Correspondence and personal documents, 1937-1947, created and collected by Rolf Ransenberg. Consisting chiefly of correspondence from the Ransenberg family in Wanneman, Germany to their son Rolf in the United States, the papers also contain along with some personal documents of Rolf and Friedel Ransenberg. The Ransenberg family consisted of Jakob, Matilde, Rolf, Friedel, Guenther, Alfred, Karl-Heinz, and Inge. Jakob, the father, was a butcher; he was married to Mathilde, with whom he had six children. Rolf, the oldest son, was sent to the United States in 1938, and he kept up correspondence with his family until about 1941. Eventually, six out of the eight family members were killed by the Nazis between 1942-1944.

Rolf (also known as Ralph) Ransenberg was the oldest of Jakob and Matilde Ransenberg's six children. Friedel, the second brother, was born in 1925. Guenther was born in 1926, followed by Karl-Heinz in 1928, Alfred in 1932, and the only daughter, Inge, in 1934. Jakob Ransenberg, the head of the family, owned and ran a butchery in Wennemen, a town near the city of Meschede in Germany. However, with the Nazi's rise to power, the family's lives changed permanently and rapidly. Jakob was forced to close his butcher's shop due to the 1936 ordinance that prohibited Jews from owning businesses. The oldest son, Rolf, was able to take part in a 1938 Kindertransport to the United States--one of a relatively few children from Germany who were able to--and from then on lived with Max and Rosalie Loeb in Kansas City, MO. The rest of the family, who had remained in Wennemen despite the persecution they faced, wrote regularly to Rolf, Max, and Rosalie from 1938-1941.

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