Archive of personal documents pertaining to the journey of Austrian-American Jew, Wilhelm Theodor Bauman (1922-2006).

(HOLOCAUST).

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Archive contents include (detailed inventory available upon request ): * Bauman parents’ papers from Vienna, including his father, Jakob Kopel Baumann’s passport from the Third Reich and a letter from the Rabbinate of the Jewish Community of Vienna certifying that “nothing detrimental is known” about Jakob Bauman. * Pre-war papers of W.T. Bauman, including two class pictures from his Talmud Torah and academic report cards. * Bauman’s alien registration card from England, picture postcards, a character reference of his former host in Swansea, Wales. * “Boomerang” newsletter published by the internees in the Hay camp; “Camp Seven Bank” 6-pence paper bill; a Prisoner of War-issued postcard with multiple warnings: “If anything else is added, the postcard will be destroyed;” a Kosher meat order from the Tatura Kosher kitchen. * Newspapers from the day of Germany’s surrender and the end of World War II. * Correspondence between Wilhelm and his parents, and with his close friends from England and Australia. * Drawings, watercolors, plays and essays.

These papers tell the story of a life lived from Vienna to Wales to Australia to Louisiana and finally, New York. Bauman was a member of the ‘Dunera Boys,’ and used his artistic talents while interned to assist in producing the celebrated Hay Hagadah. Teenage Wilhelm Theodor Baumann fled Austria alone, settling in Swansea, Wales, but after some 18 months there, he and other young German-speaking Jewish refugees were suspected by the British Government as Nazi sympathizers and in turn, were sent to an interment camp in Hay, Australia in 1940 via the British passenger ship HMT Dunera. The 57 days of the voyage were a nightmare of inhuman conditions and brutal mistreatment. Hay is a small town in the western Riverina region of south-western New South Wales, Australia. It was utilized as a prisoner-of-war and internment center, due in no small measure to its extremely isolated location. Bauman worked in the kitchen of the camp and regularly wrote letters to the British military offering his services. In 1942, he was released and settled on the farm of Mr. Feiglin in Shepparton, Victoria. Bauman petitioned to enter the United States hoping to reunite with his parents who had found sanctuary in Shreveport, Louisiana and with whom he managed to stay in contact through the war. Summer 1947, Bauman arrived in San Francisco and made his way to Louisiana, eventually settling in New York City and finally retiring to Englewood, New Jersey. Bauman’s papers here contain an abundance of historical artifacts all of which gives us an intimate view of his life throughout his extensive wanderings.