Subseries 2: Theater Personalities, A–Z: Personal papers, Ephemera, Clippings, 1905 - 1940

This subseries comprises 150 small files of materials pertaining to individual theater personalities. Some files contain fragmentary personal papers, including materials such as correspondence, agreements, government permits (related to theater troupes), membership cards, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and memorabilia. In other instances, the materials consist of miscellaneous ephemera and clippings of mixed provenance.

Included are manuscripts of autobiographical writings by Berish Bekerman, Yitzhak Turkow-Grudberg, Abraham Teitelbaum, Sam Liptzin, and Abraham Morewski; and collected clippings of serialized memoirs by Avrom Fishzon, Eddie Cantor, Leon Kobrin, and Anshel Shor.

Also included are miscellaneous business records of the theater directors Jacob Ben-Ami (in partnership with Jacob Mestel), Hirsh Hart, Shloyme Herszkowicz, Nahum Lipovski, Mieczysław Mendelsohn, Isaac Nozyk, Kalman Ebel, Sholem Cukier, Jacob Kenner, Moyshe Reichman, and Zelig Schorr, as well as prompter Wolf Neuhaus (including items related to a troupe directed by Israel Bialkowicz).

Among other noteworthy items are the records of Abish Meisels as chair of a committee to establish a commemorative plaque in honor of Abraham Goldfaden, at the house where Goldfaden stayed in Marienbad (Mariánské Lázně, Czech Republic); a scrapbook kept by Moyshe-Leyb Gurewicz of theater programs from his career as an actor and director in Łódź, Poland, and Kaunas, Lithuania, spanning the years 1913 to 1940; a handwritten manuscript by Ludwig Satz pertaining to a performance; and a handwritten letter addressed to Henrietta Schnitzer from Yiddish writer Yenta Serdatzky.

Fragmentary personal papers are also found in the files for Nathan Goldberg, the Genfer family, Joseph Weinstock, Jozef Wajshof and Berta Litwina-Wajshof, and Noach Nachbush.

Items in some of the files, by provenance, belong to the correspondence of Zalman Reisen, of Vilna (editor of the Vilner Tog); included (under the name heading of the letter-writer) are letters written to Reisen by Khane Braz, Jacob Gerstein, Clara Young, Jack Lewi, Abraham Morewski, Ajzyk Samberg, Shloyme Kutner, and Jakub Rotbaum.