Peter Paz Collection

This collection contains personal papers of Peter Paz and some of his family members. The bulk of the material dates from the 1990s and early 2000s and relates to restitution claims.

Peter Paz claimed restitution for himself and his mother. Materials related to these claims, such as legal documents and correspondence with officials and lawyers, can be found in folder 8. Paz and his cousin Miriam London also claimed restitution for the property in Rosswein, Germany owned by their grandfather, Alfons Goldmann. This property, located at Mühlstrasse 18, had once housed the Alfons Goldmann’s textile store. Legal documents and correspondence with lawyers related to these claims are in folders 9-10. Correspondence between Paz and Miriam London with both personal and restitution-related content can be found in folder 7. Photocopies of restitution materials related to Peter Paz’s uncle Rudolf Goldmann are also included. Rudolf Goldmann was forced to give up his career as a lawyer in Germany in the 1930s and claimed restitution for this in the late 1950s.

Beyond restitution materials, this collection also includes personal correspondence sent from Dorothea Goldmann to her mother during her imprisonment in 1944. A few letters from Peter Paz to his grandmother are also included. Official correspondence reflecting Paz’s attempt to gain German citizenship in the 1990s can be found in folder 6. Citizenship was granted Paz in 1994 and then retracted when German officials discovered that Paz already had U.S. citizenship, which made him ineligible for a reinstatement of his German citizenship. A few examples of Paz’s corporate photography are included in folder 11. Correspondence to and from Beverly Pimsleur, Paz’s companion at the end of his life, can be found in folder 12, most of which relates to Paz’s death and the donation of his papers to the Leo Baeck Institute.