Private Papers of V Reynolds

Collection

Scope and content:: Privately printed memoir (288pp ts) centered on the life of his mother Eva Rheinhold (nee Ruedenberg), describing her family background as the daughter of a prominent Hannover businessman, her marriage into another prominent business family in the city in the early 1920s, the impact on both families of the Nazi regime's anti-Jewish legislation in the 1930s, the trial and imprisonment of her husband Heinz Rheinhold on charges of 'Rassenschande' (sexual relations with 'Aryan' women) including a detailed reconstruction of the trial on the basis of surviving records, Eva's emigration to England with her children on a 'Kindertransport', transcriptions of official and family correspondence concerning Heinz's imprisonment in Coswig jail and abortive attempts to obtain his release (he was transferred to Gestapo custody in July 1942 and put on a transport 'to the East', presumed murdered in the camps), the expropriation and 'Aryanisation' of the factory owned by Eva's father Max Ruedenberg, who was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto with his wife, also in July 1942, where both of them died, the difficult times experienced by Eva and her children in England during and after the war (including a brief return to Hannover in 1949), concluding with the family's life in England until Eva's death in 1978.

Access points: persons/families:: Reynolds; Rheinhold, Eva; Rheinhold, Heinz; Ruedenberg, Max

Subject terms:: Antisemitism; Antisemitism--Antisemitic legislation; Holocaust; Holocaust--Deportation; Kindertransports; Memoirs; Plunder; Plunder--Aryanisation; Prisoners

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Finding aids:: Online catalogue see: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030018626