Jewish refugees

This collection contains catalogs, announcements, invitations, reviews and clippings about exhibits at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York.

The Leonie and Ernst Steiner collection contains photographs of three generations, official and legal documents and certificates of the time when the family members became American citizens. There is also some correspondence, for example from the young Eva Steiner in London to her father Ernst in the United States.

Leopold Levi was a merchant in Stuttgart. Most of the material in this collection gives information on his activities for Jewish organizations and the Jewish Community in Wuerttemberg. Levi was a member of the Oberrat der Israelitischen Religionsgemeinschaft Wuerttembergs (from 1919 to 1940) and of the Israelitisches Gemeindevorsteheramt. He also was an Oberkirchenvorsteher in the Oberkirchenbehoerde and he was active in the Chewra Kadischa. Furthermore he assisted the Juedische Nothilfe. During the years 1941-1943 he succeeded to immigrate to the United States. He died in 1968 in New York.

The Lithuanian Jewish Communities Collection is comprised of documents relating to Jewish cultural, religious, social, political, and economic life in approximately 150 towns in Lithuania. The bulk of the collection pertains to the period between 1919 and 1926, when elements of a system of Jewish national autonomy existed within the Lithuanian state, including a Ministry of Jewish Affairs and governmentally empowered Jewish community councils. Smaller parts of the collection relate to the periods before (1860-1918) and after (1927-1940) the autonomy.

This collection contains personal and official papers of the Blau, Mahl, and Goldberg families of Vienna, Austria. The bulk of the records stems from the 1930s through the 1940s and relates to the immediate family of Lucie Blau (1932-2010) and to her aunt Etta Mahl née Stern and uncle Max Mahl. Materials include correspondence, vital records, immigration records, education and employment records, business records, arrangements for funerals and gravestones, and a few photographs and slides. Limited documentation of restitution efforts is also included.

Lucien Wolf (1857-1930) was a diplomat, foreign affairs expert, journalist, and historian. As the secretary of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association (earlier the Conjoint Foreign Committee), Lucien Wolf took a leading role in the efforts of Western Jewry to aid persecuted Jews in Eastern Europe. He was also a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), where he helped to draft the minorities treaties guaranteeing the rights of Jews and other ethnic and religious minority groups. David Mowshowitch (1887-1957) was Lucien Wolf's secretary and aide at the Joint Foreign Committee for many years and continued to work for the Joint Foreign Committee until the 1950s. The collection consists of the papers of Lucien Wolf and David Mowshowitch, as well as fragmentary records of the Joint Foreign Committee. The material includes personal papers, correspondence, reports, memoranda, minutes of meetings, copies of articles, and press clippings. The documents pertain to the situation of persecuted Jews throughout the world, most notably the efforts of the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association to aid the Jews of Eastern Europe, and to the Peace Conference at Paris in 1919 and the minorities treaties. There is also material on Lucien Wolf's and David Mowshowitch's other activities, most importantly Lucien Wolf's career as a journalist and as a historian of the Jewish community in Britain.

Letters and cards sent by Malvine, Leopold, and other members of the Fischer family in Vienna to daughter Mimi Fischer's family in New York City.

This collection contains research material and information on the life of Max Kreutzberger, a former Director of the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) in New York. A large portion of this collection consists of copies of documents from archives in Europe, Israel, and the United States. There is also information on the Leo Baeck Institute in general, LBI events, and LBI publications. In addition, the collection holds Max Kreutzberger's correspondence, writings, and some personal papers.

The Max Markreich collection documents the life of Max Markreich and his family, especially their emigration from Bremen, Germany. The collection also centers on the history of the Jewish communities of Bremen and East Frisia (Ostfriesland). Included among the papers are manuscripts, correspondence, vital and government documents, clippings, and notes.

Two original German manuscripts and their English translations, describing the author’s escape from Nazi Germany (written in 1942) and her subsequent life underground (written in the 1960s).

Case files (containing correspondence, handwritten notes, application forms, documents, and affidavits) in addition to general correspondence, speeches, brochures, and newspaper clippings from the Immigration and Naturalization Office of the National Council of Jewish Women, Worcester Section, regarding assistance provided to Jewish immigrants and permanent residents seeking citizenship from the 1930s to the 1970s. Case files include office correspondence with individuals, Jewish social service agencies, lawyers in the United States and Germany, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some case files also contain correspondence and personal statements in support of reparations claims filed with the West German government.

This collection contains the records of the National Refugee Service (NRS), a refugee aid organization founded in New York City in 1939 to assist refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. A successor agency to the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany, which had operated as an umbrella organization of refugee aid agencies since 1934, the NRS remained in existence until 1946, when it was merged into the new organization United Service for New Americans. The NRS program encompassed a migration service that assisted with affidavits, visas and other legal aspects of the immigration process; temporary relief and casework services; job placement, retraining, and small business loans; help in resettling to localities throughout the country; and social and cultural adjustment to American life. The records include minutes, correspondence, memoranda, and reports related to the board of directors; the executive director; lay advisory committees; the various departments within the NRS; special committees assisting professional groups, including physicians, musicians, rabbis, social workers, and scholars; and cooperating refugee-assistance committees and organizations across the United States.

This collection contains official certificates documenting the lives of four family members of the Ogutsch-Katz family. Also included are report cards, clippings, correspondence, and obituaries, as well as many photographs.

This collection contains a handwritten recipe book in Yiddish and German with entries dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as some of Otto Leib's correspondence and essays from the late 20th century regarding the Jewish experience in Southern Germany and Switzerland.

Correspondence with individuals and family members. Manuscript of a translation of Itzhak Katzenelson's Sheshet yemei bereshit. Manuscripts of Yiddish and Hebrew poems. Photographs. Personal documents.

This collection contains manuscripts of novels, short stories, poems, essays, lectures, speeches, translations, and other writings, correspondence, photographs, and personal documents and materials of Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and his wife Inna Hecker Grade. The collection helps to illustrate Grade’s literary development and impact on Yiddish literature over time, from his earliest poetic works written in Vilna and the Soviet Union, to his prolific and accomplished prose work composed mainly in the United States. The collection illuminates Inna Grade's intellectual and academic prowess, as well as the integral role that she played in the editorial and logistical aspects of Grade's literary output.

Correspondence with individuals and organizations: Elias Tcherikower, Daniel Charney, H. Leivick, Bernard Kahn, James Bernstein, HIAS-HICEM, AJDC. Reports about child welfare in the Ukraine, 1920s. Handbills from Jewish communal elections in Germany, 1927.

This collection, which is a sub-group of RG 294 Displaced Persons Camps, consists of the records of Leo W. Schwarz, the Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC/JDC) for the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany during the years 1946-1947. The papers pertain to his work with the JDC in Germany and to the history of the Jewish displaced persons in Germany after World War II.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of historian and bibliographer Philip Friedman. These materials include correspondence with individuals and with organizations, newspaper clippings, subject files, manuscripts of works by Friedman and by others, and some of Friedman’s personal documents. These materials relate to Friedman’s work on the histories of various Jewish communities, particularly those in Poland, and his work gathering source documents about the Holocaust.

This collection contains the correspondence of Paul A. Mayer. Most of it consists of correspondence with family members. Primary topics of the collection are the attempts of Ernst and Lisbeth Mayer to emigrate from Germany, Paul and Margaret Mayer's correspondence from their time in England, and Paul Mayer's correspondence to Margaret during his service in the United States Army in World War II.

The collection mainly comprises manuscripts of Paul Collin in English, including two autobiographical narrations in the form of typescripts; and four completed books (copies of typescripts, in binders) that he distributed to friends. Three of the books convey a mixture of personal reminiscences and ruminations on various historical, social and political topics; one is a collection of jokes, in both German and English. There is also a small binder of recipes handwritten in German, along with some recipes on loose notes, and a few items of miscellaneous correspondence, including one photograph. Also included are a tribute and an obituary for Collin that were published in bulletins of the Jewish Council of 1933 (San Francisco), of which he was a longtime member.

This collection contains correspondence, official documents, photographs, and other archival materials pertaining to Ralph Moratz (1931-2016) and to his project to locate fellow survivors of his Kindertransport from Berlin to France in 1939. After arriving in France, Moratz and thirty-nine other boys sought refuge in the Chateau de Quincy, a Jewish Orphanage near Paris. In 1941, Moratz was able to escape occupied France with assistance from the Children's Aid Society OSE and resettle in New York.

Recording of a reading about experiences as internees in Nazi Germany and as refugees in Latin America.

This collection, which is a sub-group of RG 245 HIAS, includes the records of the main HICEM office in Europe prior to and during World War II. There are also some records from the post-war period relating to the dissolution of HICEM, HIAS’s taking over of HICEM’s operations and HIAS’s work with displaced persons.

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 collection contains the records of the Paris Office of the American Jewish Committee, established in 1947 to study conditions of Jewish refugees and Jewish communities in Europe and North Africa. The Paris Office was involved in major programs and projects of the AJC to study the needs of and aid to the Jews of Europe and the Middle East. The materials include correspondence, memoranda, reports, clippings, photographs and published materials.

This collection contains mainly correspondence between staff of the JDC Landsmanshaftn Department and members of various landsmanshaftn, benevolent organizations of immigrants originally from the same communities, as well as between the Landsmanshaftn Department and the interest-free loan associations (gmilas khesed societies) and heads of the various Jewish communities, mostly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Collection consists of records of the HICEM Office in Prague, documenting efforts to assist Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia. Records include minutes of National Committee Meetings, correspondence from the HICEM office, including with various aid societies, and extensive individual refugee case files.

The records of the National Council of Jewish Women, New York Section document the organization's community service, advocacy, and supportive administrative, fundraising, membership, and public relations activities from the Section's early years to the present. Included is a large amount of material from the National Organization in relation to the New York Section. This material is dated from 1896 to 1999 and consists of administrative, events, and advocacy matters. The New York Section's community services files include its work on aging, child care, consumer telephone referrals, counseling support, crime prevention, the disabled, domestic violence, early child education, feminism, homelessness, hunger, immigrants, Israel, Jewish education and promotion, literacy, probation, the sick, summer recreation for children and the elderly, and war relief. The Section's advocacy files consist of lobbying efforts for the rights of children, the disabled, the elderly, families, the homeless, immigrants, Israel, and women. The collection is primarily in English, with some Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Greek, Spanish, Chinese, and Italian. Among the types of material are audio tapes, blueprints, correspondence, minutes, photographs, publications, scrapbooks, and scripts.

This collection contains correspondence, records, and publications of the United Service for New Americans (USNA), the major immigration and resettlement organization in the United States for Jewish displaced persons immigrating in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These records document USNA’s interaction and coordination with the United States government’s Displaced Persons Commission, associated Jewish agencies, particularly the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and representatives of Jewish settlement groups in cities and towns across the country. The organization helped obtain housing and job assurances for Jewish refugees without family in the United States and provided assurances that they would not become public charges. The correspondence and records in this collection document the entire process of immigration and resettlement, including obtaining the necessary assurances required for displaced persons to immigrate to the United States, relief services provided immediately upon the refugees’ arrival, their designation to and arrival in communities across the country, and the services provided to the new immigrants by their local Jewish communities thereafter.