Vera Bier: restitution claim papers

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Bookmark:http://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb1556-wl1756

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Scope and Content

This collection consists of the restitution claim papers of Vera Bier whose parents and brother perished in the Holocaust. Her claims relate to the destroyed family property in Aachen, damage to her education, loss of finances, and deprivation of liberty and death of her family.

Administrative / Biographical History

Vera Bier (née Dahl) was born in Aachen in 1921. Her school education was disrupted by Nazi-legislation which prevented Jews from attending state schools. After being forced to leave her school in Spring 1937 she went to an English-Jewish college in Cologne until the school was shut after the November pogroms in 1938, leaving her without qualifications for further university education. Vera Bier emigrated to England in May 1939 aged 17. Due to a lack of financial means she was unable to study medicine but trained as a nurse instead.

Vera's parents, Adolf (born 1880) and Olga Dahl (born 1887) stayed behind in Germany. Her father was a successful textile tradesman before the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses. Her parents and her brother Rudolf Dahl were taken to the Jewish ghetto in Aachen in 1941/1942 before being deported to Poland. They did not survive. The family's property was destroyed during the war.