Collection of letters relating to the immigration of Fritz Oppenheim.
Object numberM2020/039:003
TitleCollection of letters relating to the immigration of Fritz Oppenheim.
DescriptionFive letters concerning the immigration of Fritz Oppenheim through the Quakers’ German Emergency Fellowship Committee (GEFC), 1938-1939. Fritz, a German-Jew born in Petershagen in 1911, had studied medicine but was unable to practice this profession; most likely due to antisemitic laws which prohibited Jews from practicing medicine. Instead, he worked as a farmer; qualifications that enabled his successful immigration and inevitably saved his life.
Fritz Oppenheim was interned in Buchenwald concentration camp following Kristallnacht in November 1938. From the camp he filed an application to Australia in December 1938 and a month later appealed to Camilla Wedgwood, the President and Chairperson of the German Emergency Fellowship Committee in Sydney, for assistance in progressing his application. At this stage, release from concentration camps could be secured as long as someone had a visa to leave Germany immediately. Fritz managed to obtain a permit for England, where he would stay until he received permission to come to Australia.
In Britain, the Quakers set up agricultural training centres to foster skills that would be highly regarded on immigration applications. Agricultural experience and domestic work were amongst the best pathways to acceptance by the Australian government.
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.
Fritz Oppenheim was interned in Buchenwald concentration camp following Kristallnacht in November 1938. From the camp he filed an application to Australia in December 1938 and a month later appealed to Camilla Wedgwood, the President and Chairperson of the German Emergency Fellowship Committee in Sydney, for assistance in progressing his application. At this stage, release from concentration camps could be secured as long as someone had a visa to leave Germany immediately. Fritz managed to obtain a permit for England, where he would stay until he received permission to come to Australia.
In Britain, the Quakers set up agricultural training centres to foster skills that would be highly regarded on immigration applications. Agricultural experience and domestic work were amongst the best pathways to acceptance by the Australian government.
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
Subjectimmigration, escape attempts, escape pre-war, Australian link to Holocaust, agricultural colleges, aid giving
Object nameofficial correspondence
Materialpaper
Language
- English
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, donated by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)