Correspondence, 1938-1941

This collection contains the correpsondence between two Jewish teenager pen pals Walter Weiner from Boston and Jenny Wilk from Antwerp, between the years 1938 and 1941. Jenny’s letters provide information about the increase of everyday antisemitism in Antwerp in the late 1930s. She tells Walter about her experiences with verbal insults from her Flemish peers and the rise of violent incidents against Jews in the city. When the war starts, she asks Walter to help her family plan their departure from Europe by tracing a relative who presumably lived in Brooklyn, New York. In his responses Walter encourages Jenny to maintain a positive attitude despite her worries and shares with her his observation of declining antisemitism in the United States. In her last letter, Jenny tells Walter of her escape to France and her experiences in a camp there, before deciding to return to Belgium.