Jews -- Persecutions -- Germany -- Berlin

This collection contains the personal papers of Arnold Stein (1890-1974) and Werner A. Stein (1925-2017), a Jewish German-born father and son who fled Berlin, Germany in 1939 with their immediate family, Arnold’s wife Gertrude and daughter Marianne. The family settled in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, where Arnold opened a printing business.

The collection includes correspondence and documentation of Arnold’s printing business in Berlin; his World War I German army service; his marriage with Gertrude Rosenthal; and the family’s emigration from Germany. Also documented are Werner’s schooling; United States army service; longtime involvement with the German-Jewish newspaper Aufbau; marriage to Helga Marcus and their lives in Great Neck, New York with their two daughters, Susan and Barbara. The collection also includes documentation on Stein, Rosenthal and Marcus genealogy and family history.

The collection consists of various materials covering aspects of the Berlin Jewish community’s history from the 1880s to the 1990s, concentrating on documents from the community’s sole official congregation, “Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin”.

Bulk dates for Series III are 1927-1968.

The Photographs and Ephemera series contains the photographs that did not logically fall into any of the folders in Series I or II; other photographs may be found in Series I and II .

Folder 2/15 contains loose photographs, mostly identified, both before and after World War II. It includes members of Stein and Marcus families, and photographs of the exterior of the Stein’s home in London, 1939-1940. Pictured in color are photographs of the exterior of the Stein’s apartment while living in London, 1939-1940.

Folder 2/16 contains photographs that were removed from a binder album in their existing order within the binder sleeves. There are photographs of family members in Germany before WWII labeled “1939”; of the Stein family home interior before leaving Berlin in 1939; and of Stein family visits to Germany after the war of exteriors of former homes and cemeteries where family is buried. Folder 2/17 consists of a leather-bound photo album dated 1927-1928, in French, by an unknown creator.

Folder 2/18 holds stamps and first day covers, predominantly in Hebrew.

This collection contains a wide range of personal and family papers of the Jacobi, Kornik, and Mosse families of Posen and Berlin, as well as extensive family trees for the Jacobi and Wolff families.

Letters from Günter Riegner in Berlin, France, and Switzerland to his brother Otto in Philadelphia.

The bulk of the correspondence is from Hugo Riegner in Berlin-Charlottenburg (Germany) to his son, Otto-Ernst Riegner in Philadelphia.

The collection contains records from the administration and executive committee of the Berlin Community from 1933-1938.