Erwin Tepper (M / Austria, 1931), Holocaust survivor

Erwin Tepper (M / Austria, 1931), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <United States> <Kraus Rescue Mission>

• MEMOIRS : 50 Children (doc, 2013), by Steven Pressman

Biography

Erwin Tepper was born in Vienna, Austria in November 1931. In 1939, one year after Germany annexed Austria, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus coordinated a rescue of fifty Austrian Jewish children to be brought to the United States unaccompanied by their parents. Erwin was chosen as one of these children. Erwin arrived in NYC in June 1939 and was reunited with his parents in late 1940 and early 1941 in the United States. Erwin earned a B.S. from Yale University, and an M.D. from the University of Basel in Switzerland. He went on to serve as attending radiologist in radiation oncology at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, and radiation oncologist at Monmouth Medical Center in New Jersey. Erwin retired from Monmouth Medical Center in 1994.

Doc : 50 Children (2013), by Steven Pressman

• 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. And Mrs. Kraus (USA, 2013)

"The film tells the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia who traveled to Nazi Germany in 1939 and, with the help of the B'rith Sholom fraternal organization, saved Jewish children in Vienna from likely death in the Holocaust by finding them new homes in Philadelphia. The Krauses were the grandparents of Pressman's wife, Liz Perle, and the film is based on the manuscript of a memoir left behind by Eleanor Kraus when she died in 1989 ... The documentary, which premiered on HBO in 2013 on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, was narrated by Mamie Gummer and Alan Alda. Some of those who were rescued were interviewed for the film. Aged from five to fourteen, they were senior citizens living in the United States and Israel when the film was made."--Publisher description.