Emigration and immigration

This collection contains the family papers of Robin Hirsch, owner of the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village, and child of German Jewish refugees, Herbert and Kaethe Hirsch. The collection is mostly made up of correspondence and photographs, dating from the 1910s-1980s, documenting Herbert's life in Berlin (especially his involvement in the Jewish rowing club "Ivria"), time as a World War I artilleryman, and refugee in London during World War II. Post-World War II materials in the collection mostly consist of Kaethe's restitution documents, correspondence between Robin and his parents, and material pertaining to Robin's academic and artistic pursuits.

The Herbert Bloch Collection contains the personal papers of the classicist and medievalist Herbert Bloch, a Harvard professor. Prominent is correspondence between himself and his family, which mentions not only family news and the deaths, deportations, and experiences of family members but also references his own research, writing, and teaching. In addition to family correspondence is correspondence with colleagues and friends, former neighbors, and legal and financial correspondence. Other papers in the collection include poetry, educational certificates and diplomas, material relating to Herbert Bloch's academic career, family trees, obituaries, and photographs.

The Herbert Strauss Collection documents the life and professional activities of Herbert Strauss, writer, historian, and teacher. The collection includes correspondence, court procedures, documents, lists, manuscripts and lectures, notes, photographs, printed materials, and a small amount of teaching materials. Materials constituting the collection reflect various aspects of Herbert Strauss’ personal life, teaching, research and writings in the fields of German-Jewish history and relations, Anti-Semitism, and assimilation. The collection includes both, personal and professional materials related to Herbert Strauss, with personal being by far the smaller.

Correspondence and other materials on the Gildemeester Hilfskommittee including data gathered from potential immigrants.

The Herta and Egon Wells Family Collection centers on the emigration of Herta (née Guttmann) and Egon Wells from Vienna to New York by way of Trinidad, with further documentation on their lives prior to and following emigration. Documents relating to the emigration experiences and attempts of other family members are also present. About half the collection consists of personal correspondence, but it additionally includes official documents, immigration and citizenship documentation, educational and professional documents, memorabilia, legal correspondence, a few family photographs, and newspaper clippings.

This collection details the lives and immigration experiences of Herta and Leo Leab. Given Herta Leab's experience as an executive in the Scherk cosmetics company and as the owner of her own company, Hedda Maar Cosmetics, it includes significant material on the cosmetics industry in Germany and the United States. Losses suffered by the Marcus, Liebeskind, and Scherk families in Nazi Germany and the Leabs' efforts to receive restitution are also well documented, along with some material on the town of Gilgenburg (now Dabrowno, Poland) and World War I. The collection is comprised of extensive personal and business correspondence, family and official papers, notebooks, clippings, and a few photographs.

The collection focuses on the private and professional lives of the attorneys Hilde Neumann (née Rosenfeld) and her first husband, the political scientist Otto Kirchheimer. It contains personal and official correspondence, articles, restitution claims, clippings (information artifacts), official documents from Germany, and immigration records from the United States.

The collection contains letters and postcards as well as photographs and slides. The majority of letters were written by Hildegard Josephine L. Wirtz to her mother-in-law, Hedwig Hellmann. The letters document her wedding with Ulric Hellmann and then follow her emigration to the United States. Photographs and slides show mainly the Wirtz family and document the wedding.

The Hirschberg-Goldmann Family Addenda holds documentation on the lives and emigration of Harry and Leonor Harter, originally of Breslau. It additionally contains research, conducted by their son, into the history and genealogy of the Hirschberg and Goldmann families and their relations, as well as into the fate of his maternal grandparents, Siegfried and Käthe Goldmann. The collection includes material about the Breslau Jewish community, especially about its Storch synagogue and the Cosel cemetery (Legnica Street cemetery). The collection contains many copies of historical documents, extensive correspondence, photographs and a photo album, copies of articles related to the research of the collection, and some family trees.

The collection includes family trees and genealogical information on the Hirschberg and Goldmann families from Breslau as well as some certificates of citizenship and other documents from various relatives issued in the early 19th century. The bulk of the collection consists of personal documents of the physician Harry Hirschberg (later Harter) and his wife Leonore Goldmann, such as certificates, passports, study books, military documents related to World War I, emigration papers, and new licenses and certificates issued in the United States after World War II.

The Hirschland Bank and Family Collection contains the family papers and banking records of the Hirschland banking firm established by Simon Hirschland in Essen. Family papers pertain to members of the Hirschland, Grünebaum, Neumann and other families, with an emphasis on family members' emigration and role in the family firm. Banking records focus on the history of the family firm from the 1930s through the 1960s, including records of successor financial firms. The collection includes prolific correspondence, banking files and financial records, family papers, official documents, photographs and photo albums, contracts, and other papers.

The records document the Histadruth Ivrit's early history to the present, representing a significant portion of its work in spreading the Hebrew language in the United States in the second half of the twentieth-century. The records include substantial amount of material regarding the organization's history, administration, public events, publications, and reports. Some information of the early history of the Histadruth Ivrit could be found in the records kept by the writer Daniel Persky. Persky collected personal and professional records that include correspondence with friends, readers, and writers; a partial collection of the drafts of his own publications, and a collection of photographs and newspaper clippings. The functions and activities of the Histadruth Ivrit are documented through Board of Trustees and Board meetings agendas and minutes; various programs for events, conventions, conferences, and celebrations; documents related to fundraising; public relations, press releases and brochures; correspondence with different individuals, organizations, and foundations; Histadruth Ivrit's publications among them the newspaper Hadoar and Tov Lichtov; a large collection of photographs, and scrapbooks. The records of the Histadruth Ivrit represent the large majority of the organization's activities dating from the 1980s to the present. Records for the earlier years of activities are fragmented and incomplete. The records related to the life of Daniel Persky are also partial and copies of many of his publications are missing. This collection included brochures, correspondence, financial records, flyers, grant applications, invitations, lists, minutes, news clipping, orders, periodicals, photographs, press releases, reports, and scrapbooks.

This collection contains the institutional records of the Houston Action for Soviet Jewry, mainly news clippings, correspondence, files about refuseniks, and various materials and programs for events which Houston Action for Soviet Jewry sponsored or was involved with. There are also some materials from other organizations set up to aid Soviet Jewry, including the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, the Chicago Action for Soviet Jewry and the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews. Many of these materials concern the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the 1990s, soon after the end of the Soviet Union.

This collection holds the papers of the lawyer and librarian Hugo Knoepfmacher. The main subject of the collection is his personal and professional life, although material concerning other members of the family is also present. The collection consists of official documents, notes, correspondence, manuscripts, some clippings, and a very small amount of published material.

This collection focuses on the professional work of art dealer and Plato scholar Hugo Perls. Among the documents assembled here are an extensive amount of manuscripts, notes on his writing, some correspondence, clippings, photographs and a few manuscripts of the writing of his second wife, Eugénie Söderberg.

This collection contains a variety of material related to the pre-war life and emigration of members of the Frank family of Bamberg, Germany. There are five handwritten reports by Bernhard Sichel from his studies at the University of Würzburg (1906-1909); four music books from the choir of the Synagogue at Bad Mergentheim, composed by Sol Prager, for four parts: I bass, II bass, I tenor, II tenor, and a printed music sheet entitled Psalmen und Gebete im Urtexte, in Musik gesetzt von David Rubin (circa 1900-1931); birth certificate for Henry (Heinz) Frank (1938); correspondence of Henry Frank from Newark, NJ, with travel agencies, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the US State Department, trying to secure a Cuban visa and passage for his mother Ernestine Frank (née Früh) in Bamberg. The correspondence reflects the enormous financial cost and bureaucracy required for a visa. The papers never went through and Ernestine was deported to Riga, where she perished. (1941-1942).

Correspondence, documents, cookbook.

This is a collection of clippings pertaining mostly to German-Jewish individuals, whose life, accomplishment, or death had been noteworthy enough to trigger the interest of an editor at a newspaper or a journal. From the 1960s to the end of the 20th century, archivists at the Leo Baeck Institute perused dailies, immigrants’ journals and periodicals of special interest groups in the United States, in Israel, in various European countries and beyond to discover traces of the scattered survivors of German-speaking Jewry. Birthday celebrations, special anniversaries and obituaries as well as reports about deeds and accomplishments were clipped from the publications and collected. Today, these clippings bear testimony of all these individuals’ lives and German speaking Jewry as a whole.

The collection documents the activism of Dr. Jack Minker, a leading authority in artificial intelligence, on behalf of foreign scientists whose human rights and scientific freedom were violated. The bulk of the collection focuses on Soviet Jewish Refuseniks, such as cyberneticist Alexander Lerner, mathematicians Victor Brailovsky and Anatoly Sharansky, and a dissident human rights activist, nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. The documents include manuscripts, correspondence, memos, notes, publications, news clippings, and photographs.

This collection documents the academic, professional and private life of Jacob Barosin (1906-2001), a painter and artist of Russian-Jewish descent. Barosin was raised in Berlin, but he fled to France in 1933 and in 1943 survived a stint in the Gurs concentration camp. The collection primarily contains correspondence, ephemera, manuscripts, official documents, personal papers, and photographs.

Collection Consists of stories, proverbs, and reminiscences recorded by Rothbart at the request of his granddaughters: Betty R. Rothbart, and Judith Anne Rothbart.

A videotape (with a typed transcript) of an interview of Jean Strauss Tillis, who immigrated from Ukraine to New York circa 1921.

The collection contains papers of Jerry Goodman, the founding director of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, the largest and most influential organization created by the American Jews to coordinate efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews, which survives today as NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States & Eurasia. The bulk of the collection covers the activities from the early 1970s through late 1980s. The collection includes some minutes of meetings, memoranda, correspondence, newsletters and publications of the NCSJ and its precursor, the American Jewish Committee on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ, 1964-1971). Among other materials are some posters and considerable number of photographs on Refuseniks and of the ASJM events in New York and the US, audio recordings on compact cassettes and reel-to-reels re-mastered into CD format, and VHS tapes. The collection also contains non-paper objects like pins, pendants, bracelets devoted to prisoners of conscience in the USSR, as well as a t-shirt, a scarf and a shopping bag.

The Jewish Chronicle is a weekly newspaper covering local, national and global news for the Jewish community of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and its vicinity. The collection contains information and photographs used by The Jewish Chronicle for coverage of the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union during the decades of 1960s and 1970s. The bulk of the materials originated from the Soviet Jewry movement organizations and other Jewish institutions in the United States and includes publications, press releases, correspondence and photographs related to Soviet Jews.

This collection consists of brochures, by-laws, correspondence, fliers, meeting minutes, memorandum, pamphlets, programs and reports. The documents in this collection describe the activities of the following committees: Immigration, Democratic Educational Practices, Civil Liberties, and the High School Institute. Also the activities of the following divisions are documented: Germantown, Logan/Olney Boulevard, Main Line, Neighborhood, Northeast, Old York Road and Western Divisions. Of particular interest to researchers are lawsuits and legal memorandum concerning religious liberty, state busing practices, religious holiday observances, fair housing practices, and the American Nazi Party.

The Jewish Family Service of Greater New Orleans (JFSGNO) was a social service agency created in 1948 to establish and preserve the self-sufficiency of Jewish families. The collection focuses on the JFSGNO’s work to resettle Jews from the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, often in cooperation with similar agencies, such as Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), United Service for New American, and United Jewish Fund. Also included are lists of the Displaced Persons who arrived from Eastern and Western Europe by ships to the port of New Orleans in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and materials on resettling of refugees from Southeast Asia in the 1970s-1980s. The documents include ship manifests, memos, agendas, correspondence, clippings, policy statements and procedures, statistics, congressional reports, programs and budgets.

This collection is comprised of one folder of telegrams, correspondence, and a resolution, disseminated by the Jewish Public Relations Council in Pittsburgh, PA in response to the “Free Ports” plan, May-June 1944.

The collection contains items documenting Jewish life, particularly Jewish refugee life, in England during the late 1930s and early 1940s.

The Joan Salomon Family Collection documents the immigration and marriage of Otto and Helina (née Mayer) Long (formerly Lichtwitz). The fate of family members and restitution for loss of property during the Holocaust are other prominent topics. The collection includes official and personal papers, notebooks, cookbooks, correspondence, articles, photographs and drawings.

Contains newsletters and related documents composed by San Francisco area organizations pertaining to Soviet Jewry. The newsletters are composed by American Jewish activists on behalf of Soviet Jewish refuseniks and refugees. The documents provide insight into the daily lives of Soviet Jewry and the American Jewish fight for Soviet freedom during the 1970s and 1980s. The newsletters document different organizations and attempts to aid Soviet Jewry, their status and their plight. Organizational newsletters included are from such organizations as: The Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Bay Area Council on Soviet Jewry and Northern California Lawyers' Committee for Soviet Jews. Highlights of the collection include UN Human Rights documents, the Pesach Project (1978-1979) and Twinning programs for Bar/Bat Mitzvah.