Ibmemoirs : [The memoirs of Inge Brenner].

In a memoir written for her daughters, Inge (Irene) Brenner recounts her family’s history, growing up in Berlin with her parents, her maternal grandfather Samuel Oppenheimer and her two sisters, Lony (born 1913) and Marianne (born 1922). She tells of the hardship that befell Jewish families after the Nazis’ rise to power. Her sister Lony left for Paris in 1933 and later worked as a secretary for the Zionist politician Vladimir Jabotinsky. Inge met her future husband Hans (Harold) Brenner in 1937 in Berlin; he was able to immigrate with the help of an American cousin and sent for Inge soon after Kristallnacht. They met in Havana, Cuba, and were married there. He returned to New York while Inge waited for her visa in Cuba, then entered the United States via Miami. Hans and Inge lived in a small apartment in Washington Heights, eventually joined by his parents as well as Inge’s parents and younger sister Marianne. When Lony and her husband Maurice arrived from Paris, they started a small business that employed several members of the family. Hans and Inge had two daughters, Barbara and Jessica; Maurice and Lony had one daughter named Linda. Inge also describes her younger sister’s life in some detail. Marianne, in an ultimately broken marriage with Henry Dreifus, gave birth to her only daughter at the age of 22. Claudia Dreifus was raised until the age of eight by her grandmother, Emma Willdorff, and later by her father and step-mother. Marianne went on to suffer a nervous breakdown, followed by a severe car accident. She spent her final years living in Reno with her second husband Aram Jorjorian. Following a second divorce, Marianne died at age 55.digitizedPart of the Claudia Dreifus Family Collection.Inge (Irene) Willdorff Brenner was born in Berlin, Germany on Aug. 8, 1919, daughter of Benno Willdorff and Emma, née Oppenheimer