Trahan, Elizabeth Welt

Elisabeth Welt was born on November 19, 1924 in Berlin, Germany, and raised by her grandparents in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia after her mother's death in 1929. On January 1, 1940 she rejoined her father, who had been living in Vienna since 1936, so that they could emigrate together. They did not succeed in leaving, and her memoir Walking with ghosts: a Jewish childhood in wartime Vienna (Peter Lang, 1998, 2000) describes her experiences during World War II in Vienna.

In July 1947 she immigrated to the United States as a displaced person with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC). After gaining a PhD in comparative literature at Yale University in 1957 she taught at various universities before retiring in 1993. Since then she was active as an independent scholar and writer. Occasionally she wrote under the pen name Lisa Mondo. Elizabeth Welt Trahan died on September 16, 2009.

Elizabeth Welt was married to Donald Herbert Trahan from 1957 to 1974. They had one daughter, Jennifer Trahan (born 1964-). Elizabeth's father, Albert Welt (1895-1965), was born in Czernowitz (then Austria, today Chernivtsi, Ukraine) and died in Vienna, Austria. Her mother, Selma née Silberstein (1896-1929), was born in Ostrau (today Ostrava, Czechoslovakia) and died in Berlin, Germany.

From the guide to the Elizabeth W. Trahan Collection, 1913-2009, bulk 1939-1947, (Leo Baeck Institute)