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Note: Steven von Schenk writes: "These are my grandparents. My grandmother Ilse was the daughter of a famous Danish Lutheran Minister who had settled in Austria. They studied art with the Viennese Workshop ("Wiener Werkstaette"), and came to New York City in 1932 and opened a design studio, the Schenk Studio. This eventually moved to Vermont and turned into a factory for toys, dolls, stuffed animals and Christmas decorations, which ran successfully until the 1980's in Vermont. It was called The Vermont Toy Farm. Due to their artistic connections in Vienna, including the theater (my grandfather was briefly the director of a theater in Frankfurt), they had many Jewish friends, and helped get hundreds of people out of Austria before the Nazis gained enough power to close the borders. After that they worked in an underground saving Jews from the holocaust. Many were brought to New York and given work in the studio until they could find their way in the new world. They had two sons born in Vienna and brought to New York in 1932."
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