Robert Zweigenthal
Robert Sigmund Zweigenthal was born in Pforzheim on January 20, 1908.
He initially lived with his parents, Armin and Irma, at Sophienstraße 48. In 1914, his brother Edmund Leopold was born. Armin ran a company for silver and gold goods at Durlacherstraße 42, exporting to several European countries and the United States.
From 1914 to 1917, Robert attended primary school in Pforzheim, then secondary school. After that he trained as a jewelry designer at the Municipal Goldsmithing School and later at the Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. From around 1929 onward, he worked in his father’s business.
ROBERT (SECOND FROM THE LEFT) AT WORK
After the Nazis came to power and antisemitic boycotts were imposed, the company’s turnover declined rapidly. Robert worked for a short time at the Emrich company in neighboring Mühlacker. His father, Armin, who was born in Czechoslovakia, was stripped of his German citizenship. In the end, the business had to be closed. In 1935, the Zweigenthal family left Germany and made their way to Prague.
In Prague, Robert and his father tried to make a modest living by running a small costume jewelry business. After some time, his mother developed cancer.
Since Robert’s Hungarian sweetheart, Elizabeth Aigner, was now living in Paris, he tried to reach France after the Germans marched into the Sudetenland. In 1939, Robert managed to get a plane ticket to the French capital.
He initially lived in Paris and tried to make ends meet through odd jobs, as he was unable to obtain a work permit.
ROBERT AND ELIZABETH SHORTLY AFTER THEIR WEDDING
International developments were growing increasingly tense. Shortly after Robert married Elizabeth, he joined a unit of the Czechoslovak army in exile, thereby avoiding deportation and worse, and was stationed in Agde, in the South of France. After the Wehrmacht invaded Paris in 1940, Elizabeth left the city and, now pregnant, fled to join her husband in Agde, where their son Thomas was born and where Robert was eventually demobilized. Having been the unofficial photographer of the exiled Czech army, Robert continued his craft as the family strived to secure the elusive visas to the US. Finally, in October 1942, Robert, Elizabeth, Thomas, and Elizabeth’s mother, Carola Aigner, managed to escape via Spain to Portugal, from where they made their way to New York.
ROBERT, ELIZABETH AND THEIR SON THOMAS ABOARD THE “S.S. CARVALHO ARAÚJO”
Starting over in a foreign country was difficult without knowing the language or the local area. During his first three years there, Robert again tried to earn a living through odd jobs. After the end of the war, he attempted to establish his own costume jewelry business, initially without success, but after being employed for three years as a designer, he began again in 1951, starting small, in the bedroom of the family’s apartment, and the firm eventually grew into a successful enterprise. Robert now went by the name Robert Zentall, and by this time the young family had another child, Katherine, born in 1948.
With the help of the Red Cross, Robert learned that his brother Edmund survived the war in the greater Prague area, partly in hiding. They were reunited in 1946. Edmund, who now bore the surname Zachar, immigrated to the United States with his Czech wife, Elizabeth Weisz. The brothers resumed working together, with Edmund selling Robert Zentall Fashion Jewelry to boutiques and department stores and his wife managing the New York City showroom (which they shared with Robert’s brother-in-law Etienne Aigner’s leather goods company). Robert’s father died in 1955, before he could be reunited with the family. Robert would never see his mother again either; she had already died during the war as a result of her cancer.
Like his children and grandchildren, Robert Zentall thrived in the United States, where he lived to the age of 90. On April 5, 1998, he gave an interview to the USC Shoah Foundation and recounted his life…
Author: „Geschichte aktiv“ Hilda-Gymnasium
Image sources: Private archive Zentall family (all edited).
