Curt C. Silberman Papers

Curt Charles Silberman was born in Würzburg, Germany, 23 May 1908, as Kurt Leo Silbermann, the son of Adolf Silbermann, a wine merchant, and Ida (née Rosenbusch) Silbermann. He studied law in Berlin, Munich and Würzburg, where he received his J.D. in 1931. Following the passage of Nazi laws in 1933 that excluded Jews from the civil service and certain professions, he could no longer practice law, but was granted permission by the German Ministry of Economics to assist prospective émigrés in economic and legal matters, especially the interpreting of the stringent currency legislation. In 1935, he married Else Kleemann (1910-2001), also of Würzburg.

Curt and Else Silberman emigrated to the United States in late 1938, following Kristallnacht. They arrived in New York on 9 December, and subsequently settled in Essex County, New Jersey. They resided for some years in Newark, and later moved to East Orange, and then to West Orange. They both became naturalized American citizens in 1944. Curt Silberman earned a J.D. at Rutgers University in 1947 and practiced international private law in New Jersey from 1948 on. Among his clients were German corporations operating in the U.S. He was active in the New Jersey State Bar Association's Section on International Law and Organizations.

Beginning in the early 1940s, Silberman held leadership roles in local service organizations concerned with immigration issues and the assistance of newly arrived refugees. He was an immigration consultant with the Essex County Coordinating Committee of the National Refugee Service (NRS), and what became the Emigre Service Bureau of New Jersey. In the early 1950s he served as president of the Jewish Family Service Association of Essex County, a cooperating agency of the United Service for New Americans (successor of the NRS). From 1942 to 1962 he also served as president of the Jewish Unity Club of Newark, a social and mutual-aid organization of German Jewish immigrants that assisted newly arrived immigrants in their adjustment to American life. In connection with these organizational activities, he was frequently a guest lecturer at Jewish organizations and congregations in New Jersey and New York, speaking on topics related to immigration, German Jewish history, and assistance of refugees.

In 1949 Silberman traveled to Germany for the first time since his emigration, on professional matters as an attorney. In the course of the following years he was a guest speaker at educational and cultural institutions in Würzburg and elsewhere in Germany on a number of occasions, addressing topics related both to international law and to reflection on the era of National Socialism in Germany. Several times he was a speaker at the Law Faculty of the University of Würzburg, including in 1982, in connection with the festivities on the university's 400th anniversary.

Silberman played a leading role in a number of American and international Jewish organizations. He became an honorary trustee of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, in 1962. From 1962 to 1986 he served as president of the American Federation of Jews from Central Europe (AFJCE), the central representative agency of over thirty national and local organizations of victims of National Socialism from Central Europe. From 1971 to 1987 he was president of the Jewish Philanthropic Fund of 1933, a charitable offshoot of the AFJCE. From 1974 to 1998, he served as co-chair of the London-based Council of Jews from Germany, an umbrella organization representing the interests of former German Jews in matters of restitution and indemnification, legislation, and social work activities. He also chaired the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration (founded under the auspices of the AFCJE in 1971), which published a six-volume history of Jewish immigrants of the Nazi period in the United States, and collaborated with the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, to publish the International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés.

Beginning around the early 1960s Silberman and his wife Else, on a seasonal basis, spent time in South Lincoln, Vermont, and developed connections to campus life at nearby Middlebury College. In the 1990s the couple donated funds to establish a chair of Jewish Studies at the college, which was named in their honor.

Curt Silberman died in West Orange, New Jersey, 9 September 2002.