The Mela family, who lived in a posh suburb of New York, took my eight-year-old sister in and registered her under the name Lena Iggers because - they explained to my parents - the name Igersheimer sounded too un-American. As I rightly suspected, their concern was probably less that the name was too German than that it was too Jewish. My parents were faced with a fait accompli, but did not object because my father in particular did not want to attract attention in a new country; nevertheless, they did not want to deny their Jewish origins. I, however, was outraged and continued to use the name Igersheimer in school. Several years later, shortly before my high school graduation, the school changed my name to George Iggers at my parents’ request. Since this affected all my records and my enrollment at the University of Richmond was also in that name, I had no choice but to comply. An American acquaintance who knew German later quipped that after my expulsion from Germany I had become not only homeless, but also without “heimer”.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 65f (translation)