Skip to main content

Martha Mondschein Bauer papers

 Collection
Identifier: Mss 1065-007

Collection Overview

Correspondence, photographs, and memoirs of Martha Mondschein Bauer, a Jewish nurse who escaped Germany by becoming a volunteer nurse in England and the Dominican Republic. Included is correspondence regarding her brother and her husband's parents, photographs of Mondschein's and Bauer's family members, and her husband Felix Bauer's memoir. This memoir includes two other recollections, one of an unnamed sister-in-law of a close friend who was deported to the Risa ghetto and Kaiserwald concentration camp, and the other of Johann Zelenka, an Austrian friend conscripted into the German army.

Dates

  • 1940-2001

Creator

Language of Material

Materials in English, German, and Czech

Access Restrictions

This collection is open for research.

Copyright Notice

The nature of the College of Charleston's archival holdings means that copyright or other information about restrictions may be difficult or even impossible to determine despite reasonable efforts. Special Collections claims only physical ownership of most archival materials.

The materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. copyright law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source.

Biographical Note

Martha Mondschein Bauer was born on January 16, 1915, in Kassel, Germany. She received her training as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital in Cologne. In 1939, Bauer left Germany for England, where she worked as a nurse on a children's ward and learned English from her patients.

The United Kingdom ordered all enemy aliens to be interned in 1940, and Mondschein was deported to the Isle of Man and then moved to London, where she stayed during the London Blitz. She later agreed to go to the Dominican Republic, a neutral country, traveling on a ship protected by a naval convoy from England to the United States.

After a ten-day stay at Ellis Island, Mondschein obtained a transfer to the Dominican Republic and arrived in Sosúa, where she was located in a settlement of approximately 200 refugees. As a nurse, she worked with three European doctors to organize and equip a hospital. Shortly after arriving, she met Felix Bauer, a native of Vienna, Austria. They married on March 6, 1943. In October 1946, the Bauers moved to Due West, South Carolina, where Felix Bauer taught music and art at Erskine College until he retired in 1979; Martha Bauer worked as a nurse until her retirement in 1981.

Extent

0.25 linear feet (6 folders)

Abstract

Correspondence, photographs, and memoirs of Martha Mondschein Bauer, a Jewish nurse who escaped Germany by becoming a volunteer nurse in England and the Dominican Republic. Included is correspondence regarding her brother and her husband's parents, photographs of Mondschein's and Bauer's family members, and her husband Felix Bauer's memoir.

Collection Arrangement

Materials are described at the folder level.

Acquisitions Information

Materials donated in 2004 by Martha Mondschein Bauer.

Alternate Form of Materials

Digital reproductions of photographs and correspondence available online in the Lowcountry Digital Library.

Related Material

Related materials in College of Charleston Special Collections include a curriculum package and resource guide for South Carolina voices: lessons from the Holocaust (Mss 1070, D804.3 .S34 1992). This documentary includes videotaped interviews with South Carolina Holocaust survivors, including Martha and Felix Bauer.

Processing Information

Processed by Rebecca McClure, February 2011.

Title
Inventory of the Martha Mondschein Bauer Papers, 1940-2001
Status
Completed
Author
Processed by: Rebecca McClure; machine-readable finding aid created by: Rebecca McClure
Date
2011
Description rules
Dacs
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Sponsor
Funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources supported the processing of this collection and encoding of the finding aid.

Repository Details

Part of the Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Special Collections
College of Charleston Libraries
66 George Street
Charleston South Carolina 29424
(843) 953-8016
(843) 953-6319 (Fax)