Max and Eva Feuermann Collection

Max and Eva (née Hausen) Feuermann were both born in Berlin on November 13, 1911, and July 19, 1913, respectively, although they would not meet until both were in exile. Max pursued a degree in medicine with aspirations to practice until barred from university by anti-Semitic legislation, an injustice he would attempt to rectify in 1946 and 1970 but to no avail. Eva worked as a seamstress while studying to become a fashion designer, producing concept drawings of women’s dress. Both received notice in late 1938 that they were banished from the country, having already been stripped of their citizenship, and were accepted as refugees by the United Kingdom. There Max found work as a paint chemist, the career he would follow for the remainder of his professional life, before meeting Eva and marrying her in London on October 27, 1939. The couple moved to New York, New York in 1948, where they would live the rest of their lives and become naturalized citizens in 1954. By 1961 Max and Eva were officers in the Free Sons of Israel Benevolent Association, Liberty Lodge No. 192, a Jewish cultural association and burial society managing the sale of plots in the Beth El and Cedar Park cemeteries in Paramus, New Jersey, and the New Montefiore Cemetery in West Babylon, New York. Eva served as secretary to the lodge while Max was its president until his death in an accident on February 14, 1977; Eva continued to serve as secretary under Max’s successor, Ernest Weiss, whom she would marry on January 27, 1979, and be with until her death on December 31, 1999.