“The children were not due to assemble until nine in the evening, but my suitcase stood ready at the door of our apartment all day. It was December, 1938. I was ten years old. I was going away on the first transport that the Vienna Jewish Committee had organized to rescue Jewish children from Austria.”[1]
These words form the introduction of Lore Segal’s article “Other People’s Houses: The Children’s Transport,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1961. Her article was among the first eyewitness accounts written by a child of the “Kindertransports.” The New York Public Library acquired Lore Segal’s personal archive, which holds not only various documents and correspondence pertaining to her literary works, her family’s life in Austria, and their escape in World War II, but also letters sent to her from other children of the Kindertransports, who enthusiastically responded to her New Yorker article.
Born to Ignatz and Franziska Groszmann in Vienna on March 8, 1928, Lore Segal grew up in the eighth district and lived at 81-83 Josefstädterstrasse. In the months following the “Anschluss” of March 12, 1938, her parents did everything in their power to bring their daughter to safety. They managed to get her a spot on what would be one of the first “Kindertransports,” a rescue operation to get as many Jewish and other persecuted children out of the “German Reich” to safety in other countries. From December 1938 to September 1939, transports were arranged to the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, the USA, and Great Britain. Around 12,000 children were saved, over 3,200 of which came from Austria.
Lore Segal arrived in Great Britain and initially lived with a Jewish Orthodox foster family. Upon her arrival, ten-year-old Lore contacted family members outside of Austria to help rescue her parents. Her appeals proved successful, and both parents managed to flee Austria to Great Britain in March 1939. Lore Segal was one of very few children to be reunited with their parents.
After completing her studies in English literature in the United Kingdom in 1948 and a brief sojourn in the Dominican Republic where she taught English, Lore Segal and her mother Franzi (her father had died in England) received affidavits and visas to move to the United States where they settled in New York City in 1951. Lore Segal pursued a career in creative writing and married editor David Segal in 1960.
She taught at various American universities as a professor of English, most notably at Columbia University and Princeton. A prolific writer, she authored many children’s books as well as other literary works for adults. She kept writing well into old age. Her latest book Ladies’ Lunch, a collection of short stories, was published in 2023. On October 7, 2024, she died at ninety-six years-old in New York City. She is survived by her children Beatrice and Jacob and her three grandchildren.
28. October 2024
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In memoriam - Lore Segal (1928-2024)
by Caitlin Gura & Sabine Apostolo
© Poster of the special exhibition Without a Home: Kindertransports from Vienna held at the Jewish Museum Vienna
Lore Segal’s story was featured in the special exhibition Without a Home. Kindertransports from Vienna (November 10, 2021 – May 15, 2022) held at Museum Judenplatz. Her passport photo from her Kindertransport documents was the subject of the exhibition poster. Lore Segal provided us with a first edition of her New Yorker article “Other People’s Houses” as well as a Red Cross letter from her family for this show. Curator Sabine Apostolo personally met Lore Segal in 2019 during a special “Wiener Jause” event with Viennese “Kinder” – as children of the Kindertransports referred to themselves – at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York in October 2019.
© Lore Segal at the Wiener Jause held at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York in October 2019; Photo: JMW
On display at the Bezirksmuseum Joseftstadt is the special exhibition “‘Ich wollte Wien liebhaben, habe mich aber nicht getraut’ Das Leben der Schriftstellerin Lore Segal,” which offers a detailed view into Lore Segal’s life story and features unique original objects from the Austrian-American writer’s estate. The exhibition runs until January 26, 2025.
Lore Segal will be dearly missed.
Lore Segal will be dearly missed.
