Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)

This collection mostly consists of personal correspondence, including communications from relatives and friends interned in concentration camps in France, Lublin, and Theresienstadt, and letters regarding the establishment of an agrarian training camp for Jews in Italy.

This collection contains a wide variety of materials concerning Albert Dann, his ancestors, and children. Included are genealogical materials, correspondence, biographical information, and official, business, and restitution documents.

The Anna Schneider Correspondence contains a large body of correspondence between 1939 and 1945, plus a small amount of genealogical information gathered in 1993.

The collection consists primarily of correspondence to Annie Heim from her brother Ernst Bernstein regarding his efforts to emigrate with his wife. There also also documents and correspondence pertaining to the composer Rudolf Senger.

This collection contains the records of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, an organization founded in 1961, in New York City, by members of the Joseph Popper unit of B’nai B’rith, to foster and disseminate knowledge about the history and culture of Jews in the Czech and Slovak lands. Along with the Joseph Popper unit and, later, the Holocaust Survivors of Slovakia, the society sponsored an annual memorial service held in New York City to honor Czechoslovak Jews who perished in the Holocaust. A majority of the records are from the tenure of Rabbi Norman Patz as president (1994-2008). The materials primarily comprise correspondence, and items related to the annual memorial service, including texts of addresses, and yizkor memorial booklets. Also included are meeting minutes, letters to the membership, financial reports, writings, speeches, obituaries, clippings, photographs, and printed ephemera. The society's correspondence reflects its participation in cultural events related to Czech and Slovak Jewish history, as well as its relationship to the Jewish communities in the Czech Republic and, to a lesser extent, Slovakia; some correspondence with members contains genealogical information.

The Beigel Family Collection holds materials about the Beigel family members from Berlin. The collection consists of post-war personal correspondence between the various family members and documents on restitution claims. It includes original handwritten letters and papers from the time Liane Beigel (née Bick) was in Sweden, as well as official correspondence with the United Restitution Organization after she immigrated to the United States. Also included are her husband Horst Beigel’s restitution claims against Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG.

This collection holds the papers of Bernhard Kolb, the business manager of the Jewish Community of Nuremberg. Among the material here are personal papers with some information on the Kolb family as well as a small amount of papers of Hans and Käte Bruck and some material on Jewish communities, especially that of Nuremberg. However, the collection is largely comprised of records from Theresienstadt and the offices of Der Stürmer, the Nazi newspaper. The collection includes official records such as lists, reports and announcements; correspondence; unpublished manuscripts; notes; and some photographs and drawings.

This collection documents the family of Bernhard Wolff, extending back to his earliest known ancestor in 1646 through his grandchildren born in the 1970s. Born in Esens (Ostfriesland, Germany), Bernhard escaped National Socialist persecution by emigrating to Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1938, followed shortly thereafter by his wife Fanny née Mitau. His six siblings and mother Flora née Oppenheimer also emigrated, eventually settling in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, or the U.S. The collection contains correspondence, family trees, vital records, official documents, and photographs of family and Jewish historical sites. Also included are a three-volume family chronicle and a two-volume collection of materials on the Jewish community of Esens (Ostfriesland) created by Bernhard Wolff. A unique highlight of the collection is the postcard album belonging to Fanny’s mother Ida Mitau née Jacobsohn, who was not able to escape Germany and perished in Theresienstadt.

The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence to Bertha Badt-Strauss from various writers and friends between 1940 and 1969. The letters deal with topics related to emigration/immigration, Judaism, Zionism and publishing opportunities in the United States and Mexico. Included are manuscripts, poems, photographs and clippings of Badt-Strauss's correspondents, as well as some of her own writings.

The Buchheim Jonas Family Collection holds documentation of various branches of the Jonas family of Waldbreitbach, Germany, especially the descendants of Louis Jonas and Ella Buchheim, and tells of their emigration from Germany. In addition, it documents aspects of the life of Meier Buchheim of Dauborn, Germany, especially his attempt to emigrate and later death. The collection includes many family photographs, family trees, correspondence, official documents, material on the village of Waldbreitbach, and other documentation.

The majority of the materials in this collection consist of original and some published documents pertaining to the Berlin physician Curt Bejach and his family. Also included are original correspondence and published articles about the physicist Samuel Goudsmit.

David Friedman (Friedmann; 1893-1980) was an artist in Berlin. During the Nazi Holocaust, he was incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz. He resumed his artistic career immediately after the war and then immigrated to the United States. His papers include artwork, memoirs, and essays focusing on his experiences in the Holocaust.

This collection pertains to the life of Doris Rauch (née Perlhefter), her uncle Norbert Troller, and fellow Holocaust survivors Oscar Bittner and Oscar Jellinek. It encompasses government documents and Rauch’s identification forms issued by the United States and Czechoslovakia, as well as her correspondence relating to family and Holocaust history in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Included are photographs of friends and family engaged in recreation or as posed portraits, the great majority in black and white. Authored by Norbert Troller himself are a memoir manuscript and family tree denoting those members killed during the Holocaust.

This collection holds papers of the physician and author Edmund Hadra. Much of the collection is composed of unpublished manuscripts of his writing, a significant part of which is autobiographical in nature and describe some of the most notable events of his life. In addition to these works are other writings on themes such as literature and art. The collection additionally contains official, educational and professional documentation, some correspondence and a few research notes.

Elsa Oestreicher, née Herz, born in Berlin in 1878 and married to the physician D. Jacques Oestreicher, was a successful cooking instructor and author of cookbooks. In 1942 she was deported to Theresienstadt where she also worked as a cook, cooking instructor and as head of the soup-kitchen until her liberation in 1945. The collection contains Elsa Oestreicher’s notes on Theresienstadt, concentration-camp insignia, correspondence, poems and memoirs by her as well as official documents such as certificates related to her profession.

This collection documents the experiences of members of the Solinger and Vogel families of Aschaffenburg, Germany with a particular focus on Ernst Solinger (1913-2008) and his wife Martha née Vogel (1917-2007). Materials include correspondence, photographs, poems, vital records, property and inheritance papers. Also included are records of Ernst and Martha Solinger’s emigration, education, banking, and taxes, as well as their efforts to sponsor their parents’ emigration and their later restitution efforts on behalf of their parents.

The collection consists of private correspondence, personal documents and writings of Eva Heilberg Schäffer, her parents, her husband Hans Schäffer, her daughters and other relatives and friends.

The Flora Morstadt Collection documents the life of Flora Morstadt and her family mainly through the years 1938-1944. The bulk of the collection is comprised of letters from Flora Morstadt to her family during World War II. Other materials include documents relating to emigration, post-war identification cards, and Flora Morstadt’s recipe book.

Writings (all photocopies) by Richard Frank and his sister, Hedwig Ems, as well as by Reinhard Frank.

This collection documents the history of the Weiss family with a focus on Gerald Weiss’ parents Jacob and Selma Weiss née Falk and their siblings. Jacob (alternatively Köbes) Weiss (1883-1965) was born the second of nine children to the cattle dealer Albert Weiss and his wife Mathilde Amalie née Michel. As a young man, he lived in Cologne and started a bed linen manufacturing business, S & J Weiss, with his brother Siegmund. As the situation for Jews in Germany worsened in the 1930s, he and Siegmund smuggled money from the business to banks in Holland to aid in the Weiss family’s emigration. Jacob Weiss emigrated with his wife and children in 1939 and settled in New York. This collection contains family trees, family correspondence, translations of family correspondence, vital records, immigration and naturalization records, correspondence and legal documents concerning restitution claims, correspondence and legal documents concerning the estate of Hermann and Carolina Michel née Frank, and correspondence and photographs concerning family gravesites and the restoration of a Jewish cemetery.

The collection contains six original letters written by Gertrud Kantorowicz, 1907-1935; one original letter sent to Gertrud Kantorowicz, 1934; carbon copy of an extract from a 1944 letter, concerning the death of Gertrud Kantorowicz’s daughter; the typescript of her Theresienstadt poems (eight pages carbon copies); the original typescript of a Theresienstadt poem; as well as the photocopy of a handwritten manuscript of two of her poems.

This collection documents the family history and restitution claims of Gertrude Guckenheimer née Goldschmidt (1916-2003) and her husband Ludwig Guckenheimer (1911-1991). Half of the collection relates to the family histories and family businesses of Gertrude and Ludwig, while the other half documents the restitution claims brought by them and their family members. Included are family trees, birth, marriage, and death certificates, inheritance documents, business contracts, and personal and business correspondence, bank records, official and legal documents concerning restitution claims, and a few photographs. The history of the family businesses Herz Hachenburger Sohn and Max Baer Söhne are well documented in contracts and correspondence.

The bulk of the collection consists of original correspondence between Gottfried Saloman and Marta Mierendorff, 1938-1939, as well as Mierendorff’s journal entries from 1941. Much of the material concerns philosophy, or is poetic, flowery and romantic with a background of angst.

The collection consists of material pertaining to Rabbi Leo Baeck. The material, mostly secondary, was collected by the Leo Baeck Institute’s staff and in some cases bear markings and notes by the Institute’s staff.

This collection contains the personal papers of members of the Hecht, Bielefeld, Günther, and Gottschalk families. Materials range widely in time period and content, providing insight into varied experience of these families from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. Materials include vital records, emigration records, apprenticeship and journeyman records for a merchant, education records, letters of recommendation, personal correspondence, military records from World War I and World War II, restitution claims, property records, tax and financial records, friendship books (Poesiealben), documents related to religious services during military service, family trees, photographs, a diary about emigration, and a Hebrew primer.

This collection documents the experience of Hedwig Geng née Berg (1891-1981) as a Jewish woman living in Munich during the Nazi regime and her survival of Theresienstadt. Materials include personal correspondence, official correspondence and directives, ephemera from Theresienstadt, identification papers, poems, notes, clippings, and a few photographs.

The collection contains correspondence and other documents, pertaining to Herbert Heineman(n), his brother Eric(h) and their parents, Lisette and Max Heinemann. The bulk of the collection pertains to Lisette and Max Heinemann’s correspondence with their sons and their imprisonment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Collection of letters sent from Hertha Josias from Germany to her daughters Hannelore and Inge in Sweden; letters from Rosalie Selig.

This collection contains personal and official documents pertaining to the family’s immigration to the United States and their situation in Germany as the political climate deteriorated. Included are a large amount of personal letters, supplemented by various other documents from government and military offices, some genealogical and tracing certificates, as well as other various material.

The bulk of this collection consists of correspondence sent from Jenny Pelz in Berlin to her children and grandchildren in the United States during the second World War.