Letter relating to the immigration of Dr Rudolf Lowe
Object numberM2020/039:006
TitleLetter relating to the immigration of Dr Rudolf Lowe
DescriptionLetter from Olga Mayr in Vienna, Austria, to the Quakers’ German Emergency Fellowship Committee (GEFC) in Sydney, dated April 1939, concerning the immigration of her husband, 70-year-old Dr Rudolf Lowe. Olga wrote directly to Camilla Wedgwood, the President and Chairperson of the GEFC. Her husband had Jewish ancestry but converted to Catholicism in 1900. After divorcing his first wife, he remarried and practised as a Protestant. He escaped to Brussels, where their son Roland was practising as a pianist, but without an immigration permit his situation was desperate. “Allow me to lay before your heart an Austrian fate, influenced and ruined by the sequence of four political governments.” Olga argued that although he is a retired doctor, her husband could buy a shop in Australia and still contribute to the economy.
The letter explains the family's circumstances, and also features a poem by Olga, titled “Lonely Mother’s Dream”.
The mother in an agony of grief,
was driven from her bed, wringing her hands,
"My children!" did she cry, "My husband!" did she weep.
Is it horrid truth, that you are torn from me?
Alone, alone, alone in that sad home,
that lost its warmth, its light, its life,
a coffin round my heart.
Being elderly and without the preferred occupation, Rudolf Lowe was denied a permit for Australia. He was murdered in the Holocaust.
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 letter explains the family's circumstances, and also features a poem by Olga, titled “Lonely Mother’s Dream”.
The mother in an agony of grief,
was driven from her bed, wringing her hands,
"My children!" did she cry, "My husband!" did she weep.
Is it horrid truth, that you are torn from me?
Alone, alone, alone in that sad home,
that lost its warmth, its light, its life,
a coffin round my heart.
Being elderly and without the preferred occupation, Rudolf Lowe was denied a permit for Australia. He was murdered in the Holocaust.
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)