Doris Perlhefter Rauch Collection

Doris Rauch (née Perlhefter/Perlhefterová) was born August 26, 1920, in Brünn, Czechoslovakia (now Brno, Czechia). An only child, Rauch lost her father, Arthur Perlhefter, in 1936, leaving her and her mother, Alice, to grapple with the German annexation of Bohemia soon afterwards. Rauch had planned to attend university but was denied admission due to Nazi antisemitic policies, and instead attended textile school. After the outbreak of World War II, Rauch, her mother, and her uncle, the architect Norbert Troller, were deported to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. The three survived there together while avoiding transportation further east until Rauch and her mother were relocated in September 1942 to a camp in Raasiku, Estonia, where the two were separated. After over two years of hard labor Rauch was relocated again to the camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, where she would be liberated by Allied forces and placed in the care of the Danish Red Cross. Immediately engaging with the survivor community, Rauch worked as a secretary for the Jewish World Congress in Sweden until moving to the United States in May 1947, where she would die at her long-term residence in Washington, DC on June 23, 2011.

Rauch maintained a close relationship with her uncle Norbert Troller until his passing after many years running a New York-based architecture firm and designing Jewish community centers across the United States, and many of his papers were placed in her care. She shared with him a passion for family history and genealogy, working to preserve the memory of her father, a decorated veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, and eventually Troller himself. Later in life Rauch corresponded with other German-speaking Holocaust survivors in the U.S. and expressed interest in memorial associations for those interred at Theresienstadt. She also took interest in the 1988 commemoration of Bohemian author Oscar Jellinek in Raach am Hochgebirge, Austria, a village where he had vacationed and which featured prominently in one of his writings. Jellinek's lyrical prose earned him the name “the singer from Raach” and Rauch collected newspaper clippings the monument dedication in his honor as well as letters from the author’s childhood friend to a literature professor in Vienna.