Metadata: Estate of Rachel Michel-Frumes
Collection
- Country:
- Switzerland
- Holding institution:
- Archives of Contemporary History at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiv für Zeitgeschichte der ETH Zürich
- Postal address:
- Hirschengraben 62, CH-8092 Zurich
- Phone number:
- +41 44 632 40 03
- Web address:
- https://www.afz.ethz.ch/
- Email:
- afz@history.gess.ethz.ch
- Reference number:
- NL Rachel Michel-Frumes
- Title:
- Estate of Rachel Michel-Frumes
- Title (official language):
- Nachlass Rachel Michel-Frumes
- Creator/accumulator:
- Michel-Frumes, Rachel
- Date(s):
- 1905/2001
- Language:
- German
- Polish
- Extent:
- 0.6 shelf metres
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- The collection primarily documents the status of Rachel Michel-Frumes as a Polish emigrant in Switzerland during the Second World War. There is correspondence with relatives and friends in Poland, the immigration authorities in Switzerland and Jewish aid organisations. Rachel Michel-Frumes's relief work for Polish war victims in the postwar period is also documented by correspondence and reports. Interesting additions to the collection are sound documents with conversations by Anna Gecow and Hermann Field about their experiences during the war and postwar years. Rachel Michel-Frumes met Gecow and Field during her medical studies in Zurich. The conversations were processed by Christiane Hoff in a publication in 2005.
- Archival history:
- Ruth Michel-Richter handed over her mother's estate to the AfZ in several deliveries between 2005 and 2011.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Rachel Michel-Frumes was born in Lodz on 16 July 1913 and died in Baden on 19 February 1993. She was the daughter of Lewi Frumes and Sonia Elpern. She attended the Jewish Girls' High School in Lódz and studied medicine in Warsaw, Bratislava and Prague. In 1934, she was expelled from Prague due to her involvement in the Communist student movement and continued her studies in Basel and Zurich. In 1939, she submitted her dissertation and successfully passed final examinations in psychiatry and pathology. In 1942, she quit the state examination and in 1944 earned her commercial diploma as secretary-accountant. From 1944 to 1946, she attended lectures on art history and literature at the University of Zurich. Most of her family members were murdered during the Holocaust. In 1945, she attended a training course for "postwar care assistants" and established and managed the "Swiss-Polish Family Search Service" for Polish war victims in Bern. In 1946, she made a trip to Poland and in 1947 worked as a correspondent and translator for the "Polish Mission for Foreign Trade in Switzerland". In 1947, she married Kurt Michel, with whom she had three children. In 1950, she gave up work.
- Access points: locations:
- Poland
- Switzerland
- Subject terms:
- Aid and relief
- Memoirs
- Migration
- Migration--Emigration
- World War II
- Access, restrictions:
- Partially restricted. Subject to application.
- Finding aids:
- An online finding aid is available.
- Links to finding aids:
- http://onlinearchives.ethz.ch/
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Museum Hohenems
- Author of the description:
- Severin Holzknecht; Jewish Museum of Hohenems; 2020
