The collection contains three copies of a pamphlet for the first concert of the 10th season of the Cape Town Chamber Music Society. Helga Bassel, Tessa’s mother, is listed as a pianist, and her father, Hannes Uys, is listed as the Honorary Secretary for the organisation. It also contains a pamphlet for a concert in aid of the Jewish National Fund which Tessa Uys attended.
Helga Bassel was born in 1908 in Germany. In 1930 she bought a second hand Blüthner piano and became a concert pianist in Berlin. In 1933 when the Nazis came to power she converted to Christianity. However, she was still classified as Jewish under Nazi law. Her then-fiancé, Franz Michels, a Christian geologist, was forced by the Nazis to break off their engagement. In 1935 she was expelled from the Reich Music Chamber and instead became a member of the Reich Association for Non-Aryan Christians. In 1936, with the help of Franz, she managed to escape from Germany with her brother, Gerhard, and her piano. She later met her husband, Hannes Uys, an accountant and musician at a concert at the Cape Town City Hall. The couple got married in 1943 and had two children: Pieter-Dirk Uys, the noted playwright and political satirist, and Tessa Uys, the renowned pianist. Helga died in tragic circumstances in 1969. Her piano was posthumously donated to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.