Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
1-11 of 11
- Ellen Brandt, born on May 10, 1922, in Mannheim, Germany, was the only child of Mathilda Tillie and Guido Andreas Friedsam. Ellen's father served in the German military and was a decorated World War I veteran. When Ellen was six months old, the family moved to Munich where her father bought a paper factory. Foreseeing Hitler's rise to power, Ellen's father thought it dangerous to continue to own a business. Therefore, in early 1933, less than a month before Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the family moved to Berlin where Ellen's father ran a factory owned by non-Jews. Her father felt this new position offered his family greater anonymity and safety. In Berlin, Ellen became keenly aware of increasingly limited basic rights or the Jewish community and describes the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 as a life- altering event. She remembers witnessing Jews being beaten to death on the streets and saw others rounded up and taken away. In 1936, she began to be shunned at school when her schoolteachers were no longer allowed to speak to Jewish children, and Jewish students were forbidden from interacting with non-Jewish schoolmates. Ellen's parents eventually removed her from that school and enrolled her in a makeshift Jewish school. Before the outbreak of the war, a relative living in the United States provided Ellen's family with affidavits to flee Germany. Ellen's father was able to expedite the family's departure within twenty-four hours due to his status as a decorated veteran. On April 6, 1938, the family arrived in New York City. Ellen Brandt passed away on Sept. 19, 2008.
