Paula Hofmann made this binder for her brother Fred Hofman (born Siegfried Hofmann) sometime after his circumcision. In May 1939 Fred, along with over nine hundred other Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, boarded the MS St. Louis and set sail from Hamburg, Germany, for Cuba. Carrying his Torah binder—one of his sole possessions—he reached Havana only to be forced back across the Atlantic. Hofman was sent to a refugee camp in the Netherlands but, through the efforts of his family, ultimately reached the United States in April 1940, serving in the US army from 1942 to 1946.