Wachtel Family Collection 1939-2004 Bulk dates: 1939-1946

This collection reflects the experience of the Wachtel family members during the 1940s as well as some of their restitution efforts and the investigation into the disappearance and supposed murder of Arnold Wachtel in later decades. The bulk of the collection is correspondence; a few official papers belonging to Arnold Wachtel are also included.Markus Wachtel (born 1898) and his wife, Regina née Guttenberg (born 1898), were born in Poland and later lived in Berlin, Germany. Markus Wachtel was arrested by Nazi forces and deported in 1939. He died in 1940. Regina Wachtel was arrested at the Jewish hospital in Berlin in 1941. She was deported and perished in the Holocaust.Their younger son Arnold (born 1921) survived six years in concentration camps in Germany including concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Ausschwitz, Warsaw, Dachau, and Bebra. After the end of the war, he rebuilt his life in Markt Schwaben near Munich, although he considered immigrating to the United States. In July of 1946, Arnold Wachtel and his friend Heinz Karliner hoped to become trustees of a department store, Kaufhaus Müller, alongside its then owner, Fritz Müller, a former Nazi party member. On the night of July 10, 1946, Arnold disappeared and seems to have been murdered.Arnold's older brother Leo (born 1919) fled Nazi Germany to Manchester, England and then immigrated to the United States in 1948. Leo died in 1995 in San Diego, California.Processeddigitize