In 1938 the Nazi Anschluss of Austria shattered Margarethe’s “comfortable” world. I found the continuation of her story in the archives of the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. “ Felix Ungar (1887-1970) ..was imprisoned following the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 and was only released after signing over his business. ”
That was a time in Margarethe Hammerschlag Ungar life that she never spoke about with me. She would only allude to it and say, “That was a difficult time.”
E. Randol Schoenberg, the grandson of the composer, keeps a database of Holocaust survivors at www.geni.com . He told me that he needed a photo of Margarethe for this data base. I reached out to a former colleague, violist Tina Pelikan, who is a lifelong friend of Margarethe’s granddaughter Pamela Wilson. Recently, Pamela Wilson discovered, to my astonishment, a group of wonderful and historic photographs of Margarethe Hammerschlag Ungar. They were in her former art studio in San Francisco.
I am extremely grateful to Pamela for giving me permission to use some of them in this article.
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