Under the employ of the New York Kehillah, detective Abraham Shoenfeld infiltrated and documented Jewish crime rings, prostitution houses and gambling establishments from 1912 to 1917. For the American Jewish Committee from 1938 to 1964, he investigated anti-Semitic organizations and individuals. He also authored a controversial book about the New York crime world, The Joy Peddler, and he was at work on other pieces of fiction and his memoirs. The bulk of his papers consist of investigative reports and research for the American Jewish Committee, his manuscripts, and his collection of anti-Semitic literature.

The Adler Family Collection holds materials regarding the lives of Thekla (née Grünebaum) and Leopold Adler and their children Bennie, Rose, Irma, and Berthold. The papers document their lives in Hintersteinau, Germany, the deaths of Leopold and Irma Adler, and the emigration of the remaining family members to New York. Included in the collection is a large amount of their correspondence, in addition to various family papers, including official documents, school records, immigration documentation, documentation relating to the careers of family members, and genealogical and historical research. The collection also contains family photographs and a photo album.

The collection contains papers of Alan M. Kohn, a former emergency preparedness operations officer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and a former president of Temple Beth Sholom, the Conservative Synagogue of Brevard County, Florida. It documents Mr. Kohn's participation in the Rally for Soviet Jewry outside of the John F. Kennedy Space Center of NASA on July 15, 1975. The occasion for the rally was the launch of the Apollo spacecraft manned with three astronauts for a rendezvous with the Soviet Soyuz manned spacecraft on the Apollo-Soyuz Space Mission. The purpose of the rally was to raise public awareness of the plight of the Jews in the Soviet Union and to demand their freedom. The collection includes part of an unpublished, novelized memoir written by Alan M. Kohn in 1995, that focused on the rally. The collection also contains a letter of introduction to the memoir.

This collection contains the archival papers of Arthur Rath. Most of it consists of correspondence with friends and family members. Primary topics of the collection are Arthur's life in Switzerland towards the end of World War II and the decades immediately after, correspondence with friends who were also Jewish refugees from Germany after the war, and Arthur Rath's life decisions following the displacement of his family during the war.

The Bernard Eckstein Addenda Collection focuses on providing documentation of the life of the chemist Bernard Eckstein, especially his early life in Ulm, Germany, his education in England and the United States, and his military service during World War II. Documentation of the lives of his parents, brother, and other family members are also present. The collection includes official and personal documents, scrapbooks, family correspondence, biographical and autobiographical narratives, photographs, military documents, newspaper clippings, and other documents.

The collection contains Bernard G. Richards personal and official correspondence, papers from his involvement with the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Information Bureau, published and unpublished writings, publications collected by Richards, articles about Richards and his activities, correspondence and articles from testimonial dinners in honor of Richards, and photographs. Significant correspondents include Joseph Barondess, Louis D. Brandeis, Vladimir Jabotinsky, J.L. Magnes, Louis Marshall, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jacob H. Schiff, Philip Slomovitz, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Morris Winchovsky, and Stephen S. Wise.

The collection holds papers, photographs, documents and correspondence pertaining to four generations of the Altmann family. Topics of the collection are, among others, the lives of the family members in Austria-Hungary, in pre-war Austria, in the emigration process and in the United States. Part of the material focuses on the family’s genealogy. The collection comprises correspondence, memoirs, personal and official papers, family photographs, postcards and some notes.

This collection documents the history of the Kahn family from the 19th century to the end of the 20th century. The bulk of the materials relate to Alfred and Lotte Kahn, who fled Germany for New York City in 1939, where Alfred made a career as a lawyer and Lotte as a stockbroker. Paper materials include a family tree, vital records, correspondence, memoirs, education and emigration records, World War I military records, clippings, speeches, and ephemera. Papers showing the activities of the Kahn family in the Congregation Habonim in New York City are also included, as well as a large amount of family photographs ranging from the 1880s to 1969.

This collection contains the papers of the Deutsch-Edel family, originally from Vienna, and in particular the family of Georg and Sabina Deutsch and their children. The bulk of the collection – dating 1940 to 1990 -- is correspondence, but there are also large sections of educational and immigration records, as well as memoirs documenting the history of the family authored by George Deutsch. The collection documents the lives of family members in Vienna, including their educational and professional lives, up to the time of the Nazi annexation of Austria and the flight of different members of the family to England and the United States. Post-World War II materials (the largest portion) consist mostly of correspondence between Thomas Deutsch and his parents, and material pertaining to Thomas’s academic career and travel.

The Dimon-Kurrein Family Collection contains the assorted papers of the Kurrein, Blau, Dimon, and Loewe families. A special focus is on the family correspondence during and after their emigration to the United States and Palestine in 1934. Official documents, a biographical essay, a family photo album, articles on Max Kurrein and several family trees are included in the collection.

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 the papers of the philosophy professor E. Hans Freund. Notable subjects include the development of his professional life, the Freund family, and his experiences in Nazi Germany. The collection consists of correspondence, official documents, memoirs, manuscripts, official documents, and photographs.

This collection holds material related to Anna Perlmann, a German physician who worked in Israel at the Women’s Prison in Bethlehem, Israel; Edith Burian (née Muenz) from Austria who lived in a Kibbutz before immigrating to the U.S.; as well as material pertaining to family members and friends of Edith Burian. The collection includes correspondence, documents related to restitution payments, and photographs.

The Elias Tcherikower Collection documents the professional and personal life of Elias Tcherikower, a scholar, communal activist, and one of the founders of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and to a smaller extent personal life of his wife, Riva Tcherikower, née Teplitski. Collected here are Tcherikower’s writings, professional and personal correspondence, photographs, manuscripts by other scholars, research materials, printed materials, financial documents, conference and exhibit materials, minutes of meetings, bibliographic materials and personal materials of Riva Tcherikower, née Teplitski, and Chaim Tcherikower.

The Enrique Lerdau Family Collection focuses on documentation of the lives of Fritz and Barbara (née Elkan) Lerdau and their children, including their early years, marriage, and emigration to Peru. In addition the collection provides material on the Elkan and Rée families and their members, and to a smaller extent on the Lerdau (formerly Levy) family, including some genealogical information. The history of the hops industry and of the company J.F.U. Scheibel is also mentioned among the documents of this collection. The collection includes an assortment of documents, including extensive correspondence; several memoirs; official, legal, educational, financial, and military documents; many photographs; and family writings including poems, notebooks, and eulogies.

The collection contains writings, along with a small amount of personal and business correspondence, of Erich Drucker, a German businessman and active member of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, who immigrated to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1941 and subsequently became a book dealer in New York City. A prolific writer throughout his life, Drucker regularly kept diaries, and wrote poems, essays, sketches, reflections, and aphorisms. The materials include notebooks dating from Drucker's youth in Germany; typescripts of poems, prose and diaries that he produced in the United States; business correspondence from the year 1933 of the firm Drucker headed in Berlin before his emigration – Drucker & Gotthelf, a representative of clothing manufacturers; and Drucker's edited copies of letters written to him by his friend Elise Tilse, of Berlin, in the years 1946 to 1947.

This collection contains the papers of Ernst Mueller: mathematician, writer, philosopher and librarian. The most prominent material here are his unpublished writings, including autobiographical items such as diaries and memoirs along with essays, articles and drafts of longer works. Major themes of the collection reflect Mueller's interest in Kabbalah and anthroposophy, in addition to a number of works relating to various areas of Jewish studies. Other materials in this collection include correspondence of Ernst Mueller and his wife Frieda, notes, many poems of himself and his brother Edmund, and a few biographical articles and official papers.

This collection contains a wide variety of family, personal, vital, and legal documents pertaining primarily to the Herz, Steinthal, Buchholz, Isenstein, and Cohn families.

Papers in this collection pertain to the academic life and career of theoretical physicist Fritz Reiche in Germany and the United States. Included are a curriculum vitae, memoirs, letters of recommendation, clippings from public documents such as newspaper articles, faculty letters, obituaries, as well as some personal correspondence, a death certificate, a manuscript and a few photographs.

The Gabrielle Glueckselig Collection centers on the personal and professional lives of Gaby and her husband Fritz Glueckselig. This collection documents many facets of the couple's lives, including their professional work, friendships, and families. A large focus is on the literary work of Fritz Glueckselig, Gaby's hosting of the German-language Stammtisch (originally founded by Oskar Maria Graf and George Harry Asher), and their families, but many other aspects of their lives are also documented here. The bulk of the collection consists of their correspondence, drafts of Fritz Glueckselig's writing, and a large amount of photographs and photo albums. Other documents include official documents of Gaby, Fritz and some family members; sketches including of Gaby's jewelry designs; a few scrapbooks; drafts of other authors' works; and other materials.

The personal papers of the professor for medieval history Gerard E. Caspary consist mainly of a typescript “From the edge of the Holocaust: Letters from my mother and grandmother 1940-1943”, composed by Caspary between 2005-2006 and the original letters on which it is based. Also included are photographs and additional family research documents.

The collection holds papers, photographs, notes and documents pertaining to three generations of the Neumann family.

The Gunther Steinberg Collection contains Steinberg's research and related documentation. Four folders hold family trees, including one folder of Steinberg family trees. The remainder of the collection consists of photocopies and some translations of memoirs, a mohel book, a diary, and family letters. Most prominent among the many families mentioned in this collection are the following: Adler, Dux, Ellrodt, Falk, Hallo, Regensburger, Rowe, Rubensohn, and Steinberg.

The Hanns Fischer family collection includes correspondence of Hanns and Ellen Fischer in Bolivia with their daughters Marianne and Konstanze in Berkhamsted, England, where they had gone by Kindertransport. Also included are the memoirs of Ellen and Konstanze as well as of Hanns’s brother Rudolph; poems, genealogy tables and some photography. A few letters exchanged between Hanns Fischer and Thomas Mann and Karl Jaspers can be found among other professional and personal correspondence.

The Hans and Eleonore Jonas Collection provides documentation of the personal lives of Hans and Eleonore Jonas, better known as Lore Jonas, along with papers relating to the professional work and achievements of the philosopher and scholar Hans Jonas. In addition, the collection contains papers of members of the Jonas and Weiner families. The collection includes correspondence; photographs; articles and unpublished writings, including personal reminiscences and poetry; official documents; notes; sketches; speeches; and family trees.

The Hans Heller Collection contains papers of the businessman and author John (Hans) Heller, originally from Vienna. The collection focuses on his creative writing, such as novels, poems, plays, essays, and his memoirs, as well as on files related to the Heller Candy companies in Austria, England, and in the United States, including the original company’s finances and property in Austria. The collection also includes personal documents, personal correspondence, some papers of his wife, artist Helen Heller, family photographs, and other materials.

The collection holds diaries, memoirs, reports, letters and papers pertaining to five generations of the Hellmann-Kirchberger family. A prominent topic is the life of the family in the Lahn area in Rhineland in the 18th and 19th century. Additional topics are the emigration from Nazi Germany and immigration to the United States. Letters and diaries that are included in the collection draw an intense picture of the distinct impacts of historical and social events from the 18th until the beginning of the 21st century.

This collection primarily holds material on the professional lives of Leni Fromm, hostess of the Boston based German Radio Hour, and her husband, the composer Herbert Fromm. Papers here include material on Leni Fromm's radio program and some of Herbert Fromm's professional appearances and activities. Some of the Fromms' personal correspondence is additionally included. The collection comprises correspondence, radio scripts, unpublished manuscripts, clippings and articles, and a few music scores and photographs.

Contains clippings, letters, certificates and photographs relating to the activities of Levy in both his public and private life. Materials relating to his service as a Representative of the State of N.Y. to the U.S. Congress focus on fiscal and labor legislation; the suffering of the Jews in Russia and Rumania and the attempts for the amelioration of their condition; and the controversy over Levy's purchase of Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello. The latter constitutes the greater part of the collection.

Collection also includes also correspondence of Amelia Mayhoff, 1901-1939, sister of Levy, and documents relating to the military career of Monroe Mayhoff, 1910-1930.

The Jews in Shanghai Collection contains an assortment of original and photocopied documentation of Jews in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition it includes an abundance of personal narratives, newspaper clippings and scholarly articles on this subject as well as on the origins of the Jewish Community in Shanghai.