was born in Hamburg, Germany, on October 1924 to Chayim (Karl) Zloczower (b. 1878 in Lvov) and Leah Fruchter (b. 1885 in Bolechow). He was the youngest of nine children. Prior to 1908, Karl and Leah, already with two children, left Poland and settled in Hamburg, where Karl worked various jobs to support his family. Gunther attended a school for boys and did not experience a great deal of anti-Semitic persecution during the 1930s, until October 1938. On October 28, 1938, Nazis came to arrest all members of the family over sixteen years old, so Gunther was not arrested, but found his family at the train station and they reunited. Since Chayim and Leah were Polish citizens, the family was deported to Zbaszyn, on the border with Poland, where they remained for nine months. In July 1939, they were allowed to enter Poland and went to Lwow. After a few days, Gunther received word that he was to leave for Warsaw to join a kindertransport. After learning some English with other children at Otwock, they left by ship to England, arriving on August 29, 1939. Gunther was sent to Cardiff to live with his foster family, the Cornes. As he was a teenager, he worked odd jobs and kept in touch with his older brother, Sam, who was living in London. He moved to London in 1941 and eventually began to work in the American Army Officer’ Mess cleaning dishes. In 1944, he began a new job with the railway. When the war ended, Rice moved to the United States. His sisters Cilli and Edith and brother Julius were able to immigrate to Palestine prior to the war. His brother Simon left for the United States in 1937, joined the American Army, and was a translator at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, while brother Sam survived the war in England and as a member of the British Army. A brother, Edo, was killed in an accident in 1929. Gunther’s parents and sister Betti perished in the Holocaust. After arriving in the United States, Gunther attended Roosevelt College, received his PhD in psychology in 1960, married, and had two children. He now lives in Chicago.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Dr. Gunther Rice
Dr. Gunther Rice donated a copy of his memoir to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2013.
Scope and Content
Consists of one typed memoir, 42 pages, entitled “A New Letter to my Children” written by Gunther Rice, originally of Hamburg, Germany, as a letter to his children. In the memoir, he describes the lives of his large family in Hamburg, his childhood, and education. He describes his memories of the family’s arrest and deportation to Zbaszyn on the border of Poland in October 1938, since his parents were Polish citizens. In the summer of 1939, Gunther left his parents and traveled to England as part of a kindertransport, first living with a foster family in Cardiff and later in London.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright Holder: Dr. Gunther Rice
People
- Rice, Gunther.
Subjects
- London (England)
- Hamburg (Germany)
- Jewish refugees--Poland--Zbąszyń.
- Cardiff (Wales)
- Zbąszyń (Poland)
- Zbąszyń (Poland)--History--20th century.
- Kindertransports (Rescue operations)--Great Britain.
- Germany--Emigration and immigration.
Genre
- Personal Narratives.
- Document