Alfred Traum papers

Alfred (Freddie) Traum was born on March 22, 1929 in Vienna Austria to Elias Traum and Gita Alster Traum who ran a business. He had one sister, Ruth (March 22, 1926). Elias was severely crippled from injuries sustained in World War I and spent his afternoons playing with and instructing Alfred. The Traums had a traditional Jewish home but lived in a secular neighborhood, and most of Freddie's playmates were not Jewish. He was expelled from his public school in the Meidling district following the March 1938 German annexation (Anschluss) and sent instead to a Jewish school farther from home. Elias and Gita decided to send their two children to England on a Kindertransport and hoped to follow them soon. One of Elias’ business colleagues helped arrange for the two children to be placed with a family in England instead of a hostel. On June 20, 1939 Freddie and Ruth left Vienna and went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Griggs, a working class couple in London who had a daughter and son close to their ages. After the start of World War II the Traum children along with thousands of other children were evacuated from London and sent to the English countryside. Freddie spent the next three years in the country, separated from his sister. After the war ended, Freddie learned that his parents were deported from Vienna to Minsk on June 2, 1942 and killed at Maly Trostinec. Freddie's grandmother Sara Alster and his paternal grandparents also perished in the Holocaust. After the war, England granted citizenship to the almost 10,000 children who had sought refuge there. Freddie moved to Manchester, joined the Zionist youth movement Habonim, and in 1948 he volunteered to serve in the Israeli army and fight in its War of Independence. After the war, he returned to England to fulfill his obligatory two year service in the British Army as a tank commander in Germany in the Royal Scots Greys. After his discharge, Freddie attended the Merchant Navy Academy to train to join Israel's new merchant marine. He returned to Israel and became the chief radio officer aboard the newly commissioned S.S. Zion. During one voyage, he met his future wife, Josiane Aizenberg who had survived the war as a hidden child in Belgium. After their marriage, Freddie went to work for IBM. The Traums moved to the United States in the 1960s to obtain medical care for of one of their three children, and Freddie worked as Telecommunications Engineer for the Boeing Company. Ruth married David Doniger, a British Jew, in 1947. They and their two sons immigrated to Israel in 1956 and joined Moshav Habonim. The Alfred Traum papers consist of identification papers, a report card, family correspondence from Elias and Gita Traum in Vienna to their children in London, family photographs from Vienna, England, and Palestine, and a brief personal narrative documenting the Traum family from Vienna, and the family’s separation when Alfred and his sister, Ruth, were sent to England on a Kindertransport in 1939 and their parents were killed three years later in the Holocaust. Alfred’s personal narrative describes his memories of leaving his parents, staying with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Griggs of London through most of the war, learning that his family was killed in the Holocaust, volunteering to fight in the Israeli War of Independence, performing his British military service, meeting and marrying Josiane Aizenberg, moving to Haifa, and immigrating to the United States. Elias and Gitel’s letters inquire about how Alfred and Ruth are doing in England, ask them to write more often, and describe daily life in Vienna, friends’ and relatives’ emigration plans, and their hopes of joining their children soon. Copyright Holder: Mr. Alfred Traum