Vera Lachmann

Vera Lachmann (June 23, 1904 – 1985) was a German poet, classicist and educator. After founding a school for Jewish children in Nazi Germany, she emigrated to the United States in 1939 and established Camp Catawba, a summer camp for boys.

Early life in Germany Lachmann was born in 1904 in Berlin, into a family of German-Jewish heritage. After attending a private school for girls, she enrolled in the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Basel in 1923 to study philology, language and literature. She earned a PhD from the University in Berlin in 1931, and planned to go on to teach at the university level. However, due to the bias against women in the field of tertiary education, she trained instead to teach at the Gymnasium (secondary school) level.

In 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany, Lachmann founded a private school for children of Jewish and Jewish-Christian parents who had been expelled from public schools.