Introduction

Inesita (Ines) Danziger was born in 1947 into a family of German Jews in Buenos Aires, who emigrated from Breslau (Silesia) in 1938. She trained and practised as a psychologist. In the early 1990s she moved from Argentina to Germany and settled down in Nuremberg. There she began collecting documents and letters from her extended family and studied their historical background. Her dream was to create a book about her family based on these documents.

In 2001 she became fatally ill. Before she died on 28.5.2001, she expressed the wish that the collection be donated to the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (Central Archive for Research of Jewish History in Germany), in Heidelberg. The Danziger files arrived in Heidelberg on 30.9.2001.The files contain documents from Ines Danziger’s family including originals of official documents, newspaper articles, personal letters and photos.  There is also research material, excerpts from books, correspondence and a CD-ROM compiled by Danziger. The CD contains drafts of Danziger’s unfinished book alongside many other files. The material collected by Danziger documents the family history of her father, Hans Manfred Danziger, and her mother, Ruth Danziger née Tichauer.  Both families, the Danzigers and the Tichauers, came from Silesia (Schlesien), territory which belonged to Germany before World War II. On the side of Hans Manfred Danziger, besides the Danzigers, there are documents of the Lewysohn, Wittenberg and Krimmer families. On the side of Ruth Tichauer, besides the Tichauers, there are documents of the Hammerschlag family.The history of these families can be divided into two parts: the period in Silesia and the period in South America. Danziger’s parents, Hans and Ruth Danziger, left Germany in December 1938. They fled by sea to Montevideo, Uruguay. Five years later they moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ines (Inesita Margarita) Danziger was born there in 1947. Ruth Danziger’s parents, Wilhelm and Helene, left Germany to South Africa with Ruth’s brother, Gerald. Gerald founded very successful furniture factory. The Danziger files contain the extensive correspondence of the Danzigers in Buenos Aires (no. 21-32). The great majority of the letters came from relatives in South Africa , but there are also letters from other branches of the family and friends around the world in places such as Dallas and Atlanta in the USA, Valparaiso in Chile, and Tel Aviv and Ramat Menashe in Israel. Hans Danziger’s compensation from the German government after W.W.II is fully documented. (no. 41) There are also a number of photos of the family also amongst the documents. (no. 52)Two subjects were of particular interest for Danziger: the historical background of Jewish life in Silesia; and the fate of her paternal grandmother, Martha Danziger, who was murdered by the SS in Lithuania.

The collection was organised and filed in summer 2003 by Yeshayahu P. Balog at the Central Archive in Heidelberg. He is a part-time assistant at the Archive.

The Danziger family files consist of 3 boxes of documents and letters, plus 1 box of books and 1 CD-ROM.

Yeshayahu P. Balog
Heidelberg, 9.9.2003

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