10/27/2019
The RMS Queen Mary departed Cherbourg, France, for New York City in March of 1939. Many of the passengers on board were Jewish refugees fleeing years of N**i persecution. One of those refugees was little Robert Tennenbaum (left), traveling with his parents. Both of Robert’s parents had been small business owners in Vienna—his mother owned a hardware store and his father ran a plywood business—but the N**is took their livelihoods away from them. The Tennenbaums managed to get visas to come to the United States, despite the uncertainty awaiting them in their new country.
Robert grew up and settled in Columbia, Maryland, where he worked as an architect before he retired. Now in his eighties, he still remembers the voyage that brought him to the US. “The bottom line was that the Queen Mary saved me and my mom and dad,” he told the Washington Post in an interview, “Saved our lives.”
Robert’s father, Marcus, took home videos of their lives in Vienna and their long voyage to America on the Queen Mary. You can view them in the Museum’s collection: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1003703
