Zinaida Behmuaras: personal papers

Scope and Content

This collection contains the personal papers of Zinaida Behmuaras, a Lithuanian Jewish woman who fled to England from Nazi occupied France in 1940. Included are school certificates, marriage certificate and naturalisation papers, French ID papers, telegrams from Kauna (1940-1941), photographs, and death certificate.

Administrative / Biographical History

Zinaida ('Zina') Behmuaras (1912-1977, née Rozenblum) was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. She went to a private German school until May 1930. In 1932 she got married to Leo Behmuaras (born 1910), a Jewish student originally from Czechoslovakia. Zinaida studied at the Pathologic-Anatomical Institute of Vienna from 1936 to 1938. She followed her husband to Montagnac, France, in 1940 where he was stationed with the Czech army at a military training camp. The circumstances of her emigration to England are unclear. According to the accounts of family friends, Zinaida was rescued from Nazi occupied France by an English businessman who brought her to England. Her marriage was annulled in 1946. Zinaida became a British citizen in 1953.

Arrangement

Chronological

Access Information

Acquisition Information

Donated by Evelyn Page

Note

2011/19

Related Material

For photographs see photo archive.