Margaret Iglauer collection

Relates to the life of Margaret and Ernest Iglauer, who escaped Nazi Germany in 1938. The collection details the couple's sojourns in England, the Netherlands, Belgium,and France during World War II, their stay in refugee camps in Switzerland, and their subsequent emigration to the United States. Margaret Iglauer was born on 2 December 1910 in Nürnberg, Germany, and married Ernest Iglauer in 1936. She and her husband lived in Nürnberg until November 1938 when the events of Kristallnacht prevented Ernest’s return to Germany after a business trip abroad. After Margaret’s escape from Germany in December 1938, she reunited with her husband in the Netherlands, where they eventually settled in Amsterdam after a brief stay in England in 1939. Ernest Iglauer moved his hops exporting business, Gebrüder Tuchmann, to Amsterdam in 1939. When new restrictions on Jews in the Netherlands were introduced by the Nazi occupation force in 1942, the Iglauers fled to Switzerland via Belgium and France where they were assisted by the French Underground movement. In Switzerland, the Iglauers were separated into different refugee camps. Margaret Iglauer stayed at a camp run by the Salvation Army in Lausanne for several months in 1942, and then was transferred to other refugee camps in Lausanne and then in Basel. Ernest Iglauer stayed in Lausanne where he worked for the Schweizerische Jüdische Flüchtlingshilfe, an aid organization for displaced persons. The Iglauers remained in Switzerland until 1945, when they returned to the Netherlands. After a brief stay in England, Margaret and Ernest Iglauer immigrated to the United States in Dec. 1946.