Goldhammer-Roth Family Papers

Dr. Egon Goldhammer was born in Austria in 1900, his wife Josefine Roth (some documents claim her first name was Gyöngyi but the birth records in this collection state her name as Josefine, we do know however that while in the US she went by the name Ginger), was born in Hungary in 1906. They met in Vienna, where Egon was a young doctor taking care of Ginger's sick aunt and married in 1934. In 1938, Hitler forces came to Vienna, Austria, where the couple resided, arrested Dr. Goldhammer and sent him to Buchenwald concentration camp. To save her husband life, she relied on a non-Jewish friend, who also happen to be a Nazi, to orchestrate Dr. Goldhammer release and escape to China. Ginger eventually joined him, and the couple stayed Hongkew Ghetto in Shanghai, China until 1947. While there, Dr. Goldhammer receive a certificate to practice medicine in China. When the couple entered the United States, they originally moved to New York. Egon later worked as a doctor in the Veteran's Administration, at a hospital in Mission, Texas and another in Rome, Georgia. Suffering from some sickness, he died in 1966. After her husband's death, Mrs. Goldhammer moved to Atlanta, where she volunteered over 38,000 hours for the VA Hospital, and spent the rest of her time volunteering for other organizations such as the Anti-defamation League, the American Cancer Society, and many Jewish organizations. She died in 2008 at the age of 102.