Family's Holocaust-era letters to be translated

The pair continued to write to each other for many years and the collection contains dozens of letters which they exchanged.

Ralph’s parents Max and Martha remained in Hanau and were later killed in concentration camps, along with many other family members.

The letters chart Ralph’s desperate attempts to help his parents escape Nazi Germany.

Dr Gilbert’s project has been awarded the grant from the Kaplan Kushlick Foundation in South Africa, to contribute towards the cost of translating and cataloguing the letters.

“We have many documents to examine, which I am sure will add greatly to our understanding of life in both Nazi Germany and South Africa in the middle of the last century,” she said.

Dr Gilbert plans to write a book about the collection and the life of Ralph Schwab, who died in a road accident in 1971.

The letters are currently held at the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem.