Henny Wenkart (F / Austria, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Henny Wenkart (F / Austria, 1928), Holocaust survivor

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

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

Biography

Henny Wenkart was born July 5, 1928 in Vienna, Austria. Shortly before her eleventh birthday, Wenkart was rescued from Nazi-occupied Austria by Brith Shalom Lodge in Philadelphia, which rescued and hosted 50 Jewish children at their guest resort. Her family fled the country later that year, reunited with her, and moved to Providence, Rhode Island.

Wenkart studied philosophy at Pembroke College, where she became a charter member of Hillel before graduating in 1949. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University in 1950. In 1951 she married and moved to Boston, where she earned her PhD in Philosophy from Harvard in 1973 while teaching writing and philosophy at the university. From 1980–1986 she taught philosophy at Stern College in New York. Wenkart then founded the Jewish Women’s Poetry Workshop, which she continues to lead as of 2016. She edits The Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and has also edited the poetry anthology Sarah’s Daughters Sing (1990), co-edited Which Lilith? Feminist Writers Recreate the First Woman (1998), and published a collection of her poetry, Love Poems of a Philanderer’s Wife (2005). Wenkart was a founding board member of the Jewish Women’s Archive.

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.