Elizabeth Gurewitsch Pokempner letter in lieu of passport
My mother had to apply for a passport the United States after having married Leonard Pokempner of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in order to remain in the U.S. She originally arrived in 1928 to complete a post-doctorate in Chemistry, traveling on a student visa and laisse-passer instead of a passport because her family were refugees living in Vienna and ineligible for Austrian citizenship.
She completed her post-doc at Iowa State College, but as a woman chemist she had difficulty obtaining employment. When she finally found a job in Pittsburgh, she discovered she would have to have a passport to work legally. She was ineligible to stay in the U.S. because strict quotas limited the number of immigrants like herself from the Russian Empire or other eastern or southern European countries. A friend from her university days in Vienna, Austria told my mother of a young man (Mr. Pokempner) who would marry her so that she could obtain citizenship.
Thanks to Mr. Pokempner, my mother was able to stay in the United States where she enjoyed a career as a PhD chemist. During World War II, she was employed by Merck and served as the liaison between the vice president of Merck and British scientists who came to the U.S. to synthesize penicillin for mass use. The last scientists for whom she worked received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine along with Sir Alexander Fleming and Sir Howard Florey for their work on penicillin.
After 1934 when national quotas for immigrants were relaxed, my father came to United States and married my mother whom he had met at university in Vienna. They worked to save as many of their family members from Nazism as they could. Therefore Mr. Pokempner’s generosity made a difference to many people. His life was truly for a blessing.
