Gerald Weiss Family Collection

This collection documents the experiences of the Weiss family with a focus on the parents of Gerald Weiss, Jacob Weiss, his wife Selma née Falk, and their siblings.

Jacob (alternatively Köbes) Weiss (1883-1965) was born the second of nine children to the cattle dealer Albert Weiss (1851-1927) and his wife Mathilde Amalie née Michel (1856-1920). His siblings were Siegmund (1882-1940), Arthur (1884-1968), Jetta (1886-1969), Rosa (1888-1969), Minna (1889-1966), Sally (shortened from Salomon, 1891-1979), Josef (alternatively Jupp, 1893-1976), and Emma (1895-1985). The family lived in Kirchheim and later Flamersheim, small villages near Cologne.

During World War I, most of the men in the Weiss family served in the German army, some earning an Iron Cross and Jupp rising to the level of a sergeant. After World War I, Siegmund, Jacob, Sally, and Josef moved to Cologne, where Siegmund and Jacob founded S & J Weiss, a bed linen manufacturing business.

Gerald Weiss (alternatively Gert) was born in 1922 to Jacob Weiss and his wife Selma née Falk (1889-1968). His sister, Margaret Weiss (alternatively Marga), was born in 1924 and died in 2012.

As the situation worsened for Jews in Germany, the Weiss family members began preparing to emigrate. Jacob and Siegmund Weiss smuggled money from their business out of Germany. This required falsifying records, which their Christian bookkeeper Maria Wischerhoff kept secret as well. In 1936, Gerald was sent to a high school in Nyon, Switzerland, near Geneva, to escape bad treatment in his German high school. The property and assets of S & J Weiss along with the Weiss family home were forcibly sold.

During Kristallnacht, Jacob Weiss was arrested, imprisoned at the Brauweiler prison, and then sent to the Dachau concentration camp. He was released under the condition that he and his family leave Germany as soon as possible. They immigrated to the Netherlands in December of 1938, where they stayed in a refugee camp until they could procure visas to enter the US. They arrived in the United States in November of 1939.

Other members of the Weiss family stayed in hiding in Holland and France during the duration of the war. Six family members were sent to concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt. While five survived, Erna Weiss, Jacob Weiss' sister-in-law, perished shortly after liberation from Bergen-Belsen.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Jacob Weiss filed several restitution claims, concerning damages to his property, his professional advancement, and his freedom, as well as claims concerning life insurance, the cost of property storage and insurance, the cost of emigration, the interruption of education for several family members, and damages to the goodwill of the company S & J Weiss. These claims were almost all successful. Jacob Weiss was also successful in gaining money lost in the forced selling of the family home in Cologne.

Several other Weiss family members also filed claims for restitution and recovery of lost real estate including Selma Weiss, Minna Sachs née Weiss, and Josef Weiss, and the heirs of Siegmund Weiss on his behalf. Most of these were also successful.

From 1995-1997, Gerald Weiss collected and translated letters from his family members that document their experiences from 1940-1946. These can be found alongside his introduction, notes, commentary, glossary of terms, and family trees in his self-published “From the Edge of the Abyss: Family Letters 1940-1946,” included in the collection. The original letters are also held in this collection.