The collection documents American Jewish Committee’s efforts to combat all forms of discrimination against the Jews in the United States. Additionally, there are materials pertaining to AJC’s work regarding other minority groups in the United States. The collection offers researchers a unique chance to see how and what was done prior to the changes in public opinion and civic and legal laws. The American Jewish Committee Records, Subject Files consists of materials created by executive offices, departments, local offices and chapters of the Committee concerning a variety of matters; foremost Jewish civil and religious rights, immigration, and the Holocaust.

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papers from his involvement with the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Information Bureau, published and unpublished writings, publications collected by Richards, articles about Richards and his activities, correspondence and articles from testimonial dinners in honor of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.

This collection mostly consists of newspaper clippings, articles and other documentation on Jews in Europe and in Palestine, as well as on Zionism and Jewish history. In addition, a small amount of biographical information on Conrad Cohn is present.

This collection of mainly anti-Semitic material was compiled by a Jewish librarian of German descent who infiltrated the pro-Nazi community developing in New York City in the years leading up to World War II. The bulk of the collection consists of publications and printed matter, with the notable exception of narrative reports that describe first-hand experiences and observations of Nazi-affiliated events. Document types include advertisements, event announcements, books, clippings, correspondence, magazines and newspapers, travel guides, political memorabilia, and other print ephemera.

Joseph Eaton (born Josef Wechsler) was an American sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh and a German-Jewish immigrant who arrived in the United States as a child in 1934. The collection primarily comprises correspondence, writings, clippings, ephemera, and photocopied archival materials related to Eaton's genealogical research in the Bavarian localities of Schwabach, Nuremberg, Fürth, and Theilheim (Waigolshausen), including materials pertaining to the history of the Jewish communities in those localities, as well as specifically to Eaton's own immediate family and his ancestors of the Wechsler, Rosenbaum, and Goldschmidt families. Included are materials related to Eaton's travels to those localities in the context of programs hosting former Jewish residents and commemorating the Holocaust and the German-Jewish communities that were destroyed. A small portion of the collection pertains to Eaton's scholarly interest in the experiences of Jewish communists in East German society, including transcripts and/or audio files of two interviews he conducted with Hermann Axen, a Jewish concentration camp survivor who from the 1970s until 1989 was a member of the Politburo of the ruling Socialist Unity Party.

This collection contains documents of journalist and left-wing political activist Paul Novick, consisting mainly of correspondence, subject files, manuscripts, photographs, and newspaper clippings. These materials relate to Novick’s career as long-time editor of the Morning Freiheit (Morning Freedom), his important role in the worldwide Communist movement, the history of the Freiheit itself, and Jewish and general politics. These materials demonstrate Novick’s important, and changing, role in the history of Communism, as well as his career as a Yiddish journalist and author.

The collection represents the papers of Morris David Waldman (1879-1963), a rabbi, social worker and communal leader, who was appointed executive secretary of one of the main Jewish defense organizations, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), in 1928. The executive secretary had top executive function at the organization and was in charge of working out and implementing the organization’s projects and policies regarding monitoring the civil and human rights of the Jews, and intervening on behalf of the Jews both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1942, Waldman was promoted to executive vice-president, a position he held until his retirement in 1945. The Morris Waldman Files relate to all of Waldman's activities as acting executive secretary and vice-president of the AJC.

The Rudolph Seiden Collection describes the life and work of Rudolph Seiden, who was a chemist and a Zionist activist. Included in this collection is personal and editorial correspondence regarding Judaism, Zionism, anti-Semitism and the proposed Jewish resettlement in Alaska in the 1930s. Unpublished manuscripts collected by Rudolph Seiden for the Foreign Authors’ Syndicate can be found in this collection as well as autographs from Max Brod, Lujo Brentano, Franz Oppenheimer, Erich Muehsam, Arthur Schnitzler and Otto Warburg.

The collection contains the papers of Shalom Schwarzbard (1886-1938), the Russian-born French Jewish watchmaker, revolutionary, writer and activist for Jewish self-defense. In May 1926 in Paris, Schwarzbard assassinated the exiled Ukrainian nationalist leader Simon Petlyura, whom he held responsible for the pogroms against the Jews in the Ukraine in 1918-1921. His trial in October 1927, at which he was acquitted, drew worldwide attention. The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts of Shalom Schwarzbard's autobiographical writings, personal documents, clippings, and printed ephemera, as well as poems by Schwarzbard's wife Anna and others. Materials in this collection mostly relate to Shalom Schwarzbard's writings, his speaking engagements following his acquittal, and his efforts in the 1930s to organize Jewish war veterans and war victims of the First World War.