AHC interview with Bettina Graf

May 28, 2008Bettina Graf, née Kniesbacher was born on Dec. 12, 1927 in Vienna, Austria. In 1938, after several failed attempts to get a visa for the United States, a son of her mother’s cousin, who lived in England, got them a transit visa for Great Britain. They left Austria for London and stayed there until August 1940, when they finally got their immigration visa for the US. When a torpedo hit their ship, they had to go back to Liverpool and stay there for another 3 weeks. On March 10, 1940 they finally arrived in New York. Bettina Graf enrolled at New York University and studied fashion design; once she got married she worked in real estate.Austrian Heritage Collectio