Theresienstadt (Concentration camp)

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.

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.

The Leo Baeck Collection documents the life and work of Rabbi Leo Baeck, well-known as a leader, scholar, and spokesman for German Jewry. Although the most prominent items in this collection are articles, clippings, and biographical material on Leo Baeck, the collection also holds original manuscripts of his writing, as well as personal documents, correspondence, and a small amount of photographs and artwork.

Documents refer to the Ostwald, Tendlau and Cohen families. One focus is on the life of Alice Witte née Cohn. Of special significance is a letter that Karl Siche wrote to Alice Witte. Together with Alice Witte's former husband Max Witte, Karl Siche was detained in a concentration camp. Here Max Witte passed away. There is also a remarkable letter from Hedwig Ostwald, which she wrote in Theresienstadt in 1944, prior to her deportation to Auschwitz where she died. Her husband Max Ostwald, a lawyer and the head of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (district Westphalia) had already died in 1942 in Theresienstadt from disease.

This collection consists mainly of correspondence between family members of Rose Wegner, predominantly of her mother Gertrud Leon's letters from Berlin to Rose in New York in the years 1938-1942. The recent correspondence between Peter Leon and Beate Niemann deals with the past of Beate's Nazi parents and their connection to the Leons.