Olympia and Alfons Blumenfeld Collection
Biographical History
Olympia Könyöt (1885-1942) was a par force rider born into a Hungarian dynasty of circus performers. She married fellow artist Alfons Blumenfeld (1887-1942), a member of a large German-Jewish circus family. They had a daughter, Ruth Berousek (1913-1942).
Alfons, along with two brothers, ran the Magdeburg-based headquarters of the famous and long-established Circus Blumenfeld. Due to the unstable political and economic situation in the interwar period, they had to give up the business eventually in 1928.
In the following years, Olympia and Alfons worked for other circuses, mainly abroad, as the rise of the Nazis forced many German circuses to close down and Jews were banned from employment.
During the November Pogrom of 1938, Alfons was arrested in Magdeburg and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. Upon his release, the Blumenfeld’s’ emigrated to Paris in December of that year.
After the outbreak of WWII, the family members were interned in various camps in Southern France, including Bram, Rivesaltes, and Drancy. While Ruth’s daughter Wardia Berousek (1931-2022) survived the war, Alfons, Olympia, and Ruth were deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where they perished.
Alfons’ parents and nine of their eleven children were murdered during the Holocaust.
Scope/Content
This collection comprises one letter only. In it, the authors, Jewish-German circus artists, describe the hardships of everyday life after their emigration to France in the late 1930s.
