Teodor Diamant papers

The collection documents the experiences of Teodor Diamant, originally of Turčiansky Svätý Martin (Martin, Slovakia), on the SS Pentcho, its shipwreck on the uninhabited island of Kamilonissi, while en route to Palestine, and his internment at a concentration camp on Rhodes and then the Ferramonti concentration camp in Tarsia, Italy. Included is a photograph album documenting his voyage on the ship and his internment in the camps. Other photographs document his military experience with a Czech unit in Great Britain, family and friends, and post-war experiences in London and the United States. Also included are loose photographs, correspondence (original, copies, and translations), immigration and naturalization papers of Teodor and his wife Friderika Diamant, army records, passports and other identification documents. Teodor Diamant was born on 10 November 1908 in Turčiansky Svätý Martin (Martin, Slovakia). Prior to the war he worked as an electrician. Trying to flee persecution by the Nazis, he boarded the SS Pentcho in 1940 to sail to Palestine. In October 1940 a boiler on the ship exploded and the passengers were shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Kamilonissi. About ten days later, an Italian warship picked them up and transferred them to a camp on Rhodes. Around March 1942, Teodor and the other refugees were transported to the Ferramonti concentration camp in Tarsia, Italy. He went to England around 1944 and enlisted with a Czechoslovakian unit. He was discharged in 1946 and immigrated to the United States later that year. While in England he married Friderika Sidon (b. 1920, daughter of Regina and Isidor Sidon) who immigrated to London from Trnava, Czechoslovakia (Trnava, Slovakia) in 1939.