My First 6701 Days : July 31 1921 to December 1939 /

The memoirs contain photocopies of documents and photos as well as extracts from letters and were written in October 1989 in the United States. Description of life in Baden, a famous health resort near Vienna. The family lived in Vienna in the second district (Leopoldstadt). Recollections of schoolteachers and childhood friends. Occasional Friday night services in the Leopoldstadt temple. Theater and opera visits and cultural life in Vienna. Private piano and music lessons. Description of the family apartment and Jewish life in the Leopoldstadt. The family celebrated Christmas and observed the high Jewish holidays. Recollections of the author's bar mitzvah celebration. His mother Charlotte, nee Schwadron, was an artistic woman, who studied painting at the Frauenakademie with Tina Blau. Walter's father Leo Schaffir was born in Byalistock, Russia and studied in Berlin. He was a travelling businessmen. His family lived in Lemberg, Galicia. Leo and Charlotte Schaffir got married in 1919 in Vienna by rabbi Dr. Grunwald. Recollections of a family trip to Poland and to the World Fair in Posen in 1930. Suicide of the author's father due to business failure in 1930. Schaffir and Schwadron family history. Both families originated in Galicia, Poland. Family and social life. Summer vacation at the Semmering. Austrian politics in the 1930's and rising National Socialism. Life in Vienna after the "Anschluss" in 1938. Walter had to leave school and took lessons in graphic arts with the artist Heinrich Koerner. Preparations to emigrate. Walter was picked up in the streets in the days after Kristallnacht and released due to his mother's intervention. He was sent with his brother Kurt on a "Kindertransport" to Holland. They were sent to a quarantine camp at Heyplaat. Reunition with their mother in the United States in December 1939. Reflections on life as an emigre.

Women in the congregation in the days of Hazan I. B. Seixas

Digital image