Collection of letters relating to the immigration of Dr Johannes Schneider
Object numberM2020/039:002
TitleCollection of letters relating to the immigration of Dr Johannes Schneider
DescriptionTwo letters concerning the immigration of Dr Johannes Schneider, an academic from Berlin, through the Quakers’ German Emergency Fellowship Committee (GEFC), 1938-1939. In December 1938, Camilla Wedgewood wrote to the Secretary of the Australian Department of the Interior, motivating for the immigration application of Dr Johannes. Camilla Wedgwood was the President and Chairperson of the German Emergency Fellowship Committee in Sydney. At the time, she was an anthropologist and Principal of the Sydney University Women’s College.
The application had been submitted by his brother-in-law, Dr H.S.A. Rosenthal. Camilla had known the Vaucluse-based Rosenthals almost since their own arrival in Australia. She had been “impressed by her very unusual intellectual ability and her cultured charm”, and reassured the government that, as an employed engineer, Dr Rosenthal had the means to provide support to his brother-in-law. She stressed the urgency, writing, “he is in a concentration camp… it is of course not possible to know what is really happening to him”. At that stage, release could be secured as long as someone had a visa to leave Germany immediately.
Johannes’ case was one of many that Camilla and the Quakers were unable to influence. She received a reply from the department of the interior that Johannes Schneider’s application was denied. Swamped with work just like this, Camilla admitted, “to work like this, one has to develop the hide of a rhinoceros.”
Part of a collection of 442 documents from the archives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which relate to victims of persecution desperate to escape Nazi Germany and Austria. As early as 1933 the Nazis began implementing discriminatory laws intended to vilify and exclude those deemed “racially undesirable”, rounding up political dissidents and incarcerating them in camps, dismissing officials in civil service and positions in the universities, forcing the Aryanization of Jewish businesses, forbidding Jews from practicing in their professions, and so on. The ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom in November 1938 was the turning point resulting in mass emigration. Yet increasingly, nations, including Australia, limited quotas for Jewish refugees. In 1938, the German Emergency Fellowship Committee of the Quakers was established in Sydney. The letters, applications and articles through this committee speak to the urgent appeals flooding into benevolent organisations like the Quakers from ‘non-Aryans,’ including Jews, conscientious objectors, opponents of Nazi ideology and other ‘undesirables’. One letter from January 1939 mentions 70,000 applications for immigration to Australia at the Department of the Interior. The letters in this collection give voice to some of the individuals that made up that number; many of whom were never able to escape Europe.
The application had been submitted by his brother-in-law, Dr H.S.A. Rosenthal. Camilla had known the Vaucluse-based Rosenthals almost since their own arrival in Australia. She had been “impressed by her very unusual intellectual ability and her cultured charm”, and reassured the government that, as an employed engineer, Dr Rosenthal had the means to provide support to his brother-in-law. She stressed the urgency, writing, “he is in a concentration camp… it is of course not possible to know what is really happening to him”. At that stage, release could be secured as long as someone had a visa to leave Germany immediately.
Johannes’ case was one of many that Camilla and the Quakers were unable to influence. She received a reply from the department of the interior that Johannes Schneider’s application was denied. Swamped with work just like this, Camilla admitted, “to work like this, one has to develop the hide of a rhinoceros.”
Part of a collection of 442 documents from the archives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which relate to victims of persecution desperate to escape Nazi Germany and Austria. As early as 1933 the Nazis began implementing discriminatory laws intended to vilify and exclude those deemed “racially undesirable”, rounding up political dissidents and incarcerating them in camps, dismissing officials in civil service and positions in the universities, forcing the Aryanization of Jewish businesses, forbidding Jews from practicing in their professions, and so on. The ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom in November 1938 was the turning point resulting in mass emigration. Yet increasingly, nations, including Australia, limited quotas for Jewish refugees. In 1938, the German Emergency Fellowship Committee of the Quakers was established in Sydney. The letters, applications and articles through this committee speak to the urgent appeals flooding into benevolent organisations like the Quakers from ‘non-Aryans,’ including Jews, conscientious objectors, opponents of Nazi ideology and other ‘undesirables’. One letter from January 1939 mentions 70,000 applications for immigration to Australia at the Department of the Interior. The letters in this collection give voice to some of the individuals that made up that number; many of whom were never able to escape Europe.
Production date 1938 - 1939
Production periodpre-World War II
Object nameofficial correspondence
Materialpaper
Language
- English
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, donated by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)