Holocaust Survivor and M.S. St. Louis Passenger

Liesl Loeb was born on June 17, 1928 in Rheydt, Germany, the only child of Josef and Lilly Joseph. Her father was a prominent and successful attorney, and her mother was an accomplished soprano. Of interest, one of their neighbors in Rheydt, Joseph Goebbels, later became the Minister of Propaganda in the Nazi Party.

Despite the passage of the oppressive Nuremberg Laws of 1935, Liesl’s father was able to continue his practice of law. But the ever-increasing warning signs worried her father, and he applied for immigration status with the United States. On August 20, 1938 the family was given quota number 14, 350 for immigration, meaning they could reasonably expect to be called to travel to America with the next two years.